The Catalog of Good Deeds

There is a small chapel in honour of the Holy Martyrs Faith, Hope, Love, and their mother Sophia in the building of the Private Grade School and Sunday School run by our St Elisabeth Convent. It is still being decorated but for the most part, the work has already been done. Every piece of work adds something important to the general design idea. Each new detail does not only make the chapel more beautiful but also adds some meaning to it. Even the smallest brick has its mission.

This is what fresco painter Dmitry Kuntsevich, who is in charge of the mosaic workshop of St Elisabeth Convent, tells about it:

— We did our best to make the chapel look interesting, distinctive, warm, and lively. The fact that the chapel is located in a place where children come together, allowed us to let our imagination run free. We even considered letting children create certain decorative elements themselves but it soon became evident that this kind of work requires serious concentration: you’ve got to teach the children regularly and for a long time. Unfortunately, we did not have this opportunity so we did the majority of tasks on our own.

The idea and its implementation was a joint effort of Sergey Kozyr, Mikhail Lavshuk, Alexander Truskovsky, Maksim Dudarau, Anna Ambrosova, Vitaly Zharov, Sergey Kudlach, Andrey Dudka, Alim Raula and many others.

We hope that the children will pray, study church-related subjects and enhance their creativity. This nice and cosy place will help them to concentrate on prayer and learning.

“The Dome Looked Empty Without Mosaics”

During the concept design stage it became clear that a mosaic could fit into the dome nicely. The attempts to do without the mosaic were dull. We felt that something was missing because the composition looked incomplete.

The dome is a semi-sphere, or, symbolically speaking, a transcendent place. It symbolizes the Heaven — a place where God dwells. We decided to cover it with gold, which, coupled with the starry darkness and the clouds in the centre, signifies something ethereal, something from outer space. However, we felt that there was a lack of the central piece, some “personal” image. If we used the face of Christ as the centrepiece, we would need to develop a plot of some kind. We did not want to do it because it would involve adding unnecessary details. We were to make the composition lighter, so one of our team suggested placing a dove in the centre of the dome. The allusion to the dove that brought an olive branch to the Noah’s Ark is a testimony about forgiveness and unification between the Heaven and the earth, between God and man. We gave the dove a golden olive branch, and this made the dome look complete, deep, and multilayered, which is very important for the composition.

Each Detail Has Its Own Image

Once we formulated the general idea and completed several parts of the composition, we decided that we should focus on the materials – the beauty of gesso, natural stones, bricks, and alabaster – and not to overload the composition with paintings, stories, and literary events.

At a certain point, we decided to make niches in the walls, which would represent windows into the alternate world. The vigil lamp lights shine like the saved souls of the reposed whose sepulchres we observed in ancient caves. The niches also resemble swallow’s nests in quarries or maybe burial sites of early Christians in catacombs. I hope these images will be properly interpreted by the visitors.

Finally, we finished the dome; the walls with niches “land” into the scheme and create a sort of a space in its own right; they follow their own logic. The problem was how to make pendentives. We did not want to continue decorating the chapel with mosaic.

Once I saw several photos on the Internet related to Syrian art: ruins of churches, decoration, tiling, streets and palaces that went back to late antiquity and the beginning of the Christian era. I had never seen Syrian Christian art heritage before. These masterpieces were the foundation for the entire Orthodox culture; in fact they lie at the roots of the Orthodox church art.

I saw how stones match bricks. I appreciated the imagery of these materials, the conceptuality of these masterpieces, their artistic perfection, when I suddenly felt that they were in tune with our ideas and could be reproduced in our chapel! They are so amazing!

I was so inspired by the Syrian architectural masterpieces that I wanted to use them, to put this inspiration into practice, so we made a wave in the pendentives, which represents the grace of the Holy Spirit, the sea and air waves through which the Lord touches us. The movements in the pendentives diffuse the tension from the dome down to the people who stand in the church.

The chapel itself is an artistic representation of the Noah’s Ark where human beings, including the students and other supplicants, can get saved. The pieces of wood incorporated into the plastered walls remind us of the old wood – the authentic wood that the Noah’s Ark was built of – and of the saving wood of the Lord’s Cross. The fumed oak looks like it has survived many ages and epochs.

The walls have an arched structure. It expands the space and adds visual depth. Figured mosaics and paintings will cover the surface of the niches. However, it took us a long time to figure out what to do with the floor. The ancient samples helped us again: we finally decided to try making a ceramic floor with glazed elements, and found out that they were a perfect match!

Like all other elements, the ceramic floor has a symbolic meaning. It represents clay and soil, the earth that human beings are made of and to which they shall go. These tiles were made of our Belarusian clay excavated in Polesie region. Firing, shaping, and fitting it was no easy task. Nevertheless, seeing how nicely it matched the general concept, the artistic idea of the church, we decided to undertake this hard work.

We used wooden inserts of fumed oak for the floor, too. The combination of the materials and colors looks fascinating.

