Blog Posts

I wrote this because I wanted to understand why God lets us have disabilities. I have friends and family who have loved ones with disabilities, I visit nursing homes, and often pass people on the street who have some sort of special need. I am a second-year seminarian and it seemed like a good time to take a closer look. 

Last week, Fordham University’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center hosted a panel on “The Female Diaconate and the Orthodox Church” at its Lincoln Center Campus in Manhattan. There was a strong turn-out for a chilly February evening, mostly of students and people from area churches. Unlike a similar event I attended in Philadelphia last March, the overall vibe was open and curious, and questions flowed thick and fast after the presentations.

I learned lectio divina on retreat at New Skete monastery, in Cambridge, NY. More than any other practice, it has changed my relationship with Christ and has created a pathway to dialogue with him. For all that, there's nothing complicated about it. It’s a simple, three-step practice, that goes like this:

A third lesson from Axia Women's first six months: Everybody is going through stuff. We need to show up for each other.

There are many women (and more than a few men) hungry for support and ways to channel their love for the Church.

My experience of working, living, and worshiping alongside women for these many years is that when you bring women together online and in person, and when you support them, listen to them, and advocate for them, great things happen. So that is what we will be doing. No one in the church should have to feel isolated or unappreciated.

That goes for men, too, by the way.

Axia Women hasn't been around all that long. In spite of that, we've learned a few things in our short time as an organization that I'd like to share over the coming weeks. The first has to do with diversity.

As a high school science teacher, one of the courses that I love to teach is Environmental Science and Field Biology. I also teach at a Christian high school and love the opportunity to challenge the students to think about what it means to really live as a Christian.

Predictably, by the end of the first semester, students begin to ask “This all can seem so overwhelming, what can we possibly do? Isn’t it too late to reverse the worst of climate change?”

My first answer is that despair (and its siblings cynicism and doubt) is exactly how the Evil One wants us to respond. Despair is easy, it absolves us of any requirement of true repentance. It’s too big, it’s too complex, there are so many other factors…