545. My First Trip to Greece: Part Three – The Return Home: Saint Nicholas takes charge.

  Pray for the suffering people of Ukraine, Gaza and the West Bank. ______________ I know, you long-time readers have heard this story before. So have I! I’m telling it again 1 So you newer readers will hear it. 2 Because all good stories deserve re-telling. Why do you suppose the Church year repeats itself over and […]

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541. My First Trip to Greece, Part Two – 1) Popular Orthodoxy. 2) The Face of Saint Nicholas.

  Pray for the suffering people of Ukraine and Gaza. _________________ A Week on a Greek island The conference ended and with my wife’s leave – I have a wonderful wife – I had something I had long wanted: a week to bum around on a Greek island. I felt prepared. I had learned enough […]

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540. My First Trip to Greece: Part One – at the end of which, Saint Nicholas begins to make his move.

  Pray for the people of Ukraine and Gaza.   I’m old, now. I won’t see Greece again. Nevertheless, I often still go there. On my trips I kept a daily travel journal. I wrote one time: “Why am I keeping this journal? So when I get old and can’t travel here any more, I’ll […]

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497. Nicholas: the Saint who doesn’t seem to have been but actually was and now definitely is

 Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker Bishop of Myra December 6, 343 Saint Nicholas was Bishop of the city of Myra on the south coast of Asia Minor (now Turkey) in the Fourth Century, back in the days when the Greek-speaking world stretched across much of the eastern Mediterranean. * He is perhaps the most popular, most […]

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432. I love secular Christmas. Mostly.

As surely you have noticed, most of our American Christmas customs have nothing to do with the Birth of Jesus Christ. They’re secular – that is, without any specific religious connotations. That doesn’t mean they’re evil. Many of them are good or lovely or fun. But first, there’s one thing about secular Christmas which I […]

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