It’s been 15 years since the repose of my spiritual father, Fr George Calciu, a survivor of the communist brain-washing prisons in Romania. Someone recently asked me if he had given any advice about how American Christians might resist, if some kind of persecution arises. He did answer that question,…

[2022-2-13] Someone who was writing an article about the state of the culture asked me to send her by email a couple of quotes about abortion and porn. I thought I’d share my responses here. About abortion: <<Abortion takes a terrible toll on our country. The annual fatality rate from abortion…

[January 14, 2022] Someone once emailed me to ask me about evangelism in Orthodoxy. I wanted to share my reply, because it’s worth discussing. +++ After my husband’s and my chrismation, I was frustrated to see that most Orthodox “evangelism” seemed to be aimed at evangelicals. I asked why that…

On January 7, 2022, my friend Rod Dreher had a post on his American Conservative blog about the direction Pope Francis is trying to take the Catholic Church. Rod went on to say: <<For the time being, American Orthodoxy is not as vulnerable as American Catholicism is to liberalizing, but…

When I was visiting my hometown, Charleston, SC, I saw this story on the front page of the local paper. It’s about two small 19th century cemeteries used by Black churches in Charleston, lots which lie back-to-back within the same block. The overcrowding is horrific. <<Ephrath’s size is about 240…

[12/19/2021] A friend played for me a few minutes of an AFR podcast about “anti-Western” bias among Orthodox. There was a reference to something in one of my books (politely done, without naming me). I messaged the hosts to say that there are two stages, one in which inquirers into…

An emailer  asked me to distinguish between various kinds of meditation, like someone sitting and thinking only about a word like “Love” or “Peace,” and how that differs from the Jesus Prayer. I replied: Those methods, it seems to me, aim at the prayer experience. It is a search for balance,…

[10/20/2021] A journalist asked me a question, and I didn’t know how to answer it. She said that she had read something I wrote in which I said that my husband was attracted to Orthodoxy right away, but I didn’t like it. (That’s a common pattern; a priest told me…

My son, Fr Steve Mathewes, told me that once a man came to him interested in Orthodoxy, but he couldn’t get used to our relationship to Mary. It bothered him that we praise her so highly, and he feared we thought of her as being as important as Jesus. That’s…