the hitchhiker’s guide: the journey forward to the ancient roots of our faith

I apologize in advance, knowing full well that I will probably make a few unorthodox statements and probably ruffle more than a few feathers — I’m sorry, really. But indulge me for a few minutes and allow me to be quite frank. There’s a long overdue vent that requires being thrown out into some ones and zeros and let people ruminate on.

It seems you can take the Orthodoxy out of the culture, but not the culture out of the Orthodoxy.

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Written and posted by Michael on July 20, 2009, 3:02 pm.
Filed under: Culture, Orthodoxy

2 Comments

I won’t lie — I’ve neglected my contributions to The Hitchhiker’s Guide [psst... and I'm the admin]. In fact, because I felt like I had nothing to say or to contribute to the discussion of the ancient faith, I didn’t say anything at all.

It was probably better that way.

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Written and posted by Michael on July 15, 2009, 2:52 pm.
Filed under: Daily Walk, The Journey, The Road Ahead

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>мебелиe are tough days indeed — plenty of anxiety, stress, and negativity to go around and then some. And of course the overly-spirited mud slinging between Presidential campaigns, their supporters, and anyone with a political point of view has only contributed to further divisions, polarizing individuals even further than before. My wife and I have even been the target of some of that mud slinging because we don’t hold to a certain party line, which I think is just preposterous. But before I get distracted with political points, I’m going to lay that aside to reflect on something of greater importance: finding peace by drawing near to God and His mercy through the simple act of prayer.

Written and posted by Michael on October 20, 2008, 2:26 pm.
Filed under: Daily Walk, General Discussion, Orthodoxy, Transformation

2 Comments

It’s been an interesting summer — obviously having taken the summer off from writing in HHG with April being my last posted entry — and I’ve walked away with a few observations about Orthodoxy, culture, and plenty of introspective conclusions about myself and the life I lead.

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Written and posted by Michael on September 16, 2008, 10:43 am.
Filed under: Culture, Daily Walk, Orthodoxy

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Recently, sometime before the process of moving from our old web host and the new hosting environment, someone hacked into our WordPress installation and injected malicious code into about a half dozen of our articles that we had posted on our own experiences. It’s troubling enough that someone would do that to a site such as ours, but even more troubling is that some of their injection attacks completely overwrote some of our content. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the backed up version of the MySQL database that I had was a version with said injections.

The data was full of links to poker sites, iFrame code to a malicious website, and other objectionable content placed on our website without our consent.

The offender was tracked to the IP address 61.155.8.157, which leads to some hosting service in China:

person: Chinanet Hostmaster
nic-hdl: CH93-AP
e-mail: anti-spam@ns.chinanet.cn.net
address: No.31 ,jingrong street,beijing
address: 100032
phone: +86-10-58501724
fax-no: +86-10-58501724
country: CN
changed: dingsy@cndata.com 20070416
mnt-by: MAINT-CHINANET
source: APNIC

I tried e-mailing the host, but of course the anti-spam e-mail address was invalid.

I apologize if this injection caused any inconvenience to our visitors or if it spread any viruses or further injections. We can assure you that we’ve removed all malicious injections and have updated our WordPress installation to the latest version.

As for the missing content, I wish we would have been more aggressive with back-ups. Some of the priceless accounts of our own respective journeys has been defiled by someone hoping for a little more visibility for their gambling site. Pathetic. Simply pathetic.

Written and posted by Michael on September 16, 2008, 9:45 am.
Filed under: General Discussion

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Tonight we celebrated the lamentation service of our Lord, where throughout a beautiful and ornately decorated setting, we expressed our lament of Christ’s death through spoken words, through sung lamentations, and in the candlelit sanctuary processed under an icon of Christ’s body representing our passing into death as did Christ — an expression of sharing in His sufferings and His death.

It was one of the most beautiful services that I have been to in a long time — the sanctuary was dimly lit, candles lighting up various areas of the alter, and an ornately decorated arc-like structure covered in roses, washed over in candlelight, and containing the cross of Christ, symbolizing his burial into the tomb.

The service was nearly two and a half hours, and with just twelve hours before I become christened into the Orthodox Church, I honestly felt like I have not sufficiently prepared myself for this moment.

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Written and posted by Michael on April 26, 2008, 12:05 am.
Filed under: Catechumen, Orthodoxy, The Journey, Transformation

2 Comments

We all have great intentions — I know I do anyway. I have great aspirations of maintaining strict disciplines, like a rule of prayer, fasting from certain passions, and even cultivating some of the artistic gifts I’ve been given. But the problem is that my passions (as known by the Orthodox; different from a passion for music, for example) are not passive and do not sit back and allow me to just lay my stake in the ground and claim it done. Unlike Evangelicalism™ which generally professes a transactional version of salvation — an event that happens, and then you’re saved — I am finding that maintaining and working out this gift of salvation and becoming more like God is going to be a long, slow, and arduous process, requiring much patience, faith, endurance, and above all humility.

