Die Schreiben von Schreiber

This past weekend, October 26-29th, two of my kids and I went on a spiritual pilgrimage to Kearney Nebraska. What, you will ask, is worthy of a pilgrimage in Kearney?  Well, here we are. Read on. Kearney is the exact center point of the united states from east to west. It is 1733 miles east or west to the ocean. You might call that the "heart" of the country and the amazing story of Father Nicola Yanney lends a great depth to that statement. In February of 1873, Nicola Yanney was born in north Lebanon. In 1892 he married Martha George Al-Baik and soon thereafter the couple immigrated from Syria to Omaha Nebraska.  After a couple of years (and children!) there, they moved west to a sod house and took up the life of farmers. In the summer of 1899, there were 6 Yanneys, Nicola, Martha, and their four children, living on the plains just outside Kearney, which had an active Arab community. There they did well until February of 1902. Martha died while giving birth to t...

(Truth in Advertising: If you did not know it, I was a Lutheran Christian, but I have left Wittenburg to "swim the Bosphorus" and have been received into the Holy Orthodox Church. It is from this perspective that I now write the following:) It is my opinion that the present-day understanding of The "Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel" creates handicapped Christians. Lutherans have a doctrine of Law and Gospel. These are the handles by which they grasp the Scriptures. If there is a passage in which we are doing or commanded to do the verbs, that is categorized as "Law." The Law has three functions: curbs bad behavior, mirrors our inadequacy, and guides our new life in Christ. Curb, Mirror, Guide, for short. The Gospel (in this broad sense) is in verses where God does the acting and these passages show us the things He has done for us and how He has saved us. So they go to the Law, hear about how they don't measure up to the holiness req...

What follows was a Facebook post I intended to make a Blog post. Somehow time got away from me and now, almost 9 months later, it seems anachronistic, but I wanted to put it here anyway.  In the interval, I have since been received into the Holy Orthodox Church, and there is a draft post that will be ready for prime-time some day in which I will talk about that a little more. For now, here is some of the catalyst for my move: I have for several years now had mixed feelings and a slight melancholy and unease with regard to this day (Reformation day, October 31). On the one hand, Martin Luther had the courage and awareness to begin a discussion about abuses he saw in the Roman Catholic church. This is a great thing. The rediscovery that God is Love in the late middle ages is earth shaking in the West. Many of the reforms as they began to add up as time passed were truly good and necessary changes. Had Rome been willing to talk, had there not been several others riding on Luthe...

There is a misconception about the honors rendered to Mary by  Orthodox Christians, with some suggestions that she is "almost elevated to a Goddess," or that she is worshipped. This popular misconception thrives but is simply not true, and that fact is clear to any person who does the most elementary investigation into the matter. To give some insight into the matter, I grabbed my "Little Red Prayer Book" from the Antiochian Orthodox Church. This is a popular pocket-sized book with Several sections: Daily prayers and spiritual helps Prayers and Devotions for Confession and Holy Communion The Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom as used in the Antiochian Archdiocese Prayers for various occasions. Looking at the first section, Daily prayers and Spiritual Helps, the section used most often, we find 21 pages of personal/occasional prayers, with roughly 45 prayers to God. I say "roughly" because there are doxologies & repetitions that I skimmed...

Timothy has been taking lessons since... August.

A couple weeks ago I read the supposition that newborns are “ morally irrelevant ” and children with conditions like Down syndrome can be an “ unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole.”   Shortly after that I read of a couple that sued a hospital for “wrongful birth,” saying that they would rather have aborted their baby if they would have known she had Down syndrome.   So many things crossed my mind when considering these ideas and the people behind them, but I have come to the conclusion that it’s true, there is a nearly unbearable burden in having a child with Down syndrome. My son, the youngest of six, has Down syndrome, so I know about the burden.  He has Trisomy-21, the most common form of Down syndrome, and the most common genetic disorder in the world.  It means he has three copies, instead of the typical two, of the 21st gene set.  Typical people have 23 pairs of chromosomes.  Today is World Down Syndrome D...