My priest sent out an e-mail of the liturgical schedule all the way up to Pascha, thus cementing the feeling that Lent is coming along way too fast this year.
It makes me start thinking about a good book to read through Lent. Last year I read Frederica’s “First Fruits of Prayer: A Forty-Day Journey Through […]

I’m home today with a late October sinus-flu-whoknowswhat bug, so it’s a good time to catch up on my reading. I’m not able to hold terribly complex thoughts for long, so I’m pleasantly sort of in and out mentally as I try to figure out my own question about the all-consuming pursuit of spice.

This is […]

I just finished reading “Keeper of the Light: St. Macrina the Elder, Grandmother of Saints” by Bev Cooke about that most interesting woman, St. Macrina the Elder.
This is a person we’d all like to invite over for dinner. Born around 270, her spiritual father was St. Gregory the Wonderworker, her granddaughters were St. Macrina […]

(This started out life as a book review, but as I started adding in thoughts about the subject, I realized that it was more of a brain-dump of my accrued thoughts from years of having tried to figure out what the heck happened to the once-honorable visual arts — painting, drawing, sculpture. It got lengthy, […]

Well, here’s a sad state of affairs for a book review. The only reason to write about this book at all is to let Orthodox readers know not to get it.

I’m sorry to have to say that. “6,000 Beards” is the detailed memoir of an English writer’s 1935 visit to Mount Athos — the Grecian […]

Saint Theophan the Recluse’ 19th century book “Unseen Warfare” is a classic of Orthodox literature, but it is a very difficult read, both because of some archaic language and styling and because it is just very profound material written by a great spiritual warrior. Father Sparks has refashioned the book into three books — “Victory […]

This small volume (114 pages) by an Orthodox archbishop is one of my very favorite books, and since it doesn’t seem to make into the church bookstores as much as I think it should, I’ll put in a word in time for Christmas buying.
The Amazon.com review of their book on tape version says: […]

On February 15, 1987, I was chrismated into the Orthodox Church at St. Nicholas Church in Los Angeles. It was a small intimate affair. Metropolitan Philip ordained 60 or so priests, then chrismated and served me my first eucharist, as he did to a couple hundred of my nearest and dearest friends and fellow travelers. […]

I managed to find this dandy little item at a bookstore once, and I’ve been sold on them ever since. “The Daily Lives, Miracles and Wisdom of the Saints and Fasting Calendar” is a spiral-bound daily calendar lets you start the day with a little something to think about and other bits of help. In […]

Greg the Resourceful Husband managed to find this out-of-print gem, and I’m glad to say you can find it here at Alibris, which is turning out to be an invaluable source of hard-to-find books. Published in 1950, it’s a much-needed compendium of Russian Orthodox writings from nine different periods, going in chronological order from the […]