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Written and posted by Michael on March 20, 2008, 1:29 pm.
Filed under: Culture, Daily Walk, Orthodoxy, Transformation

2 Comments

This morning I was ceremonially welcomed and prayed for as a catechumen into the Orthodox

Written and posted by Michael on March 9, 2008, 1:24 pm.
Filed under: Catechumen, Culture, Orthodoxy, Transformation

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In my previous posting, I had laid a spread of questions on the table regarding the arts and Orthodoxy and my frustration with no contemporaries to look to for guidance, inspiration, and fellowship. These frustrations are accentuated by the idea that there is a fullness of the arts that ought to be created, expressed, and shared with the world, a fullness that just isn’t that prevalent in America. And it’s the idea of that fullness that has put a desire in me to find answers, and God willing, be a part of the awakening of the arts in the Orthodox church in America.

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Written and posted by Michael on March 3, 2008, 2:02 pm.
Filed under: Culture, General Discussion, Orthodoxy

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There has been a topic on my mind over the past several weeks as I’ve started on this journey towards Orthodox Christianity and into a life of theosis — when I become Orthodox, what becomes of my artistic expressions and what is that supposed to look like within the context of being an Orthodox Christian? And I must forewarn you, that there are far more questions in this particular entry than useful reflections or things we can all learn from. Instead, I would hope that it might generate some significant discussion that would ripple into the arts community within Catholic and Orthodox traditions — especially the latter of the two.

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Written and posted by Michael on February 27, 2008, 12:30 am.
Filed under: Culture, Orthodoxy, Transformation

4 Comments

It seems that every time I walk out of St. George Antioch Orthodox Church — whether on a Sunday morning or at my catechumen class — I come home with more and more books to read. And anyone who knows me well, I don’t exactly finish books in a timely fashion (let alone at all). How I will manage to keep up is but a mystery… fitting as I am pursuing Orthodoxy and they’re all about mystery.

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Written and posted by Michael on February 14, 2008, 4:47 pm.
Filed under: Catechumen, Daily Walk, Orthodoxy, The Journey, Transformation

2 Comments

My first Sunday as a catechumen was most certainly a different feeling for me than before when I was attending and admiring from afar. Instead,

CONTENT LOST DUE TO INJECTION ATTACK

Written and posted by Michael on February 4, 2008, 2:07 pm.
Filed under: Catechumen, Looking Back, Orthodoxy, The Journey

2 Comments

As they say, “today is the first day of the rest of my life.” It’s a bit melodramatic, sure, but going to my first catechumen class today was a huge step for me — it’s saying, “yes, I want to be a learner of the Orthodox faith, that I might align myself to you and be in communion with you.”

Our first class was really more of an informative session, where Father Tom shared about the meaning and symbolism of all the imagery within the sanctuary. It was quite impressive to hear of all the deep meaning behind what things were placed where and why they appeared where they did. As he said, nothing is where it is just because it looks nice — there is meaning for everything here.

Of course there is no way that I could have hoped to remember everything he said — I’m getting older and brain capacity isn’t what it used to be, so it’s harder to retain all the information he shared. But that said, there were a few things I pulled from it that I was hoping to understand, and now have walked away knowing more.

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Written and posted by Michael on February 2, 2008, 1:27 pm.
Filed under: Catechumen, Orthodoxy, The Journey

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As I’ve discovered in reading and hearing the stories of others on their journey towards a life of Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, there are vastly different stories but the themes usually resonate in harmony — people are hungry for an authentic faith that can be traced to the time of Christ; a faith that looks like the first century Church.

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Written and posted by Michael on February 1, 2008, 11:54 am.
Filed under: Looking Back, Orthodoxy, Our Roots

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Greetings one and all, and welcome to The Hitchhiker’s Guide (THG), a website re-purposed to track the journey of a few people as they make the journey back to the roots of their faith.

Originally THG was a website that showcased articles on life and Christian spirituality and had a long run since its inception in early 1997. All the old articles have been removed, but are available upon special request if you are looking for one in particular.

But as with all other things, life changes and brings about perspectives that we either knew not existed or has a way of changing our heart and our mind to see things from a much different light source. What you will read here is about the pursuit of the roots of our faith in Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholicism — the faith before the reformation.

With protestant Christianity continuing to splinter into more and more shards of disunity and finite foundations, there is a movement among the West to seek out the roots of our faith. There seems to be this great search for authentic Christianity without the commercialized and consumerist trappings we have come to expect from many churches in the West; and we are among the many on that search to find the roots of our faith.

Over the coming weeks you will have the opportunity to meet those on this journey and will get to read their stories along the way and participate with us in discussion. And in the process, we hope that we can help you find your way back, too.

Written and posted by Michael on February 1, 2008, 10:13 am.
Filed under: General Discussion, Our Roots

2 Comments