Things I'm learning on sabbatical…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Sin messes people up, twists them, breaks them, fills them with delusion, in fact its the ultimate delusion. If, for some reason, a person is at the moment more sane than another, less caught up in darkness, they need to deal gently with those in a darker place. First because they understand their own sinfulness and take care to realize that even their best intentions may be touched by this. Second because they know from their own experience that the confusion, the sickness, and the pain of sin may be so deep that what seems obvious to the observer may not be clear at all to the one being observed. Sanity may have to be restored a little at a time, a process wrapped in grace and administered with a spirit of gentleness to avoid the cure being worse than the disease.

Things I'm learning on sabbatical…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes the role of the people in the life of the church is patient, prayerful, endurance. Leaders are sometimes holy, sometimes flawed, and occasionally just plain evil but the patient faith and endurance of the people of God is where the holy are acknowledged, the flawed corrected, and the evil overcome by good.

Things I'm learning on sabbatical…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

character is more important than knowledge. I can learn every rubric for every service and be able to recite the Fathers by memory but its meaningless if my character is not in the image of Christ. First work on being like Christ and the knowledge will come.

Wisdom…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

I have consciousness of my sinfulness, but I live with hope.
It is bad to despair, because someone who despairs becomes
embittered and loses his willingness and strength. Someone
who has hope, on the contrary, advances forward.

Elder Porphyrios

From time to time…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

I post hymns that we sang in our Plymouth Brethren church when I was a child. It’s amazing how I don’t remember many of the sermons, except for that one with the “chart of time from eternity to eternity” display, but I do remember the hymns.

Every once in a while one will spontaneously come to mind, words of hope, words of adoration, words of sanctity all sung in unison without instruments. As we sang you could occasionally hear individual voices, the high wobbly notes of a grandma or an off key bass in the pew behind you,  but good singer or not everyone did what they could. In a church noted, as I recall, for being fairly somber every ounce of piety and emotion would be directed into hymns. Maybe that was a German thing, soul placed into music.

Regardless even after all these years they’ve stuck with me, the well of my childhood full of faith, and I draw on them from time to time. What an odd mixture, Plymouth Brethren hymns and Orthodox prayers. Yet there have been more than a few times when the “night watches” have been filled with both before sleep closes my eyes once again.

Another childhood hymn…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment
  1. I am Thine, O Lord, I have heard Thy voice,
    And it told Thy love to me;
    But I long to rise in the arms of faith
    And be closer drawn to Thee.

    • Refrain:
      Draw me nearer, nearer blessed Lord,
      To the cross where Thou hast died;
      Draw me nearer, nearer, nearer blessed Lord,
      To Thy precious, bleeding side.
  2. Consecrate me now to Thy service, Lord,
    By the pow’r of grace divine;
    Let my soul look up with a steadfast hope,
    And my will be lost in Thine.
  3. Oh, the pure delight of a single hour
    That before Thy throne I spend,
    When I kneel in prayer, and with Thee, my God
    I commune as friend with friend!
  4. There are depths of love that I cannot know
    Till I cross the narrow sea;
    There are heights of joy that I may not reach
    Till I rest in peace with Thee.