Cultivating Orthodox
Christianity in America

Cultivating Orthodoxy in America

The world around me is not the way it is supposed to be

I am tired of being angry about it. I reject the lie that there is no truth, no goodness, and no beauty. I reject the lie that everything is a lie. Despite all of my failures, I can feel the nobility of my soul; I know somehow that I was made to love and to be loved, and that I was made for …

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Baptism is the gateway into the Church, cleansing us of sin and rebirthing us in Christ. Chrismation brings the Holy Spirit into our souls, and communion of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ physically joins us to Him.

The True Home of My Soul

The world around me is not the way it is supposed to be, but I am tired of being angry about it. I reject the lie that there is no truth, no goodness, and no beauty. I reject the lie that everything is a lie. Despite all of my failures, I can feel the nobility of my soul; I know somehow that I was made to love and to be loved, and that I was made for an ultimate purpose far greater than myself yet close to my heart. What could that be? Who can teach me how to get there? Where is the home of my soul? I want to go home.

Various religions and philosophies say that our true home is beyond this life, in Paradise or heaven or something like that. I’m willing to believe that, I’m willing to believe that something like that is the ultimate goal, but if I am going to have the power to keep going, today, and the understanding of how to do it, now, I also need a home now, in this life. I need to be rooted, related to, and loved. I need a framework of meaning and a plan of action that makes sense not just to my head but to my heart. Who will show me the way to this home, now?

Christians say that ultimate meaning, the ultimate Guide back home, is not ideas but a Person, Jesus. That makes sense: I know that I am personal, that I can communicate and have friends, that I have a unique identity. Why would the Ultimate be less personal than me? That would be crazy; it would mean that attaining the ultimate would be spiritual suicide. Well, I’m not going to commit suicide. So there is this Person of Jesus. You kind of can’t get around Him, but Who is He, really? Ten thousand Christian sects say ten thousand different things.

So here I am on this website (the ten thousandth one I’ve looked at so far), and here is the Orthodox Church claiming that it is my true home, and that it can teach me how to finally be at peace through being rooted, related to, and loved while at the same time getting over myself and all my supposed problems, learning that it’s really not about me at all. It claims that through learning and living the real teaching about Who Jesus is, I can attain that level of freedom that comes from overcoming one’s obsessions and addictions, forgetting one’s ego, and looking outward, to God and to others and to the whole universe, from a place where I am secure in the meaning of my life and free to sacrifice myself for that which is greater than I. From that secure place that is the true home of my soul, which they say is the Church. Which they say is the real Church founded by Jesus Himself, which in fact has not changed in 2,000 years, is based in reality, and won’t lie to me.