Weekend Recap

First, I'll give a brief summary of our weekend, then I'll reflect on some of the things we did.

1. Friday we went to Barnes and Noble as a family. No, not to support the wholesale homogenization of American culture, but I needed to buy Karen Armstrong's A History of God for my Religion & Violence class.
2. Saturday I listened to Fr. Anthony's interview on Ancient Faith Radio, which was great.
3. Then we took the kids to a great Nature Center in Cape Girardeau.
4. Then in the afternoon we drove up to Madison, IL, to attend Vespers and stay with the Huniaks.
5. Sunday morning we went to Divine Liturgy at Nativity of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church (OCA).
6. Last night I worked four or five hours at my pizza delivery guy gig. I put 40+ miles on my car. Unbelieveable.

1. My Religion & Violence class is going to be a jarring experience as we look at essentially the worst in all three great monotheistic religions. Armstrong's gives an interesting account of the development of monotheism. She particularly disdains the western conception of Christianity. She does a less-than-average job of objective reporting of facts.
2. This nature center is big and nice. But, picture a nature appreciation exhibit as sponsored by the NRA. Everything was like, "How you can hunt [insert animal]..." Kind of comical. One nice thing, the place has great hiking trails. When Micah saw one of them he said, "can we go on an adventure? There's no dangerous species [sic] down there..." So we did. We'll have to go back some time and take full advantage of the nature center.
3. We'd never attended a Vespers service in an Orthodox Church and the Huniaks offered us beds at their house, so we took them up on it. The Huniaks have been so gracious to us, allowing us to stay in their home, feeding us, and letting our kids roam their house. And we've only known them two weeks. They're great. (btw, Huniaks, we got to WalMart and home fine :-) )
4. Sunday morning was a lot easier for us, since we didn't have to get up and leave our house at 7:30 for Liturgy. We got to relax around the house until 9 AM! Then we went to Liturgy. The kids were more of the same, asking, "Is it over yet?!" a little too loudly. They were very well-behaved for 2/3 of the service, then Amy took them downstairs. No use burning them out. They'll eventually learn to be good through the whole service. Oh, and we met the other attached priest, Fr. Oliver. He's very nice.
5. My job at the pizza place is very entertaining. I just smile and laugh at some of the off-the-wall conversations. I had the following weird deliveries last night: 1. I deliver a pizza to a big house. The adults (parents, I guess) are upstairs and say ' we didn't deliver a pizza, it must be for downstairs..' So, I walk through their house to the basement and into a room where a bunch of teens/college age people are watching TV in the dark, 'did you guys order a pizza?' Weird. 2. Apparently when someone from outside our delivery area wants a pizza we can meet them at the edge. Well, last night I delivered a pizza to the parking lot of a closed gas station. So, I'm sitting in my running car waiting, feeling conspicuous when up drives a truck, then they roll their window down. Can we say "pizza deal"?

That's the bulk of my weekend. Now I should be doing some Spanish homework.

Young Life to Orthodoxy

This week Ancient Faith Radio is airing an interview with Fr. Anthony Karbo, who was a Young Life area director and converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. He's now the priest of Ss. Constantine and Helen in Colorado Springs, CO. The interview will be on at the following times:

Thu Jan 26 3:00pm CT/ 4:00pm ET
Sat Jan 28 11:00am CT/Noon Et
Mon Jan 30 7:15pm CT/8:15pm Et
Wed Feb 1 3:00am CT/4:00am ET
Fri Feb 3 2:00pm CT/3:00pm ET

As any regular readers know, I have been involved and on staff with Young Life for a few years. I'll be interested to hear Fr. Anthony's conversion story.

Whoo!

