This blog is a more formal attempt at a serious bloggie for Orthodox Christians, Southerners, those Southerners interested in church history, Southerners interested in a conservative southern Christian faith that does not invlove: polyester, jackboots, nationalism, softball, Pat Robertson ( who, by the way, is one of the best things to happen to "weird" since Micheal Jackson) or having an eagle somehow woven into the art in your church sign or letterhead. Also Southern humor. As you can see I have quickly bypassed the first few ideas and headed straight fot the last one; humor. Anyway back to t he Cerenekov Effect and Orthodox Christianity. I mention the Cerenkov Effect because I attend an Orthodox Church in America parish in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the Home of Hot Instant Death On a Stick or Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Weapons. It saddens me that some of the dear Christian people I worship with may spend their workday making and improving nuclear weapons. I say may because I am not sure of the job despription of any of the gubment employees I know. Anyway that is a blog entry for another day and it is obvious I don't really know what I am talking about but may God save us from nuclear energy anyway!
Back to more interesting stuff. The aformentioned "Cerenkov Effect" is the effect of radioactive decay in the form of light traveling at 186,000 mph impacting water molecules and producing a eerie blue spectrum best seen in a nuclear reactor cooling tank or shortly before your death or both. I have never seen this effect in the flesh but I have seen pics which I will attach to his article a s soon as I find that button.
http://www.nightscribe.com/Science_Technology/Nuclear/db13r_refueling.htmEnough about nucular energy , as our president says, and more about about the Christian faith, its many facets, its many fractures, and the New Southern Man. The fact remains that I only attend church in Oak Ridge and I rarely socialize there because of the 45min drive both ways from my humble abode. There are many fine people in my parish I've never spent time with because of "war capitalism" and the price of oil! As far as parishes go, I have a good one filled with intelligent professionals and families. 95% of the orthodox in my parish are converts from protestantism, charismania, catholicism, and the baptist experience.
I within myself am a mix of episcopalian, charismaniac, and old catholic. I discovered the orthodox faith in Jesus Christ while studying the early church structure esp. Tertullian and Ireneaus. I was at one time and avid reader of Hippolytus the "antipope", ( you gotta be one bad dude to be the antipope, man) the Didache, Phillip Schaff, and many heretical pamphlets and books by a company called Scroll Publishing (who was trying to reinvent the early church whilst rejecting two-thirds of Christian Orthodoxy) . I tried my best to either find or recreate the liturgical, eucharistic early church within the Charismatic Anglican Church or later through the Pseudo-O ld Catholic denomination I was a member of. I was in Holy Orders in the last Old Catholic church I attended before my chrismation into the Orthodox Church, which was vibrant and active all along in the South yet hidden in plain sight from me. .
I am very much a spiritual vagabond and ragamuffin as Manning has accurately stated. As a Southerner the Christian faith has had a deep effect on me both good and bad I think. I am a Christian twentysomething and I am a christian by choice and not by Southern cultural enforcement. I despised church services as a boy and I sought hedonistic endeavor above all else and did not believe in God as living person more so as an ideal. That all changed when I got "saved " when I was 17 in an independent charismatic church and was healed instanly from many troubles. That was a beginning of a strange and unusual and very rewarding journey to the Orthodox Church in America.
My typical, educated Southern family looks at my conversion to orthodoxy
( sidebar: I don't like to say "my conversion to orthodoxy" I didn't become a Mormon or something! I just believe what was revealed to me by the Holy Spirit more deeply and without division or pollution. I think becoming orthodox is much like being blind yet feeling the sun on your face, you can describe the sun but you've never seen it, and then one day you gain vision and can see how beautiful everything is, because of the light of the sun, and you realize the sun too is beautiful. And then you meet the one who made the sun , Who is Beauty, and you start to spend time with those who have had the same realization. sorry for the rambling)
as something qaint and humorous but not appropriate for everyday much like a small dog taking a large crap. My family just nods and says "that's interesting" so that I will spare them from any serious endeavor into Christian Theology, Sprituality, or History. I count myelf blessed to have said loving family regardless of their views of orthodox christianity. In their defense I was a member of 4 denominations in 8 years which makes you look like a psychopath. That is also the rollercoaster adventure that is the Chrisitan life. In closing I will say with clarity and without ramblings that I had and have a hunger for knowing God in the fullness that He allows. Even though I did my best to tune out the the Book of Common Prayer in my youth the episcopal liturgy says these four things of which the Priest was supposed to choose one to read and My wise old priest always said all four:
From the book of Common Prayer:
Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.
Matthew 11: 28God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 3:16
This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.
1 Timothy 1: 15
If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the perect offering for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.
1 John 2:1-2
THe first and the last of the these scriptures are the only thing that really got through in my youth at church. But they are what we all seek: Rest and Peace.
