SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN

Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the Kingdom of God. Verily, I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.” (Luke 18;16-17)

The other Sunday, several small children and two babies were taking their first communion after baptism. They looked so sweet in their new clothes and our priest showed immense patience and love in his attempts to get the babes to take the bread and wine. I love to watch the different reactions of the babies. Some hate the whole affair and scream throughout, eventually being ‘force fed’ while held in a sort of gentle headlock. Some are as good as gold. My favourites are those who cry and refuse to co-operate until they taste the wine and decide they quite like it after all! With them all, however, the priest talks gently and kindly.

Unlike the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches, there is no Confirmation Service in the Orthodox Church; the child at baptism immediately becomes a full member of the Church, including participation in Holy Communion. There is no need for the promises made by the godparents to be confirmed by the child itself on reaching an age of understanding. When I first considered this concept, my Baptist origins and even my later Anglican beliefs rebelled a little. Surely a baby cannot understand enough to be a full participant in the Church’s sacraments. However, like the Irishman giving directions who says “Well, I wouldn’t start from here,” the Orthodox doctrine starts from a completely different understanding of the nature of the Church and the meaning of Baptism.

MAY THE JOY AND PEACE OF THE NATIVITY BE WITH ALL MY READERS

“Christians awake, salute the happy morn

Whereon the Saviour of mankind was born.”

Modern icon by Georgia Lellou of Athens http://www.lellou.gr/agiografies/ 

According to my statistics, I have readers in Greece, The Netherlands, Germany, Albania, Chile and Malaysia. Although I assume you must be English-speaking, I would like to wish you:

Καλά Χριστούγεννα και Ευτυχισμένο  το Νέο Έτος

Prettige kerstdagen en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar!

Fröhliche Weihnachten und ein gutes neues Jahr

Gëzuar Krishtlindjet e Vitin e Ri

¡Feliz Navidad y próspero año nuevo!

Selamat Hari Natal & Selamat Tahun Baru

I hope I've got all these right. What a wonderful thing is the Internet!

No blog today, just a few nice things to share with you on this Christmas morning. I haven’t forgotten readers from the Russian tradition or others following the Old Calender. I'll try to do something for you on 6 January.


First, the bells of Christmas from Bethlehem:

Meanwhile, in Crete, Santa Claus even visits the Bishop! For those who are not familiar with Greek traditions, the chap in the red suit is actually Aï Vasili (based on Agios Vasilios or St. Basil). Although he bears a remarkable resemblance to Santa Claus, he visits the children of Greece on 1 January. Needless to say, the kids don't worry about the details, they just enjoy the presents!

Since I am a firm believer that nepotism should be kept in the family, I'd like to share this with anyone who hasn't yet seen it. The Christmas hymn, words and music, was written by my son Michael and sung by his daughter Melina in the Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sophia in London. Michael also did the filming and editing.

                        

And finally, the joyful sound of more church bells, this time from Christchurch Cathedral, New Zealand on Christmas morning. Filmed before the tragic earthquake of 2011.

“Joy to the World, the Lord is come!

Let Earth receive her King”

A BRIEF NOTE ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD

Well, it didn't happen, which will come as no surprise to Christians as Jesus several times made it crystal clear that nobody will know when it will happen: “Be on your guard, then, because you do not know what day your Lord will come” … “No one knows, however, when that day and hour will come – neither the angels in Heaven nor the Son; the Father alone knows.” 

 Nevertheless, it doesn't stop people trying. To be fair to the Mayans, it wasn't they who predicted the 21 December 2012 as the end of the world; they just stopped computing more dates. Over the years, there have been a multitude of cranks and oddbods attempting to predict the end of the world, so far with little success! Although I have very little time for the Jehovah's Witnesses, intriguingly their original prediction for the date of  Armageddon was 1914 and it could be argued that their estimate was nearer than most. Certainly the states of Europe did their best to bring it about!  

Cartoon with permission of Leigh Rubin. If you enjoy quirky humour, as I do, his website is certainly worth a visit. (http://www.rubescartoons.com/)

LOVE DIVINE

“Love Divine, all loves excelling

            Joy of Heaven to earth come down.” (Wesley)

           

Most scholars believe that John the Theologian, apostle and writer of the fourth Gospel, was the same John referred to in the Gospels as “the disciple that Jesus loved” but  nobody can be completely sure of this. What is certain beyond any question, however is that John was “the apostle of love.” I do not have a concordance and cannot prove it statistically but my instinct is that the word ‘love’ appears more times in John’s Gospel and epistles than in any other book in the Bible.

