Jacobs Well Fall 2019 Trust

Jacob’s Well
Orthodox Church in America Diocese of New York and New Jersey / Fall 2019
trust

Jacob’s Well
FALL 2019: “TRUST”
Published with the blessing
of His Eminence,
the Most Reverend Michael,
Archbishop of New York and
the Diocese of New York & New Jersey
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Presbyter Matthew Brown
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Nick Tabor
COPY EDITOR
Deacon David Maliniak
ART DIRECTION & DESIGN
Presbyter Leonid Schmidt
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FRONT AND REAR COVERS
Liviu Vasu, 2019. Parishioner of Holy Virgin
Protection Cathedral. Artist and Owner of Dacia
Gallery in Manhattan, NY.

Diocesan
Life
Contents
4
6
Faith as Trust
by Archbishop Michael
Letter from the Editor
8
11
Toward an Immersive
Church-School Experience
by Susan Lukianov
Orthodoxy on Tap
by Spyridoula Fotinis
Daily
Bread
12
15
16
18
22
24
28
32
Remembering Archbishop
Basil (Rodzianko)
by Archpriest Thomas Edwards
Notes from last issue
Letter from Coxsackie
by Brian Hodges
Feature
Essays
Trust as Action
by Jim Forest
Trust in the Church
by Presbyter Joshua Frigerio
Restoring Trust
In the Global
Orthodox Communion
by Deacon Nicholas Denysenko
Our Scandalous
Emperor-Saint
by Presbyter Justin Patterson
The Working Out
of God's Love
by Archpriest John Shimchick
34
37
40
43
45
|SCIENCE|
The Myth of
the Flat-Earth Myth
by Noah Beck
| SCRIPTURE |
Heresy and
the Scriptural Canon
by Presvytera
Jeanne Constantinou
| HISTORY |
Aragorn's Archetype
by Matthew Franklin Cooper
| FAMILY LIFE |
And Then
You Came for Me
by Matushka
Lauren Huggins
| LITURGY & LIFE |
The Manna, the Tablets,
and the Rod
by Hieromonk
Herman (Majkrzak)
48
49
50
52
54
57
58
59
| NOTES FROM SEMINARY |
Trusting the Pastoral Call
by Jeremiah McKemy
| FROM MY YOUTH |
An IOCC Conference
in Minneapolis
by Josh Brad
Holy Land Pilgrimage
Q&A with
Daniel Rogozenski
| REVIEWS |
On Modern Psychology
and Ancient Wisdom
by Ben Keaster
The Cost of Lies
by Presbyter Matthew Brown
| POETRY |
After Holy Communion
by Nick Skiles
| CHILDREN'S PAGES |
Nativity coloring page
Nativity word mix-up

Faith as Trust
by Archbishop Michael
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not
rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge
Him, and He will make straight your paths.
(Proverbs 3:5–6)
There is a huge difference between declaring
one’s belief that something exists or
happened and declaring belief in something
or someone. In the Nicene Creed, we do not say, “I
believe that there is a God,” but rather we affirm, “I
believe in One God.” It is possible for me to believe
that someone or something exists without that belief
having any practical effect upon my life.
So, for instance, I can open up a telephone directory
and find the names and phone numbers of many
of a city’s residents. Thus, I am prepared to believe
that these people (or at least most of them) actually
do exist. But I don’t know any of them personally; I
have never visited them, and my belief that they exist
has no effect whatsoever in my life.
On the other hand, when I say to a much-beloved
family member or friend, “I believe in you,” I am expressing
far more than the notion that this person
exists. “I believe in you” means that I turn to that
person, I rely upon that individual, I put my full trust
in that person, I hope in that individual. This is precisely
what we are saying to God when we recite the
Creed.
Faith in God is not the conclusion of our reasoning
or the certainty of our logic. To believe in God is
not to accept the possibility of His existence, because
it has been “proven” to us by some argument, but it is
to put our trust in the One Whom we know and love.
Faith is not the reasoned conclusion that something
might be true; it is the assurance that Someone is
there.
A Personal Relationship
This means that faith is not a logical certainty but a
personal relationship. Because this personal relationship
is as yet incomplete in each of us and needs to
continually develop further, it is very possible for our
faith to co-exist with our doubt. There are some of us
who, by God’s grace, retain throughout their lifetime
the faith of a child. As such, they are able to accept
all that they have been taught without question. My
dear grandmother was like that. But for most of us
who live in our western, technological world, such an
attitude is hardly possible. We have to make our own
the cry of the father in the Gospel account: “Lord, I
believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)
For most of us this will remain our constant prayer,
right up to the very moment we close our eyes to this
world. Yet, in itself, this doubt does not signify a lack
of faith. In fact, it may actually mean the opposite—
that our faith is alive and striving and growing! For
faith implies not complacency or apathy, but taking
risks. Faith implies not shutting ourselves off from
the unknown, but rather advancing boldly to meet
the unknown, having God with us.
An Example from the Old Testament
The pages of the Bible provide us with two incredible
examples of such a personal, living, and trusting
faith. From the Old Testament, there is an account
of unimaginable sacrifice that required incredible
faith—the story of Abraham and Isaac (Gen. 22). For
parents, this is perhaps the most gut-wrenching story
in all of Scripture. It is difficult to comprehend the
faith it would take to offer the life of our own child
to God. And yet, this is precisely what Abraham was
prepared to do, in obedience, with his own son Isaac.
The tension in this passage is excruciating—especially
when Isaac realizes that something is wrong, and he
asks his father: “The fire and the wood are here, but
where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
Abraham, having nothing other than real trust in
the character and goodness of God, replied: “God
Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering,
my son.” After journeying to the top of Mount Moriah,
Abraham placed his bound son upon the altar and
raised his knife. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord cried
out from Heaven, “Abraham! Abraham! Do not lay a
hand on the boy!” Abraham looked up to see a ram
caught in a thicket. God had indeed provided the
sacrifice, and Isaac was set free to new life.
Abraham’s trust in God is the greatest example of
faith in the Old Testament, one which came at the
cost of unimaginable emotional pain and suffering.
But it is also one of the clearest pictures we have of
the Gospel message from the pages of the Covenant
of old: A loving father who was willing to sacrifice
his one and only son… only to have this son returned
to him alive!
The Example from the New Testament
Along with this stirring story, there are other accounts
from the Old Testament that reflect faith as trust in
God, such as the parting of the Red Sea, the collapse
of the walls of Jericho, and the three youths in the
jacob's well 4

fiery furnace. But none of these is “more impossible”
than the Virgin bearing within her womb the
Incarnate Son of God! Yet this is exactly what we read
in the first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel account—
that the angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin named
Mary and told her: “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have
found favor with God. You will conceive and bear a
Son, and you shall call his name Jesus.”
The choice placed before the Theotokos would
forever change her life. To embrace God’s plan would
result in a cloud of suspicion and shame hanging over
her and her family. It would cause her heart to suffer
untold pain and grief, as her Son would suffer a brutal
and unjust death on the Cross. It would place her on
the front lines of the eternal struggle between the
forces of Heaven and hell.
Yet, in spite of all these things, Mary said to
Gabriel, “I am the handmaid of the Lord; be it done
to me according to thy word.” What a powerful
statement of faith! And, in response, the prophecy
of Isaiah 7:14 was fulfilled: “The Virgin will conceive
and bear a Son, and will call Him ‘Emmanuel’ (which
means ‘God is with us’).” The Theotokos’ words are an
example to all who would follow the Lord in faith. No
matter what the obstacle, no matter what the cost or
the danger, we all would do well to make the words of
the Virgin Mary our own personal declaration of faith:
“I am the handmaid (or the servant) of the Lord; be
it done to me according to thy word.”
Trusting the God Who Is Love
Faith, then, as we see from the examples of Abraham
and the Theotokos, signifies a personal relationship
with God—a relationship that is incomplete and faltering,
but nonetheless real. It is to know God not as
a theory or an abstract principle, but as a person. To
know a person is essentially to love him or her; there
can be no true awareness of other persons without
mutual love. We don’t have any genuine knowledge
of those whom we hate or those who are strangers.
So, we have two simple and clear ways of speaking
about the God Who surpasses all understanding—He
is personal, and He is love. And these are really two
ways of saying the same thing. One way of entering
into the mystery of God is through personal love. And
we do that with a faith that is trust. As we read in The
Cloud of Unknowing, “He may well be loved, but not
thought. By love He can be caught and held, but by
thinking never.”
Seek Him with Your Whole Heart
In the 11th century, Saint Symeon the New Theologian
described how Christ revealed Himself in a vision of
light to the monastic:
The Sacrifice of Isaac
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn.
(Oil on canvas, 1635)
“You shone upon me with brilliant radiance and, so
it seemed, You appeared to me in Your wholeness,
as with my whole self I gazed openly upon You.
And when I said, ‘Master, who are You?’, then You
were pleased to speak for the first time with me,
the prodigal. With what gentleness did You talk
to me, as I stood astonished and trembling, as I
reflected a little within myself and said: ‘What
does this glory and this dazzling brightness mean?
How is it that I am chosen to receive such great
blessings?’ … ‘I am God,’ You replied, ‘Who became
man for Your sake; and because you have sought
Me with your whole heart, see from this time
onwards you shall be My brother, My fellow-heir,
and My friend.’”
Solomon the wise tells us, across the cavalcade
of three thousand years: “Trust in the Lord with all
your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In
all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make
straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:5–6). For He is the
One Who loves us more than we love ourselves!
The Most Rev. Michael (Dahulich) is the Archbishop
of the Diocese of New York and New Jersey (OCA). He
is also the Rector of Saint Tikhon's Orthodox Theological
Seminary.
5 jacob's well

