Not One, but Two New Blogs

Good evening dear readers.

This repentance thing is a lot of hard work.  Now instead of one new blog, I've started two.

The first new blog is called House of Repentance and is a blog about how I work out my repentance, and thus my salvation in the context of my daily life.

The other new blog is called Lessons After The Fall and this blog covers the biggest failure of my life, which was my time at Biola University.  The subject matter of this one involves what led up to my Biola wipeout and the aftermath.

As far as any new Orthodox Mission to Parker goes, the most I can do right now is to immerse this project in prayer.  I would like to do more at some point, but there are too many pressing duties right now to move forward.

I plan to start working again on Growing up Christian in America which is an autobiographical issues oriented book detailing why I became an Eastern Orthodox convert and what I believe Orthodoxy can say to Christians today.

Blessings in the Holy Trinity, One God.

Columba Silouan 

Where Angels Fear to Tread: Fools Rush In

As one friend of ours said when I recently created a Facebook account:

"Welcome to the Dark Side."

My recent projects online have been nerve-wracking at times and I've struggled with questions about whether I am doing things correctly when I participate in this medium called The Internet.

I've decided to start a sister blog to this one called the House of Repentance blogspot.

This new blog will be dedicated to exploring the concept of repentance and how I as an Orthodox Christian pursue repentance in the context of my family, my parish, my workplace, and with my other relationships and associations.

Orthodox Parker will continue to explore the possibility of a future Orthodox Mission in Parker, Colorado and other Orthodox subjects.

I will post the new URL shortly.  This new blog is also a Blogger website.

Columba Silouan

The Hard Reality of Career

Good evening dear readers,

All the blogging about developments in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Orthodox Church of America has been fun and interesting, but now I'm back to thinking about what I should be doing as my life's work.

I'm thinking about becoming a teacher.

I'm also thinking about putting desires and dreams about the Orthodox priesthood on temporary to permanent hold.

When I look at the subdeacons and deacons of my parish, every one of them has a better or more solid career situation as their "anchoring job."

There are at least three computer programmers, one corporate trainer and a full time UPS employee among the ranks of our clergy at Saint Marks.

Only our Archpriest is paid full time in his direct role as a priest.

God has been impressing on me more and more that my first duty and priority must be to my family, and their support.

I am currently employed at Dish Network.  It's a good company and a decent position, to be sure, but it doesn't feel safe or permanent.  I don't know what the outcome is going to be.

My career situation has been problematic for a long time.  I feel the need to find a permanent, long-term solution to this issue before I will have the strength necessary for any run at the Holy Priesthood.

So I plan to pray a lot and move forward gingerly in the direction of becoming a school teacher.

I don't know how Dish Network is going to turn out.  I hope it turns out well, but in this economy, you just never know.

God's Blessings to you and yours,

Columba Silouan