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

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

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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

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