Enacting the Kingdom

We return to our series after a summer away, having had time to reflect on the discussion with Deacon John. Among other things, it serves as a good reminder that it can be all too easy to approach this issue with high level ideas and concepts. The truth is that on all sides of this issue can be found very real people, affected in very real ways, which we must be sensitive too. Fr Geoffrey and Fr Y...

Please join us in extending a warm welcome to our special guest Fr Dcn John Schantz, who shares his family's background and its connection to missionary work with Indigenous persons, and his professional work as a pediatric cardiologist serving a population in which Indigenous people are affected disproportionately.  In this thoughtful discussion, we consider the relationship between making amends...

Words matter. Sometimes words fall short and they disappear in short order, yet when done right they make a profound impact and can be remembered and quoted decades and even centuries later (think Nostra Aetate , or the Creed). In this episode, we take a look at the statements made by other Canadian churches in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission with the goals of taking the good,...

In today's episode, we focus our discussion on Orthodoxy in relation to the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. As in the last episode when we spoke about St Stephen of Perm, there are many North American saints who "got it right" as well, recognizing the theological similarities and compatibility between various forms of indigenous spirituality and Orthodox Christianity. However, it is essential...

In this episode, Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey focus in on how Orthodoxy has historically approached its mission of bringing Christianity to other cultures, before coming to North America (don't worry, we'll get to North America soon!).  If we look honestly at the history of how Orthodox Christians have shared the Good News, we didn't always get it right, however we do have some shining examples of miss...

If we are truly to be the Canadian Orthodox Church, we need to be attuned to our people. Throughout this season, Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri will explore ways that the Liturgy can (and should) reflect the place we're in, and specifically how we can effectively work with the efforts of Truth & Reconciliation with the indigenous peoples of Canada in an intentional and authentic way. As a Church, our...

It's time to wrap up our series on The Hours at Home!  We hope this has been as refreshing and freeing for you as it has been for us. So much of the emphasis in Orthodoxy can be on doing something "right" or "completely", but this series has been about how we can actually, in practical ways, engage in the daily prayer of the Church that makes sense of our experience of time and reconnects us to th...

"Eight Days a Week": a classic Beatles song, yes, but also the Orthodox approach to the weekly cycle of prayer! Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri discuss the theme of each day of the week, how they relate to our human experience, and also offer practical advice on how to incorporate the themes into our home prayer life. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

We come now to the Ninth Hour, the last service of the day, and the time to re-collect ourselves after being disoriented by our many worldly cares and concerns during the day. Fans of "The Office" might transition from work by playing "Closing Time" (if you know, you know), but the Ninth Hour encourages us instead to use this time to focus on the theme of "return" — the cycle of the day returning...

In Psalm 54(55) we hear, "Evening, morning and at noon, will I tell of it and declare it  and He will hear my voice." We've already seen how Matins and Vespers are the bookends of the day, as dark transitions to light and light to dark. Now we see how when the sun is at its unrelenting peak, our daily rhythms also naturally lend themselves to prayer.  n fact, it has been a practice of Christians s...

The Third Hour is generally served between 9am and 12noon, which corresponds for many of us to the middle of our work morning. It's rather a rough time to stop for prayer, risking the interruption of our workflow. But what if — what if! — instead of seeing these services as being in competition with what we're doing in our day, we began to see them as a way of complementing and supporting our acti...

This is the hour in the daily cycle of prayer that doesn't have a high profile in the communal life of the church, often just tacked on to the beginning or end of another service, if it's celebrated at all.  In contrast to the other services, which have fuller expressions in the church and we are offering ways to do it more modestly at home, this particular service comes into its own when taken ou...

It is cockcrow, the time when light just begins to break through the darkness, and the time for Matins. But don't go out and buy your rooster just yet (Fr Yuri is still trying to return his!) — the goal of this series is to help you enact the services of the daily cycle at home in a practical and sustainable way. Thematically, Matins is the mirror image of Vespers, straddling the transition now fr...

Midnight Office is a service that Orthodox Christians rarely do, if ever. But don't worry, we are not going to ask you to set an alarm in the wee hours of the morning, disrupting your much-needed rest!  The question this series is attempting to answer is, "How do the Hours make sense in (and how do they help us make sense of) our lives?", and not, "How do we artificially liturgize throughout our d...

The hymns and prayers of the Hours are intimately linked to the time of day, but also to our human experiences at that time of day. Compline is served in the evening, after supper, when the sun is fully set and our own biological rhythms are slowing down. The service invites us to silence, repentance and forgiveness - in fact, when done in the context of a parish or monastery, it concludes with a...

In this series, we are encouraging you to bring the services of the hours into your home, as a natural extension of communal and liturgical church life. Today's episode will focus on Vespers, that service that straddles the transition from day to evening, from light to darkness. ETK's first public season was a (very thorough!) season on this service, so if you want a deep detailed dive into Vesper...

The average Orthodox Christian does not actually pray the services of the church at home, the continuing cycle of prayers that Christians have been praying since the early days of the church, but rather prays the morning and evening prayers prescribed in prayer books. This has created a disconnect between the individualized and privatized prayer life that we experience at home and the communal pra...

Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri wrap up our series on Narrative Theology and the discussion of Samuel Wells' book "Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics" with an overview of what we've learned and how we should move forward with this knowledge. While we navigate and improvise the fourth act of this five act play, we must remain faithful to the first three acts as we move the story forward.  As the...

Uniquely among the topics we've addressed so far in this series, wealth and accumulation has been an issue that humans have struggled with for all of history.  There's nothing new here.  There are many biblical examples of what it looks like to block, accept and over-accept into the wider story of God, throughout the Old Testament and also through the words of our Lord himself. The fact that it is...

And we're back!  We continue our series on Narrative Theology, looking at transgenderism within the improvisation model of Christian ethics.  There are again so many offers on the table, and many more nuanced ways of accepting and blocking these offers, but how do we move to over-accept, wrapping this story up within the greater story of God?   In both accepting and blocking, it is taken as a give...

In this episode, Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri tackle the topic "Sex & Gender" as they continue to run the issues chosen by our patrons through the improvisation model we've explored in this series.  This method allows us to take on a certain way of being in which we faithfully, in every moment, live the fullness of the tradition we have received in the first three acts and which directs us towards...

Over the next few episodes, Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri will be addressing some of the thorny issues of our modern age, filtering them through the elements of narrative theology that we've been exploring over this series such as forming habits, assessing status, accepting, blocking, etc. Our patrons chose transhumanism as the first topic: a vision of moving beyond the constraints of mortality, illness...

Whether through improv, songs or stories, audiences are delighted when the narrative draws to an end and elements that had been seemingly discarded are brought back into play. In fact, "Reincorporating the Lost" is necessary to bring a fulfilling conclusion to any story (just ask a child whose parent has attempted to summarize the ending to a plot!). As those lost things that we thought had been w...

Instead of a binary decision between accepting gifts without discernment, or blocking them without engagement (neither of which would make for good improv theatre), there is also a third option, that of over-accepting, which focuses on the way we receive the gift.   Rather than focus on what the gift IS, or what the gift is FOR, or even whether it is good or bad, we can focus on what the gift COUL...

In the previous episode "Accepting & Blocking", we discussed the importance in improv of using the strategy of "Yes, and..." to further the narrative.  Of course, there are multiple ways of saying yes, and often this requires us to question givens.  The givens we assume can imprison the way we think and act, but when we question those givens we can receive them as gifts and re-connect to the w...