When I was visiting my hometown, Charleston, SC, I saw this story on the front page of the local paper. It’s about two small 19th century cemeteries used by Black churches in Charleston, lots which lie back-to-back within the same block. The overcrowding is horrific. <<Ephrath’s size is about 240…

[12/19/2021] A friend played for me a few minutes of an AFR podcast about “anti-Western” bias among Orthodox. There was a reference to something in one of my books (politely done, without naming me). I messaged the hosts to say that there are two stages, one in which inquirers into…

An emailer  asked me to distinguish between various kinds of meditation, like someone sitting and thinking only about a word like “Love” or “Peace,” and how that differs from the Jesus Prayer. I replied: Those methods, it seems to me, aim at the prayer experience. It is a search for balance,…

[10/20/2021] A journalist asked me a question, and I didn’t know how to answer it. She said that she had read something I wrote in which I said that my husband was attracted to Orthodoxy right away, but I didn’t like it. (That’s a common pattern; a priest told me…

My son, Fr Steve Mathewes, told me that once a man came to him interested in Orthodoxy, but he couldn’t get used to our relationship to Mary. It bothered him that we praise her so highly, and he feared we thought of her as being as important as Jesus. That’s…

[November 6, 2021, lay keynote talk for the Doxacon Conference] I was very honored to be invited to speak at this conference. But I was also perplexed, because I don’t really know much about the world of sci fi and fantasy. So I talked with Mr. Daniel, and we came…

[2021-11-19] Biblical Archeology Review has reported the discovery of a 1500-year-old church about 15 miles southwest of Jerusalem. It began as a simple chapel, built inside a cave where a saint was martyred (a “martyrium”) and buried. Archeologists found a large mosaic set in the floor of the courtyard that…

[2021-10-28] Here’s my strategy for making a prayer rule. A prayer rule is the plan you make about saying your prayers and reading Scripture every day. You might do it all at once each day, or you might (like me) split it up into many shorter times during the day.…

I thought I’d share something about how I use social media and the news media, to keep myself from getting “thrown around” inside. First, I stopped looking at my Facebook news feed. That endless scrolling, looking to see if the next one will be interesting–I think all that jumping about…

[June 2017] In June 2017 I got a phone call from my speaking agent, Cynthia Damaskos (director of the Orthodox Speakers Bureau). She said that a man called Jeff Gardner had phoned her trying to reach me. He said that he had some information about my grandmother. I was skeptical;…