Welcome to my blog! I, the author, am an American/Canadian Orthodox
Christian born in Central Africa and raised there and in the Pacific
Northwest, the Caribbean, and the Horn of Africa with a short 2-year
stint at a boarding school in East Africa. I moved to the American
Midwest for university and since then have lived here and in Eastern
Europe, the Horn of Africa, and the Pacific Northwest.
I became a
catechumen in an English-speaking Antiochian Orthodox church during high school, spent
the rest of high school attending Greek, Kikuyu, and Swahili-speaking Alexandrian
and Coptic Orthodox churches (as well as the occasional Ethiopian and
Armenian Orthodox church), and was finally received into Orthodoxy in an
American Orthodox ("OCA") church in the Midwest.
In the years
since my conversion I've been on the move quite a lot and consequently
have had the opportunity to be involved in American, Ethiopian, Greek,
Russian, and Ukrainian Orthodox parishes for extended periods of time
and also visit Albanian, Armenian, Bulgarian, Coptic, Greek, Malankara,
Old Ritualist, Romanian, and Serbian Orthodox churches. What amazes me
the most about my experiences of Old World Orthodoxy is that countries
as diverse and far apart as Russia and Ethiopia, Egypt and the Ukraine,
et cetera, can still witness to the same Apostolic Faith.
I'm not
the most faithful Orthodox Christian, but my faith remains central in
my life as I wander the globe. If I'm overly dramatic in how I portray
things at times, then that's probably why :-). As Dostoevsky said, "Judge
our people not by what they are, but by what they wish to become."
Judge accordingly, and please remember me in your prayers!
On a side note, the reasoning behind the naming of this blog can be found here,
whilst the listing of Local Orthodox Churches includes both the
autocephalous churches (ranked according to my own personal diptychs ;-)
) and the autonomous and/or self-governing churches with their mother
churches in parentheses. The status of some of the Orthodox Churches
listed is considered controversial, but their mysteries are generally
recognized as true and their current exclusion from world Orthodoxy
appears to be largely political in origin and therefore, in my
history-oriented view, of passing significance.
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