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NB: the Text of my newsletter with pictures… PAX! With the help of your prayers, I’ve been trying to do this stuff for four weeks, now (if not the whole of my life, already) it seemed good to let let you know what “this stuff” all is. First, thank you for all the continued texts,…

There are about 12 miles of dirt road between us and the highway.  I took a walk about three and half miles up Cabin Creek Road and came back. It was the longest walk I’ve yet taken since getting here: I’m still getting used to the elevation (7,500 ft) and exercise is a bit of…

Greetings!  Matushka Robin at Holy Trinity Cathedral wanted photos of the mountains! Pikes’ Peak from Pueblo Monastery grounds under the full moon. Snow at the Monastery Snow at the Monastery Snow at the Monastery Snow at the Monastery Snow at the Monastery Along Colorado 50 Along Colorado 50 Along Colorado 50 Along I70 in Utah…

In social sciences, the words “Emic” and “Etic” have very specific meanings.  I’m not sure of them because I wasn’t introduced to these words in the context of social sciences and I certainly never heard them in school (we didn’t use them back in the Dark Ages of the Late 20th Century, although I would…

O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, exspectatio gentium, et Salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos Domine Deus noster. O Emmanuel, God with us, our King and lawgiver, the expected of the nations and their Savior: come to save us, O Lord our God.Emmanuel means “God with us.” In the Eastern Rite, at Great Compline on…

I’m tired of people (Christians and not) hijacking Christmas for their politcal ends. The “poverty” of the Holy Family was not a thing at all until Francis of Assisi got obsessed with proving Jesus owned nothing. This was a serious theological debate in the 12th and 13th centuries and it has come down to us…

So there was this Sheik who, as a youth, had studied in America, in the south, in fact, where he learned to like fried chicken with all the fixings And as he was sitting at the Oasis, surrounded by the court and camels, he turned to his son and said, “My son, my son, the…

Dearly beloved : Today we keep holy-day, with one great cry of joy, in memory of all the Saints ; whose presence is a gladness to heaven ; whose prayers are a blessing to earth ; whose victories are the crown of holy Church ; whose testimony is now to be honoured in proportion to…

When I ask God for an Orthodox Western Rite parish to be founded in San Francisco, I do so under the intercession of the Four Latin Doctors of the Church, the Great Teachers of the West: Sts Gregory the Great, Ambrose, Augustine of Hippo, and Jerome.  Today is the feast of the latter-most and I…

From 6 – 12 August, I was on retreat at the first Western Rite  monastery established in the Antiochian Archdiocese.  The Monastery of St Laurence & Our Lady of Glastonbury is located about three hours outside of Denver to the South and West, back up in the mountains, near Canon City, CO.  Remote: it is some…

I wrote this for the Parish Newsletter. This year’s Assembly of the Diocese of the West, at which I was honored to serve as your lay delegate, was only a brief event: just a couple of hours time before the All American Council rather than the two days of meetings and discussions that would have…

Only let the Republic remain undefeated, they say, only let it flourish and abound in resources; let it be glorious by its victories, or still better, secure in peace; and what matters it to us? This is our concern, that every man be able to increase his wealth so as to supply his daily prodigalities,…

American Media (Left and Right) is making much of the recent vote in Ireland to legally recognize same sex marriages.  Now, why they are making so much of it is worth a whole essay on conspiracy theories.  Yet let us take them at their word: the American Left and the American Right are all susprised.…

A Homily for the Ascension from the works of Pope St Leo. After the blessed and glorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ (wherein was raised up in three days that true Temple of God which had been destroyed by the impiety of Jewry), there came by God’s providential ordering a season of forty days,…

In their 2005 work, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers,  sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton introduced the term “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” to describe the spirituality they found among those teenagers.  Most of the commentary I’ve read about the topic (hereinafter MTD) has included a lot of hand-wringing and asking…