What am I to do?
“Man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal.” Ethical questions presuppose narrative questions. As he put it, “I can only answer the question, ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question, ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”
Alasdair Macintyre, 1929-2025, via Christopher Kaczor
Inoculated
C. S. Lewis once claimed that it was much harder to present the Christian story to a post-Christian culture than to a pre-Christian one, and today we can see how true this claim is. Where I come from, people are largely inoculated against Christianity, or what they imagine Christianity to be. The history, the cultural baggage, the half-formed prejudices: all of these are compounded by a stark lack of understanding of what the Christian Way really is.
Paul Kingsnorth, Prose and Principalities
Not Mincing Words
On Memorial Day, I stumbled onto an Orthodox Priest in Texas who is gung-ho on “masculinity” and other click-baity stuff. I don’t link to indecent material, and this stuff felt indecent, twisted — Mark Driscoll in a cassock.
Since the story was from BBC, it came to the attention of the Russian Orthodox Bishop of London and Western Europe, who felt compelled to speak.
If he was speaking spontaneous, unprepared remarks, then he’s a remarkable man and Bishop. I want to quote every pointed, potent word, because my effort to excerpt it could leave out things that might be just what you need to “hear.”
So I give you a link to the full remarks: ‘Seeking After Worldly Visions of “Masculinity” is Not an Orthodox Pursuit’: A Word From Bishop Irenei.
I cannot deny that growth of the Orthodox Church in North America has been disproportionately from men coming in, and young men particularly. The appeal of Orthodoxy to men had been noted before I entered the Church, but I’m not sure it has ever been explained.
What I can tell you from my own parish (and my personal experience doesn’t extend much further than that) is that it’s not because our Priest obsesses over masculinity, or because the parish has special men’s ministries, or any other gimmick. It seems to be “a God thing,” and I can go no further than that.
Christ, the Life of all
To be Christian, to believe in Christ, means and has always meant this: to know in a transrational and yet absolutely certain way called faith, that Christ is the Life of all life, that He is Life itself and, therefore, my life. “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” All Christian doctrines—those of the incarnation, redemption, atonement—are explanations, consequences, but not the “cause” of that faith. Only when we believe in Christ do all these affirmations become “valid” and “consistent.” But faith itself is the acceptance not of this or that “proposition” about Christ, but of Christ Himself as the Life and the light of life. “For the life was manifested and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us” (1 Jn. 1:2). In this sense Christian faith is radically different from “religious belief.” Its starting point is not “belief” but love.
Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World
Religious ideas have the fate of melodies, which, once set afloat in the world, are taken up by all sorts of instruments, some woefully coarse, feeble, or out of tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the melody itself is detestable.
George Elliot, Janet’s Repentance, via Alan Jacobs
[N]one of the things that I care about most have ever proven susceptible to systematic exposition.
Alan Jacobs, Breaking Bread With the Dead
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Tipsy Teetotaler ن 