I love Easter so much that it is hard to write about it. I cry thinking about it. It is the most full of true joy, the most expressive of God’s mercy, the mo...

Flowery (Palm) Sunday began to be celebrated in Constantinople by the fifth century - a couple centuries after it began in Jerusalem and a couple centuries b...

I remember listening in amazement in high school chapel at my Christian school as various guest speakers told of dramatic conversions from being ardent athei...

When I was younger I did not want the mess, the noise, the chaos, or the financial burden of children. And I was under the impression that I could be in cont...

The first time I remember seeing an icon was in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. I was taking a class in Israel my sophomore year of college, and as ...

I have often heard or seen Dostoevsky quoted, “Beauty will save the world.” It is attributed to him as if it were his personal conviction, but it is importan...

Several years ago, after very emotional struggles with infertility and two heartbreaking miscarriages, we began our first adoption. It was a complicated affa...

In our family, we have four very intense children, two adopted with trauma histories, one with secondary trauma, one with a missing corpus callosum (the cent...

I have a hard time relating to the saints who knew they were going to be nuns from the time they were six - those saints who wanted to do nothing but pray, e...

The feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple (2 February) is one of the Twelve Major Feast Days in the Eastern Church, also known as the Purificat...

The interior of a Byzantine Church should be a three dimensional icon; the Church is a model of the universe, a vision of the redeemed, a transformed cosmos,...

One Sunday after liturgy, I overheard a visitor to our church commenting on the iconography, “Why do the figures look so strange? They are cartoonish and sim...

Two intensive weeks of art camps have come to an end, and I am thankful for the experience. I kept enrollment to four students per camp so that I could focus...

I have just returned from a beautiful, powerful, intense experience where art and prayer were indistinguishable. I have come away with a deep appreciation fo...

Various influences were dropped into my path that lead me into the Catholic Church, one of the most prominent being the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Comparativ...

I love this quiet, mid-week feast day celebrating Christ's rising up to Heaven in His resurrected body. He leaves us with the commission to carry on, to shar...

When I was living in St. Petersburg, I rented a small, airy room in a sunny, high-ceilinged apartment on the corner of Dostoevsky Street and Candle Lane. I l...

Pascha is my favorite time of the year! I love the joy of this season, the hope of rebirth and resurrection! We celebrate this day with our Church family, be...