Orthodixie

A few adults and some wee volunteers were busy stuffing plastic Easter Eggs with candy and goodies. Most of them were. One creatively naughty little boy was stuffing them with something else. That would be shrimp tails. And that would be, ahem … my boy.

It was the Wednesday before Lazarus Saturday – the day on which the annual Egg Hunt is held at St George. Following the Presanctified Liturgy, some folks helped to stuff the eggs for the following Saturday; it was after the Lenten Potluck (hence, the shrimp). Dead shrimp … dead shrimp tails … stuffed in plastic eggs … to sit for 3 days … hidden and undiscovered … until found by some unsuspecting happy children.

Heh heh. Priceless.

Oh don’t get me wrong. He was wrong! But I was so proud of him.

I remember when my oldest was about, oh, 3-ish. It was after church one day, the kids were running around the yard, climbing trees, and creating mayhem. I was talking with some parishioners when I happened to look off in the distance to see a boy, about the same age, holding my daughter down and … gasp … kissing her!

I walked out and called his name, yelling: “Hey! Get off of her!”

Almost at the same time could be heard the voice of the other’s Dad, yelling: “That’s my boy! Heh heh, Yep! That’s my boy!”

For him, priceless. For me, not so much.

It’s all in perception. And when perception is viewed through the favoring eyes of love, it looks a whole shade different.

Love of my daughter led me to yell one thing; his hopes and love for his son caused an entirely different reaction.

Love.

It definitely complicates things … and you just can’t simplify without it.

St Paul writes:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

… For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

Now, back to my boy; boy, being the operative word here … You gotta admit, that was a great trick! Stinky ol’ shrimp tails inside of hidden plastic eggs.

When I found out, he was scared. He thought I’d be mad at him. When I brought it up, he started to cry. He was shocked, I’m not sure he yet understands, when I held out my hand and said, “Give me five!” Laughter through young tears is, well … Priceless.

(The tails were discovered and discarded long before the cherished children’s event.)

And so it goes. When we don’t love someone, we find no joy in anything they say or do. Yet love … Love covers a multitude of sin.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Love, thanks God, never ends.

Yesterday, the kids returned from Camp St Raphael; a 10 hour bus trip. My son had fallen asleep and — welcome to kid camp travel — some kids had drawn on his face with markers. (Aren’t you glad you’re grown?) Anyway, when he awoke to find out, he was mad. He stayed mad, even telling me about it, until he discovered that the markings were not the work of a suspected little boy, but of his own sister and her girl friends.

Again, it’s all in perception. And when perception is viewed through the favoring eyes of love, it looks a whole shade different.

Truth be known, though … there’s times when I wonder if those two even love each other.

Boys …

“Watch over your child, O Lord, as his days increase; bless and guide him wherever he may be, keeping him unspotted from the world. Strengthen him when he stands, comfort him when discouraged or sorrowful, raise him up if he fall; and in his heart may your peace which passes understanding abide all the days of his life …”

Love never ends.

Amen.

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I am in a Sunday School class with senior ladies, and one of them related her experience in one of the many nail salons in our area. She was puzzled about the little shrine in the corner of the establishment and asked the class, “now what you reckon that little statue was going to do with that pack of Lance cheese crackers somebody laid in front of it?”

Blog Reg Roxanne commenting on the Hindu George Clooney.

Granted, we don’t normally think of John the Baptist when we think of HONEYMOON. In fact, we probably don’t think of the Forerunner in any other way than somber … austere … severe.

John the Baptist never shows up on any of those Fantasy Dinner Guest Lists like Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Shakespeare, Plato, and Jesus.

First of all there’s the whole “Repent thing” and then there’s the menu … I mean — hello! — only locusts and honey?

Be that as it may, St John the Baptist is very much connected with HONEYMOONS and here’s why …

The Orthodixie Podcast on Ancient Faith Radio.

The Church of England has turned to Homer Simpson for help with recruiting teenagers.

Clergy are to be advised to set up screens in churches to play extracts from the beer-swilling cartoon character’s life.

An unlikely source of holiness

Doh! Understatement!

