This is meant as an informal blog.
When it comes to religious items, I would stress that these are my personal opinions, and not those of the Russian Orthodox Church which I belonged to until Easter 2022, or of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, of which I have, since 1 October, been a priest ( Read more... )

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Our annual 3-day diocesan clergy conferences (I have just returned from my third) are mixed blessings. Valuable opportunities to catch up with other priests, meaningful morning prayers, a few excellent one-to-one conversations, offset by the inevitable lengthy ‘discours de circonstance’, and a constant being careful of whom I say what to.

This ( Read more... )

I am an incorrigibly liberal theologian, constantly testing boundaries: presence of God in other religious systems and in atheism, different layers of religious consciousness, new patterns of community and sexuality. No doubt I frighten my bishop - and sometimes myself.

It is when I fear going over the edge that I am reminded of words to me from ( Read more... )

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THE ENFANTS TERRIBLES OF FRENCH ORTHODOXY

When I started in Orthodox back in the early 1990s, a large part of the French-speaking scene was occupied by a handful of rather larger-than-life figures: Annick de Souzenelle, Alphonse and Rachel Goettman, Jean-Yves Leloup. Common to all of them was coming in from outside Orthodoxy, with a strong emphasis ( Read more... )

I am reading, with considerable interest, Beverley Lanzetta’s ‘Radical Wisdom - A feminist Mystical Theology’. Conceived as pointing to and seeking ways beyond, soul suffering caused to women, put down in patriarchal societies by reason of their gender, it looks among other things, to the experience of the great women mystics of Christian history ( ( Read more... )

I am very tempted to do a little research into the ‘priestess’ figure, as presented by women who define themselves today as priestesses (as distinct from women priests).

Somehow I sense the necessary existence of a “priestess” figure as an archetype (?) , a woman vested with ‘mystical power’ (my wife’s expression), on the same level as, but ( Read more... )

The picture below, from a magazine that goes under the delightful name of 'The Catholic Gentleman", posted by a friend whose churchmanship and politics are well to the right of mine, is a powerful one, which speaks to the deep inside. I fought through it during my early-morning mediation.


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We don’t normally vacation in summer: my wife takes the heat badly, and I dislike crowds and beaches. Most years we catch up in autumn, plus special breaks, like a superb long weekend in Arras and Lille last April. So in summer I tend to go off on day walking treks, taking advantage of cheap pensioner train and bus tickets. This requires a modicum ( Read more... )