I went to my Spanish American Culture class, and it was wayyyy over my head. I could understand every few words. Anyways, I got an email from the professor telling me she had to drop me, since I haven't finished SN200 yet. I emailed her back and said that I was more than happy to drop the class. Hehe. So, I dropped that class and added Religion and Violence (Are we fur it or again' it?).
That should be an interesting class. The professor is the local Episcopal rector. I've not met him yet, but I hear he's pretty great.
Last night I had my Advanced Logic class. It's just like Symbolic Logic I ("Baby Logic"), but harder and they change just about the whole system of notation. Plus, this course involves a lot more explanation of the methods and principles of logic, rather than just learning to symbolize and check for validity all the time (but we'll do plenty of that).

This weekend will be my fourth regional Leader Weekend. It's going to be great, I'm sure. I'm going to try hard to not stir things up too much with our spiritual disciplines seminar. I probably won't even take more than one of my ikons.
Traditionally it's very cold for this weekend. Last year I got ice crystals in my beard walking to and from meals. This year it's supposed to be a high of 57. Well- no ice crystals this year. How about that?

This weekend I'll have to work hard on reviewing my Spanish and I'll have a good time teaching the seminar.
Pray for me.

Class

Yesterday was my first day back in class. What a thrill!
This is my lineup for this semester's classes:
Modern Philosophy
Symbolic Logic II
Spanish III
Spanish American Culture
Chem in our World (Intro Chem)

I'm not too worried about the difficulty of my schedule, although I am a little nervous about the Spanish American Culture class. When I picked up the book for that class, I looked at it and saw that it's completely in Spanish. I guess that makes sense, but it just scared me.
I hope the lectures are in English. I have that class today, so I guess we'll see.

This morning I'm watching the kids, then I'll go to the high school for lunch. It's getting to be more fun to visit the school, as I get to know more kids. It's hard work to walk into a school of strangers and visit. But I guess that's what's meant by "earning the right to be heard."
My awkwardness in hanging around in their school is worth it if it results in building real relationships with kids and pointing them to Christ.

Also, please keep my little brother, Noel, in your prayers. Yesterday he was sentenced to 2-10 years in prison for probation violation. Even though that's the just penalty for the crime, I still wouldn't want anything like that to happen to my kid brother. I just pray that he'll get some help for some of his things in there, and not just the usual.

St. Louis

Yesterday we drove up to St. Louis (Madison, IL, specifically), to visit a different Orthodox Church. Since we've moved an hour and a half north the church in Memphis is not the closest anymore, so we decided to try and find a parish in St. Louis to find.
Not long after we walked in one of the priests, Fr. Michael, squatted down in front of our kids in his vestments, told Alexis she looked like a princess and gave them some spiritual advice.
Our kids' eyes were big as saucers. "Who is this man in a big gold robe talking to us?"
Micah asked several times during liturgy, "when's this going to end?", and one time he said, "This song is sooo long..." We were sitting next to Lauren, the girl from SEMO, and she kept laughing at our kids' hijinks. At one point I leaned over and said to Amy, "Relax. Our kids are being at least as good as those Orthodox kids." "But those kids are little!"
After liturgy we were standing around meeting folks when the older of the two priests came and got me. We sat in a pew and visited some over our story and our interest in Orthodoxy.
After all that, we went to the Huniaks for lunch.
I can say with some authority that this was definitely our kids' favorite visit to an Orthodox Church, even though the liturgy was 2 hours long. They especially liked the chance to play afterwards.
That's the latest in our journey in, around, and to Orthodoxy.

St. Louis

Yesterday we drove up to St. Louis (Madison, IL, specifically), to visit a different Orthodox Church. Since we've moved an hour and a half north the church in Memphis is not the closest anymore, so we decided to try and find a parish in St. Louis to find.
Not long after we walked in one of the priests, Fr. Michael, squatted down in front of our kids in his vestments, told Alexis she looked like a princess and gave them some spiritual advice.
Our kids' eyes were big as saucers. "Who is this man in a big gold robe talking to us?"
Micah asked several times during liturgy, "when's this going to end?", and one time he said, "This song is sooo long..." We were sitting next to Lauren, the girl from SEMO, and she kept laughing at our kids' hijinks. At one point I leaned over and said to Amy, "Relax. Our kids are being at least as good as those Orthodox kids." "But those kids are little!"
After liturgy we were standing around meeting folks when the older of the two priests came and got me. We sat in a pew and visited some over our story and our interest in Orthodoxy.
After all that, we went to the Huniaks for lunch.
I can say with some authority that this was definitely our kids' favorite visit to an Orthodox Church, even though the liturgy was 2 hours long. They especially liked the chance to play afterwards.
That's the latest in our journey in, around, and to Orthodoxy.