From the Editor
by Presbyter Matthew Brown
Trust: It’s precisely because it is ordinary and
ubiquitous that it is profound. We scarcely
realize how important a role it plays in our
society and our relationships. Almost all our knowledge
is based on trust.
Ask yourself this question: Where did your knowledge
of history or literature come from? Did you dig
up the artifacts yourself or personally visit the archaeological
excavation? Did you read the original manuscripts
of Shakespeare or the Gospel of Matthew? No,
you didn’t. You’ve only read copies of copies of copies.
Almost everything you know about the world, including
the existence of Antarctica, is mediated through
other people whom you trusted.
Even if we could experience everything firsthand,
it wouldn’t obviate the need for trust. A vast body of
evidence, from psychological studies to courtroom
eyewitness testimonies, has shown that our senses
aren’t always as reliable as they seem. Approximately
71% of all wrongful convictions in the United States
have involved mistaken eyewitness identification.
Since the 1960s, social scientists have pointed out the
problematic nature of eyewitness reliability. Among
the most comprehensive reviews of this problem can
be found in the 2014 report by the National Academy
of Sciences titled: “Identifying the Culprit: Assessing
Eyewitness Identification.”
Furthermore, the more our experiences are filtered
through digital screens, the more our perceptions
become suspect. Take the example of “the dress,”
which swept the internet in 2015. Over a period of
several days, millions of social-media users debated
whether a garment depicted in a photo was blue and
black or white and gold. Scientific experiments later
showed their perceptions were affected by ambient
lighting and the quality of their display screens.
We often complain about living in a “post-fact”
culture. As a society, the ease with which we dispense
with facts underscores the importance of trust for
the human mind. We are wired, it seems, not to be
factual, but to be trusting—because, over the long
course of time, facts have been hard to access and
confirm. Trust has been necessary for survival. Evolutionary
psychology tells us that perception is not
in the business of truth—it’s in the business of useful
adaptive behavior. It is far more efficient to function
by trust and supplement with facts later.
Trust always involves undertaking a risk. It requires
us to assume some degree of danger: of being
deceived, of losing time or money or dignity. We try
to minimize that risk by basing our trust on evidence,
such as past experiences, probability, and empirical
data. People who have already earned our trust can
also be helpful guides. This is important in our faith
as in every other part of our lives. At the same time,
skepticism can sour into cynicism and pervasive
doubt, and this is an untenable way to live. It is incompatible
with any kind of true happiness; it leads
to isolation and despair. Blind trust and cynicism are
both attempts to escape from the responsibility, risk,
and hard work required for trust.
By and large, modern industrialized societies tend
toward the second mistake. Trust in institutions, from
governments to nonprofits to universities, is at an alltime
low. The 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer report
recorded a 14-point decline in global trust compared
to last year. Conspiracy theories are rampant. Millions
mistrust journalists and scientists. Lay people mistrust
clergy. The clergy mistrust the people. Many people
outside the Church think religion is a scam.
jacob's well 6

The consequences of this systemic mistrust are
no small matter. On the most basic level, a lack of
trust makes everything work more slowly and with
greater difficulty. Business deals are more difficult and
costly. Law enforcement is less effective and therefore
more expensive. Mercy and forgiveness are more
often withheld. And the likelihood of violence greatly
increased. Misunderstandings are numerous. This
lack of trust even eats away at our prosperity and
wealth. I recall a recent conversation I had with the
father of a boy in my son’s Scout troop. The father, an
exporter-importer, was talking about the challenges
posed by the ongoing tariff wars between the U.S.
and China. “It’s much more expensive to do business
with someone you haven’t established a trusting
business relationship with,” he lamented. In the
absence of trust, even if it is merely that the person
or company hasn’t had a chance to demonstrate its
reliability yet, various financial and risk-management
instruments are needed to mitigate potential losses
and to create financial mechanisms to hold the other
party accountable. These instruments are costly and
eat into the profits of any given transaction. But with
mutual trust established, such instruments can be
forgone and profits increased.
Money, for example, is a symbol of trust. It symbolizes
the possibility of engaging in an honest
transaction. And money only has as much value as
people believe that it has. The value of money is not
a fact. It is a belief. Our whole economic system is
based on trust. When cheating becomes rampant,
commerce doesn’t work, markets don’t work, and
the legal system doesn’t work, because when people
believe the game is rigged, they stop playing by the
rules. Recent events such as the regime change in
the Ukraine or the Arab Spring occurred (in part)
because of, and in response to, massive systemic corruption.
There is a strong link between the level of
corruption and social instability, if only for the reason
that corruption (the breaking of social trust) causes
economic inefficiencies. This explains why less developed
countries are far less resilient to corruption
(and also more susceptible to it) given their smaller
pool of resources. One 2005 study estimated that the
global cost of bribery—not to mention all the other
forms of corruption—is as high as $1.5 trillion per
year (or 2% of global GDP).
The same goes for religious institutions. The
erosion of trust in the Roman Catholic Church, due
largely to the clergy sex-abuse scandals, has had devastating
consequences: declining membership, nationwide
closing of parishes, and depleted finances. Deep
mistrust for social institutions and the isolation and
violence which eventually emerge from that mistrust
can collapse an entire society, or church. Trust is the
life-blood of all human relationships from the simplest
interpersonal ones to the most complex societies.
We don’t have a fact problem or a reason problem,
but rather, we have a trust problem. It’s ruining our
politics, our churches, our communities, and our families.
Perhaps part of the cause for the opioid crisis and
escalating suicide rates in our country is the breakdown
of trust and the ensuing isolation and state of
anxiety it creates. When we are alone, on edge, and
never feel “at home” in a place and with a people we
feel we can trust, we are fearful, anxious, and depressed.
Granted, some of our mistrust is understandable
and even rational. Many of our institutions have
failed us repeatedly of late. Yet, we cannot wait until
every person or institution has attained the pinnacle
of virtue or until every belief has amassed a perfect
amount of evidence and passed all scrutiny before
we extend our hand in trust. For no such day is ever
likely to arrive, save that eternal day.
As Christians, the fragility of trust is something we
must wrestle with in our spiritual lives and not merely
in its societal breakdown. We are like Peter, beckoned
to join Christ out on water, amidst the storm. When
that trust breaks down and fear seizes us, we sink.
The fact is that our whole present life is one lived in
the midst of a storm. We are always in that precarious
circumstance of needing to summon the courage to
trust God and one another. But what other choice do
we have? What life can be lived without trust?
Getting over our fear of trust can be an exercise
in humility and self-awareness. It’s a matter of recognizing
how limited our knowledge and control of the
world actually are, and of acknowledging that we’re
not as rational as we think. How can the Gospel help
guide us in this endeavor? How can our Church be
part of the solution? The essays contained in this
edition of Jacob’s Well approach this problem from
various perspectives, some very personal and others
more global. This issue hopes to offer a small contribution
to addressing this problem. Being honest about
our broken trust and not being afraid to confront
the weakness of our faith is the first step. Denying or
ignoring it is a sure way to make things worse.
The Rev. Matthew Brown is the Secretary of
the Diocese of New York and New Jersey (OCA) and
the Editor-in-Chief of Jacob’s Well. He is the rector
of Holy Apostles Orthodox Church in Saddle Brook,
New Jersey.
7 jacob's well

Toward an Immersive
Church-School Experience
by Susan Lukianov
Is your church empty? Sometimes mine is. We
know attendance figures are down across most
Orthodox jurisdictions in America, and I believe
one reason is that our children do not feel engaged—
and so parents aren’t coming to services either. Kids
often get bored in church; it’s obvious when you see
them wandering in and out of the nave or entertaining
themselves with books and toys. Even when
they are attentive and want to participate, many
don’t know how. On top of this, there are constant
demands on young families’ time: soccer games,
ballet classes, homework assignments, sleepovers,
and pool parties. Our parishes have competition
and it feels like we lose more than we win.
As a longtime elementary educator, I think the
most promising solution is a more robust churchschool
experience. Too often, educating our children
relies on lectures: a passive format in which
adults talk at the kids. Instead, our childrens’ classes
should resemble the cycle of services in the Orthodox
Church, which are designed to immerse us.
Our children deserve learning experiences that
excite them and encourage them to ask questions.
I propose a model for church school that is engaging,
active, tactile, informative, and stimulates growth.
If you build it, they will come!
During my career of more than 25 years, I have
taught elementary students of all grades. I have also
taught at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in
New York City, and I’ve served as a church school
teacher and a summer church-camp leader and instructor.
I am now the math and science specialist
for an elementary school in Connecticut. Following
the church’s example of immersive worship, I have
developed a series of learning experiences called
“Teaching Our Children About Prayer and Faith,”
which center on the physical elements of liturgical
life: water, incense, church bread, bells, candles,
icons, and church buildings. When I teach children
about bells, for instance, they learn about the
significance of bells in the church. But they also get
opportunities to listen to different tolls, ring bells,
strike talantons, and make bells of their own. They
become actively involved in their own learning, and
they learn how to behave toward these elements in
the course of it all.
I’d like to share some of my experiences, in case
others would like to replicate these classes or build
upon them.
A month of Sundays
The lessons I’ve created are easily adaptable for
various settings. I’ve delivered them to large multiaged
groups (20+ children at once) and to a smaller
single-aged group (four students). Most recently, I
was asked to facilitate these sessions with a small
group of multi-aged, multilingual children (aged
3–10) at Saints Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in
Jersey City. Although adaptable, the one non-negotiable
element is the length of time required for
each session: each one takes at least two hours to
allow ample time for the tactile experiences. At Ss.
Peter and Paul, we held these one Saturday a month,
from 3–5 p.m., followed by Great Vespers. These
were held in lieu of the regular Sunday School sessions,
but students and parents were asked to share
their learning the next day (Sunday) at coffee hour.
Many hands make light work
Planning and preparation are key. I had to be certain
of my content knowledge of the Church and her
teachings, as well as how to make each element. I
kept in mind the words of Saint John of Kronstadt:
“If you teach children—your own or other people’s
children—let this work become a service to God;
teach with zeal; study beforehand to make your
teaching clear, intelligible, as complete as possible,
fruitful.” On average, each session required about
5–6 hours of planning/research, and some required
an additional hour or two for the physical prep
of materials. For example, as part of our study of
candles, I researched the history and use of candles
in the Orthodox Church, how bees make beeswax,
how to harvest it, and how to make beeswax candles.
While this program was designed for children,
their parents and church-school teachers were
invited to attend and volunteer. Something very
interesting happened during our first session at Ss.
Peter and Paul. In our original plan, I was to work
with the children, and Father Joseph Lickwar, the
parish priest, was to meet with the parents. After the
opening prayer, we went to opposite sides of the hall.
Slowly the parent group began to migrate towards
jacob's well 8

