Call me a Boomer. Among the more surprising developments across my nearly seven decades of life is the now widespread practice of tattooing. As a child in the 50’s, the only tattoos I ever saw were on the occasional sailor, and we rarely saw many of them. Indeed, I don’t think there was a tattoo […] The post God’s Tattoos appeared first on Glory to God For All Things ..read more

The search for the historical anything is an exercise in fantasy and imagination, a good movie, but not good for much else. C.S. Lewis noted that reviewers of his books, speculating on how they were written and other such intimate historical matters, were almost universally wrong. He wondered out loud why we should presume historical […] The post History’s Detectives appeared first on Glory to God For All Things ..read more

A chance conversation with my wife opened a world of wonder for me recently. I mentioned to her that, as I reaching for a scarf before my walk on a chilly morning, my thoughts drifted to a woman (a parishioner, now deceased) who had knitted several items for me. As I remembered her, I prayed […] The post An Avalanche of Kindness appeared first on Glory to God For All Things ..read more

“Welcome to the 21st Century!” Pick your issue, and if its outcome conforms to a popular, desired norm you are likely to hear such a greeting. The greeting also implies that a less than desirable outcome is wrong because it doesn’t belong to our time. It might be characterized as “medieval,” “outmoded,” “out-of-date,” “primitive,” “Neanderthal,” […] The post The End of the Modern World appeared first on Glory to God For All Things ..read more

I cannot begin to measure the amount of time I have spent over the years in conversations about the “problem of evil.” That problem, in short, is the impossibility of reconciling an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God with the presence of suffering, injustice, and evil in the world. Those conversations often involve listening to a deeply […] The post Worshipping a Weak and Foolish God appeared first on Glory to God For All Things ..read more

How do you feel about the Scriptures? What thoughts come to you as you read? Do they comfort you or challenge you? Do you love them or wrestle with them? Does God speak to you in them or are they opaque and bothersome? My primary relationship with the Scriptures as I was growing up was […] The post Me and My Bible appeared first on Glory to God For All Things ..read more

The Feast of the Nativity, known sometimes in Orthodoxy as “the Winter Pascha,” is one of the great examples in the story of our salvation where the “foolishness of God” defeats the wisdom of man. It is not the story of an underdog defeating the mighty, but a revelation of who God is, and who […] The post The Wisdom of Man and the Foolishness of God appeared first on Glory to God For All Things ..read more

Eyes they have but do not see. I have a daughter who is an artist. Her art is a gift that eludes me. The wonder is not so much in the skill of her hands but in her eyes. For having watched this phenomenon grow up and mature, I am certain of one thing: she sees […] The post An Artist’s Eye and the Kingdom of God appeared first on Glory to God For All Things ..read more

You cannot attend an Orthodox service and not be aware of doors. There are the doors that form the center of the icon screen, opening directly upon the altar. There are the two doors that flank them, one on either side, known as the “Deacon Doors.” Someone always seems to be coming out of one […] The post The Doors and God appeared first on Glory to God For All Things ..read more

The city that I live in was founded in 1943 for the purpose of building an atom bomb. Various movies have shared Hollywood’s moral opinions on that endeavor, none of which are very surprising. When I moved here in 1989, I met a good number of the “Class of ’43,” people who were here during […] The post What We Shall Be appeared first on Glory to God For All Things ..read more