Incense

When I was in high school incense was a very popular item. I remember visiting stores with their large collections of incense, mostly of the stick-variety.
Today I added a censer and incense to my prayer corner. I ordered it from Conciliar Press. I should have ordered the manual with the incense starter kit. Unfortunately, I didn't. I lit the little piece of charcoal and, after dropping it on the floor, put it in the censer and added two honking hunks of incense. Whoa. Soon fragrant smoke was pouring out, and now our entire house smells like the incense. That's not so bad, but I also apparently bought the same incense that my wife says gave her a headache at a church.
What a day.
If anyone has incense/censer pointers for me, it would be great. I mean for the incense to add to my prayer rule, not distract from it.
Pray for me.

Life

This morning I took the kids to a school screening. (Un)fortunately, they're both very bright, and so there's no preschool program offered for either of them. Micah will start Kindergarten in the fall. Alexis probably has another year or more to hang at home with me. Poor thing.
Then I took them to McDonald's for a little training in American consumerism. We had a little bit of a breakfast and they played in the Playland.
When Amy came I went to Jackson High School by myself for the second time. This time there were also three of the younger volunteer leaders. They're great. It's really weird walking around on a campus where i know barely any kids. Very nervewracking. In that way, I'm probably not very much help to my new leader friends. I'm sure we'll all do well.
This afternoon we're all driving down to campus so I can pick up my books and I've promised to buy the kids some kind of SEMO shirt. We'll see how that goes.
I start at the pizza place on Monday. Awesome. I always wanted to be a pizza guy. Next weekend I'm team teaching a seminar on spiritual formation/disciplines at the MO YL Leadership Weekend. That should be interesting.
This Sunday Amy and the kids and I are all going to church at an Orthodox Church up in the St. Louis area. Since we're closer now to St. Louis than Memphis we decided to try and find a parish up there instead of driving the three hours to Memphis to go to liturgy.
Did I mention that we got a new cat? He's from the Humane Society. He's a gray/white tabby named Ace. He's about 14 weeks old and very cute.
I've been enjoying all this time at home with the kids, but it is taking to some adjusting. I'm sure it will be a great experience for all of us.
Pray for me.

Moved

Well, we did it.
We're all moved in to our house in Jackson, MO. My dad stopped through for one day and Amy's parents were here for a week to help us with the move.
It went really smoothly. We had a bunch of help in Cville helping load the truck and were met with a bunch of help in Jackson to unload the truck.
Amy doesn't officially start work until next week, but she's going in all this week to have orientation. I guess it's going well. I know she'll do well and maybe even enjoy herself.
I am adjusting to my new stay-at-home househusband role. I fear I won't be very good at it, but the kids seem to like having me around more.
We'll see how soon they get sick of me.
Anyways, I'm at the public library writing this, because we won't be paying for any internet. If I can make it work, we'll be sharing DSL with the church through a wireless network-- if I can make it work.
That's all for now.

Thirsting for God

In the last three days I have re-read two books I'd read about Holy Orthodoxy: Matthew Gallatin's Thirsting for God in a Land of Shallow Wells and Clark Carlton's The Way: What Every Protestant Should Know About the Orthodox Church. Yesterday I took an afternoon and read all of Gallatin and today I'm reading Carlton.
Both of them point out the primary problem with Protestantism from the start (and even moreso since the Great Awakening)- individualism. It's clear to see that individual interpretations and preferences are at the very heart of everything we practice and believe.