Tomorrow's Church
Sophie Maliniak (2019)

my group, and after about 30 minutes we were one
large group. The parents were interested in having
the same tactile experiences as the children. This
was a turning point. We had hooked both children
and parents.
Although I was responsible for the majority of
the preparation and delivery of instruction, this
work can easily be shared among volunteers. For
example, one person can prepare the tactile component,
another can research the church teachings,
and yet another can organize and prepare the videos
and other visual aids.
Go the extra mile
This series elicited great enthusiasm from children
and parents alike. The children were eager to share
their knowledge and to take home products, such as
bells or incense. Many adults said they had learned
things about the Church as well—in fact, they expressed
surprise at the amount they learned. But
I also know that we all learned from the children.
The purity of their hearts, their curiosity, and their
ability to see Christ where we do not remind us we
need to be more like them.
As Orthodox Christians, we want our children
to love God and become adults who are active participants
in the Church (tithing and giving freely of
time and talents); yet we do not always give them
what they need to maintain their unconditional love
of God and His Church. If we can provide them
with learning experiences that mirror the richness
of our services and give them a purpose/role in the
church, then they just may choose church!
For additional information about this series or
to obtain a digital copy of the lessons, please contact
Susan Lukianov at slukianov10@gmail.com.
—
The following is a brief outline of a session I’ve
taught on incense:
◉ Opening Prayer
◉ Transition
◗ Have students move to different areas of
the available space. This provides them
with a movement break and reinforces that
each area has a specific goal/function
◉ Introduction of the church element
(water, candles, bells, incense, prosphora)
◗ Explore students’ prior knowledge
◗ Introduce new learning; set goals for the day
◗ Context setting: “Today we are going
to make incense. But first, we need
to learn the role, significance, and
history of incense in the Church.”
◉ Activity 1
◗ Concrete experience: Incense
▲ Provide samples of different types of
incense for students to touch and smell
▲ Students share their thoughts
and observations
◉ Activity 2
◗ Concrete experience: The censer
◗ Provide at least one censer that
students can look at and touch
▲ Explain the structure and symbolism
of the parts of the censer
◉ Activity 3
◗ Multimedia and Discussion
▲ Show digital images of frankincense
and Boswellia sacra trees
▲ Show video of frankincense sap
being harvested and discuss
◉ Activity 4
◗ Concrete experience: Making incense
▲ Guides children through the
process of making incense
◉ Wrap-up/Summary of learning
(done by students)
Almonroth, License CC-BY-SA-3.0.
Susan Lukianov is the math and science specialist
at The Peck Place School in Orange, Connecticut.
She is a parishioner at Presentation of Christ into
the Temple Orthodox Church in Stratford, Connecticut.
10

Orthodoxy on Tap
by Spyridoula Fotinis
Iam 22 years old, and I am told there are not
many people like me. I care about my faith, and I
try, however imperfectly, to have it permeate every
part of my life. Many of my childhood friends are
no longer part of the Church and many of my peers
finding meaning in activities and ideas outside of
churches and other places of worship. However,
with the growth of Orthodoxy on Tap in New York
City over the last two years, I’ve met numerous
people my age who share my love for the Church
and the desire to be part of a community.
I grew up in a Greek Orthodox parish in New
Jersey, where my grandfather was the priest. After
high school, I attended the local community college,
where my experience in the Orthodox Christian
Fellowship chapter strengthened my faith. I joined
the Student Leadership Board, and I felt empowered
to serve the Church as a young woman, in a way I
never had before. After two years, I transferred to
the City University of New York in Manhattan, a
school without an OCF chapter, but slowly grew to
love the many Orthodox parishes around the city.
I attended church close to school, and the parish
priest and I spoke about growing an OCF presence
on campus. But this idea evolved into a larger idea
for fellowship. We added another priest I knew well,
who had previously tried to begin Orthodoxy on
Tap in NYC, and we slowly began to discuss the
possibility of trying once more.
A model for this already existed: Orthodoxy on
Tap, which started in Boston and later spread to
Philadelphia and California. Once a month, each
chapter meets at a restaurant and has a guest speaker
give a presentation about some aspect of the Orthodox
faith, followed by informal fellowship.
We planned our first event for January 2018 at
the Olive Garden in Times Square. We invited Dr.
Christos Durante to give a presentation on “Orthodoxy
and Multiculturalism,” and we advertised it on
Facebook and by word of mouth. To our amazement,
more than 50 young adults showed up. Since then,
we’ve expanded our leadership team and our online
presence. We’ve held most of our events at Pier A
Harbor House, a wonderful seafood restaurant in
Battery Park.
Some of our events have distinct themes. Our
first event during last year’s Nativity fast was called
“Orthodoxy in a Pinch,” and we learned how to
pinch pierogies and then enjoyed them as a group.
At another event, called “Orthodoxy off the Vine,”
we pressed grapes with our feet to make wine for
Holy Communion. (Don’t worry — we washed our
feet and wore single-use gloves!) We gifted our first
bottle to His Eminence, Archbishop Michael, as a
thank-you for his talk at our last OOT in May before
the summer break. We also held “Orthodoxy on the
Rise,” where the women’s group from Saint Spyridon
Greek Orthodox Church, in Washington Heights,
taught us how to make the offering bread (prosphora).
And during Great Lent this year, we held
“Orthodoxy on the Mind,” where one of our clergy
members hosted a trivia night with his Pani, ending
in an Easter egg hunt in anticipation of Pascha.
Orthodoxy on Tap is entirely grassroots. It’s not
attached to any specific jurisdiction, so everyone
feels welcome, whether they’re Eastern Orthodox
or Oriental Orthodox. Now when I church-hop, I
always run into someone I met at one of the events.
It’s evolved into a beautiful community. We invite
one another to our parishes and to Bible studies.
For many of us, including me personally, it provides
critical support during this period between college
graduation and possible marriage or aging out of
young adult groups. It is only one ministry, but it has
begun to spark interest and motivation for young
adults to begin their own grassroots ministries to
create spaces to be together and continue to grow
as Orthodox Christian young adults.
The organization is supported by prayers, parish
donations, and contributions from our members.
All donations support the renting of the restaurant
space and light appetizers or funding for food and
supplies for the unique events during fasting seasons.
For questions, or to lend us a hand, please contact
us at orthodoxyontapnyc@gmail.com.
Spyridoula Fotinis works for the Greek Orthodox
Archdiocese in the Department of Inter-Orthodox,
Ecumenical, and Interfaith Relations. She is
a YES (Youth Equipped to Serve) Leader through
FOCUS North America and a member of the board
of Axia, an Orthodox women’s ministry. She is a
parishioner at Saint Spyridon Orthodox Church in
Washington Heights, New York City.
11 jacob's well

Remembering
Bishop Basil (Rodzianko)
by Archpriest Thomas Edwards
Portrait of a saint
Jessica Ward, 2019.
Parishioner of Holy Apostles,
Saddle Brook, New Jersey and
Art Teacher for
Jersey City Public Schools.
The better I got to know him, the more I realized that Bishop Basil
had one foot in our world and the other in the Kingdom of God.

On Friday, September 17, 1999, Bishop Basil
fell asleep in the Lord and passed all the way
into the heavenly kingdom. It is not without irony
that Vladyka fell asleep the day before he was to
receive his U.S. citizenship. His beloved wife, Matushka
Mary, was called by God the day before she
was to have received her British citizenship.
In the previous 12 years, this imposing man, with
his kind face, gleaming white beard, and captivating
British accent, had profoundly touched many people
in New York and New Jersey. Though he lived in
Washington, D.C., Vladyka often visited our area,
giving retreats, talks, and wise counsel to many of
his spiritual children.
Vladimir Rodzianko was born May 22, 1915, on
a family estate in Ekaterinoslav, in what is now
Ukraine. His grandfather, Michael Rodzianko, was
president of the Imperial Duma during the reign of
Tsar Nicholas II. As an adult, Vladimir remembered
being under his grandfather's dining-room table,
listening to the grown-ups mulling over what to do
after the Royal Family had been murdered. “Surely
this will be over shortly,” he heard his grandfather
say, “and we can then return to Russia. In the meantime
we will go to our Orthodox brothers in Serbia.”
He recalled his ordinarily clean-shaven grandfather
later disguised behind a long beard, escaping Russia
by train.
The young man spent the rest of his childhood
in Serbia. After he received his theological degree
from the University of Belgrade, he married Mary
Kolubayev in 1941 and was ordained to the Priesthood
the same year. He served several parishes in
northern Serbia during the Nazi occupation. Then,
after World War II ended, he later recalled, “the
Nazis marched out one door, and the Communists
marched in another.” He was arrested by the
Communists and charged with the high crime of
preaching religious propaganda. He was sentenced
to eight years imprisonment and hard labor. By this
time, he had two young sons, Vladimir and Michael.
Upon entering prison, his beard was shorn and his
cassock and cross were ripped off. “Now you're like
all the other comrades!” his captors taunted. When
asked, nearly half a century later, about his worst
memories of imprisonment, Vladyka stated without
hesitation, “The fleas!” The fleas were so bad that
he felt he was being eaten alive.
Years later, over dinner at our house, he spoke
about being deprived of the right to celebrate the
divine services. “Well, not quite all,” he added.
Every day, the prisoners were taken outside into a
quadrangle for an exercise period, which consisted
of marching around the four walls in concentric
circles. On Theophany each year, Father Vladimir
was able to bless water. Even the non-Orthodox
and non-believers did their part, taking to the outer
circle to give the Orthodox prisoners cover. Since it
snowed every day, there was a ready water source.
As instructed by Father Vladimir, the inner circle of
Orthodox sang the troparion of the feast in muffled
tones: “When Thou, O Lord, wast baptized in the
Jordan…” Father Vladimir blessed the snowflakes
that fell on each and every prisoner, as well as every
guard—though the guards were none the wiser.
Through the efforts of the Archbishop of Canterbury
and a change in Tito’s policies, Father
Vladimir was eventually released from prison and
reunited with his family. They first went to France,
where they were the guests of Archbishop John Shahovskoy,
and later settled in England. In London,
Father Vladimir, in addition to serving as a priest,
took up a second passion that he’d harbored since
childhood, when he was offered a position on BBC
Radio. For the next 40 years, he produced religious
radio programs that were broadcast into the Soviet
Union through the BBC, the Slavic Gospel Association,
Radio Vatican, and the Paris-based Voice
of Orthodoxy, following in the footsteps of Father
Alexander Schmemann.
Then tragedy hit his family. In 1978, his teenage
grandson was killed in an assassination attempt intended
for Father Vladimir himself. Because of his
religious broadcasts into the Soviet Union, he had
long been a target of the KGB. Later that same year,
his wife reposed.
In 1979, Father Vladimir took monastic vows in
England, adopting the name Basil. He was received
into the Orthodox Church in America and was consecrated
Bishop of Washington, D.C. on January
12, 1980. By then, Archbishop John Shahovskoy,
the priest who had given Father Vladimir’s family
shelter in France, was overseeing the Diocese of
the West—but he was gravely ill. During the Archbishop’s
final days, Bishop Basil stayed with him
and served as his nurse. Afterward he himself was
transferred to the See of San Francisco, a position
he held until his retirement in 1984.
Bishop Basil returned to Washington, D.C. and
for the rest of his years he continued religious
broadcasts to Russia. My family and I visited his
apartment in D.C. once, when he invited us over
for lunch after Divine Liturgy. The place was akin
to a monastic cell. In one corner was his chapel,
complete with altar and iconostasis. Here he would
serve weekday Liturgies for a small congregation
who would easily fill the one room. When not in
use, the chapel was closed off by a floor-to-ceiling
13 jacob's well

