AmericanMom
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Posts posted by AmericanMom
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Strange coincidence, this has happened to me three times, too, the first two being very early but the last one later. Also the last time was 5 years ago last December, and my due date would've been in early June, too. You are in my prayers today. We cry with you...
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Have you looked at OrthodoxWiki? Not terribly in depth, but it might answer some of your questions, if you need a quick and simple answer.
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I think of the verse that says the one who has family in need and doesn't take care of them is worse than an unbeliever! I'm not sure where that is, but it's in the Epistles. Like someone else said, it's one thing for an adult to take a vow of poverty, it's another to subject children to it against their will and to their detriment. That reminds me of Jesus' strong words to those who cause children to sin.
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When my dh and I were first exploring Orthodoxy, we went to every Orthodox church we could find, I think it was maybe 5 or 6? To see what they were all like. We wanted to know what we might be getting in to, apart from just one particular parish. Eventually, we ended right back up at the first church, we knew it was the place to have our questions answered and to learn and grow and for our kids. But it was comforting to see, even through the more ethnic churches the faith is the same, the service is the same, whether it's mostly Americans and in English or mostly immigrants and in some other language.
So I would encourage you to visit all the Orthodox churches in your area, to get a feel for it, if you are blessed enough to have more than one in your area. It doesn't have to always be on a Sunday, most churches will probably be having a service either tonight or tomorrow morning, and of course as someone mentioned, vespers on Saturday night.
I'm praying for you! It can be unnerving to step outside the "box" of our own experiences and comfort zones. I've been there, recently!
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I'm scared to ask my priest the hard questions, because especially with the Trinity, that is a MUST.
You won't ask him questions he hasn't already heard!
Remember Matthew 28:16-17: "Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them. When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some doubted."
And remember Thomas, who said (John 20:25): "Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe."
Online reading can be destructive as well as instructive. Our priest told us the other Sunday to read the Bible as much as we look at screens (tv or computer) and pray that much as well for a week, and then we'd see where our faith is! That was an eye-opening thought for me.
We'll be praying for you.
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Welcome! I will be praying for you tomorrow.
My family and I joined the Church last fall after 1 1/2 years of attending, reading, praying, and talking it through. My dh & I used to joke about our "Orthodoxy walks" where we'd go for a walk around the neighborhood and try to sort it all out.
What time are you going to be there, so we can be in prayer at that time?
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I hope I didn't come across as judgmental. I didn't mean to imply your friend was insincere or anything. It's a reasonable question. I can see why she'd ask. My husband is frequently saying, we can't take for granted that our children are in church, we have to teach them the faith and live the faith in from of them. And pray without ceasing! Lord have mercy on our children!
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That was great. Thanks for linking it!
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Wow. Thanks for linking this! Amazing!
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Also, why is going through the motions bad? We do it all the time, brushing our teeth, doing the dishes, folding laundry, driving. Why so we think it is so bad to not have some emotional experience all the time, like a constant spiritual high? Not asking you in particular, just wondering out loud. I mean, we can't be in ecstasy all the time. The liturgy has meaning whether I feel it or not, KWIM? I think there's great value in that.
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Okay. Well, I guess I'd just address the issue from a free will perspective. Our kids have free will, they can choose to rebel. Parenting isn't a sure thing, no matter what you do, because our children are autonomous human beings, with their own free will. They have to own their faith at some point. Everyone does. I feel my job as a parent is to teach them the true faith and how to live in the life of the church, and hopefully keep them close and not leave them susceptible to over-influence by the world, if that makes sense? But there are no guarantees. If she's looking at Orthodoxy as a way to make sure her children are saved, it doesn't work that way. But by doing the daily readings from the Bible, and expanding them into teaching as appropriate, and teaching them the prayers, and how to pray on their own as well, using catechism materials provided by my priest, and raising them in the Church, faithfully attending and explaining what and why we do what we do (this helps my children answer friends who say why do you have to fast, whatever), and most of all praying for and with them, we have hope in Him Who said "Let the little children come to me".
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I guess it's different everywhere. In my church, acolytes and sub Deacons go first because they are assisting, then people file up in order of where they're sitting, from the front to the back, and then the choir goes last because they sing while everyone else is going up. As far as confession, I never heard of a specific age, but when we joined last year, our priest asked us if we wanted our just-turned-6 year old daughter to confess as well, it was up to us. We asked him what he thought and he thought it was okay either way, but probably he'd have her go ahead with the rest of the family, so she did. I guess it's a case by case type of thing.