The lower tier of the chapel requires lighting. We chose not to make forged brass sconces. Amazingly enough, I realised that ceramic vessels on those Syrian photos were used as lights when vigil lamps, candles, and wood spills were placed into them. We made a sketch and then adapted it for our chapel. Quite unexpectedly, we discovered another piece of the puzzle: a jug… A jug is basically earth, water, and air that went through fire. Generally, water, earth, air, and fire are the basic elements of the creation, according to the Holy Fathers. These jugs made from the dust of the earth become sources of light, thus embodying a human being who can be filled with either light or darkness, with either living or dead water. As a result, we put ceramics into the white walls, the color of which is the same as the color of the floor tiles, and the ceramics start to shine through holes in the exquisite floral ornaments.

Several important parts of the interior design remain to be implemented in order to fully finish the decoration of the chapel, including painted, glazed, and ceramic plates made according to an ancient Byzantine technology; entrance doors made of glass with fumed oak inserts, rivets and doorknobs with images of the Evangelists on them.

With an Image of Christ in the Centre

An icon of the holy patron saints of this chapel, Ss Faith, Hope, Love, and their mother Sophia, is being painted now. It will sit in a side niche. There will be images of other saints in various other strategic points around the chapel. The central icon of Christ who holds a white scroll in his hands with an inscription that reads, Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid (Cf. John 14:27). This scroll in the hands of the Lord, combined with his dark posture, looks like a cross. This image of Christ was inspired by an icon of Moses found in one of Jewish synagogues in Syria. This icon was painted in the style of early Christian encaustic paintings, and it has become the centrepiece of the chapel that helps to finish the general image of the chapel.

We plan to make mosaics Alpha and Omega, which will be located on both sides of the Savior and will serve as a continuation of this image. The mosaic is a concise composition where letters α (alpha) and ω (omega) will be parts of the ornament. There will be faces of the apostles and two hands of Jesus in this ornamental pattern: a blessing hand with the Eucharistic Cup and a hand with Eucharistic Bread. Can this be the perfect illustration of the idea of fullness of ecclesiastical life? The Communion is the beginning and the end of all things. The Body and the Blood of Christ contain the entire Revelation! There is nothing better than what the Lord feeds us with. Jesus Christ is the Word of God — our Logos, our life.

I’d like to hope that this is the Word of God that the children are taught in our school.

Recorded by Vadim Yanchuk

September 30, 2017

St. Elisabeth Convent

Q: If we can make confession to God without the priest, then why do we have confession with a priest present?

A: In the early Church, confession was public; that is, one confessed one’s sins in the presence of the entire faith community. When this became impractical, it was the priest who “stood in” for the community, as its presiding officer and as its witness to the penitent’s repentance.

Further, while we can indeed confess directly to God—even a casual reading of the daily prayers reveals that we should do this—we often find that we need help and advice in overcoming the very things we have confessed.

We do not confess “to” the priest; rather, we confess to God “in the presence of” the priest who, as the prayer before Confession clearly states, is God’s “witness” and who, having witnessed our confession of sins offers pastoral advice on how we can better our lives and overcome the very things we can confess. Just as one would not attempt to diagnose, much less cure, one’s own physical ailments, so too one should not attempt to diagnose, much less cure, one’s own spiritual ailments.

It is often the case that those who object to revealing their sins in the presence of a priest or to seek his advice have no qualms about revealing their sins to their neighbors, friends, psychiatrists, and so on, usually with the intention of obtaining advice—advice that is not necessarily godly or spiritually profitable, or even just plain “good,” for that matter.

Many years ago, a woman cornered my wife at coffee hour and told her that she was having an affair. She asked my wife’s advice.

My wife advised her that perhaps she should speak to me about this. The women replied, “But he’s a priest—I couldn’t tell him that!” This is somewhat akin to the person who finds a huge lump on his or her body, goes to the doctor, and then asks the receptionist to diagnose it. No doubt the receptionist would suggest that he or she have a seat and allow the doctor to look at it, only to find that the person with the huge lump replies, “But the lump’s much, much to big for me to show to the doctor!”

So, we confess in the presence of the priest to acknowledge that our sins, whether we wish to accept it or not, affect the entire faith community on the one hand, and that we cannot “heal ourselves” on the other. The priest is there to help us overcome those things for which we seek forgiveness, to give advice that a friend or neighbor might not be in a position to give, and to bear witness on behalf of the faith community, of which he is the spiritual father, that we have indeed repented and been forgiven by God.

Q: Can’t I go to God, who already knows what I’ve done, and confess?

A: Yes, one can confess directly to God—but refusing to confess in the presence of a priest implies that one can also be one’s own spiritual physician. If this were so, then one wouldn’t find that one is generally confessing the same sin, over and over again—which not only implies that one is not making progress in overcoming one’s sin and also implies, perhaps, that one really doesn’t want help in overcoming one’s sins in the first place! [There are indeed those who commit certain sins, ask God’s forgiveness, feel that the slate is “clean,” and then plan the next occasion upon which the same sin can once again be committed. This is not “confession” in any sense, and this does not generate forgiveness, precisely because there is no desire to “repent,” or “change.”] On the spiritual level, one who refuses to seek spiritual advice from one’s father confessor is somewhat like the person who refuses to see a surgeon because he or she would rather perform his or her own brain surgery. While I suppose one could pull out a few knives and a can opener and attempt this, it is not likely that it will be a success!

