The Peaceful Gnome

   For a long time I've thought that all Christians should be pacifists.  I've thought it was very clear from the teachings of Jesus, especially in the Sermon on the Mount, that a Christian could not participate in a war for any reason.  This seems blindingly obvious to me.  Yet almost all Christians hold the opposite view, that it is a "Good Thing" to serve ones country as a soldier.  How can this be?  Is it because, as I've heard some pacifist Christians say, that once Christianity was entangled with the Imperial Government, beginning under Constantine, that it compromised on war and government in order to better serve the Emperor's needs?   I have been reading, slowly and painfully, through some of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, painfully because the version I have available on Kindle is from the 1800's and is translated in a pretty archaic form of English, but then again I read a LOT of 19th century stuff so I'm pretty used to it.  I'm hop...

   This morning, as I was reading about St. Adrian and Natalia and 23 other unnamed martyrs, I realized how weak my own "witness" for Christ tends to be.  Martyr means witness, after all.  These Saints withstood horrific tortures rather than betray Christ, while I can't even manage to fast a couple of times a week and make sure we have a brief family prayer time.  Traditional fasting in the Orthodox churches involves abstaining from animal products, basically vegan, except for shellfish.  I have never yet managed to do that for more than one day at a time.  I have attempted to integrate the idea of fasting into my Grain-Free diet by restricting the amount of food and times of day when I eat on fast days.  Today is a regular fast day and it is my intention to have only one moderate meal some time between Noon and Four in the afternoon.  I haven't talked to Abouna about this yet, but it seems a reasonable compromise to me.  Saint Adrian a...

Life is too short to waste it on Politics.  I have decided that paying attention to what those who think they are our rulers are doing is not at all helpful in my spiritual walk.  Pretty obvious isn't it?  You would think it wouldn't take so many decades for me to figure it out, but I have finally done so.  I intend this post to be pretty much my final comment on political matters. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2011) — Saying a prayer may help many people feel less angry and behave less aggressively after someone has left them fuming, new research suggests. A series of studies showed that people who were provoked by insulting comments from a stranger showed less anger and aggression soon afterwards if they prayed for another person in the meantime. The benefits of prayer identified in this study don't rely on divine intervention: they probably occur because the act of praying changed the way people think about a negative situation, said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University. "People often turn to prayer when they're feeling negative emotions, including anger," he said. "We found that prayer really can help people cope with their anger, probably by helping them change how they view the events that angered them and helping them take it less pe...