I guess I was inadvertently quoting Matthew Gallatin when I said to Bob yesterday, "If the Orthodox Church is The Church, then it doesn't matter I think about the Church, it only matters what the Church thinks about me."

He said something about our having better critical and hermeneutical skills than the early church, as well as many developments in psychology and science.
But, wait, by that reasoning we would have a better understanding of church than even the Apostles, because they lived in that age of comparative intellectual darkness. However, if, instead of discounting anything ancient, you assume that Christ's Church will always be present on the earth, (and not in secret, as some Baptists suppose), then the only way to objectively view the interpretation of Scripture is to compare mine to the early Church Fathers. In doing this, one will find that the Holy Orthodox IS the Church founded by Christ in the Apostles. This Church has been continuous for all these centuries.

Now, recognize, that, as a mere inquirer and novice of the Orthodox Faith, I don't assume to apologize for the Faith, but I am merely working through these things in answer to myself.
"What is it in the Orthodox Church that attracts you?"
And I guess that is my answer.
Yes, the Orthodox Church is mystical, experiential, sacramental, and communal- all things that are appealing to my personal bent.
If there is Absolute Truth anywhere, it is to be found in the Holy Orthodox Church.
If the Orthodox Church is The Church, then there's nothing I can do but submit myself to the Church of the Apostles, Fathers, Saints and Martyrs.
Pray for me.

Well, in answer to a question in my comments, here is a regional map. In the center you'll see a big star: that's Jackson. That's where we're moving to. If you follow I-55 south from there a ways you'll see Caruthersville, MO. That's where we're moving from. To get an idea of the relative location in the U.S. I zoomed out so you can see the metro areas that surround us, St. Louis, Memphis, Nashville, Little Rock, Kansas City, etc.
Stacy, I hope this helps you place us. We moved to Missouri last December from Dyersburg, TN. Now we're moving farther north. Further up and further in, as Aslan says...

On another note, I did have a couple of conversations about my interest (some would say obsession) with Orthodoxy, and it was interesting. One guy (whom I'll call my benefactor) said that I wouldn't be using my full potential in the Orthodox Church, because I'm more of a free spirit and wouldn't handle being under authority. I wouldn't hesitate to say that he understands me very well, but the exact reason that I need to be under the authority of the Church. It's the only path to truly, humbly serving Christ.

My pastor and I also discussed Orthodoxy for a bit. He's concerned about some 'problem doctrines' like infant baptism. I said, if I'm under the genuine authority of the Church, then it doesn't much matter what I think about a given issue. What has the Church practiced in all times at all places? That's more what we should be interested in. I've been looking for a Saint's principle of hermeneutics: universality, consensus, historicity.

Well, that's all for now.
My benefactor said, "If God's calling you to the Orthodox Church, then you need to sign up now, but I just don't think it would be the best use of your skills and personality."

What to do... what to do??

Dancing in the streets

For those of you who haven't been following my blog for long, a little note of background.
In July I resigned as youth minister at my church. Then I registered to be a full time student at Southeast Missouri State University. This was my first semester as a full time student in five years. It went pretty well. My grades are up this morning- All A's. So, thanks be to God who allowed me to do well in the midst of all these hard transitions in my life.

Over Christmas break we are moving north to live near my college. Over this semester we have been pretty poor while spending around $300 a month in gasoline. Approximately 600 miles a week is a bit extreme.

Seeing as my college is paid for and it's about time I finish my education we decided to make it a priority even over my job and ministry.

So, what will we be doing? That's the real kicker.
God has provided a house next to the First Presbyterian Church of Jackson,MO. They love Young Life, and so they're excited to have a YL family live in their house for free.
Amy will be working as the secretary at the church (making as much as I did with YL) in the mornings. While she's at work, I'll be learning to be a good stay-at-home-dad and house-husband. I'm registered for 18 hours at SEMO in the afternoons and I'll volunteer with Jackson YL in the evenings.
That's what we'll be up to before long. We have a truck for the 28th. Hopefully, we'll have lots of help to load it and unload it.
Pray for us as we go through yet another hard transition. (And pray for a home for our dog.)