Q: However, if someone has commited a sin they want nobody to know about except that person and God, then what’s the problem with confessing only to God since he is the only one who can forgive sins.

A: By hiding what one has done, one commits another sin. Have you ever told a lie in order to get yourself out of a situation, only to find out that by telling the lie you are required to tell additonal lies—and so on and so on and so on?

Consider this: One day, when our daughter was four years old, I was taking a mid-afternoon nap on the couch. She came running into the living room in an agitated state, demanding that I give her a kleenex. [In the past, she had always gotten her own kleenex, so this was rather odd.] I told her to get her own kleenex, as she had done so many times in the past, but she insisted I give one to her. I did. She ran up the steps to her bedroom and slammed the door shut.

A few minutes later, she woke me up, asking for a piece of scotch tape. Again, this was odd behavior, since she knew where the tape was and never hesitated to get it herself. So, once again, I got up and gave her the tape. And, once again, she bolted up the steps and slammed her bedroom door.

Figuring that something was up—the silence was deafening!—I went up stairs, where I found the kleenex taped to the wall, about two feet from the floor. I asked her what this was all about; “nothing” was her reply.

Since in my opinion “nothing” usually means “something,” I removed the kleenex that was taped to the wall, as she watched in absolute horror.

There, under the kleenex, was a crayon mark.

” What’s this?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she replied.

But it wasn’t “nothing.” She knew quite well that coloring on the walls was “something” that was clearly not acceptable. She “sinned” by doing that which she had been told was not permitted—coloring on the wall. And she tried to cover it up, hoping that I would not notice.

Now, had she not asked for the kleenex and tape, I probably would have never noticed her colorful “sin” in the first place, as I rarely, if ever, inspected the walls for crayon marks. But by trying to cover up the crayon marks in the hope that I wouldn’t notice them, she only made them more obvious, and committed a second sin in the process—one by which she tried to deceive me.

My point here is that when we refuse to confess what we have done, we commit a second sin—a sin of pride, by which we are unwilling to acknowledge what we have done to another person, often justifying this by thinking, “Well, I didn’t really hurt anyone.” We also sin by thinking that we are “pulling the wool over” God’s eyes, which we cannot do. He knows our hearts and He alone judges the sincerity of our repentance—and a key element in genuine repentance is acknowledging to God and to others that we are indeed sinners.

I assure you that there is no sin that would shock a priest out of his sensibilities; at the same time, should a priest in whose presence you choose to reveal even the most shocking sin in a spirit of true repentance reject you for doing so, consider it a blessing and find another confessor.

But I don’t know a priest who would shun one who genuinely repents and genuinely seeks the means by which even the most serious sin can be overcome and brought under control, and I know plenty of priests who would, in fact, applaud one who confesses openly, honestly, and with a true spirit of repentance.

A saint of the Church once opined that the angels in heaven dance for joy when a sinner repents; believe me, the priests on earth do the same thing!

So continue to ask God daily for forgiveness, but please do not overlook the need everyone has—including priests!—to seek guidance and direction in overcoming sin. And never forget that, if it true that God often heals the physically ill by guiding the hands of a surgeon, He also heals the spiritually ill by guiding the words and advice of a priest.

Source: https://oca.org/questions/sacramentconfession/confessing-in-the-presence-of-a-priest

OrthoChristian.com correspondent Vasily Tomachinsky recently travelled to Boston, where he became acquainted with Clifford Isaac Gardner, Senior Administrative Manager of Research in the Division of Nephrology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and member of a number of refugee humanitarian relief missions in the Middle East. Isaac, once a Southern Baptist, is now a parishioner of the Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church in Boston. He tells Vasily about his journey to the Church through icons.

I met Isaac and Marilyn Gardner met at the Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church in Boston at a lecture on their missions to support refugees suffering from the Middle East conflicts in Iraq and Syria. Afterwards, Isaac and I sat down together in a hipster cafe, where I took this interview. In the first part of our conversation, Isaac told me how he discovered Orthodoxy.

Clifford Isaac Gardner

—Please tell us about your background and your journey to the Orthodox Church.

—My name is Cliff (Isaac in Orthodox Baptism) Gardner, and this is my background. I was raised in a Protestant Southern Baptist family. We were in the military; my father was in the U.S. Air Force. I have four brothers, a family of five boys, and we moved all over the world. We lived most our lives in America and then in Germany, where I was as a teenager. No matter where my parents moved, they always found a Southern Baptist church, including in Puerto Rico, where I was born, and Germany, where our German pastor was Southern Baptist!

I grew up in Miami, Florida where my mother was from, so we moved back to Miami after my father retired from the Air Force. Miami is where I went to high school. It was when I was in the high school that I felt called to be a missionary. I wanted to be a Protestant missionary/Bible translator in Indonesia. So I went to a Bible school in Chicago called the Moody Bible Institute—a famous Bible school. I studied Bible-Theology/Greek; it was at Moody where I first started to interact with people from the Muslim world. I was very attracted to working with Muslims. I ended up going to the University of Illinois at Chicago where I studied linguistics, Middle East studies and Arabic. This is how I met my wife Marilyn.

