for some time on the troubles that seem to be working themselves through the various Orthodox jurisdictions. It’s been a sometimes frustrating and sometimes hopeful sort of task.

Frustrating, of course, because it seems so meaningless. Our culture is in a deep moral crisis and millions wander through life without some kind of healthy guidance to make it through the day. So what is our agenda? Arguments over who gets the best places at the table, whose title is what, and who, in a certain way, gets to lord it all over the subordinates like the Gentiles.

Would to God that we were vying for who can have the deepest prayer life, or who can do the most to plant churches to strengthen the faithful and help the drifting. Imagine a contest among us as to who will love the most, or with whom the poor will find the greatest shelter!

Yet that is not to be for the moment. For now we have to pound our heads against the stubborn wall of pride until, it seems, we realize that the pain will go away only if we stop. For now the game must be played until the players, exhausted and battered, come to realize that its only a game, nothing more, that we’ve expended so much precious time and energy playing.

Gone is the triumphalism of Orthodoxy. Sex scandals are not only a Roman Catholic problem. We have them too. All the televangelists that we pointed fingers at with the big houses and unaccounted for money, well we have that in our way as well. The idolization of position and title has been dealt a fatal blow as well all stand exposed in our humanity like kids caught at the door of the store with a unpaid candy bar in their pocket.

Yet perhaps its at this place that we need to be. Perplexed, frustrated, humbled, unsure of ourselves, and even afraid. The closets have been opened and everything we’ve tried to hide under the bed is slowly leaking out. We look like the stars without makeup in the tabloid magazines. We are being weighed in the balances and found wanting.

Yet there is a voice that we can hear if they care to listen. Perhaps it is the voice of the God who loves us deeply whispering in our ears. “Your pedigrees, your temples, your titles, your connections, the great and holy gifts, all of these are good but none of them is anything without humility, grace, love, piety, and all the precious gifts that come with the Holy Spirit. Seek those first, seek first the kingdom of God and everything else will find its proper place.”

Some day, tired of hearing our own voices, we’ll be able to listen and perhaps that day is why we are here now.

point of view regarding the recent challenges in the Orthodox Church and the internet.

improbably tucked between a gas station and a pizza place, no sign out front and the shades drawn to protect the interior from the sun. You could drive by it a hundred times and not know it was a church, but it is. It’s a mission in Anoka, MN, a place for Orthodox Christians to gather in what had once been a remote farm town now completely engulfed as a suburb by the Twin Cities.

I was the guest that day, called to serve because the interim pastor needed to fill in at another church and I was available. The drive north was short and familiar. The highways were clear because it was Sunday morning and I had driven in this area many times over the decades I’ve been in St. Paul. Arden Hills, Shoreview, Mounds View, Coon Rapids, and Blaine all passed by my window as, early, I was the first in the parking lot.

Soon cars began to arrive and I was let in. Such an interesting and beautiful place. What had once been a 7-11 store was now a church complete with an apse carefully constructed where the dairy products or pop might have been. It all looked hand made but in the best possible sense of the word. The iconostasis was open and wonderfully unlike a fortress wall. A kitchen had been built inside and even small rooms on either side of the sanctuary that had everything needed for worship. Icons were posted on all of the walls and the altar stood in holy simplicity, an older tabernacle and a Gospel book without an elaborate metal cover.

As people came in there was noise and talking. The choir was gathering, a small Sunday school class sat at the floor in the back, and the kairon, proskemedia, and censing proceeded apace. When all you have is one larger room everything that must happen does so in one place, a reverent noise born of necessity that dissolved into the prepatory readings.

As the service began it became clear that this was a place of worship. Some stood, some sat, and the choir was small but very proficient at its work. There was a Deacon with me, an older and extraordinarily helpful man making sure that I could make the transition into serving in the Slavic style. Altar boys peered out from the side rooms. Folks lined up, so many of the group, to partake of the life giving mysteries. And even here it seemed that God had honored us with His presence.

As I drove home later after something about this place occurred to me. There are grand cathedrals out there, structures of imposing size where equally imposing people seek to guide and direct larger affairs. There are boards and commissions, committees and organizations, a confusing array some times and fertile places for pride and the business of the world to intrude on the holy. When these places and the people who preside at them are troubled that trouble seems to fill the air, the spiritual breathing space of the Church, and even their pathology is assumed important.

Yet the promise is given that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church and now I understand in part why this is so. It is not because the great have gathered to wrestle, ponder, and decide, rather it is because the small have gathered in an old 7-11  in Anoka, Minnesota.