What Idols Lead You Astray?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said, “We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.” I wish I had learned this earlier in my life. I would have avoided some painful idolatries. But we humans are slow learners. And over and over again we come to the end of what we...
Normal Orthodoxy Invites Us to Repentance
If you had to choose between self-esteem and self-awareness what would you choose? By the way, it's a trick question! I remember when there was this emphasis on self-esteem becoming so very central to our educational process for children. And I remember when there were even public service announcements during...
Normal Orthodoxy Reveals Your True Potential
It was a bit of a significant moment between me and my daughter. We were at the Mall and went into a store for her to buy some of the pins and stickers she loves and behind the counter was a young person with piercings on his nose and...
Normal Orthodoxy Creates a Well-Lived Life!
I love this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well." In an age where it seems narcissistic Nihilism...
Made To Be Like Christ – Sunday’s Homily
The Christian Faith is meant to transform you into a "new creature." You are made to become like Christ. In fact, the purpose of the Orthodox Faith is to have you enter a lifestyle that remakes you from the inside out. And it will be as we bend our...
Normal Orthodoxy IS Marvelous
Welcome to the second day of the Dormition Fast! The wisdom of the fasting disciplines of the Church is meant to reinforce the reality that unless the faith is holistically practiced, that is it affects every aspect of your person, the real danger of compartmentalization exists! One aspect of Orthodoxy...
Normal Orthodoxy Honors Mary
Everybody else was squirming. They were obviously having a hard time with the information and seemed to rather have been elsewhere. But I was at peace. It just made sense to me, I guess. Some of you know the story of how I entered the Orthodox Church. I was a...
Normal Orthodoxy Always Chooses Better
There's an old saying, "Life is simple, we make it complicated." And what complicates our lives the most? Well, if you'll allow me a bit of meddling, may I suggest it is our untamed desires. What I want, undisciplined and unmanaged sends my life down paths of consequences that...
Normal Orthodoxy Handles Conflict Well
It seems we humans have an ingrained "love" of fighting, defending ourselves, and drama. We are really good at it. Just look at the conflicts that are raging today in our world. We seem to love to fight, and that, in itself, should be a sign of deep brokenness...
Normal Orthodoxy Leads to Freedom AND Responsibility
"My Want-To is broke." With that, my grandmother gave me another insight into real life. She was describing a very common problem all of us face. We know what we should do, but we don't do it. Why? As my grandmother said, our "want-to" is broken. One of the central...