She was raised in Pakistan, as her parents were Baptist missionaries for over thirty-five years there. She went to nursing school in Chicago. She was a nurse and I was a linguist, and we met back to back in an Indian restaurant.

“I was amazed by the worship, the liturgy, and the icons.”

We first moved to Pakistan in 1986 where I taught English to Pakistani government employees. Pakistan was Marilyn’s home, and we were involved in a Protestant church there. Then we moved to Egypt in 1989, where we lived for seven years; this is where I first encountered Orthodoxy. I don’t think I ever met anyone who was Orthodox before I moved to Egypt. I had an Egyptian friend in Chicago, so I had met one Oriental Orthodox person before. But when I moved to Egypt, I was an English teacher and I started to meet Coptic Orthodox Christians, who were very amazing and very faithful. One of my colleagues, an English teacher, was Orthodox. She was always fasting and I didn’t understand why. She said that she fasted over two hundred days of the year. And I was so surprised. I was amazed at the Coptic Orthodox faith. They are minority religion in Egypt but they have amazingly strong faith. I used to take trips to visit the monks of Wadi Natrun in the Scetis desert of Egypt. I was even able to take my students to meet with the former Pope Shenouda III.

Every time I would go to the monasteries I could not believe their deep faith. All of the people in Egyptians churches go out to the monasteries for instruction, learning, prayer, spiritual information and guidance. I remember one monk from Deir al-Surian, a Syrian monastery, who said to me: “You don’t know it but you are really Orthodox.” I was sure that this was what he would say to the Protestants he liked.

Abu Serga (Sts. Sergius and Bacchus) Coptic Church. Photo: Guidetrip.

I remember that I was amazed by the worship, the liturgy, and the icons. The icons are very interesting in Egypt—they believe that holiness shines through the eyes of a saint, thus their saints in icons have wide, large eyes. Many times I visited a very old church called Abu Serga. It is a first century church built over the cave where the Holy Family hid from the authorities. It is still an active Orthodox church. During my last three years in Egypt, I set up a study-abroad program for American Christian Protestant students. I would take them to meet Coptic Orthodox priests and monks, who would challenge their faith. As the priests interacted with their great faith, the Protestants often found it difficult to fit this faith into their Evangelical Protestant boxes. This often created a crisis of faith.

Mosaic of the Holy Family, Abu Serga Church, Cairo

I also took my students to Israel/Palestine where I met more Orthodox—Greeks, Armenians, and Russians. I thought to myself that they were Orthodox because they were Greek, Russian, and Egyptian. I’m from the American South, so I’m Southern Baptist. I didn’t think you could become Orthodox—I thought you had to be born into it.

In 1996 we moved to Boston, Massachusetts where my wife’s family was from. I worked at Harvard University for ten years. During my last four years there I was the Program Officer for the Prince Alawleed bin Talal Islamic Studies Program.

“In writing this icon I entered into the window of Theotokos, and my wife saw this change in my life, in my heart.”

Earlier in 2000, my wife and I were going through a crisis of faith, with many challenges in our marriage and raising five children. My wife knew that I was interested in icons. She introduced me to an iconographer, who was not Orthodox but who painted Orthodox icons. I took a class for ten weeks and learned to paint, or as we say, wrote icons. My first icon was of the Yaroslavl Mother of God from the fourteenth century. This experience changed my life. As you can tell, I am talkative person, but icons are to be written in silence. My instructor would give instructions, but we were not allowed to talk. My first icon was written with over fifty hours of silence. As I wrote I got to know Mary, the Theotokos.

For Protestants Mary is a bit of a mystery, and we often just think of her as a very nice person without really grasping the depths of Orthodox teaching about her. As I wrote this icon in silence, I got to know Mary. I started to read everything about Mary in the New Testament, and from the Church Fathers. I felt like I was getting to know her personally.

As I wrote this icon, I entered into the timelessness of God and eternity. It is hard to explain, but time is a construct and God is not limited to human time. I wouldn’t be able to explain this experience to anyone, but I remember that I would drive two to three hours after writing this icon and when I drove home, I couldn’t talk to anyone. I couldn’t turn on the radio, as the noises were too loud. In writing this icon I entered into the window of Theotokos, and my wife saw this change in my life, in my heart.

My heart had been softened; Mary is the softener of hearts. My heart has been so hard, and she saw this, and I was entering into this. All I wanted to do was to write icons. The Yaroslavl Mother of God icon had a seemingly simple design, but my second icon was from the School of Crete sixteenth century. It was much more complex. It was of Jesus appearing before Mary Magdalene by the tomb. Mary greets Jesus with the phrase, “Rabboni”, which means Teacher, and he greets her with her name.

This icon has a lot of mountains and vegetation. In the icon, Mary’s hair is uncovered, as only married women have veils in icons. As I wrote this icon I got to know Mary Magdalene and Jesus. I remember that in that icon, there was a cave that needed to be painted black. It was called “thanatos” which in Greek means “death”. I must have painted one hundred layers of black and it couldn’t get black enough. I wanted it to be very black, and I just kept applying layers.