curtain. In another corner was the Bishop's broadcasting
studio, where he recorded tapes for subsequent
broadcasts. There were floor-to-ceiling bookcases
along the walls, with icons and family portraits
interspersed among the books.
One of the most spectacular memories I have
of Vladyka occurred in Moscow in May of 1991.
Bishop Basil had been asked by Patriarch Aleksi
to lead a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and back to
Russia. The purpose was to bring back the Holy
Fire, which miraculously proceeds from the Tomb
of Christ in Jerusalem each year on Holy Saturday.
For only the second time since the fall of Communism,
the Patriarch would celebrate the Divine
Liturgy in the Dormition Cathedral in Moscow's
Kremlin. The church was filled to capacity, and the
service was televised and seen all over Russia. When
the tremendous side doors of the cathedral were
swung open, there standing with the sacred Holy
Fire from Christ's Tomb raised for all was Bishop
Basil. Vladyka entered the ancient church, proceeded
through the royal doors with the Patriarch, and
placed the Holy Fire on the altar.
At the end of the Liturgy, the Patriarch, led by
Bishop Basil, all the clergy, and thousands of worshippers,
exited the great doors of the cathedral for a
mile-long procession through the streets of Moscow.
Moscow had not seen such a religious procession
in 70 years. All the church bells in Moscow were
ringing, and above our heads the blue sky was filled
with giant hot-air balloons arrayed with huge icons.
On the same trip, I was approached after a separate
service by one of the young choir singers. Upon
learning that I was from America, he asked, “Do you
know Vladyka Basil Rodzianko?” To which I replied,
“I know him quite well! In fact, he recently stayed
at our home for several days.” The young man said,
“In Russia we consider him a saint!”
V. Rev. Thomas Edwards was the rector of Holy
Apostles Church in Saddle Brook, New Jersey, for 30
years until his retirement in 2001. He now resides
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
above: The New Jerusalem
(Tapestry, c. 14th century)
St John the Theologian sees the new
Jerusalem desecending from the heavens.
jacob's well 14

NOTES FROM LAST ISSUE
Last Issue's Cover Art:
"The Hospitality of Sinners,
and the Pride of Presumption"
In this piece we have two opposing figures, one man
on the city wall, and a man below travelling on a
path.
To show their difference of place figuratively, we
have one above, one below; one to the left, one to
the right; one in the foreground, one in the background.
They are also contrasted by one clothed
in fine purple garments, one in tattered ascetical
hair shirt, one within and above, one outside and
beneath.
They each want to claim a portion of the scripture,
but they do not share it. They want try to claim
their stake at being correct. But blinded by their
desire to be right, they do not see the mercy that is
required of them.
The man in purple shows his wealth and belonging
to a place, but his position is in a place of pride
and dominance. Rather than using his wealth and
place as a source of refuge and healing, he is fearful
and protective, hoarding his wealth which was given
to him by God.
The man on the path is wearing a hair shirt,
showing that he is trying to live an ascetical life, but
there is a tell that reveals him as shifty in character.
Rather than the typical red shoes that we see an
ascetic wearing in iconography, we see him wearing
bright yellow, which is the color of danger and misfortune.
His fault is his pride in thinking he knows
better than others, and is therefore justified. He is,
after all—to his thinking—a man of God.
If the title of this piece had been The Hospitality
of the Godly, and a Humble Guest, we would
have seen the man in purple at the gates ready to
welcome a stranger on the road, and the body language
of the man on the road would have suggested
humility and trustworthiness. Perhaps each holding
a gift for the other, rather than wounding each other,
and themselves, with swords and brazen coldness.
Impaling themselves in their attempt to harm the
stranger illustrates that a lack of love toward our
neighbor always comes at the price the well-being
of our own soul. —Abraham Fillar
Missing Credit
Children's Coloring Icon of the Resurrection, Anna
Souvorov, 2019. Parishioner of Holy Virgin Protection
Cathedral, Manhattan, NY.
15 jacob's well

Letter from Coxsackie
Correctional Facility
by Brian Hodges
Editor’s note: The author of this piece contacted
Jacob’s Well after reading the Spring 2019 issue. With
our encouragement, he later submitted this letter by
mail. It has been lightly edited.
My name is Brian Hodges and I am incarcerated
at Coxsackie Correctional Facility, a state
prison just south of Albany, and I have been here
more than 12 1/2 years. I would like to describe the
struggles I go through as the only Orthodox Christian
in the facility.
Coming to prison with 20 years to serve was a
wake-up call. It’s very easy to go down the wrong
path in prison. From day one, my mother said, "Take
it a day at a time," and I have done that for more than
4,500 days. I have asked for forgiveness countless
times and have often questioned why prison life was
in God's plan for me. I certainly didn't see this in
my future growing up. I have made the best of it,
holding good jobs in the facilities and helping others
when I can. I continue to make myself a better
person than I was when I arrived. Now, with 7 1/2
years left, I will be 47 years old upon my release. I
have intentions of moving forward and starting a
family of my own.
Here, religious services are offered in a variety
of traditions: Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism,
Jehovah’s Witnesses, Islam, Nation of Islam, and
Nation of Gods and Earths, to name a few—but
there are no Orthodox Christian services. Given the
small number of registered Orthodox inmates, the
Department of Corrections (DoC) isn’t obligated
to offer any services. Therefore, I am on my own.
But on two occasions, a Greek Orthodox priest who
works part time for the DoC has visited me. He
heard my confession, gave me Communion, and
anointed me. On those days I could not wait to tell
my family, “Father Manny came to see me!” It really
brightened my day. Someone who does not know
me came to ask me how I was and answered any
questions I had.
Before my incarceration, I wasn't active in my
parish the way I should have been. However, I
plan to get involved upon my release. These past
few years, I have been reeducating myself about
the Orthodox Faith. I wrote to a few churches and
monasteries seeking information or someone to
correspond with, perhaps even to ask a question.
Two people replied! One was Father Benedict, from
Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Brookline, MA.
Father Benedict has stayed in touch, has answered
my questions, and has sent me reading materials.
Another monastery referred me to Orthodox Christian
Prison Ministry, which is based in Minnesota. I
can proudly say I have completed three of OCPM’s
Bible study classes, and I'm waiting for the next book
to arrive.
In addition, the priest from my home parish,
Saint Nicholas Orthodox Church, in Cohoes, near
Albany has come to visit me—not for confession,
but just to sit and talk. I am also lucky enough to
have a family that visits me often. Not everyone in
prison has that luxury. Visits remind me that people
do care about me and that I am not alone.
Maybe you hear about fellow parishioners who
are sick or in the hospital, but do you hear about
the incarcerated church member? Once someone is
handed a prison sentence, they can be quickly forgotten
about. I am asking the Orthodox community
to reach out to those of us who are in prisons. There
are simple ways you could brighten an incarcerated
person’s day: writing a letter, coming on a visit, or
becoming a volunteer. I realize many people feel
skittish and have negative perceptions of people in
prison. I'm asking you to give this a chance. Contact
a local correctional facility and ask the chaplain if
anyone there is registered as Orthodox. If so, they
could probably use guidance, or just a friend who
will listen to them.
The holiday season, which is coming upon us, is
a very tough time for people who are incarcerated.
Who knows? Maybe you can put someone on the
path of redemption!
Brian Hodges is an Orthodox Christian incarcerated
at the state prison in Coxsackie, New York.
jacob's well 16

