Orthodixie

HELP WANTED: missionaries for 2-year commitments to serve growing educational projects in Albania. Currently the Orthodox Church, under the direction of His Beatitude Archbishop Anastasios, runs a number of kindergartens and two primary schools, with plans to expand the existing program through high school.

NEEDED:

· trained teachers with elementary and/or high school experience

· school administrators

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES:

· Teachers: teach special subjects (math, science, computer skills, English)

· Administrators:

organize and oversee the daily operations of a school run by the Orthodox Church of Albania.

collaborate with Albanian staff who know the state requirements

supervise and train Albanian teachers, especially introducing them to American teaching methods

EXPERIENCE NEEDED: good professional and organizational skills, sound judgment, and problem-solving abilities are most important. ESL is helpful. Actual teaching experience a bonus. Potential administrators must be comfortable working with and supervising teachers who have 15-20 years experience.

Albanian teachers appreciate American teaching experience and educational methods, which brings a fresh approach to formal school for the students. In the fall of 2006, Protagonists Albanian-American School (grades 1-4) in Tirana will graduate its first class of 4th graders, and plans to open an upper elementary school. As the name implies in Albanian, these children become positive forces “for a society of hope and love” – the school’s motto.

Orthodox Christians interested in applying should call Maria Gallos, OCMC Director of Missionaries, toll-free at 877-463-6784. E-mail: missionaries@ocmc.org. To download an application, go HERE. For more about the Orthodox Christian Mission Center, visit their website.

Funny. Sometimes you only find that what you’ve been looking for when you’re looking for something else entirely. The following quotes are from my seminary days — Ascetic Theology 2 — with Bishop Brother John Charles. Worth a read (if you can find the time) …

“Make time for people.”

“Human sexuality is never holy and not always expressed genitally.”

“Without honesty, we bring an unreal person to a god of our own devising.”

“We are supposed to be part of the answer.”

“Faith, Hope, and Love … the most important things to pray for increase.”

“Scars are places of healing. They only become running sores when we pick at them.”

“If the flesh is evil, the Incarnation is an impossibility.”

“Set free FOR, not set free from.”

“Prayer is not giving God info that He’d not possess lest we told Him. Prayer is not persuading God to do some (moral) action He’d not do unless we ask Him. Prayer is not magic.”

“Do not waste pain. It buys you power.”

“Prayer is not an easy way of getting what I want — but, the only way of becoming what God wants me to be.”

“With practice the [music] prayer [plays] prays itself.”

“Prayer must be the most important thing in my life.”

“We can only learn to pray all the time — when we learn to pray some time.
We can only find God everywhere — when we find Him here (in us).”

“We see ourselves when we see God.”

To be continued …

Okay, I’ll take a stab. Not that this is the case personally nor, certainly, with any readers of GetReligion . . . but many good folks are addicted to porn. Plain and simple. I’ve heard clergy discussing the latest episode of “Desperate Housewives” and laity laughing about “Sex and the City.” Porn is mainstream these days. Violence is almost old school. Just the other day, following a link off a familiar blog, I wound up at Christian sex toy site. Hello! Last week when the news hit that the Gov’t was trying to get Google’s records, one blogger even joked that Internet traffic ground to a halt that day. I would bet that it did give many regular church-goers pause …

Go H E R E for the article and discussion.

[The poll revealed that] 67% and 77% respectively said that they believed in the immortal human soul. At the same time 62% and 63% respectively believe in the Resurrection of Christ, so their faith in immortality is based on their Christian beliefs. Though only half of them: 30% and 35% admitted that they believed in the part of the Creed which says about the resurrection of the dead before the Day of Judgement.

The reality is that many of those Christians only remember about their Orthodoxy during Lent, which they try to stick to, then take Communion on Easter day, and then …take a break till the next Lent. Possibly, the people who can be defined as practicing Christians are only those who have Confession regularly (say, four times a year). The poll result showed those made 6% of the respondents. So this very figure, and not 30%, would be a more realistic number of practicing Christians. It is a characteristic fact that smokers among those who consider themselves Christians are nearly as common as among the rest of the students, though they are practically non-existent among those who confess regularly. Besides, among those who consider themselves Christians faith often goes along with superstition, sometimes they are more superstitious than average. However practicing Christians are not superstitious at all.

Thanks to FWD from Fr Victor Potapov.

“In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law the doctrine of one omnipotent God, he connected indissolubly with it the audacious falsehood that he was himself His prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus the faith and hope of immortal life and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE … Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant … While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace on earth, and good will towards men.”

— John Quincy Adams (emphasis his)

Stolen from a longer piece H E R E.