The way icons are written is different from traditional painting. When you paint, you first paint light and then you add dark highlights. But with icons you always paint from God’s perspective; it had the perspective of, say, a railroad track going out from the viewer in a picture, only it goes the opposite direction. You also paint first the darkest shades, so Mary’s face is sankir green, and then you paint layers and layers of light—it’s amazing.

Icons really brought me to the Church, as I loved them even more. As I worshipped, I wanted to worship in an Orthodox setting.

My third icon was of the Prophet Elijah at the Cherith Ravine, but I only partially finished it. In 2003 we moved from Massachusets to Arizona for my job. When we moved to Arizona it reminded me a lot of Egypt, and I love the desert. It was in February 2006 that I attended my twenty-fifth reunion with the Moody Bible Institute. At the time, I had been struggling with worship and involvement in my Evangelical church.

Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, Illinois

“They wanted the Gospel, and not comfort.”

The church we went to Arizona was fashioned like a movie theater, where in summers the ushers would go down the aisles and hand out lemonade and coffee. It was just too casual for me. The intention of “seeker churches” is to have people feel comfortable, but it seemed so irrelevant to a lot of people—they wanted the Gospel, and not comfort.

Both my wife and I were feeling these same feelings. When I went to Chicago for this reunion I stayed with an old MBI classmate who was also a professor at MBI. He lived across the street from MBI and right next to an Orthodox church. When I was a student in Moody it had been an Armenian Apostolic Church, but was always shut. I found out that the Armenians had sold it to the Orthodox Church of America under the leadership of Bishop Job and Fr. John Baker.

The name of this church was Christ the Savior Orthodox Church. So, in 2006 I was with my friend and I asked him what church was next door. When he said that it was Orthodox, I was so surprised. I looked at the front of the building, and there was a sign about Orthodoxy, detailing the historical and theological line of Orthodoxy and how Catholicism had added to Orthodoxy and Protestants had subtracted from Orthodoxy. I found this very interesting, as I had never heard this concept.

Christ the Savior Orthodox Church, Chicago, Illinois. Sunday of Orthodoxy procession.

As we walked by the church I looked down at the fence, and there were little children’s hands coming out the fence. They turned out to be the children of the priest, Fr. John Baker. We talked with Fr. John and he invited us to attend the Divine Liturgy the next day.

I had been to over fifty Orthodox churches and monasteries in the Middle East: Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, but I had never heard the liturgy in English. It had been in Coptic, Church Slavonic, Greek, and Armenian.

“This was Isaiah’s vision of Heaven!

I went to the service, and it was Russian style with almost no furniture or pews, just beautiful carpets where everyone stood. As they started the chanting in English, I felt like a veil had been lifted from my eyes! This was Worship. This was Isaiah’s vision of Heaven! There was the altar, the incense, the smoke, the angels and the choir singing “Holy, Holy, Holy”. I realized that after all these years I had found true worship!

It was as if I were in Heaven. I felt like I had come home. After the service we went out to lunch with an MBI student but I could barely talk, as all sounds seemed so intense after that time of worship during the Divine Liturgy.

When I went to my MBI reunion it was wonderful to see old classmates, but especially to meet two who had become Orthodox. One was Lynette Holm Hoppe. She and her husband Nathan had become Orthodox in graduate school and were some of the first missionaries sent to Albania by the Orthodox Christian Missions of America. Lynette wrote a history of the resurrection of the Albanian Church in Albania, post-communism. Unfortunately she had cancer and six month later she reposed. What a gift it was to learn more about her journey to Orthodoxy!

When I visited Christ the Savior Orthodox Church I was able to receive some free icons and a book by an Orthodox convert, Fr. Peter Gillquist entitled, “Becoming Orthodox’. I read it on the plane home, and for the first time I realized that Protestants could become Orthodox. I didn’t know that it was possible. Fr. Peter had been with an Evangelical Protestant parachurch organization called Campus Crusade for Christ, who I was very familiar with. He shared the journey of a few families who sought to return to the first century Church, and ended up becoming Orthodox. What a journey!

When I got back to Arizona and I shared with my wife that I had had this spiritual awakening, and that when I was at the Orthodox service I felt as though I had come home, she said: “Well good for you! But I am not interested.”

So I went online and I wanted to find an Orthodox church in the Phoenix area. I ended up finding an Antiochian Orthodox mission called St. Ignatius in Mesa, Arizona. I thought that the Antiochian church would have some Arabs that I could speak to. I was welcomed whole-heartedly by Fr. James Coles and his wife, Khouria Karen and their family. He and his wife were converts from the Episcopal Protestant faith. I started to attend classes about Orthodoxy and would attend the services I could.

I continued to attend my Protestant church, but invited my wife to attend St. Ignatius. She came a few times to Vespers and even part of a Pascha service but she said that they were too long and the services were so foreign. We had visited Coptic Orthodox churches in Egypt, where men sit on the left and women on the right. It seemed to fit in ancient Egypt, but not in modern day America. The first Pascha service I attended went into the early morning, and when I got home, my wife asked what had taken me so long. She also said that her feet hurt standing for so long in a service.