Examples are too numerous for a short blog but the most beautiful and powerful summary of the Christian faith must surely be John's words: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (There is a beautiful musical setting of this verse in John Stainer's 19th Century oratorio 'The Crucifixion' - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkJGglj9opY .) This idea is repeated more thoroughly in one of John's epistles: “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.” So central was the importance of love to John that St. Jerome wrote: “when he was too old to preach, John would simply say to the assembled people: 'Love one another. That is the Lord's command, and if you keep it, that by itself is enough.'”

Please pray for the children and teachers killed in Connecticut, for their families and for the whole community. I was going to write a bit about this horrific event but I find I just cannot find the words. Just pray.  

THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE, Part 2

“It's Not for You to Know”

The Orthodox Church believes in the baptism of children and accepts them into full membership of the Church, including the taking of Holy Communion, from the very beginning. I shall be discussing some of the implications of this in a later blog but it also has relevance to the question of doubt and agnosticism. Children are full members of the Church and yet how can a three-year-old be expected to understand the Holy Trinity? It follows, then, that it cannot be necessary for our salvation that we understand every aspect of Orthodox theology. As we grow older, of course, we understand more but even the greatest intellects among us remain mere infants from the perspective of eternity. This is not to say that we shouldn't use our God-given brains to seek to make sense of the world but we should never forget that we are still 'looking through a glass darkly.'

As I have explored the rich landscape of Orthodox thought, I have sometimes been  surprised to find that the 'uncertainty principle' is actually at the heart of much mainstream Orthodox belief. Some of the greatest Orthodox theologians have argued that we can never understand what God is and can only attempt to define Him by what He is not. Others maintain that even this is beyond human understanding and we can only know God through Christ. Well, that's all a bit deep and I certainly don't intend to go into details about this 'apophatic' theology; if this interests you, 'The Orthodox Way' by Metropolitan Kallistos contains  a reasonably accessible approach to the subject, as does Vladimir Lossky's 'The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church.' However, even in the basic beliefs we all profess, Orthodoxy accepts that many ‘details’ of Christian faith are better left unexplored. The Church maintains an attitude of reverent and agnostic reticence towards such beliefs as the Assumption of the Virgin Mary or exactly what happens after death. The former, as Metropolitan Kallistos writes, “is not so much an object of faith as a foundation of our hope, a fruit of faith, ripened in Tradition. Let us therefore keep silence, and let us not try to dogmatize about the supreme glory of the Mother of God.”

C.S. Lewis argues that even what exactly happened at the Crucifixion cannot be (and perhaps should not be) the object of too much detailed analysis. “We believe that the death of Christ is just that point in history at which something absolutely unimaginable from outside shows through into our own world. And if we cannot picture even the atoms of which our own world is built, of course we are not going to be able to picture this. Indeed, if we found that we could fully understand it, that very fact would show it was not what it professes to be – the inconceivable, the uncreated, the thing beyond nature, striking down into nature like lightning. You may ask what good it will be to us if we do not understand it. But that is easily answered. A man can eat his dinner without understanding exactly how food nourishes him. A man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works.”

In “The Orthodox Church,” Metropolitan Kallistos cites a timely reminder of how we should beware of probing too deeply: “When St. Antony of Egypt was once worrying about divine providence, a voice came to him, saying: ‘Antony, attend to yourself; for these are the judgements of God, and it is not for you to know them.’” I'm not saying that speculation, study, theology and analysis of one's faith is wrong. I do it all the time. It should, however, be kept in perspective. Whatever our natural desire for clear answers and certainty, maybe it's better, as Christmas approaches, to consider the shepherds of Bethlehem. It's unlikely that any of them understood the concepts of the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation or the Virgin Birth; they just went and saw and “returned rejoicing and glorifying God.”