Youth groups could be asked to think about God’s love for humanity after watching Lisa Simpson give a Valentines Day card to the most unpopular boy in her class.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has said in the past that he is a fan of the cartoon series.

The number of people under the age of 16 attending worship in the Church of England on a Sunday fell from 180,000 in 2000 to 157,000 in 2005.

Owen Smith, a 24-year-old youth worker at St Margaret’s Church in Rainham, Kent, came up with the idea of using the smash hit cartoon show.

He has written a book advising church organisers to screen extracts that will be distributed to churches nationwide later this month.

He said The Simpsons was an “unexpectedly rich” resource for exploring Christian themes and theological concepts.

“This incredibly popular animation engages with everyday issues, from gossip, fighting and sibling rivalry, through to identity issues and citizenship,” he said.

A church spokesman added: “Some of the source material might seem a little bit unusual, but the book suggests Biblical passages and group activities which we believe will help see the cartoon from the Christian perspective.”

Source

Yes, I’ll take Christian Themes and Theological Concepts for a thousand, please …”

Doh! Wrong show!

Thanks to FWD from Fr Miguel.

Any journalist erudite enough to use the phrase “sure as heck-fire” is worth reading. Here’s the deal.

Kimberly Winston (Religion News Service) writes:

Sinéad O’Connor is not your typical Christian music diva.

Wow! Talk about a lede!

The Irish singer/songwriter has torn up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live, refused to have The Star-Spangled Banner played before a concert, been excommunicated after her “ordination” as a Catholic priest and announced that she was a lesbian — before shortly recanting.

Yet with her soon-to-be-released double album Theology, the Grammy Award-winning O’Connor will attempt to make a foray into the mainstream Christian music market when the album is released June 26 by Koch Records …

Gulp. Here.

HT: THUNDERSTRUCK

When it comes to Ecumenism — for which I believe we sorely need a Council — there’s conflicting (even politically competing) voices within the Orthodox Church.

“We are undoubtedly living in a time of world-shaping changes. Events –which are now being directed– are racing along at an incredible rate. Ecumenism is evolving, within the levelling plans of the Globalization that is being imposed by powerful socio-political centers. Nobody really believes any more that Ecumenism can offer a visible solution to the hope for Christian unity.

As Orthodox Christians, we should neither float in the clouds, nor should we lack apprehension. If we truly have a respect for peoples’ lives, if we truly ache for the people of the West, who have been tortured by their religious traditions, as well as for the people of the Orient, who are entrapped in demonic beliefs, we have a duty to remain focused in our Holy Church. We have an obligation to preserve our paternal faith unadulterated, living it authentically in our daily struggle for personal sanctification and theosis. The proper faith and a meticulous way of life will render us worthy witnesses of Orthodoxy and –why not?– worthy of martyrdom, if and when circumstances may demand it…

The persistence in Orthodoxy – or in other words the veridicality of life – and the persistence in the Truth that liberates and saves, is not a form of egoism, fanaticism, or religious intolerance; it is an expression of the universal quality, the love and the philanthropy of the Orthodox Church. And it also comprises the ultimate potential that Orthodoxy can offer, for both a radical spiritual turnabout in the West, but also an outlet for the Orient, to escape from its captivity by false gods.”

The above is taken from HERE.

BTW, though not nearly as cool as “sure as heck-fire,” FYI veridicality means: The correct perception of an object, that is, in agreement with the object’s real properties. Source

Elsewhere, a while back …

“In a context like the Latin American one, with a religious market characterized by bitter competition, where the churches that proliferate the most are opposed to ecumenism, the congress intends to take advantage of the energy of the Assembly to offer new incentives for churches to get to know and to collaborate with each other,” said the congress coordinator, EST ecumenism professor Dr Rudolf Von Sinner.

— World Council of Churches’ (WCC) 9th Assembly. (Feb, 2006)

I shall, out of respect for my age and maturity, refrain from commenting on the ecumenism professor’s last name (above).

Here’s a peg on which these beginning may hang.

From the same site, here’s Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev of the Moscow Patriarchate on Ecumenism and the WCC.

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