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I wonder if your friend meant did your kids like it? The comment about fear of kids leaving the church and parents having to do just the right thing makes me think that. We have a lot of people ask us this since we joined the Church. They seem to think our kids won't like it because it's old and "not relevant". They are genuinely shocked to hear our kids love it. We have a long drive to church, but my boys (11 & 14) will occasionally ask to go during the week if they are having a difficult time with something. Just to be in the church, especially during a Divine Liturgy, calms their spirits. Contemporary youth culture is pretty bad. But a lot of churches try to Christianize that, making a Christian alternative to the youth culture, which sounds and looks the same but is Christian instead of not. That sometimes works for kids who come from non Christian homes, I've seen that before. But for kids with Christian parents, especially kids who aren't in school where the youth culture is around them every day, like homeschoolers, it can be destructive. Not that it always is, of course. But it can be. It's about a lot more than clothes and music. And people are afraid because they see their best efforts don't seem to be working terribly well. But as Orthodox Christians, our kids are integrated into the church. We need them! And they know that. We need them to be acolytes, in the choir, setting out food for coffee hour, cleaning up afterwards, helping distribute food from the food closet, passing out candles for Pascha or palm branches for Palm Sunday, whatever. They aren't passive recipients of some adult who is trying to be "cool" for them. They are actively engaged in the life of the church.
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Anyone know of any? I have a friend who experiences this and she is a Christian who is inquiring about Orthodoxy. I asked my priest and he recommended she read about some of the women saints who dealt with this type of thing (being sick all the time), and he'd look for some. He's not much for the internet, though, so I thought I'd ask here, it might be faster! :)
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Praying for you and your daughter...
We are in somewhat of a similar situation here. My oldest (14) is going to high school next year, and none of my kids have been in school before either. This has been a tough year, he is frankly tired of hearing me teach all day and needs to get out and spread his wings a little. Yesterday he told me he's had the same teacher since kindergarten and he needs a change! LOL
We have worked hard this year to get him into a public magnet school, which helps a little (our districted school was not an option). But I am struggling with letting go of control of his education. The classes they put him in, the language he takes, its out of my hands! he is very excited though, and I am excited and proud of him.
I still have three to teach next year, but it will be a big change, and we'll cry the first day I'm sure. One thing I am sad about is he won't be able to take school off for church anymore. I feel like so many years were lost outside the life of the Church, and now we're finally here and he's not going to be able to do as much. I guess I'm thinking about it now with Holy Week coming up and we'll be at church a lot during the day.
Anyway, praying for wisdom for you. Let's commiserate next fall!
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For me, it's a lot of the same verses already mentioned. One I don't think has been mentioned, is a passage our priest mentions a lot, the first miracle. The people asked Mary to intercede for them (never thought of it that way before!), and she went to Jesus, and He seemed reluctant at first, but when she said to the people, do whatever He tells you to do, Jesus didn't deny her request. I never understood that story, if He was going to do it anyway, if it was in His "timeline" so to speak, why did He tell her it wasn't time? And if it was time, why did He say that? Our priest points out that she asked Him for help, but never told Him what to do! She didn't say, get them some more wine, she just said they're out. And then she said to the servants, DO WHATEVER HE TELLS YOU TO DO. This is the message Mary has for each of us. This is what she always did! When Gabriel came to her, she believed and obeyed. When Elizabeth blessed her, she believed and obeyed. Do whatever He tells you to do, this was her life. When people told Jesus your mother and brothers are here and someone said blessed is the womb that bore you, etc., He said RATHER, blessed is the one who believes what God says and follows it. As a protestant, I heard that as a rebuke and was confused by it, but now I see that He was actually pointing to her as an example. She heard the Lord's words and followed Him! He was saying, she isn't blessed merely because of the womb she had, but because she heard God and obeyed! And He was saying we can do the same, that is, follow her example and hear Him and obey. That gives me hope.
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I don't post much anymore, but I just wanted to let you all know I do still read occasionally and I pray for all the requests I see. I am very grateful to this group of ladies for patiently answering so many of my questions while we were becoming Orthodox! To those who weren't here then (and to remind those who were), my dh, myself, and our 4 children entered the Church by chrismation last fall. We had been attending for a year and a half already at that point. We were protestants before that. I mostly posted here right at the beginning (about 2 years ago), before we were really involved in our parish and I wasn't as comfortable asking questions of people at church. What a blessing this group is!
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Memory eternal to Father Jacob!
I have been to his church and talked to him and there is no other way to describe him -- he had Jesus coming out of his pores.