“I wanted to die Orthodox.”

In 2007 I was recruited to work back at Harvard University for their Islamic Studies Program. It was a gift to me as it combined my love of higher education and my passion for the people of the Middle East.

When we moved to Boston I didn’t want to go to work by train, so we moved to Cambridge. We started to attend a Protestant Church in Cambridge, but I found St. Marys, an Antiochian Orthodox Church, just a few blocks away. I would go to the Antiochian service and sneak back into my Protestant church for Sunday services. I did this for about a year and a half.

Mt. Sinai and the Gulf of Aqaba

At this point we had a problem in our faith journeys. I wanted to become Orthodox, but my wife was not interested. I was less and less satisfied with the Protestant church. My son, Jonathan (now Ignatius) describes it well. He says: “Protestants have a strong aversion to the Pope, but every Christian in the Protestant church is a pope, a little pope, because we make our own decisions by reading the Bible.” There is little spiritual accountability in the church. The way to describe it is like wading in shallow waters instead of deep sea-diving. In Egypt, there are two large bodies of water. There is the Suez Canal that is around 400 feet deep, and on the other side of Sinai is the Gulf of Aqaba that is around 4,000 feet deep. It is part of the Great Rift Valley. On the surface they both appear the same but the depths are vastly different. As I started reading more Orthodox books, I felt like I was diving deeper and deeper into faith.

—How did you become parishioner of the Holy Resurrection Church in Allston?

—I learned about another Orthodox church in an area of Boston called Allston. It is called Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church, a parish of the Bulgarian diocese in America. My oldest daughter Annie lived a few blocks away and told me about it. Once a year this parish would have a large yard sale and many students would come and buy clothing and furniture.

One Saturday I was walking down the street, when I saw two men struggling to carry a large couch that they had just bought. I offered to help them and they told me where they had bought it. I then went to the church where I met Fr. Patrick Tishel, the archpriest of this parish. When I met him he had been in conversation with a young hipster about faith. I thought to myself, “Who is this priest and how is this church interacting with those around them?”

After that I started to attend Holy Resurrection and I loved it. Father Patrick and the people of the parish were very welcoming. The parish is half American & European converts as well as cradle Russians, Romanians, Greeks, Macedonians, Bulgarians and Serbs. At one point my wife said: “We can’t be going two separate ways with me as a Protestant and you as Orthodox.” I was still reading Orthodox books and had icons in our bedroom. She commented that one can have too many icons!

So I made the decision to stop going to the Orthodox church as it was creating a rift in our marriage. For two years I stopped attending any Orthodox churches. We have five children born on three continents. When our middle son Micah got married in Chicago, we were so happy for him and his new bride, Lauren. Unfortunately, after their wedding her father learned that he had various cancers in his body and would die within five months. During this time my wife and I had a serious talk and asked each other what we would do differently if we only had a few months to live. She said she’d move to the Middle East and I said that I’d become Orthodox. She was surprised that that was my last wish. I told her that I wanted to finish my life journey Orthodox. We continued going to our Protestant church but felt progressively dissatisfied with the structure and casualness of it.

She told me one day that she thought we need to go to Holy Resurrection and see where God would lead us. I was so surprised and happy.

Isaac’s and Marilyn’s wedding ceremony in the Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church, Boston.

She had come to Holy Resurrection a few times and had met Fr. Patrick, but all of this was so new to her. It was like visiting a foreign country. We started to attend while our youngest son Jonathan was studying at Oxford. As we attended, people were very welcoming from the parish. We began to attend the weekly Orthodox 100 class for those interested in Orthodoxy. My wife had a lot of questions! My wife is a very brilliant person and has written a book called “Between Worlds” about cross-cultural communication and challenges for those people living in third world cultures. She has a blog called “Communicating Across Boundaries” that has had almost one million hits.

She has been writing since 2011 and has readers from all over the world. She started to write every Sunday on her blog a series entitled, “The Reluctant Orthodox.” Through this series she has been able to articulate her ideas, skepticism and questions about Orthodoxy, especially from a Protestant perspective. She had questions like: Why are we always standing? Why does the priest say, “Let us depart in peace,” and yet twenty minutes later we are still in the service? Why are people kissing everything? Why is Mary, the Theotokos so revered? She was able to process many of these questions with Fr. Patrick, who answered them with grace and wisdom.

“He came to the icons in my bedroom and surrendered is heart and mind to God…”

—Has your coming to the Orthodox Church had an affect on your children?

—Our youngest son came back from Oxford where he was studying Philosophy in Literature. He has a brilliant and searching mind. We invited him to Holy Resurrection. He really enjoyed the a cappella chanting and became mesmerized by it as a musician. Later that month he had a radical conversion; he came to the icons in my bedroom and surrendered is heart and mind to God. And he was converted. He came to us and said that he too wanted to become Orthodox with us. So the three of us became catechumens around Pascha of 2013. We experienced a whole year of an amazing catechumenate as people spoke into our lives. We got more involved in our parish and drew deeper and deeper. So on Great and Holy Saturday in 2014 we were baptized and chrismated, and became Orthodox. Our son actually did this before us, on Lazarus Saturday. My sponsor was Aaron Friar, who was in our parish; he and I had very deep conversation for many years and Paula, Fr. Patrick’s wife was my wife’s sponsor.

