in the world and in the church. I know that even those of us who are called to lead can have feet of clay and this can make complicated things seem disastrous.

Just follow Christ. Live as He wants you to live. Let His words be your hope, your guide, your filter to make sense of the whole crazy world. Everyone will fail you at one time or another, the things you counted on to make it through can be taken away in an instant. Life is fragile. Only Jesus can rise above the storm and say “peace be still.”

I see the craziness rippling though the Orthodox Christian world and I think “What in the world have i gotten myself into?” I thought somehow it was supposed to be better, a greener kind of grass on this side of the fence. Alas I was mistaken.

People in the Orthodox Church can be be as whatever it was I thought I was leaving behind on my journey. Egomaniacal? Check. Political? Check. Missing the point entirely? Sure. Come to think of it, though, I can be that way too. Of course when that happens to me, when I’m still like the person I thought I had left behind, it doesn’t make the headlines because, well, I’m very distant from the thrones and dominions. Yet I have my ways, even in my own little world.

What to do?

Well, there have been more than a few times when I felt like running off to a tropical island and spending the rest of my life playing music for tourists. Its an honest living. There have been times, as well, when the whole idea of being a hermit seemed okay. Completely leaving the whole thing behind was out of the question but sitting quietly in a back pew for the rest of this temporary arrangement had its charms.

Yet that’s the way it is with the Church. We bear each other’s burdens even if we don’t actually know the struggler. It’s a pact, when they need help I need to have their back and when my time comes I pray they have mine. While people higher up the food chain can have a disproportionate impact the principle still holds. I see them struggle and somehow I have to find a way to be strong for them, to lift them up, and help them recover if I can. They might not like the whole idea, after all there are times when I don’t want to be reminded of my rough edges, but a deal is still a deal. Great or small, important or not, I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. Its in the Book.

Now off for some more Lent.

its as simple as that. If you want to push forward expect a push back. If you wish to draw closer don’t be surprised if something is thrown in your way. If you desire something higher beware the hands on your ankles. And then there’s the stuff you do yourself…

the world being crazy. The idea of it even makes an odd kind of sense to me. When the Church goes crazy, or seems to, that’s a whole different thing. I count on the church to be sane, wise, deep, and clear in a way that I never expect politicians or the heads of corporations to ever be. It’s the whole kingdom of God thing. Just those words mean that it should be different, better, and something other than the world.

Alas, that’s not always the case. It seems that at any given moment we can be as petty, political, and downright stupid as anything in the world. Kingdom of God or not we can be a bunch of knuckleheads precisely because the whole Church is filled with knuckleheads like me.

How I wish it was different. How I wish that the Church could be some kind of refuge, some kind of place of peace where the cruel world was outside the door never to come inside. I guess that’s why we have the eschaton, the day when all things will be as they were meant to be. I guess that’s why we get glimpses and pieces of that day now but never the complete package. The creation groans and we groan along with it even as we stand about the altar.

Perhaps that’s what our hope really is. We see the seeds and anticipate the plant. We catch a glimpse and faith fills in the rest of the picture. We have moments and those moments help us imagine eternity. A taste previews the great banquet and a few notes let us hear the future, eternal, song.

I’d like more, but I can live with that if I have to and wait with a kind of joyful sorrowing anticipation for the rest.

a small group of people who, seeking to understand the times and seasons, are willing to pray for the Orthodox Church. No application needed. Job begins immediately.

An elderly monk, a laborer in noetic prayer, said, “We should not miss any chance given to us to say the Jesus Prayer. We must not let our mind wander in vain things. In saying the Jesus Prayer, one’s mind finds rest and joy. It is like small children who, for the whole day, run around shouting and playing and hitting each other. But the one thing that gives them rest and great joy is when, at night, they find themselves in their mother’s arms. This way also one’s mind, instead of being scattered about, out to be devoted to mental prayer.

from An Athonite Gerontikon

on the Theotokos (Virgin Mary) from Onesimus Online.

of iconoclasm. The first denies that God can sanctify and use holy holy images to bless the faithful and the world. The second sees these holy images largely in the context of decoration or museum pieces.