The Ninth Wave (Девятый вал)
Ivan Aivazovsky
(Oil on canvas, 1850)
17 jacob's well

jacob's well 18

Trust as Action
by Jim Forest
“In God we Trust; all others pay cash,” read
a sign over the cash register of a delicatessen
I often frequented in Manhattan’s Lower East
Side half a century ago. It was a humorous way for
a shopkeeper to communicate his determination
to keep his small business from being buried in a
cemetery of IOUs.
Like that merchant, most of us are cautious when
it comes to money. We are well advised not to be
gullible about the claims of advertisers, the guarantees
of salesmen, and the crowd-pleasing assurances
of politicians. We have learned, often the hard way,
to be careful about whom we trust, including those
who court our applause and demand our obedience.
“Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in
whom there is no help,” the 146th Psalm reminds
us. These cautionary verses are so important that
they are read or sung every Sunday in Orthodox
churches: “When his breath departs he returns to
his earth; on that very day his plans perish.”
Yet even though prudent watchfulness serves
many areas of life, trust is at the core of our social
existence. Every morning, parents entrust their
young children to the care of others. We trust our
doctors and nurses to do their best in keeping us
healthy. We trust the local supermarket not to sell
us salmonella-laden eggs.
Yet there is always an undercurrent of caution.
When we get right down to it, it’s hard to trust ourselves.
Even what we have witnessed with our own
eyes and ears and have vivid memories of is not
100% trustworthy. Recollections are notoriously unreliable.
Innocent people have been executed due to
the faulty memories of sincere and honest witnesses.
The Gospels remind us that the Apostles sometimes
had a hard time trusting Jesus. His assurances
that He would be raised from the dead fell on incredulous
ears. One Sunday of the Paschal season
is given over to recalling a saint who personifies
skepticism. The Apostle Thomas was unwilling to
believe his friends’ testimony that Jesus had returned
to life until he had not only seen the risen Lord with
his own eyes but put his fingers into the wounds left
by the nails and the spear.
For the skeptic, belief in such things is a bridge
too far; for the hard-core skeptic, the only things
that can be trusted are the things we can weigh,
measure, count, and photograph.
Ultimately faith, another word for trust, is a
life-defining decision. It’s not just an idea or an
opinion—a cognitive state—but rather something
we do. While it’s natural for us to be skeptical, it’s
also natural to be pulled with tidal force toward
Christian belief as summarized in the Creed. As Orthodox
Christians, one of the main ways we respond
to the tension of doubt challenging faith is by participating
in the liturgical life of the Church. Here
we are strengthened not only by our own deepest
longings but by the faith of the community that surrounds
us as well as the ever-present but unseen
cloud of witnesses represented by the icons that
encircle us.
Taking a leap of trust in the Gospels can be a
hard struggle. Unless you’ve grown up deeply rooted
in Christianity and slipped through adolescence and
early adulthood without passing through hurricanes
of doubt, following Christ is equivalent to walking
on water.
A Christian is someone who has decided to trust
the Gospels—to trust this particular unique and
demanding narrative. It’s a decision to try to shape
our lives around the words and actions and para-
19 jacob's well

jacob's well 20

bles of Jesus, and thus to meditate on those sayings of His as
if the truth and wisdom they contain were a matter of life and
death—because, in fact, they are.
In the Orthodox liturgy there are two processions, one
of the Book and one of the bread and wine. In the first, the
Book is held aloft and the entire congregation bows toward
it. What Book? It’s not the Bible or even the New Testament.
It’s a volume containing only the four Gospels. In it we hear
Christ’s guiding voice. The procession culminates in placing
the book on the altar table.
In the second procession we bow again, this time toward
the bread and wine which, once blessed and consecrated, bring
Christ’s Body and Blood into our own body and blood. We
trust in the living presence of Christ and its efficacy to make
us whole and save us.
Belief is an action of trust, and so is communion: Christ
trusting in us and we in Him. We choose in trust to unite ourselves
with Him who is love itself, Him who is pure mercy, with
Him who equips us to become people of love and mercy, Him
who trusts us to reveal the Gospel to others not by argument
but by witness. This makes trust the very tissue that holds the
Church together, and maintaining that trust is the challenge
we face as Christians every day of our lives. Like the father of
the boy with the evil spirit in the Gospel of Mark, we struggle
with unbelief even as we believe: “I believe; help my unbelief!”
Jim Forest has authored numerous books, including Praying
with Icons, The Ladder of the Beatitudes, Confession: Doorway
to Forgiveness, Saint Nicholas and the Nine Gold Coins, and a
forthcoming memoir, Writing Straight with Crooked Lines. He is
the international secretary of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship.
Nancy Forest, his wife, is a literary translator. Their writings
are collected on their website, jimandnancyforest.com. They
are parishioners at Saint Nicholas of Myra Orthodox Church in
Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
The Miracle of Christ Healing the Blind
El Greco
(oil on canvas, 1570)
21 jacob's well

Trust in the Church
Unexpected Visitors
Ilya Repin
(oil on canvas, 1884)
by presbyter joshua frigerio
After his transfer to a new parish, a
certain priest was graciously received by his
new flock. Following his first Sunday Liturgy,
he formally introduced himself to the parish, adding,
“Some of you may like me and some probably don’t.
But rest assured: Sooner or later, I will certainly
disappoint each and every one of you.”
The Church, being the Body of Christ, is divine
and lacks nothing. But in another sense, because
the Church is also human, it is often sorely lacking.
Those who are entrusted with its earthly stewardship
will inevitably and regularly disappoint and
scandalize. It doesn’t take much study of Church
history, or indeed of current events, to know this
to be the case. Since Saint Paul wrote his letters to
Timothy, we’ve tried to weed out wayward clergymen.
Many ancient canons and modern guidelines
for ordination have that as their goal.
We know representatives of the Church will fail
us from time to time despite our precautionary measures.
But what effect does it have on us personally?
Can we inoculate ourselves such that when they
do, our faith will not be mortally wounded? And
moreover, if we do inoculate ourselves, how do we
avoid becoming numb? Are some of us already so
proficient at being disconnected from the Church
that a scandal that should affect us deeply does not?
Is there a spiritually healthy, moderate approach to
this issue?
It’s easy to observe how our lack—or abundance—of
trust can fail us at either end of the spectrum.
Those overly susceptible to a personal faith
crisis in the wake of some kind of Church infidelity
are typically those for whom trust in the Church
plays an exaggerated and immature role in even
the most trivial aspect of their lives. Such persons
might consult the holy canons before choosing a
living-room paint color, and then perhaps show
it to their nearest holy elder to make sure. There’s
a story told on Mt. Athos of a man who traveled
all the way from America to his spiritual father on
the Holy Mountain simply to ask if he should quit
smoking (uh, yes!). Not only are such people more
disposed to despair of faith when pressed, but they
also tend to take it in strange directions, like following
the latest schismatic spinoff because, after
all, that’s where the truly pure and holy people are.
Forever seeking the perfect church makes it easier
to overlook one’s own failures.
If we are not willing to take responsibility for
our choices, then we’ll end up handing over our
discernment process to anyone who offers to take it
from us—and there is no shortage of people offering.
Taken too far, the result is something more cult-like
than Christ-like.
But this is a temptation for all of us, albeit in
subtler ways. Even those in a healthy, balanced relationship
with their clergy and the Church can be
severely shaken when those individuals, whom they
trusted with their souls, betray that trust, whether
out of malice or weakness. A common response is
to seek, at the very least, a new parish, if not to step
back from the Church altogether for a time. This
happens to clergy too, perhaps even more profoundly,
as they have given so much of their lives and trust
over to people whose decisions sometimes seem, at
best, arbitrary. Sacrifices made deeply leave tender
spots.
The temperament of the American Orthodox
population, however, predisposes us more to the
inverse problem. Having too little trust, or even
being completely jaded to Church matters, is at
least as serious a challenge. Many of us never even
think to check with the Church or our clergy about
anything we do, even large life decisions. We live
parallel lives: one secular and one spiritual, with a
nice, neat separation between them—a consequence
of accepting the “two-storey universe” paradigm
that Father Stephen Freeman writes about. Father
Alexander Schmemann addressed this eloquently in
the third part of his essay, “Problems of Orthodoxy
in America”:
It is in good faith that they see in the Church
an institution that should satisfy their needs,
reflect their interests, “serve” their desires and
above everything else, “fit” into their “way of
life.” And it is, therefore, in good faith that they
reject as “impossible” everything in the Church
which does not “fit” or seems to contradict their
basic philosophy of life.
jacob's well 22

This unconscious capitulation to secularism
makes us safe from scandal, because we cease to
be invested enough, and vulnerable enough, to
care. Realistic expectations are well and good—who
among us hasn’t indulged in a bit of cynicism about
Church administration? But when this is pushed to
include all the pastoral guidance that the Church
offers, we are left with the most foolish of all spiritual
guides—ourselves. The Greek word scandalon
refers to a stumbling block in our path. It’s certainly
safer to stay off the path altogether rather than risk
the openness and vulnerability of walking the path,
lest that rock trip us up. But what do we give up by
staying safe?
How do we become malleable enough to be
changed by our participation in the Church, while
also remaining immune enough to the inescapable
disillusionment that will tempt us to despair
and gossip in the face of scandal? Recalling that
the Church is the Body of Christ, that is, a person,
it stands to reason that Saint Paul’s identification
of Christ’s relationship to His Church as marriage
might serve as our guide.
The crowns of the wedding service remind us
that a successful marriage requires martyrdom:
an inhuman amount of vulnerability and sacrifice,
even a kind of death to oneself, so as to live to the
other. But this is not a naïve trust; it’s not simply
submitting blindly for the sake of peace, which often
brings calamity instead. It is a long string of fully
conscious decisions to surrender one’s will for the
sake of the union of the two in Christ, being well
aware of the hazards involved, and being willing to
endure them. Indeed, this is not a “bug” in marriage,
it is a feature! It is often exactly the fallibility, the
humanity, of our spouses, that teaches us to love, to
forgive, to endure. Surely the Church is the same:
it has nothing less than union with God as its goal
for us, yet accomplishes it, not in spite of her imperfections,
but exactly because of them.
As we have seen, first with Israel and now with
the Church, God allows exile and tribulation to
happen from time to time so that we might repeatedly
repent and be cleansed for our return from
wherever we have strayed. Likewise, in marriage,
God allows us to experience our failures as opportunities
to learn humility and repentance. In fact,
many couples have found that it was precisely a
serious breach in trust of some kind that forced
them, through the long and arduous process of
finding trust again, to finally learn the openness
and vulnerability that they believed they had been
practicing all along. A naïve picture of marriage as
some kind of continual bliss must give way to the
better reality that Christ has provided for us: that
deep relationships are born of a steady diet of contrition
and renewal. Similarly, if we expect all those
entrusted with any kind of Church authority to only
ever behave benignly, it will take a struggle to regain
a healthy perspective. Grueling as it may be, it is
the way we learn to be “as shrewd as snakes, yet as
innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16) Few indeed
are those people who learn this by any means other
than experience.
The Rev. Joshua Frigerio is the rector of Holy
Ascension Orthodox Church in Albion, Michigan.
23 jacob's well

