This piece of writing is likely going to be something half-baked for quite some time. That being said, if the only person I’m really writing for is myself, it shouldn’t matter. A few weeks ago (probably a phrase I’ll use often — and whether it was actually a few weeks ago or a few years ago, who can tell? Time is fickle…) I arrived at church early one morning to serve behind the altar with my priest. I was wearing a T-shirt with a 1980s G1 Optimus Prime on it, and chiding me with a big smile and a loving voice, my priest said, “You’re nothing but a big kid!” ...

On October 7th in the Prologue from Ochrid (sometimes Ohrid) written by Saint Nikolai Velimirovic, the “For Consideration” section has a story about St. Andrew the Fool-for-Christ. In the story, St. Andrew is having a vision of a demon who says to the saint: “You’re the greatest enemy I have in the whole of Constantinople!”. Keep silent, refrain from judgement. This will raise you above the deadly arrows of slander, insult, outrage, and will shield your glowing hearts against the evil that creeps around. — St. Seraphim of Sarov The story continues: instead of driving the demon away, St. Andrew let him speak for a while. This is what the devil said: ...

One day recently, after a particularly challenging argument with my 12-year-old son about attending church, I reached out to several friends to ask them about their experiences with their own children (of varying ages) around church attendance. I wanted to know if they had faced similar struggles, and more importantly, what kinds of conversations they’d had around when their kids could make their own decisions about whether or not to attend church. ...

Get out of your head… Some days it feels like this is all I’m ever trying to do: get out of my head and into the forest; get out of my head and into life with my wife and kids; get out of my head and onto paper. Now, more than ever, I find things rattling around in my head that I need to put somewhere. Sometimes it’s in a journal. Sometimes it’s a random text file on my computer. Sometimes it’s a half-baked essay that ends up in the ‘boys chat’. It used to be that I wrote things on the Internet, but for whatever reason those days slowly faded into oblivion and one by one old WordPress installs were relegated to the digital trash heap. ...