Category: Spirituality
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On the (Protestant) Recovery of the Rite of Confession
I grew up as a Dutch Reformed protestant, and as such, never participated in an ecclesiastical rite of confession. My parents were also raised Dutch Reformed protestants, and so they didn’t either. And so on back generations upon generations. However, I wonder if we are missing something central in dropping the tradition of confession, not…
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A Close Encounter of the Divine Kind
I remember the first time I attended an Orthodox Divine Liturgy. Walking in the door was almost overwhelming. The lingering scent of incense was unmistakable, and unlike any olfactory experience I’ve ever had at church. And it was equally visually stunning, being surrounded with iconongraphy: saints, cherubim, biblical scenes, and especially Christ and the Theotokos.…
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Guidance and the Spiritual Life
Almost every explorer who set out into an unknown land was accompanied by a guide. When Hiram Bingham went into the Peruvian jungle to search for a lost city of the Inca, he took Melchor Arteaga with him. When Lewis and Clark set out on their famous expedition to explore the Louisiana Purchase (and beyond),…
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To Be Leaven For the Future
He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’ Matthew 13:33, NRSV The restoration of the church will surely come from a sort of new monasticism which has in common with the old only the…
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A Wonky Advent Wreath
We recently took our Advent/Christmas decorations down from the attic. The tree went up, we fought with the lights (as we always do), our two-year-old almost destroyed the ornaments, and we began the annual adventure of rediscovering what we actually have in the Advent/Christmas bins. One thing I knew that we had, however, was our…
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The Hidden Life
Those who know me know that I have been called to a new place. No longer in the Midwest, I make my home in the East, in a place also settled by the Dutch, only this place was settled over a hundred years earlier than in my home. Though, the traces of Dutch settlement lie…
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To Our Home’s New Owner
Welcome to your new home! We are so happy that you were interested and even happier that you’ll be staying a while. We are very sad to leave, perhaps it’s good for you to know that. We’re not leaving here to get away from here, but because we’ve been called elsewhere. We intended to stay…
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Blessed are the Autumn Daisies
Long after the trees have dropped their leaves, and the canopy of green becomes a jagged collection of branches reaching upward toward the disappearing sun, long after the geese have ceased honking and the birds have stopped their morning songs, long after the bushes begin to blaze but are not yet consumed, long after the…
Matthew van Maastricht 