Finals

Yesterday I finished my finals. I think I nailed them all. My grades should be up online on Tuesday, so now I just wait... I think I did pretty well.

Tomorrow I'm going to see underoath in Nashville at RCKTWN. Yet another hardcore/screamo concert for yours truly. We'll see how that goes. This time I'm getting really excited because I actually like underoath a lot. (They're not quite as "screamy" as the others.)

Tuesday night it was decided that we are moving. So, we'll be moving to Jackson, MO the week after Christmas. It should be great for us. I'll write more about it later.

Well, that's all in our wild lives.

Pray for us.

Finals Week

Today is my first day of finals. I have one today and three back to back on Wednesday. I will try to be disciplined enough to spend minimal time on the internet in the next three days.

I've been reading The Brothers Karamazov and studying a lot lately. The novel is for pleasure for a break between studying times. We're allowed to bring one page of notes into the final today, so I've been typing that note. My handwriting is awful, so typing will fit a lot more information on the page.

Anyways, there's lots of stuff going on in our lives this week. I'll share more about that thursday when I know more.

Pray for me.

Of finals week

Today is my last day of classes for the semester. Bright and early Monday I'll start my finals. I have one on Monday and three on Wednesday. That'll be a joy.
Consequently, my brain has been preoccupied with school.
Also, we have some big possible life changes and moves looming and I've spent a lot of time thinking about that.

I did want to give a plug for
Our Life In Christ & Ancient Faith Radio
One of the guys from Our Life in Christ read my blog the other day and posted a nice comment, so I want to mention their show. It is very thoughtful stuff. It's especially helpful for protestants who are trying to learn more about Orthodox Christianity. And I wanted to mention Ancient Faith Radio, because I first listened to OLIC on AFR. Ancient Faith, not American Family!!

I'm going to go heat up my car, it's pretty cold.

Pray for me.

Sola scriptura continued

I've received a few messages about my misrepresentation of the protestant cornerstone of thought- sola scriptura. First, I apologize. It's hard not to see (and even point out) glaring problems with my own religious upbringing as I explore the ancient Christian faith.
For the reformers sola scriptura didn't mean "nothing but the Scriptures". I recognize that Luther kept some things that were purely tradition and even Calvin kept some extrabiblical tradition. Now, a lot of protestants today are children Zwingli. Those are easy to spot. If they deny being a Protestant, then they're Zwinglian.
Amy and I were talking about this issue of authority and she said something like this:
For the average (ornery-type) protestant, they study the Bible to find out what they believe, then they take it to their church and point out their faults. Eventually a protestant believer leaves that church and joins one that agrees with his doctrine. What kind of submission to spiritual leadership is that?

That sounds like a better slant to this question of authority. The Fathers never abrogate the Scriptures. They affirm, interpret and apply them.

Of Protestants and Sermons

I've changed the title of my blog to reflect my ongoing fascination and thinking about the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith.

I may have mentioned that I preached at our current church a couple of weeks ago. Our church is a evangelical protestant inter-denominational church. Lately, I have been more and more uncomfortable with the "choose your own faith" attitude that I encounter in all protestant churches. Not that these are particularly dishonorable or arrogant people. This is just a consequence of the reformation. Sola scriptura sold us down the river, so to speak. Now there are no rules. The more that our churches try to set hermeneutical/theological guidelines the more arbitrary it all seems.
For me that is the beauty of the Orthodox Church. Nothing is arbitrary. This is truly the historic faith of the New Testament and the early church fathers. It's scary how much this changes the way I read Scriptures and notice the text-wrestling I was doing before to make it read like it should if my conclusions are true. Then I realize that I NEVER believed in the final authority of the Scripture. I believed in the authority of MY INTERPRETATION of Scripture. I was willing to fight and argue with fellow believers who didn't read this text or that text the same as I did, when the odds are we were both wrong.