When it was time to take Christian names—I love the Middle East, and I love the saints of the Middle East—I took the name Isaac named after St. Isaac the Syrian. His life and writings are so amazing. I’ve been able to visit northern Iraq and was about two miles from ancient Nineveh (and ISIS) where St. Isaac was Bishop. I sensed his presence there. I took his name because his writings are so humbling, honest and compassionate. I need more compassion in my heart.

And my wife loved the story of St. Mary of Egypt, so she took the name Maria, but she also loved the story of St. Sophia an her daughters. So she asked Paula if she could have two names: Sophia Maria, and she said, “At your age you can easily have two Christian names!” Our son took the name Ignatius after St. Ignatius the Great of Antioch.

Ignatius started to study at Hellenic College in Brookline, Massachusetts majoring in Religious Studies and Classics. He is surrounded by amazing men and women at Hellenic College and Holy Cross Greek School of Theology.

It has been an amazing journey! It has also been amazing for our other four children to watch this journey. We continue to pray that God would draw them to Himself, and we have prayed to various saints on their behalf.

Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church, Boston

After being baptized and сhrismated, we were also given an Orthodox wedding. When my wife’s brother heard about this he said that he had married us, but we were married again? His father had baptized my wife, but she was baptized again? Her mother had named her, but she now had a new name? What was he to make of all this? We asked Fr. Patrick, our spiritual father, and he said to tell them that these were all sufficient to get us to where we were now.

We are thankful to God for this journey, and we remind ethnic Orthodox friends and neighbors about the gift of Orthodoxy that they have brought to American shores!

Vasily Tomachinsky spoke with Clifford Isaac Gardner

Source: http://orthochristian.com/86833.html

GOD

It is proper to begin our teaching with God, and when we finish it to thank God - not that I am worthy to mention and utter the name of God, but I am sure that God suffers me to do so through His great and infinite compassion.

God, the all-good and most merciful, my brethren, is one, and whoever says that there are many Gods is a devil. He is triune: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; yet one nature, one glory, one kingdom, one God. He is all light, all joy, all compassion, all love.

This All-holy Trinity we pious Orthodox Christians glorify and worship. He is the true God, and all other so-called gods are demons. And it is not we along that believe, glorify, and worship the Holy Trinity, but angels, archangels, and all the heavenly hosts, as numerous as the stars of the heavens and the grains of the sand of the sea unceasingly praise in hymns and worship and glorify this All-holy Trinity. Again, out of their love for the Holy Trinity men and women as numerous as the stars of the heavens and the grains of the sand of the sea spilt their blood, and as many renounced the world and went to the deserts and led a life of spiritual endeavor, and still as many lived in the world with temperance and virginity, fasting, prayer, almsgiving and other practices; and all went to Paradise and rejoice forever.

LOVE

If we want to fare well in this life and to go to Paradise, and to call our God love and father, we must have two loves: the love for God and the love for our neighbor. It is natural for us to have these two loves, and contrary to nature not have them. Just as a swallow needs two wings in order to fly in the air, so we need these two loves, because without them we cannot be saved.

Let us have love for God and for our fellow men. Then God comes and brings us joy and implants the eternal life in our hearts, and we fare well in this life and also go to Paradise, there to rejoice forever.

Fortunate is the man who has these two loves in his heart, that for God and that for his brethren. He surely has God; and whoever has God has every blessing and does not bear to commit sin. Again, wretched is the man who does not have these two loves. Surely he has the devil and evil, and always sins. God, my brethren, asks us to have these two loves. As He Himself says in His Holy Gospel: "On these two commandments hang all the law and the Prophets." Through these two loves all the Saints of our Church, men and women, attained sainthood and won Paradise. Whoever has blessed love, firstly for God and secondly for his fellow Christian, becomes worthy of receiving the Holy Trinity in his heart.

If you wish to be saved, seek no other thing here in this world as much as love.

Know my brethren that love has two characteristics, two gifts. One of them is to strengthen man in what is good and the other is to weaken him in what is evil. I have a loaf of bread to eat; you do not have. Love tells me: Do not eat it alone, give some to your brethren and you eat the rest. I have clothes; love tells me: Give one garment to your brother and you wear the other one. I open my mouth to accuse you, to tell you lies, to decieve you; but at once I remember love and it deadens my mouth, and does not allow me to tell you lies. I stretch out my hands to take what belongs to you, your money, all your possessions. Love does not allow me to take them. Do you see, my brethren, what gifts love has?

Those of you who earn your bread by means of your toil and sweat should rejoice, because that bread is blessed; and if you give a little of it as alms it is reckoned as much. But those who live by means of injustice and grasping should mourn, for what you thus acquire is cursed; and if you give alms out of these they do not benefit you at all, being fire that consumes you.