Next week: Looking at my programme for future blogs, I notice that the next one due is on the theme of the Last Judgement!! Perhaps this might be a bit gloomy for the week before Christmas so, in the words of TV cooks everywhere, next week I will be presenting “one I prepared earlier.” On the other hand, if the predictions of the end of the world on Friday come true, my original posting might have been very appropriate, if a touch late!

THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE, Part 1

“When in Doubt …”

The Holy Apostle Thomas

I’ve always felt a particular affection for the apostle Thomas. His was not the way of blind faith but of reverent agnosticism. “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Even more than Peter’s timidity after the trial of Jesus, his doubts strike a chord with modern man. It is interesting and possibly significant that, alone among the apostles, Thomas is celebrated twice: on his feast day of October 6 and on the Sunday after Easter. Moreover, the Gospel reading at the beautiful ‘Service of Love’ on Easter Sunday is the story of his doubt. With a wonderful sense of the dramatic, the priest's chanting of the Gospel rises to a crescendo as he ends with the words: “I will not believe,” a real cliff-hanger until the story is completed the next week. The story does end, of course, on a high note as, when Thomas actually meets the risen Christ, he kneels before Him and utters the simple words “My Lord and my God.” Jesus gently ticks Thomas off for his doubt but, according to tradition, the apostle went on to become a valiant missionary to Persia and India and a martyr for his faith.  

We could all have said the same as Thomas and, in a manner of speaking, we often do. How lovely it would be to be able to say at all times “I know that my Redeemer liveth” instead of “I believe” or even on occasions “I’m not really sure but …. .” To have no doubts, however, is surely to have no thoughts. To have no doubts is to have no free will. Is doubt always a bad thing? Ellis Peters has her fictional monk Brother Cadfael make the insightful comment, “I sometimes like to put a little sand of doubt into the oyster of faith” and it could be argued that more pearls of wisdom may be grown out of doubt than out of certainty!

RESTORED TO LIFE

A Trip to Albania, Postscript

In spite of Enver Hoxha's attempt to make Albania “the world's first atheist state,” religious life in the country has experienced a revival since the fall of communism. The Orthodox Church, under the guidance of the extraordinary Archbishop Anastasios has rebuilt its administrative structure, ordained priests and rebuilt many of the churches destroyed during the communist era. Among these was the Cathedral in Korcë. The original Cathedral of the Life-Giving Spring was turned into a museum during the communist era and the Church was refused permission to restore it. After a long struggle, the Church was offered a plot of land in a poor location. Following an argument with the local government, even this was taken away but within a short time another plot was offered in a prime location in the city centre next to the city hall! As Metropolitan Joani says, “For us, this was a miracle. We could not have asked for a better place to build our cathedral.” Another success in Korcë was the restoration of the Metropolis offices to their original role after they had been  used as a communist party youth training centre for thirty years.

Korcë Cathedral

On my first morning in Korcë, I went to Divine Liturgy in the Cathedral. As the chanter recited the prayers, I was astonished to hear a full choir sing the responses in the Russian style. Since there was no sign of a choir or organ, I thought at first that it was a recording (!) but discovered later that there is a special choir loft. The effect was so heavenly and beautiful that a very large lump was brought to my throat. I later found out that Vasko, mentioned last week, is the choirmaster at the cathedral and was responsible for the beautiful music. Because of the persecution under Hoxha, there is a fervour and passion about those who still attend church that is extremely moving. Certainly, when the whole congregation joined in the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, I was conscious of a sincerity that is often absent in countries where it is easier to be a Christian.

ALBANIA UNDER HOXHA

Before continuing my story, it might help to give a little background, as not a lot is known about Hoxha's rule in Albania. From the seizure of power by the communist party in 1945 until 1967, Albania followed the general policy of most communist countries of marginalising the churches and religious organizations, with a view to their eventual “withering away” as Marx had predicted. This was achieved by a mixture of legal restrictions, imprisonment of the more independent and vociferous clerics, infiltration of the religious hierarchies by people sympathetic to the Party and atheist propaganda in schools. This was bad enough but, in 1967, the government initiated an all-out war on religion in an ambitious attempt at the complete abolition of all religious practices and beliefs in the country. The aim was to create, in Hoxha's words, “the world's first completely atheist state.”

