Fasting

The very unAmerican and foreign practice of fasting is actually a regular practice in the historic Christian church.  Christians have, from the beginning, consistently and regularly practiced fasting. But what does that mean?  In Scripture, we see a few examples of people doing a fast.  But these are the extreme, total fasts, like Moses and Jesus, both, on a mountain, eating nothing for forty days.  This is not what they church encourages us to do.  Not to say that the church discourages us from doing these, but the regular practice of fasting in the church is different.
The Orthodox church has, in its yearly calendar, a regular cycle of fasting.  You can look here to see the calendar for our current month: calendar.
What is the point of fasting?  For the Orthodox church, fasting is a tool to help us learn self control.  We practice a regular cycle (weekly) of fasting from certain foods, at certain times, to learn to be able to say no to our flesh/passions/desires and focus on prayer and things spiritual.  The church gives very general directions about how to fast and from what food and one can receive specifics on fasting from their priest or spiritual father, if something in the general instructions is unclear, or if you think you see yourself as an exception from these, for some reason (medical or otherwise).
The simple fact is, fasting is very valuable.  So much of our lives, especially in modern day America, is about instant gratification and having a multitude of choices, instantaneously.  At this point in time, we can pretty much have whatever we want, whenever we want it.  This mentality is very bad for our souls.  This sort of thinking/practice totally gratifies our flesh and our passions, which is the exact opposite of how we grow and mature in holiness.
We can really see the wisdom of God, in the church, for fasting really does work.  It is far more difficult to do than it sounds.  To have a refrigerator full of food and only allow one self to eat what is directed by the church is a struggle.
When we combine this sort of fasting with extra prayer, reading and church attendance, the long term results are amazing.  Just like someone who has committed to jogging everyday, one does not necessarily see immediate results, but in the long term, one will eventually be able to run a marathon.  Fasting is one of the tools the church has given us to help us grow in holiness.  We learn to turn away from our passions, we learn to fight against sin, we learn how to love God and love neighbor and we learn how to see into our hearts and repent of the sin we find there.
Here is a link to some good books on the practice of fasting: here.

Our children

How do we train up our children to love the pursuit of holiness? For one, to love holy things, they need to know what these are.  To love holy things means to love those things that will purify our souls and draw us to God.  Meaning also they need to learn to not love unholy things.  This is tough to do in modern America, with the constant barrage of godless media and instant gratification.
What is best way to teach them to love the pursuit is holiness? It's definitely not by lecturing them. They need to see us loving this, first and foremost. The details of how to pursue this needs to be put before them. Fortunately, the church has the tools to do so, and the church is eager to move us this way.
Of course, one of the most difficult aspects of all this is their maturity level.  The pursuit of holiness is very hard work and a serious matter of self denial and an attention to things not material.  Children are immature and "play" focused.  This is a big obstacle to overcome.
Probably the best place to start in all of this is to pray for them.  St Seraphim of Sarov has a great love for children. We should ask for his intercession.

Unseen

Kind of like seeing your own eyeball, seeing and critiquing one's own worldview is rather difficult.  One of the best tools for accomplishing this difficult task is the spiritual father.  The church has established for us this wonderful blessing.  We need to take the responsibility of using the tool.
The spiritual father is one who has spent many years and effort in cleansing his soul from sin and learning to listen to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  This is so incredibly foreign to our modern American thinking that it almost sounds ridiculous.
The spiritual father is one who can see our hearts and our weaknesses and guide us toward holiness.  He can see things that we cannot see.  He is familiar with the lies that we tell ourselves and that the demons tell us.  He knows how to avoid certain sins, how to work past certain sins and how to repent.
The hard part is finding one, for as Paul tells us in 1 Cor 4, there are not many fathers.
The place to start is your local Eastern Orthodox church.

Refusal

It's been awhile since I have academically interacted with atheists, so this recent activity has been interesting. One thing that atheists repeatedly miss and misunderstand is that of categories.  Whenever the subject of God comes up, the atheist always demands some sort of proof, something empirically verifiable.  But as I point out, over and over again, they are confusing categories.  You don't ask what blue sounds like, you don't ask about the texture of yellow, you don't mine diamonds with qtips.  In the same way, you don't understand the things of God by scientific study.
And a recent revelation has moved me to the point of not even engaging atheists any longer.  One atheist actually said, you Christians can offer no proof.  Even if you managed to show something, we wouldn't believe because it might be a hallucination.
In other words, atheists refuse to believe.

Hell as algebra

It is both sad and maddening.  If you listen to atheists and even many Christians, God is a homicidal tyrant, ever waiting to damn us to hell, if we don't behave exactly right.
I have been interacting with some atheists as of late and have been trying to clarify the Orthodox position.  And I came up with an analogy.
Imagine you are in high school algebra class.  You are one of those students who sleeps through most classes, never studies and rarely does homework.  Your teacher warns you over and over but you don't listen.  The semester comes to an end, you miserably fall the final exam and you receive a failing grade. Whose fault is it?
So too our earthly life.  We have been born into life, free of charge and we receive instruction, daily. If we choose to pay attention, do what is required to learn and God examines us and finds that we have worked out our salvation, we can come into the glorious presence of God.  If we fail, it's not God's fault.  If we have not prepared our souls for eternity, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Jesus did his work of freeing us from the power of sin and death, we need to work out our salvation and sanctify our lives, purifying our souls.

An experiment in music

As some of you may know, I am a huge lover of music.  My appreciation of music covers a very wide range of styles, with the exception of county and marching band.  Other than that, I can see the skill, or lack thereof, in many didn't genres.
As of late, something has popped into mind.  I have noticed that my appreciation of Orthodox church music is in a completely different category than my appreciation of any other music style.  Initially, my thought was simply that, because church music is music for church, ones like or dislike would need based on one's view of church. In other words, I appreciate Orthodox church music simply because I am Orthodox.
But I think there is more to it than that.  I am starting to think that 99% of music is made from a very worldly, temporal perspective.  It seems that music is created out of one's passions.  This would explain why the "best" music (or even just art in general) is made by people who have done sort of issues, whether due to really bad childhoods or did sin/perversions in their life.
If this assessment is correct, then the conclusion we must draw is something painful.  If all music, with the exception of actual religious music (and I'm not talking about contemporary Protestant music, that's just bad all together), is based upon and created out of the passions, then listening to it would only move us into passion instead of into things godly and eternal.
I don't think I like where this is going...
Any thoughts?

Atheists

At a foundational level, the atheist denies the existence of deity based on the idea that because proof cannot be given for the existence of deity, they cannot exist.  But they are confusing categories.  They want a tangible, physical, logical proof for something that is not in those categories.  To use an illustration, they want to know the color of sound.  As a side note, it seems that many of them don't want answers, they just want to argue.