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That said, the ethnicity of many Orthodox Churches near me was probably my biggest hindrance to the OC. I didn't want to be Greek or Russian or whatever. I am an American who wanted to be Orthodox! Thankfully, I found a church (Antiochian) that is made up of a mix of converts and different ethnicities, where we were accepted and people understood our questions and concerns. Now, though, being Orthodox, I can appreciate what someone said earlier about how Orthodoxy intertwined with life in Orthodox countries, and I have learned a lot from friends who are immigrants. I think now I could probably go to a more ethnic church and be okay with it, but it was hard in the beginning. It was harder then to separate the culture from the faith.
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There were many things, mystery was a big one, I was tired of the "if this then that" of both the Prot. and RC churches. Probably the biggest though was history. Reading history, the RC pov just didn't sound as reasonable to me as the EO pov. Something just rang true about the EO pov. The differences between the two are changes that the Roman church made, I don't think the RCC disputes most of that. The Ecumenical Councils, the book of Acts, it just fit better (to me) that way. For years as a Protestant, one of my beloved RC friends gave me books and tried to convince me it was THE church, but every time I left thinking the OC had a stronger claim to that. So when I decided I was done with Protestantism, that's where I naturally went.
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With a June birthday boy, you might want to consider giving him that extra year. It's generally better to be older than your classmates than younger, especially for boys, and it doesn't always show up until middle school. For my summer birthday boy I called it K when he was 6, but did whatever 1st grade stuff he was ready for. (I didn't want him to graduate from high school at 17, and handwriting and sitting still were difficult for him then.) Now, he is in 8th and is confident and ready to start high school -- he would not have been a year ago. He was still advanced in math (he's taking geometry now), so it's not an academic thing, it was a maturity thing. I have several friends, however, who did not hold back their summer birthday boys, and when they got to 7th grade regretted it. They wanted that extra year of maturity before high school but couldn't do it at that point without it being a big deal. However, I had another friend who did as I did and officially held back her summer birthday boy, and when he got to 7th grade he was ready to go on so she skipped him a grade.
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Here is something CS Lewis said about the subject:
The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens--at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. I suspect that men have sometimes derived more spiritual sustenance from myths they did not believe than from the religion they professed. To be truly Christian we must both assent to the historical fact and also receive the myth (fact though it has become) with the same imaginative embrace which we accord to all myth. The one is hardly more necessary than the other.
:iagree:I'm with Lewis and Tolkien...
That article freaked me out a bit. Was she serious? We have to stop saying good luck and tear down our statues of heroes? And Shakespeare is evil?
How do you teach your children about the Bible WITHOUT teaching mythology? Paul's brilliant preaching in Athens is totally lost. THere is no context for the Ten Plagues, it just looks like God is picking random things to hit them with, rather than trying to show them their gods were false so they would repent (which the Bible says many did and followed Israel into the desert and were counted as Israelites). Hundreds of other examples, where things seem random until you learn the context.
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Milovany, love the interview you posted on the General board!
I wanted to say (but didn't have the nerve to on the gen. board!) I especially liked his answer on the "tolerance" for evangelicals in Russia. If people came from another country and were well-funded and determined to convince my children that our church was not really Christian and we had to leave it and go to their church, I would be hurt and angry. And if they then went around the world telling everyone how I had "hindered" them -- well, duh! If you think I'm not a Christian, you should expect me to hinder you! And if I am a Christian, well then, why are you telling my neighbors and children I am not?
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:grouphug:
Just wanted to say I am there with you! Things are crazy around here and I don't post much, but I am praying for you all.
What is the Orthodox response to this?
in Exploring Orthodox Christianity
Posted
Great explanation!
I have thought of it like this. I require my 6 year old to hold my hand crossing the street. I do not require my 15 year old to do so.
Can you imagine Christ coming to the people who lived in Noah's day? They were not ready for it. God had to prepare us for His coming, teaching this group of people (first a man, Abraham, then a family, then a nation) what it meant to be holy, set apart for the Lord. What it meant to have laws and order and compassion, He prepared the way for His coming.
That's one of the things That amazes me most about the annunciation. God had been preparing a way since Adam and Eve first fell (and how far we humans fell!), and now here it comes down to a young teenage girl, being given the impossible task of carrying God in her womb, and she was given a choice! How the angels must have held their breath! What would have happened if she said no thanks?
But praise God, He knew what He was doing! She said yes, and Eden was opened again to us through the gift of Christ Jesus!
Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life! Hallelujah!