For the past two years I have been wondering about the communal nature of truth-knowing and I have wondered (sometimes aloud to myself) what a church would look like that practiced truth-finding/knowing in that way. In the process I became enamored with the spiritual practices of the Orthodox Church. I listened to the Divine Liturgy in Greek a few times a week long before I ever stepped foot in a real live Orthodox church. I started to explore the nature of that faith, realizing that they have always had a communal truth-knowing process.
For ten centuries the church was one and ruled by councils of Bishops. The statements of the councils were then received by the people.

Why would I long for communal truth?
I recognize the all-too likely possibility of error when I read the Scriptures by myself or you do. This is evident by the fact that we all come together and have vastly different readings of the Scriptures. This should definitely not be true when it comes to the all-important ideas of Scripture. Those shouldn't be left to interpretation. If many of us come together, depending on the Holy Spirit, then we're guaranteed that He will guide us (His Church) into all truth. As I've found out, this process leaves a lot of questions unanswered, which is a problem for us western thinkers- we want everything answered. Sometimes we even make things up just to have answer. The Orthodox faith has a lot of mystery where the Scriptures are silent or where the Fathers were not in unanimous agreement.

And from this argument it's a long way down. Once you've lost the idea/importance of personal interpretations of Scripure you lose the do-it-yourself religion of the west, and there's nothing left but to the run to Bride of Christ, where She may be found on this planet.

And I have found that Bride waiting patiently in the Orthodox Church.

Thanksgiving Pt 2

Wednesday we drove to Memphis to stop and visit my friend at Lebonheur, then we headed across the wilderness of Arkansas for Oklahoma. We arrived at my dad's wife's house at about 8 PM. It took a bit longer than we expected.
In case I haven't mentioned, this was the first time I met my step-mom. Hmm. It was an interesting experience.
Judy and her daughters (my stepsisters, maybe) couldn't have been nicer. They were some of the nicest people we've ever met. I'm sure it was weird for them to have us staying at the house, having just met us.
This was positively the first Thanksgiving dinner I ever spent outside on the patio. That's right, we all sat outside on the patio eating thanksgiving dinner. And it was a big big dinner. We went with Judy to her big family Thanksgiving. It was enjoyable being a family of 'random people' at someone else's get together.
Now we're safe and sound back in southeast Missouri.

Thanksgiving- WHOO!

I did it. I threw my money into the capitalism machine (but i did get a discount). I went with two high school guys to watch the latest Harry Potter fare. Interesting. I'm honestly not a big fan. Not that I think it glorifies witchcraft more than C.S. Lewis or Tolkien. It was pretty entertaining. And worth the $5 at any rate.
Tomorrow Amy, the kids and I are driving out to Hugo, OK to have thanksgiving at my new stepmom's house. I'm a little nervous. You see, I haven't met her yet.
So, that should be an eventful visit.
I guess I'll write more about that in the next few days.

Memphis

I went to Memphis today to Memphis today to visit a young man from Caruthersville who is in LeBonheur with some undetermined illness causing brain swelling, a constant headache and vomiting. While I was in Memphis I decided to drive by St. John to buy a new Orthodox Prayer book (mine has gone missing), and possibly an icon of the Nativity ('tis the season). They had neither in stock in their bookstore. I did have a good conversation with their youth director, Joshua. I am particularly interested in what youth ministry looks like in an Orthodox context, so I'll probably have to visit some more with Joshua.
Anyways, I did buy a book while I was there (I figured, why not?). I bought a translation of St. Athanasius' On the Incarnation. I confess I started reading a bit on the way home. Before I left Joshua took me upstairs to photocopy the daily prayers from the service book for me. Fr. John Troy saw me and remembered my name. I was impressed.
I guess I'll order the icon online and buy the prayer book the next time we go to St. John for the Liturgy.