I was among the many to be shocked today by news of the death of Warren Farha, the founder of Eighth Day Books in Wichita, KS. Who can explain Warren? He was a soft-spoken, quietly-amused man of deep insights. He was profoundly intelligent yet always humble. He was a joy…
I was so happy to see, this morning, that my friend Rod Dreher has tackled the Orthobro situation. I was coming to see that I really didn’t have the skills to encompass it; I’m an essayist, and this topic needs a journalist. Just last night I wrote in an email:…
Depending on where the choir stands in your church, they may not have a good view of the iconostasis. I printed out these two Greatest Hits among Orthodox icons (Virgin of Vladimir and Christ of Sinai) for the music stand I share with other sopranos. (The black square in the…
I was honored to be invited to fly down and be interviewed by Fr. Chris Metropoulos for a new OCN series, “Direct and Unapologetic.” They asked me to talk about how to get a prayer life started, and how to keep it going. Here’s the link: As usual with any…
Today, March 25, is the Feast of the Annunciation, the day the Angel Gabriel came to Mary and told her that she would have a Son. You’ll notice that this is exactly 9 months before December 25. The people of her time knew that a new human life begins at…
The “woman at the well,” that vivid figure in the 4th chapter of St. John’s Gospel (John 4:16-26), who converses with Christ beside the well, is known to the Church as St. Photini. She’s a remarkable figure and clearly an intelligent woman, though her irregular romantic life probably made her…
This past Sunday was Cross Veneration Sunday for Orthodox Christians, and I gave the homily at St. Nicholas Ukrainian Orthodox Church about how the Annunciation (March 25) and the Crucifixion are the two “parentheses” around the entire Christian story. Here’s the text of my talk, and I linked below to…
Here’s a tidbit I was interested to learn: When most people are illiterate, they call poems and prayers by the first line. For example, when we say “the Our Father,” listeners know we are referring to the whole prayer, and not just those two words. Catholics and Orthodox call it…
A few days ago, journalist Terry Mattingly posted on his Substack page a column about the beginning of Lent. No, Orthodox Christians don’t have ashes on our forehead (though we may well think, “Dang, that’s cool, why didn’t we think of that?”). We begin with the Rite of Forgiveness, in…
What does “Commitment to Reality” mean to you? You can hear my thoughts in the first episode of this podcast, where the host is Dave Hanegraaff. I met Dave when I went to his father’s chrismation, in April 2017. That day his dad, Hank Hanegraaff, was chrismated along with his…