Over the next 18 years, all 2,169 churches, monasteries and mosques were closed, 1608 of which were Orthodox. According to estimates from religious leaders, 95% of the buildings were demolished or completely gutted. The latter were converted to secular use such as factories, warehouses, stables, cinemas or nightclubs. The Orthodox Cathedral in Tiranë, for example, was converted to a gym. Because of their design, many of the monasteries were turned into army barracks. A very few religious buildings were preserved as ‘cultural monuments’ if they were of historical or architectural interest, including the beautiful Ethem Bey mosque in Tiranë. Nobody was allowed to pray in the mosque, however, except for foreign Muslim dignitaries on state visits.

Among all faiths, the vast majority of clergy were imprisoned, exiled, forced to seek other work, executed or starved to death. The number of Roman Catholic priests in Albania fell from 300 in 1945 to 30 in 1985, most of them in prison, while by 1990, not a single Orthodox bishop and less than 20 Orthodox priests survived. The conducting of religious services could result in twenty-five years in prison, while even the possession of a Bible or Q'uran meant ten years hard labour!

I will be telling the full story of this extraordinary period in the book I am working on now. You will find it extremely hard to believe!

PEOPLE OF HOPE

A Trip to Albania, Part 2

My three days in Korcë were so full of incident and interest that a brief blog would be inadequate, so I'll confine myself to a few of the highlights. This week, I'll concentrate on the main purpose of the visit, the testimony of some of the survivors. Without giving away too much of the book I'm writing, here are a few vignettes of some of the wonderful people I was introduced to and some of their comments.

Metropolitan Joani gave me nearly three hours out of his hectic schedule to give me some of the background to the Hoxha years. He is a deeply spiritual man but has also shown a good grasp of the practical realities in rebuilding the Orthodox community in Korcë. Born in 1956, he has personal experience of the attack on religion and was, in fact, baptized secretly in 1979. His family were persecuted for their politics which led them to see religion as a positive force for good – not the result the government hoped for! In spite of the horrors of the era, he likes to emphasize the positive aspects. “I never experienced such joy in worship as during the secret services. Everybody who was a believer felt alive, so Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim didn't see the differences, only what they had in common, the joy of belief. They often found themselves together in jail. The Albanian word for 'believer' is 'besimtar' but during that period they more often used the word 'shpesëtar' – 'he who hopes'” He also pointed out that the Albanian word for the devil literally means 'cul de sac' which was largely where Hoxha's rule took Albania.

COLD WEATHER, WARM HOSPITALITY

A Trip to Albania, Part 1

Korcë Cathedral (in snow)

Over the past couple of years, I have been working on a book about Orthodox martyrs of the 20^th Century. The general format was for each section to begin with a brief historical background, the bulk of the book being devoted to individual stories of heroism, to put faces to the dry facts and statistics. All was going well until I came to write about Albania under the communist rule of Enver Hoxha. I had no problem with the general background but details of individual stories were very hard to come by. I wrote to various people in the Albanian Orthodox community and, to cut a long story short, I was eventually invited by Metropolitan Joani of Korcë to pay a short visit and to meet with some of the survivors from the period. The result was that I eventually collected enough material for a small book on the subject which I am working on at the moment. If you are interested, you can find updates on progress with this and other books on www.facebook.com/chrismooreybooks. The trip itself, however was quite a story in its own right so, over the next few blogs, I'll give a brief taste of my journey, both secular and spiritual.

In spite of a lot of bad publicity in recent years, it is a fact that Albanians are characterized in the main by friendliness to strangers and almost embarrassing hospitality. My first experience of this was before I even set out from Greece. An Albanian living in my village, no more than an acquaintance, found out I was visiting his country and immediately organized for his cousin to pick me up from Tirana airport to take me to where I could get a minibus for Korcë. Not only that, he lent me the sim card for his Albanian mobile because it would avoid the need to pay expensive roaming charges!

A LESSON IN LOVE AND A 'CHURCH SEARCH'

Our Baptism, Part 2

Aside from the profundity of the spiritual experience, what impressed us both about the ceremony was the friendliness and informality of the priests: helping us syllable by syllable with the responses in unfamiliar Greek, showing us where to go, checking we were all right. They even allowed us to recite the Creed in English to make it more meaningful for us. All this was achieved without losing the underlying solemnity of the occasion. This is one of the great strengths of Orthodox worship in general, the services are reverent but not stuffy. I’ll never forget an open air service at a tiny church when the Bishop was in attendance. We had found a relatively shady spot with a very low stone step to sit on. When the bells began to ring we stood up but my wife had great difficulty getting to her feet. Suddenly, she felt a strong arm lifting her and turned to find that the Bishop had interrupted his solemn progress to help her. Would this happen in Rome or Canterbury?