Saints Peter and Paul
Abraham Fillar (2019)
Restoring Trust in the
Global Orthodox Communion
by deacon nicholas Denysenko
jacob's well 24

In the last 30 years, the Churches belonging
to the global Orthodox communion have suffered
from internal strife. Insiders are aware of
disagreements between the Churches of Jerusalem
and Antioch, a series of disputes involving the patriarchates
of Moscow and Constantinople, and the
schism afflicting the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
The pressure to deliver instant analysis in the age
of social media feeds the unfortunate tendency to
hastily declare the causes of strife. Most analyses
identify a single event or blame one person for the
divisions in an otherwise peaceful Church. The
most-frequently invoked guilty parties include the
Patriarch of Constantinople (for papism, or neo-papism);
the Patriarch of Moscow (for subordinating
the Church to the state); Uniates, schismatics, and
nationalists in Ukraine; and the Pope, the West, and
secularists in general.
Primacy, the role of ethnicity, church-state relations,
and secularism in the Church are all serious
issues warranting academic and pastoral attention.
They are not, however, solely responsible for the
current divisions in the Church. In fact, these
popular theories are unhelpful because they conceal
a much more complicated cause. Our divisions tend
to start with events outside the church—specifically,
with ruptures in geopolitics. Borders shift; languages
migrate; alliances are made and broken. Church
leaders must adjust quickly to these new realities,
and misunderstandings often arise in this context.
Once the Church recognizes this pattern, however,
it can initiate a process of lasting reconciliation and
restoration of trust. Our liturgical tradition already
gives us the resources.
New World Orders
and the Struggle to Adjust
Geopolitics have spurred church divisions for many
centuries. Two of the most decisive examples in the
Orthodox world are the fall of Constantinople in
1453 and the collapse of the Tsarist regime in 1917.
First, consider the events of the 15th century. At the
Council of Florence, during the late 1430s, Constantinople
advocated reuniting with the Church
in Rome—in part because the Byzantine Empire,
and the city of Constantinople itself, were under
imminent threat from the Ottomans, and the Greeks
needed Rome’s military assistance. After the rejection
by the Russian Orthodox Church of the Florentine
union, Moscow declared autocephaly in 1448.
Constantinople did not recognize this autocephaly
until it granted Moscow patriarchal status in 1589.
The events surrounding these changes contributed
significantly to the erosion of trust between
the leaders of the Churches. Russian historians
immediately began developing the narrative of
Moscow as the “Third Rome,” a myth dependent
upon Constantinople’s violation of trust within the
Orthodox commonwealth. Moscow’s relations with
Constantinople were often tense, particularly during
the Ecumenical Patriarch’s journey to Russia in 1589,
when his hosts treated him gruffly, gave him subpar
accommodations, and appointed imperial officials,
instead of church leaders to negotiate with him. It
was meant to remind him of the Russian Church’s
strong position in the reconfiguration of the global
Orthodox communion in the post-Byzantine era.
The collapse of the Tsarist regime in 1917 also
caused friction among Church leaders and led to
a loss of trust. Before the political revolution in
February of that year, bishops, theologians, and
pastors in imperial Russia had been preparing for
an all-Church council. They planned to discuss a
broad set of reforms, including the translation of
liturgical texts into modern Russian and Ukrainian,
to permit the people to comprehend and participate
in the Church’s liturgy. The proposed reforms were
evangelical in nature, a response to the Church’s
struggle to reach people in an era of modernization.
When the Tsarist regime collapsed, the possibility
for Ukrainian autocephaly surfaced, especially with
Ukraine poised to become an independent national
republic in the pattern of the modern, post-imperial
nation-state. Some Church leaders in Ukraine
pursued both objectives: autocephaly and modern
Ukrainian language for the liturgy.
In 1917, supporters of Ukrainian autocephaly
persuaded Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow to bless
the convocation of an all-Ukrainian council to determine
the fate of the Ukrainian Church. Surprisingly,
the 1918 Council adopted autonomy instead of autocephaly,
meaning Kyiv had more control over its
internal affairs but remained under the jurisdiction
of the Moscow Patriarchate. It also voted against
introducing modern Ukrainian to the liturgy.
25 jacob's well

Pro-autocephaly advocates accused the leaders
of removing delegates who they knew would not
support their agenda. Supporters of autocephaly,
unable to resolve their differences with the ruling
bishops, decided to establish Ukrainian-language
parishes in Kyiv, and ultimately established an autocephalous
Church during a council in Kyiv in
October of 1921, despite multiple warnings from the
Patriarchal Synod in Ukraine to cancel the council.
The documents from the October 1921 council are
saturated with complaints against the presiding
bishops and claims that the event had been hijacked.
Ukrainian autocephalists described themselves
as orphans abandoned by the ruling bishops
and forced to determine their own fate. In other
words, the Ukrainian Orthodox clergy and faithful
who took autocephaly despite the resistance of their
bishops did so because they no longer trusted their
leaders.
These two examples—the aftermath of the fall
of Constantinople and the all-Ukrainian council
following the resignation of the Tsar—illustrate how
the breaking of trust begins in the Church. In both
situations, Church leaders were forced to adjust
to changes in the geopolitical order within which
the Church lived. Because they were in wartime
situations, Church leaders had to act quickly and
decisively, having neither the time nor the freedom
to deliberate at length. Later, the decisions were reversed:
Constantinople eventually withdrew from
the Florentine union with Rome, and the Ukrainians
finally received autocephaly in 2019. But bitterness
remains. For the Church in Russia, Constantinople
remains suspect because it tried to lead Orthodoxy
into union with Rome nearly seven centuries ago.
For the Ukrainian autocephalists, bishops of the
Moscow Patriarchate could not be trusted because
they dismissed requests for using modern Ukrainian
and restoring native customs to the liturgy. For the
Ukrainians who wished to remain in the Moscow
Patriarchate, the autocephalists were not trustworthy
because their agenda seemed to intersect
with the ideologies of nationalist parties and leaders.
In these instances, distrust became traditional.
Stories about the supposed betrayals were passed
down through the generations, fostering the notion
that anyone from the ‘other’ community was not
trustworthy. The same pattern holds in many other
parts of the Church. Current leaders have inherited
the suspicion that shadowed their predecessors,
even when they are historically and genetically
removed.
This phenomenon resembles the absence of trust
in adult authority figures by abused children, or in
partners of spouses abused in a previous relationship.
The only path to creating trust with the new
prospective partner or authority figure is through
learning to differentiate the new person from the
abuser.
Rebooting Reconciliation:
the Rite of Mutual Forgiveness
In the Church, the way to rebuild trust is to learn a
new way of perceiving, seeing, and engaging with
the people who belong to the community of dubious
trust. Here we can turn to the Church’s liturgical
tradition for resources—beginning with the Rite
of Mutual Forgiveness appointed to Forgiveness
Vespers at the beginning of Lent. This celebration
ritualizes acknowledgement of one’s own sin, asking
forgiveness for that sin, and asking for forgiveness
from the other. In a relationship of broken trust,
this Rite enables both parties to begin the healing
process by inviting them to encounter one another.
However, reconciliation is a process that cannot
depend on a single ritual. It must include several
more encounters in which the alienated parties
attempt to establish a new pattern of trust. Such
encounters are akin to couples’ therapy, in which
both parties are called to the hard work of confronting
their fears, anxieties, and misperceptions; of
naming the injustices committed and repenting of
them; and of adopting new behaviors that are transparent
and helpful.
All actions required by a process of honesty and
openness make the parties participating in reconciliation
vulnerable, because it demands honesty in the
presence of the other whom one does not trust. For
decades, if not centuries, the Orthodox Churches
have allowed fear to dissuade them from engaging
in the hard work that reconciliation demands. Disputes
are not resolved by withdrawal into mutual
exclusion and a refusal to dialogue. This only perpetuates
a distortion of the other on the basis of
historical memory. Just as Forgiveness Vespers introduces
participants into a process of repentance
that continues for the entire season and is marked
by a series of daily ritual practices, so too must the
Orthodox Churches commit to a long process of
reconciliation, painful as it may be.
Conclusion
Let us conclude this reflection by identifying the
most crucial step to be taken by the Orthodox
Churches after the initial exchanging of mutual
forgiveness: a commitment to revising our shared
ethic of historical memory. In the current crisis afflicting
the Church, the memory of past injustices
jacob's well 26

By the Rivers of Babylon
Gebhard Fugel
(oil on canvas, c. 1920)
sows the seeds of discord in the Body of Christ, just
as a virus sickens people who involuntarily share
it with one another. The flaw in our shared ethic of
historical memory is the commitment to sustaining
negative perceptions of the representatives of
other communities with whom we have disagreed.
The examples presented earlier in this essay expose
this flaw. In the current situation, Ecumenical Patriarch
Bartholomew is not only blamed for his actual
decisions and actions, but he also bears the entire
history of the Ecumenical throne, just as Patriarch
Kirill of Moscow is tied to the legacies of his predecessors,
many of whom lived in the Soviet era. Some
Orthodox have dismissed Metropolitan Epifaniy
of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine as illegitimate
because of his history in the Kyivan Patriarchate,
labeling him as a nationalist schismatic because he
is perceived to be the servant of the former metropolitan
of Kyiv, Filaret.
These perceptions are flawed because the cases
presented against the alleged perpetrators are
shaped predominantly by the entire histories of
the Churches they happen to govern. Each leader
should be responsible for his own actions, not those
of his predecessors. We cannot simply fuse the negative
narratives associated with the communities
producing these figures with the people themselves.
The only road to rebuilding trust is to meet and
encounter people as they truly are.
Rebuilding trust and reconciling is possible
through the outpouring of God’s grace, but it requires
courage, commitment, and adopting a new
way of thinking on our part. This process requires
strenuous effort and we will want to abandon it. But
seeing it through can help us to arrive at the peace
in our midst promised us by our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ.
The Rev. Dr. Nicholas Denysenko is the Emil
& Elfrieda Jochum University Chair and associate
professor of theology at Valparaiso University. He
is a deacon in the Diocese of the Midwest.
27 jacob's well

