Lost & Found

One of the many charms of living in my particular small town is that given enough rain (and believe me we have had enough!) the two main roads into town become impassable. When we moved here last year the state was in a major drought, so this is the first year we have had to deal with the legendary flooding of Bird Creek. There is a "back" route into town, but every time I asked someone for directions, I was told, "oh just follow the other cars". After three floodings this spring, I've figured it out. I worked today and coming home this evening I was forced to use the back road in. As I got into town, out of the corner of my eye, I saw this wandering around in the middle of the street I just crossed.

Now, I have a yellow Lab who has been known to chew his way out of our fence so I immediately turned around and went to investigate. It was a yellow Lab all right, just not my yellow Lab. He was friendly enough, but he was limping and was clearly injured. I managed to get him in my car and brought him home, fed him and put him in a crate we have in garage. At least he'll be safe until I can either get him to a vet or to Lab Rescue.

Liturgy and Lifestyle

When I called my Anglican priest to tell him I was leaving the church for Orthodoxy he asked me some pointed questions. I knew he would, being a good priest and anxious that I not be damaging my spiritual health by leaving for the wrong reasons. I was able to address most of his concerns however to the question “why”? I could only say “I need more”. I was not able to explain in any more detail than that and even though I tried to come up with a more lucid and better articulated explanation, all I could say is “I need more”. At the time I didn’t even know what “more” was.
Now I know.
In a previous post I mentioned how I had been drawn to the Catholic Church through reading the book Karen. I thought that it was the liturgical nature of the Church that drew me and in part that was true. I love the liturgy, the cycles of the church year. But what I realized recently is that what I have been seeking is not just liturgy but lifestyle. The amazing thing about the author’s family in Karen was not that they were Catholic but that their whole lives were lived in the context of their faith. It was deeply woven into every day, every decision. That is what I longed for. That is what I have found in Orthodoxy. A faith that is not content to stay neatly confined to Sunday morning but overflows its banks, sweeping away the debris of my soul and pouring through every crack, every corner of my life. Fasts and feasts, darkness and candlelight, the scent of incense, the taste of bread, all running together in a glorious flood that transforms the ordinary into a sacrifice of praise. That transforms me.

First Fast

So today begins the Apostles Fast with a strict fast...no meat, dairy, oil, fish or wine. I mostly did okay and then I remembered that I had butter on my waffles this morning. Does that count? And does the oil mean things cooked in oil? What about salad dressings? Are foods that have eggs as an ingredient (like pancakes) to be avoided? I still haven't been able to get with my priest for some direction. Hopefully that will happen sometime this week.

My Faith Journey....part deux

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to the story of my faith journey. Things have been crazy lately and this is the kind of post I wanted to spend some time thinking about before I write it. Let’s see, where was I? Oh yeah, I had just gotten divorced after a 20 year marriage, left the Southern Baptist church our family attended and returned to my Episcopal roots. I loved that little Episcopal Church. People were warm and accepting and obviously loved Christ. But the dissolution of my marriage had put me into a spiritual “depression” of sorts. I kept going to church, but inside I was questioning almost everything I had ever believed. Oh, I still believed in a loving God who sent His Son to rescue us. Other than that everything else was up for grabs. I had prayed for so long for God to heal my marriage, change my husband, make me more submissive. I read Scripture and claimed verses as promises from God that He would do a miracle. In the end, He not only didn’t do a miracle but left it to me to declare the marriage dead. And it was. Deader than the proverbial door nail. In the end, I came to understand that if I didn’t get out of this dead relationship, I would sacrifice myself, emotionally and spiritually, and that I had no right to deprive my children of their mother.

But I was deeply, deeply disappointed in God. To make a long story short, I spent the next several years wandering around in a wilderness not sure of what was really true or real. I felt like my faith and my church had let me down at best and lied to me at worst. During this time God gave me a very great (and undeserved) blessing….my husband Dennis. We were married in 2003.

Then last summer God shook me awake. My beloved Anglican Communion was in crisis and the Episcopal Church, the Communion’s US branch, was clearly apostate. For years I had gone back and forth on the various problems confronting the church, hearing both sides of the argument but not sure what was true. Finally this question came to me: “Do you want a God who glosses over your failings in the name of uncritical love or do you want a God who has the kind of love manifested in the desire and the power to change you?” I knew at that moment that the only kind of God I wanted to worship was the second kind. And let me hasten to add that this was clearly a work of the Holy Spirit. This question and its answer did not come from me but from God.

So I began to search for another church. I knew I needed a liturgical church so that narrowed the possibilities to two: the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodoxy. I started with the Catholic Church. Like a lot of people I thought Orthodoxy would be too ethnic and strange for this Anglophile. I read a lot of books about Catholicism, joined the RCIA class at my local Catholic parish and spent an inordinate amount of money at the Catholic bookstore. I learned a lot. I learned about sola scriptura (I had never heard of it before!) and why it didn’t work. I learned about apostolic succession and the early church fathers. The daughter of historians, I loved the connection to ancient believers. I got to know Mary and started praying the rosary. Suddenly, I had found my spiritual life again. But there were some problems, my divorce and remarriage being chief among them. I also had a hard time getting on board with papal infallibility. Although I came close at times, I never felt the go-ahead to become Catholic. I was at an impasse. I was clearly no longer Protestant in my beliefs, but neither was I Roman Catholic. Eventually, it dawned on me that I needed to consider Orthodoxy. I started my research with the Internet and Frederica Mathews-Green’s books. Then I decided I needed to bite the bullet and visit an Orthodox church. To my great surprise I found a friend from my last Episcopal church had just been chrismated there! She helped me through my first Divine Liturgy. I knew almost immediately I was home. So that’s where I am today. I can hardly wait for the day when I will join the great river of Orthodox faith that has its source in Christ, flowing down from the apostles in an unbroken stream that will continue until He returns.

My prayer corner

Here is a pic of my first prayer corner. The framed picture is one of my favorite drawings...Jesus holding a lamb close to Himself, with the nail scar on his hand visible. Underneath is the calendar my church gave me with Scripture readings and fasting rules for each day. On the table is my Bible and Divine Hours prayer book. There is also a candle that I already had and a vase of roses which I cut from this bush in my yard this morning.

Later I will add some icons and a vigil lamp or beeswax candles (I love the smell).

Show Me the Course

Steer the ship of my life, good Lord, to your quiet harbour, where I can be safe from the storms of sin and conflict. Show me the course I should take. Renew in me the gift of discernment, so that I can always see the right direction in which I should go. And give me the strength and the courage to choose the right course, even when the sea is rough and the waves are high, knowing that through enduring hardship and danger in your name we shall find comfort and peace.

Basil of Caesarea (c. 329 - 379)

A retraction....kind of

As an addendum to the first part of my faith story...my father (who reads my blog, thanks be to God) pointed out to me that a large part of the reason we stopped going to church was my tendency to refuse to go. While I can't remember any specific incident of this, I'm sure it is true. I do remember feeling like an outsider with the other kids. My sisters and I went to a different school than most of them. But at the same time I also remember mourning the loss of yet another familiar part of our family life, although I couldn't have articulated that at the time. All that being said, I would like to be perfectly clear....my parents did the very best they could. I always knew without a doubt that I was loved and I have long ago forgiven any failings, real or perceived. My prayer is that someday my children will do the same for me. And I feel so blessed that at age 50 I still have my dad here to have this conversation with. Love you, Daddy!