Is it heretical to think that God may have a sense of humour? Near where we lived at the time there was a little girl who always seemed to be in trouble. She was, I must admit, a bit of a brat and we were for ever telling her off for chasing our cats or other mischief. It is the tradition here that, during the baptism, the candle is held by the youngest child present in church and ours was held by the young sister of one of my students. However, it was proving too heavy for her little hands and our little ‘bête noire’ took over the job and held our baptismal candle for the rest of the service. I defy anybody to doubt that ‘the Boss’ was teaching us a gentle lesson in love and forgiveness.

One of the ‘requirements’ of the newly baptized, including babies, is to take Holy Communion for the three Sundays following the service. All was well for the first Sunday, and we duly took our baptismal candles to our local church for the Divine Liturgy. On the second, however, we arrived at church to find it locked up. Not sure what was going on, we got in the car and drove to the church at the other end of the village – all locked up. Beginning to panic, we tried the church in the upper village which was also closed but fortunately an old lady in her garden pointed us further up the hill to the tiny church of St. Katherine, where all the priests were conducting a service for her feast day. Although a little late, we were in time to take communion and fulfil our obligation. The thought crossed my mind that, in my youth, I’ve driven round a town on a Saturday night trying to find a party but to drive all over Crete in search of a church service on a Sunday morning must be a first!

All in all, we found our baptism service both a deep spiritual experience and a wonderful example of the love and kindness of the priests and local people. It even had its moments of humour. However, at the end of the service, as we heard the priest say “At this moment, you are sinless and among the saints. Try to keep it that way for as long as you can,” we felt that a major change in our spiritual lives had occurred.

“BECOME WHAT YOU ALREADY ARE”

Our Baptism, Part 1

Having made the decision to be baptized into the Orthodox Church, we then set about the practical details.  At that time, adult baptism was rare in this part of Greece and our priests and we had to improvise somewhat. The ‘font’ was no problem as there had been one other English couple baptized here some years earlier and they had bought a shallow metal bath to stand in. More difficult was overcoming the tradition whereby the godparent pays for everything including new clothes for the baby. We really didn’t want to put our respective godparents to unnecessary expense but we had quite a job convincing them that, as we were adults, they didn't need to buy us a complete new wardrobe each! In the end, we compromised by accepting with good grace our baptismal crosses as gifts and sharing the other costs. 

Further practical difficulties arose over the changing arrangements. Our priests decided that we could wear robes for the baptism so that they could pour the water over us, the nearest we could get to total immersion. We originally planned to change into and out of our robes in the church office but the day before the baptism one of the priests came up to us with the ominous words, “We have a little problem.” On that very day, the office was being demolished in preparation for rebuilding. As you may recall from the Athens Olympics, however, nothing ever fazes the Greeks for long and some quick lateral thinking from the priests resulted in a very unstable arrangement of old altar cloths hanging on strings in the corner of the church. Miraculously, they all stayed in place for the service and modesty was preserved.

An ageing infant!

The service itself was an extremely moving and emotional experience but, since we had to concentrate on doing everything correctly, the full impact of the service didn’t really strike us until we watched the video quietly at home that night. For me, it brought back memories of my baptism in the Baptist Church when I was 13. Since the Baptists take the idea of total immersion literally and only baptize adults, every Baptist chapel has a small pool, in which the candidate is held by the minister as he goes completely under the water. It really does feel a bit like death and resurrection. While slightly less dramatic, the Orthodox service brought to mind another truth of the Christian faith. The old definition of a sacrament is “An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace” and rarely can this be demonstrated more clearly than when the priest poured the water over my head. I truly felt that the ‘washing away of sin’ was a reality rather than a metaphor. In fact, the emotion of the occasion was so powerful that, even after several years, when I pour water over my head when washing my hair, I am often transported back to that moment. 