Our Scandalous Emperor-Saint
by presbyter Justin Patterson
When I was a student at Saint Vladimir’s
Seminary back in the mid-2000s, a literary
phenomenon swept the United States. The
author Dan Brown captivated believers and non-believers
alike with his bestseller, The Da Vinci Code. At the
request of panicked parishioners in my first parish, whose
trust in the Church seemed to be teetering after reading
Brown’s novel, I decided to read it myself.
To my surprise, I found it to be a thoroughly riveting
read—at least in the same way that I enjoy a good romp
through biblical archaeology with Indiana Jones. At the
same time, I recognized at once that Brown’s grasp of
history was slipshod at best. He parroted as established
facts “pop-history” claims about Christianity in general,
and about the legacy of Emperor Constantine in particular.
At one point in The Da Vinci Code, a crafty English
archaeologist gives Sophie, the main character, a brief
synopsis of the "history" of Christianity. In it, he makes
the following points about Constantine:
◗ He was a lifelong pagan who was
unwillingly baptized on his deathbed.
◗ He made Christianity the official Roman
religion solely for political gain.
◗ Christianity is a hybrid religion, the result
of Constantine's fusing of the pagan cult
of Sol Invictus with Christian beliefs.
◗ Under pagan influence, he moved the primary day
of Christian worship from Saturday to Sunday.
◗ He inspired the unsuspecting bishops
at the Council of Nicea to turn a mortal
prophet into the divine Son of God.
◗ He ordered a redaction of the Bible that
would reinforce his own pagan-inspired view
that Jesus was the divine Son of God.
◗ He tried to erase the documentary
evidence that showed an alternate and
more pristine version of Christianity.
Each of these absurd claims can, of course, be refuted
point-by-point (though such detailed refutation is not
the purpose of this reflection). And yet, the fact remains
that Orthodox Christians celebrate and venerate a Roman
emperor who was, by all accounts, a shrewd political
animal and steely-eyed soldier. Many of our fellow Orthodox—particularly
in the West—have understandably
wondered: What does it mean that this man is a canonized
saint? Ought I to trust the Church? Might the “cult of
Constantine” among Orthodox prove the Enlightenment
charge that Eastern Christians have been fundamentally
sycophantic and even “Caesaro-papal” in relation to
the state? Might not the whole “Constantine thing” be
a blemish on our tradition that ought to embarrass us?
Before tackling such broad questions, it might be more
helpful to frame them with another one: “Why would a
man like Constantine be drawn to the Christian faith in
the first place?”
It might be strange to begin by answering, “because of
his mom,” but the example of our parents is often crucial
in our lives. The historical record shows clearly that Constantine
deeply loved and admired his mother Helena.
As the pious Christian wife of Constantius Chlorus, one
of four co-rulers under Emperor Diocletian, Helena
profoundly influenced her son. His devotion to her was
so pronounced, in fact, that when Constantine became
master in the West, he proclaimed her “Augusta,” the
highest title in the empire. For the remainder of her life,
Helena’s faith and piety remained a fixation for Constantine,
who zealously funded her (quite costly) faith-based
works.
Second, while Constantine was indeed a product
of his time in terms of being part of a violent imperial
system, we can see his gradual embrace of Christianity
as an expression of his deep reservations about this very
system. As a young man, Constantine couldn’t help but
note that the Christian population, under the cruel hand
of Emperor Diocletian, was bled of a tenth of its faithful.
It is now supposed that 1% of the Roman Empire’s entire
population was exterminated in an orgy of persecution
that would not be surpassed until the 20th century. As
the 4th-century church historian Eusebius later noted,
such a situation horrified young Constantine personally—perhaps
in part because he was keenly aware that
his own mother could be accused as a Christian. Though
Constantine became a soldier, and, at key moments, did
not hesitate to use violence to achieve his ends, he himself
made clear on more than one occasion that there were
absolute limits to his capacity to shed blood. Most notably,
on the eve of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, it is reported
that his pagan generals advised him to resort to
a sacrificial bath in the blood of children—an especially
powerful invocation for victory, according to Roman
military custom. In horror, Constantine declined. By the
same token, Constantine’s most odious act as emperor,
the brutal suppression of his wife and son who were in
rebellion, was ordered so that civil war and chaos might
be averted. Even so, the emperor would reportedly be
jacob's well 28

Constantine and Helen with the True Cross
(Egg tempera, 14th century)
29 jacob's well

Diego Delso, delso.photo, License CC-BY-SA.
haunted by this bloody deed for the remainder of
his life.
In determining why Constantine would be
drawn—sincerely—to the Christian faith, we might
look at a third response. Throughout his life, Constantine
was surrounded by people who cared about
what Plato called “the Good.” Not least among the
people who pursued the Good was the emperor’s
own father, Caesar Constantius Chlorus of Gaul
and Brittania. Though not a Christian, Constantius
Chlorus was reputed to rule justly and wisely, a
devotee of the monotheistic cult of the sun, which
shared much with Christianity. At the same time,
Constantine himself was also generally impressed
with the lives and commitment of Christians he met.
They cared not only about their God, but about
their society and the poor. They prayed for those
who hated them. When he saw the Christians and
their manner of life, Constantine discerned something
approaching The Good. For the emperor,
moreover, the claims made by the Christians to have
“seen the True Light,” and to hold a universal truth,
suggested that this “Way” of the Christians might
unite his warring and fractious people. The Christian
proclamation of all being one in Christ filled
the emperor with hope that the divisions among the
people of the empire could in fact be surmounted.
For Constantine, a truth that could be both benign
and universal was a sign that it was approaching the
elusive Good. Latter-day commentators sometimes
point out that such a calculation on the part of the
emperor demonstrates his “using” of Christianity.
I would submit, however, that this calculation is
actually a sign of sincere and rational striving for
the Good!
So what did Constantine accomplish in his life?
First, he granted Christians freedom of worship (via
the Edict of Milan) in AD 313. Second, he generously
gave the Church lands and buildings to further
its mission. To this day, in both the East and West,
important Christian churches and centers are anchored
by the emperor’s 4th-century gifts. Third,
Constantine asked to be enrolled as a catechumen
and ruled for decades as such, accepting baptism
prior to his death when he knew he could lay aside
the burden of imperial rule for good. Fourth, he
abolished a number of practices Christians deemed
dehumanizing and evil, such as state crucifixion, the
exposure of infants (the widespread Roman practice
of selective murdering of female and deformed
children), and the gladiatorial games. Fifth, as a sign
of his seriousness about Christianity, Constantine
outlawed public offerings to idols on behalf of the
Roman state (though he wisely allowed freedom
of conscience for pagans who wished to worship
privately). Sixth, in response to the Arian crisis and
other pressing concerns for the Church, Constantine
convened the First Ecumenical Council in AD
325, subsidizing the travel expenses for over 300
bishops and their entourages.
Most moving, perhaps, of all of Constantine’s
recorded acts was his behavior at the Council of
Nicea. He had just completed his final campaign
to reunite the Roman Empire. In the aftermath of
that effort, Constantine found it particularly tragic
that the Christians, who had recently been delivered
from the grave oppression of Licinius and his lieutenants,
would now be quarreling among themselves.
The 4th-century church historian Eusebius writes:
jacob's well 30

The most distinguished of God’s ministers from
all the churches which abounded in Europe,
Africa, and Asia assembled here. The one sacred
building, as if stretched by God, contained
people from [a very long list of nations]. There
were more than 300 bishops, while the number
of elders, deacons, and the like was almost incalculable.
Some of these ministers of God were
eminent for their wisdom, some for their strict
living, some for their patient endurance of persecution,
and others for all three. Some were
venerable because of their age, others were
conspicuous for their youth and mental vigor,
and still others were only just appointed. The
Emperor provided them all with plenty of food
[and paid their travel].
When the day came for all to gather, it was an incredible
sight. This cloud of bishops, many of whom
were visibly wounded from the recent persecution,
stood as the Emperor of Rome—the “deified” head
of the very state that had killed the Lord himself 300
years before—entered the room. He came neither as
an enemy nor a pagan, but as one who had himself
submitted to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. On
seeing the wounded and confessing bishops, Constantine
set aside his state garments and refused to
sit until they all had been seated—something he
likely would have done only for his own mother
(perhaps he had already begun to see the Church
as his Mother)! As the council began, Constantine
exhorted the bishops to maintain their faithfulness
to Christ as they sought to bring the Church to unity.
In addition, the emperor affirmed publicly that the
decisions were theirs to make—and, as emperor, he
would abide by their rulings in council. The shock
to these poor bishops must have been considerable.
Capping off the scene at Nicea, as the council
began, the emperor went around the room greeting
the various bishops. It is said that as he offered
them the ancient Christian greeting, the holy kiss,
he would also venerate their wounds, the stumps
where their hands had been cut off, and the marks
on their faces. At one point, he made his way to
one Bishop Thomas, who was, the accounts agree,
frightful to look at. Apparently, some local governor
hated the Christians and had held Thomas in prison
for 22 years. Each year he had cut off part of Bishop
Thomas’s body: one year, his right leg; the next, his
left. One year, his right arm and then the left. The
same fate befell his lips, eyes, and ears. When the
emperor saw him, it is said that Constantine wept,
fell down in prostration before the maimed saint,
and kissed his wounds.
A trend of our times is to glibly categorize people
and to see them forever locked into the category the
culture bestows upon them. Sometimes, even we
Orthodox Christians find ourselves tempted to see
everyone, from bishops to heretics and historical
figures in the Church, either as flawless heroes or as
über-villains. When we hear the word “saint,” many
of us imagine some infallible, immaculate figure.
One of the great gifts of Orthodoxy, however, is
that we don’t need to imagine that our saints were
perfect. So often, in our reading of the Scriptures or
of the lives of the saints, we see that the holy and the
broken coexist. For instance, in Holy Saturday’s Old
Testament readings, we celebrate the life of scheming
Jacob and relish the prophecy of reluctant Jonah. We
honor Peter’s tears of repentance by reflecting on his
three-fold denial of Christ. We commemorate Saint
Paul being mindful, not only of his dramatic conversion
and bold actions as an apostle, but also of
his occasional, yet undeniable, crankiness (it seems
that the Church routinely pushes us to consider the
unique personal qualities of each saint: the maternal
love of an abbot, the strength of a female ascetic, the
determination of a child martyr, and so on). We
claim to follow a Savior who surrounded himself
with redeemed, yet flawed, sinners. And we come to
recognize that the Christian life is nothing if not a
journey in God—a journey that transforms, renews,
and covers the “multitude of our transgressions.”
As we who were brought up on ideas such as
those in Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code reflect on the
mixed legacy of the man whom Orthodox Christians
venerate as Saint Constantine, we have an opportunity
to break free from easy categories. Indeed, we
can see in Constantine a man of blood who (re-)
forged an empire. And yet, the Church suggests to
us that Emperor Constantine is far more than just a
clever ruler who legalized Christianity. In presenting
him as a saint, the Church invites us to consider
the context of Emperor Constantine’s life and to
see in him a flawed yet heroic figure who stretched
himself, tried to do good as far as he could see it,
and came—almost miraculously—to put his whole
faith in Christ.
The Rev. Justin Patterson is the rector of Saint
Athanasius Orthodox Church in Nicholasville, Kentucky.
31 jacob's well

