Blog Posts

Welcome New Board Members!

We want to tell you about some changes to our Board.

Dr. Gayle Woloschak has come to the end of her three-year term as our Senior Advisor. We have benefited immeasurably from her wisdom and the depth of her expertise in starting and running non-profits, especially in the Orthodox sphere. Gayle, you have been a true blessing and we are so glad you will be staying with us as advisor emerita!

Wickes Wicked blog pic

This fall, in the middle of October, our family went to Chicago to see the Broadway production of the musical Wicked. The tickets were purchased as a gift for our daughter’s sixteenth birthday. She is crazy about musicals, and was anticipating this event with the highest expectations. I, on the other hand, went along without any specific hopes for the show.

Jasmina on St. Catherine

For years I’ve thought that Catherine of Alexandria was an intriguing figure.  Perhaps it was the painting I once saw of her in beautiful medieval garb next to the terrifying spiked wheel.  More recently, I began to think about what her life might tell me about making choices.

knees and trees blog photo

Slowing down has long been an essential part of my spiritual practice–and yet it’s the most challenging. Why? I am an extravert who loves connecting with people. Plus I have an active body/mind which gets revved up by our fast-paced, razzle-dazzle society, which seems intent on keeping me distracted. These formidable conditions make living a quiet, calm, contemplative spiritual life so very difficult. I am often left exhausted and overwhelmed by work, meet-ups, coffees, and events, and tired of trying to cope. A number of years ago, I finally decided that if I am to get closer to God, I would need to make a radical change.

Room with icons

If you think back to the first year of the pandemic and lockdown, you might remember that people kept saying that we live in crazy times. And in many ways, it continues to feel we’re living in a new normal in our schools, our workplaces, our socializing, and our common worship spaces. Does that mean we are still experiencing craziness? What can we think about that? We turned to Mother Christophora, longtime abbess at Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, for her view, excerpted from a longer post-paschal meditation: 

 

If people see our time… as a crazy time, what do they actually mean?

…Indeed, we have much to grieve,

Much to regret,

St. Macrina

St. Macrina was revered in her own time for many reasons. She taught her brothers the virtues and wisdom that helped them, in their turn to become saints, she talked her mother into freeing her slaves and servants allowing them to enter the monastery as her sisters, and she worked hard always to be a source of spiritual support to everyone around her. She trusted in Christ so deeply that this was her final prayer:  

Jane Meyer on St Brigid

Long ago I moved from busy Santa Monica, California, so filled with all the things associated with Hollywood and fame—money; divorce; drugs; fashion; arrogance... to Europe. I was only nineteen and just a few years from having quit my full-time job of being a young gymnast. I landed in a small Italian village, where the family I lived with had their own small hillside vineyard, ate lunches together in their tiny orange kitchen, made a supply of rye bread to last the year, and hunted, kept cows, sang, roasted chestnuts, and really knew how be at home in the mountains. It was like I breathed fresh air for the first time in my life. Doing things slowly, savoring friends and family. Staring at the stars.