In the preamble to the baptism service, the priest asks, “Do you join Christ?” The beauty of the service, coupled with the warmth that enveloped us from the priests and congregation made me feel truly joined to Christ. In a real sense, I felt I had come home and the words of St. Gregory of Sinai became full of meaning:
                                   “Become what you already are,

                                    Find Him who is already yours,

                                    Listen to Him who never ceases speaking to you,

                                    Own Him who already owns you.”

The rest of the story tomorrow

FASTING AND THE 'FILIOQUE'

How did we come to join the Orthodox Church?

This is definitely a FAQ and, as the anniversary of our baptism approaches, it seems fitting that I should take a brief look at the reasons why a middle-aged Englishman and his wife came to join the Greek Orthodox Church. When we moved to Crete in 1994, we were members of the Anglican Church but found no problem in attending our local Orthodox church where we were welcomed by the priests and the congregation alike. We found that the Liturgy was similar in many respects to the service we were familiar with and we could follow it and even participate to a great extent. However, the fact that we could not actually take communion left us feeling somewhat unsatisfied. At that time, the nearest Anglican church was in Athens which would be quite a long swim on a Sunday morning so, knowing that we intend, God willing, to live in Crete for the rest of our lives, we began to look into the possibility of being baptized into the Orthodox Church.

We soon discovered that not only were the services similar but the differences in belief were, in many respects, small. Anglicans and Orthodox say the same creed - almost - and even many of their prayers are similar, if not identical. Differences such as the way we cross ourselves and veneration of the icons did not amount to major ‘show stoppers.’ OK, I haven’t forgotten the Great Schism and the dispute over the 'filioque' (the addition of the words 'and the Son' to the Roman Catholic and Anglican creed). However, unless you’re a theologian, the difference between the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father or proceeding from the Father and the Son is a bit obscure. Yes, of course the difference has some important implications but, since we didn’t understand it anyway, it did not seem a major barrier to us. We believed and we believe in God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We believed and we believe that Jesus was both fully God and fully man. We believed and we believe that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” No problem!

IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE ARE MANY MANSIONS

Although I would certainly not call myself devout, religion has always played an important, often central, part in my life, sometimes on an intellectual level, more often as a spiritual need. My journey to my current (and almost certainly final) location in the Orthodox Church has taken me along many paths. It has also introduced me to many good Christian men and women of all persuasions, who have had a profound effect on my spiritual development. 

I was christened an Anglican but, when I was still very young, my mum and dad left the Church of England because the vicar had become too ‘High Church’. Apparently, he was using incense too much and hearing confessions, which didn't go down well with my Protestant parents so they moved to the Baptist Church. (The irony of where their youngest son ended up is not lost on me.)  In the Chapel, the Baptists I grew up with were kind and generous souls, more concerned with the love of God and love for their neighbour than with Hellfire and the damnation of sinners. My mother seemed to combine a deep and powerful faith with a common sense approach to life and a genuine love of other people which often overrode her impatience with cant and hypocrisy. She was perhaps the first person I met who demonstrated that it was possible to be a Christian with a sense of humour. Perhaps this story might have been different had I been introduced to Dr. Ian Paisley at an impressionable age!

FALTERING STEPS

Does the world really need another Orthodox Christian blogsite? Well, it's up to you to judge. If I get no hits, I can assume the answer is 'No' and close it down. However, there is always the possibility that my miscellaneous ramblings on Orthodox themes may strike a chord with some people, not because they are particularly profound but because they are not. I am no theologian and it is unlikely that you will find here any great spiritual truths or soul-searing revelations, merely the random thoughts of one, not particularly pious, layman. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, any profundities you find are purely accidental!

I should add that, despite my rapidly whitening hair, I am still a 'toddler' in the Orthodox Church and, as I stumble my way forward, I hope that readers will stop me falling flat on my face. The views expressed here are personal and may well contain misunderstandings, illogicalities and even downright mistakes. This is me, ‘warts and all,’ what you see is what you get. I hope you will find no actual heresies but, if any do exist, put them down to my ignorance. Fortunately, the Orthodox Church has rarely been really savage towards heretics, and I don't think they ever burned any! In any case, I trust to God’s infinite love and forgiveness not to damn the soul of one who is trying to do his best.

Below, you will find my first posting which gives a little of the background to my spiritual history.