The Martyrs won Paradise through their blood; the Ascetics, through their ascetic life. Now you, my brethren, who have children, how will you win Paradise? By means of hospitality, by giving to your brothers who are poor, blind, or lame

HUMILITY

The Christian needs two wings in order to soar upward and attain Paradise: humility and love. When the first order of angels fell from angelic glory and became demons, the other nine orders humbled themselves and worshipped the All-Holy Trinity, and remained in their place and rejoice forever. We, too, my brethren, must reflect what an evil thing pride is - that it cast down the dcvil from angelic glory and he will always burn in Hades - and that humility kept the angels in Heaven, and they rejoice perpetually in the glory of the Holy Trinity. Let us then, my brethren, aviod pride, because it is the first daughter of the devil, is a path that leads to Hades; and let us have humility, because it is angelic, is a path that leads to Paradise.

CONFESSION

If you want cure your soul, you need four things. The first is to forgive your enemies. The second is to confess thoroughly. The third is to blame yourself. The fourth is to resolve to sin no more. If we wish to be saved, we must always blame ourselves and not attribute our wrong acts to others. And God, Who is most compassionate, will forgive us.

FASTING

We who are pious Christians must fast always, but easpecially on Wednesday, because the Lord was sold on that day, and on Friday, because He was crucified on that day. Similarly, it is our duty to fast during the Lent seasons, as the Holy Spirit illumined the holy Fathers of the Church to decree, in order to mortify the passions and humble the body. Moreover, if we limt the food we eat, life becomes easier for us. Fast according to your ability, pray according to your ability, give alms according to your ability, and always hold death before the eyes of your mind.

VIRGINITY

Just as we humans prefer gold to sliver, so the Lord indeed likes marriage, but likes virginity more, in order to show you that if you can preserve your viginity and become a monk, or if you are a woman a nun, you are fortunate and thrice blessed, you are free from worldly things, you are like an angel. However, if you want to preserve your virginity, you must put as the first foundation the non possesion-of-property (Aktemonsyne) and must discipline your body with fasts, prayers, vigils, and hardships in order to humble the flesh. Also, you must flee from the world... There is no other way for the monk to be saved except by withdrawing far from the world.

WOMAN

God created woman equal with man, not inferior.

My Christian, you must love your wife as your companion, not consider her as your slave, for she is a creature of God, just as you are. God was crucified for her as much as for you. You call God Father, she calls Him Father, too. Both of you have the same Faith, the same Baptism, the same Book of the Gospels, the same Holy Communion, the same Paradise to enjoy. God does not regard her as inferior to you.

KEEPING SUNDAY

Do not separate yourselves from Christ and from the Church. Do you hear the priest ringing the bells? Rise at once, wash yourselves, and go to church. Attend the Orthros (Matins) attentively and likewise the Divine Liturgy. We should not work or do business on Sunday. The profit that you gain on Sunday is curse... Keep Sunday as a day dedicated to God.

THE JESUS PRAYER, ALSO KNOWN AS "THE PRAYER OF THE HEART"

This prayer should never be absent from you: Lord Jesus Christ, Son and Logos of the living God, through the Theotokos and all the Saints, have mercy upon me, Thy sinful and unworthy servant." (This is the actual Jesus Prayer: "O LORD JESUS CHRIST, SON OF GOD, HAVE MERCY UPON ME, A SINNER.") Always say this prayer both with your mouth and with your mind, day and night, wherever you may be, whether eating, walking, working, or sitting. Always meditate on it, as it benefits you a great deal., frees you here from every evil, delivers you there from eternal Hell, and renders you worthy of going to Paradise, our heavenly country.

MEDITATION ON DEATH

There is no better teacher than death.

Have death before your minds: the time when you will leave this unreal world and will go to the other one, which is eternal.

LIFE AFTER DEATH

We who are pious Christians must henceforth not weep for the dead like the impious and the unbelievers, who do not hope in the resurrection. This world, my brethren, is like a prison. When must man rejoice? When he enters the prison or when he is being liberated from the prison? It seems to me, when enters the prison he must weep and be sad, and when he comes out of the prison he must rejoice. Therefore, my brethren, do not grieve for the dead, but if you love them do what you can for their souls; offer liturgies, memorial services, fasts, prayers, alms.

TEACHING OF THE SCRIPTURES

Heed all the thoughts of the Holy Gospels, because they are all diamonds, treasures, joy, delight, eternal life. The existence of many churches neither preserves nor strengthens our faith to the proper extent and in the proper manner, if those who believe in God are not enlightened by the Old and the New Testament.

I have found the words and the commandments of Christ pure, holy, true, splendid, brighter than the sun; and whoever believes in Christ and calls Him God and lives in accordance with His teaching, contained in the Holy Gospels, is fortunate and thrice-blessed.

The Holy Spirit illumined firstly the holy Prophets, and they wrote the Divine Scripture; seondly, He illumined the holy Apostles; and thirdly, He has illumined the holy Fathers, and they have explained the books of our Church, in order that we may know how to conduct ourselves.

Our Faith has been made secure by wise and learned Saints, who both explained the Holy Scriptures precisely and have enlightened us through their divinely inspired discourses.

Source: http://www.serfes.org/writtings/stcosmas.htm

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