The Working Out
of God’s Love
On the Road to Emmaus
Iconographer Seraphim O'Keefe paints above
the main entrance of Holy Cross Church
in Medford, New Jersey.
by archpriest John Shimchick
few weeks before he died in August, I was
A able to visit Father Steven Belonick and his wife,
Deborah, at their home in Stratford, Connecticut.
Father Steven was an old friend and a veteran of our
diocese: He served for two decades in Pearl River
and Binghamton, New York—the period when he
and Deborah helped launch Jacob’s Well—and then
for another 13 years at Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox
Theological Seminary. At the time of our summer
visit, he was nearing the end of his long bout with
leukemia. We talked for several hours that day about
his life, family, ministry, and sickness. “When I was
young and trying to figure out what to do with my
life,” he recalled, “I said to God: ‘Either abandon
or love me.’”
He knew, all the way up to his time in hospice,
that God had never abandoned him. Yet, the
working out of this love had required him to trust
God in ways that forced him to face a number of
risks along the way. For Father Steven, these meant
confronting important life and career decisions that
might have disappointed the expectations of his
family or culture. They meant entrusting his ministry
and his immediate family’s wellbeing to the
administrative decisions of the Church. And at the
end, he had to trust God to take care of his wife,
children, and grandchildren. Both of his sons’ wives
were pregnant at the time of his death. Convinced
of God’s love, he was able to say: “In the end, I did
not lose a thing.”
Father Steven accepted the challenge that faces
everyone desiring a relationship with another
person: If I trust you, do my best to love you, and
open myself to you and potentially let you hurt or
leave me, what will you do? What will I do?
This question, and its answer, runs through the
Scriptures and every Divine Liturgy:
◗ In You, O Lord, I put my trust; let me
never be put to shame. (Psalm 71:1)
◗ Uphold me according to Your word,
that I may live; and do not let me be
ashamed of my hope. (Psalm 119:116)
◗ “Do not forsake us who hope in you” (Divine
Liturgy, Prayer after the First Antiphon)
The answer to these questions can be heard in
the conversation between Jesus and two disciples on
the way to Emmaus following His Resurrection. Not
immediately recognizing Him, Luke and Cleopas
explained to their unknown travelling companion
their dismay in the events that led to the death of
Jesus:
“We had hoped that he was the one to redeem
Israel” (Luke 24:21). Jesus responded to them, “‘O
foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that
the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to
have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?’
And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He
expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things
concerning Himself ” (24:25–27). Then while staying
overnight and joining them for supper, “He took
the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to
them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized
Him; and He vanished out of their sight. They
said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us
while He talked to us on the road, while He opened to
us the scriptures?’ And they rose that same hour and
returned to Jerusalem and they found the eleven…
[and] they told what happened on the road, and how
He was known to them in the breaking of the bread”
(24:30–35).
Recently, my parish in Medford, New Jersey,
completed a multi-year iconographic project. We
began its design by asking: What image would
best represent what we, as an Orthodox Christian
community, have to offer ourselves and our guests?
The conclusion was: the story of what happened on
the disciples’ to Emmaus—where a model for trust
in Jesus was revealed in the breaking of the bread.
The working out of these themes is featured in the
beautiful effort of iconographer Seraphim O’Keefe.
This icon, of course, provides a visual summary
of the movement that takes place within every
Divine Liturgy—communion with God’s Word
and with his Body and Blood. The Liturgy is the
continual affirmation of God’s love and His pledge
to never let those who trust in him be put to shame.
Luke, Cleopas, and Father Steven Belonick understood
this and told others. We are encouraged as
well at the end of the Liturgy to “depart in peace”
jacob's well 32

and to share that same message with those we encounter—or
at least to live in such a way that bears
witness to that message.
In each of us, this witness begins with the desire
to encounter Jesus somewhere along the way in our
own lives. It continues when we desire to develop
and integrate this relationship within the risks of
community life. When we individually partake of
Holy Communion, we ask that God would “unite
all of us to one another who become partakers of
the one bread and cup in the communion of the
Holy Spirit” (Prayer after the Consecration, Liturgy
of Saint Basil). Being united with God and others
allows us to be members of a different kind of community,
one that can still experience difficulties but
is empowered by God through his Word, Body, and
Blood with the means for healing and reconciliation.
Believing that God will not put us to shame is
one thing, but what happens when that trust is challenged
or is broken within community life? What
can be done? Can it be restored?
If difficulties have emerged out of anger or misunderstanding,
and if there is good will on both
sides, then healing is always possible. One must
begin in prayer by interceding for the person(s)
involved. It’s often said that while we do not always
know how intercessory prayer to God works in
someone else’s life, he can at least work in changing
our own hearts. Then there is Christ’s recommended
approach to conflict resolution: Begin by
speaking to the person privately; if that fails, then
try again with one or more witnesses. The last resort
is to “tell it to the church” (Mt 15:17). If nothing else,
we always approach one another at the beginning
of Great Lent and sincerely apologize at the Vespers
of Forgiveness.
Trust, hope, risks, and peace—as witnessed to in
the life of Father Steven Belonick, the story of Luke
and Cleopas, and within the dynamics of community
life—can be the means for a life-long encounter
with God’s love.
The V. Rev. John Shimchick is the rector of the
Orthodox Church of the Holy Cross in Medford, New
Jersey, and the former Editor-in-Chief of Jacob's Well.
33 jacob's well

science
The Myth of
the Flat-Earth Myth
by Noah Beck
jacob's well 34

If, like me, you grew up in the 1980s and ’90s,
you learned from your teachers, your textbooks,
and perhaps a TV/VCR combo that rolled into the
classroom on a giant cart that Christopher Columbus
set sail in 1492 for the east by heading west,
proving once and for all that the earth was round.
The scene might be emblazoned in your mind as
it is in mine: a young and brave Columbus standing
before a dark and brooding council of hooded
theologians, each of whom believed the earth was
some kind of cosmic pancake, endeavoring to prove
to them through logic and reason that they live on
a sphere.
There is one problem with that scene: It’s a myth.
Humanity had never held the idea that the earth was
flat. No educated person, no scholar, no university,
no sailor, in Columbus’s day or before, believed in
a flat earth. In fact, the Greek mathematician Eratosthenes
not only knew the earth was spherical, he
calculated its circumference by measuring a stick’s
shadow in Alexandria on the summer solstice and
knowing the distance south to Syene, where the sun
was directly overhead. His calculation was within
10% of the value we know today. He even went on to
measure the tilt of earth’s axis within a degree and
the length of the year as precisely 365 ¼ days. As you
can tell by his name, Eratosthenes was no modern
thinker or even a contemporary of Columbus. This
was in 240 B.C.
Surely, then, it must be that the ancient Greeks
were enlightened, and Columbus and his Renaissance
contemporaries were ushering in a rebirth
out of what must have been dark ages in between,
no? Actually, the phrase “Dark Ages” was coined
by the Italian writer Petrarch in the 14th century.
Petrarch, among other humanists of his day, denied
the scientific, artistic, and philosophical advancements
of the previous 1,000 years. From his vantage
point in Italy, he yearned for the glory of the Roman
Empire before its division and the subsequent fall
of the west. In his book, Inventing the Flat Earth,
historian Jeffery Burton Russell writes, “The Humanists
perceived themselves as restoring ancient
letters, arts, and philosophy. The more they presented
themselves as heroic restorers of a glorious past,
the more they had to argue that what had preceded
them was a time of darkness.” Petrarch loved traveling
to Europe to rediscover and republish classic
Latin and Greek texts. But whom did he think had
maintained and meticulously transcribed them for
the past 1,000 years? In reality, the “Dark Ages” (a
concept we also learned in elementary school) were
not so dark after all.
Some 300 years hence, Petrarch’s influence was
obvious in the pseudo-historical writings of Washington
Irving. Irving, one of America’s most popular
writers in the early 19th century, is best remembered
today for his short stories “Rip Van Winkle” and
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” It’s less widely remembered
that while he was traveling in Europe in
the 1820s, Irving gained access to a massive archive
of Spanish history, and set out to write a multi-volume
biography of Columbus. But finding the real
story of Columbus a tad dry, Irving fabricated the
flat-earth myth and promoted the reason-versus-religion
narrative that accompanied it. The semi-fictional
account was passed off as a faithful biography,
and it was the most popular biography of Columbus
for the next 100 years. Drama sells.
What is perhaps more interesting than the
genesis of this myth is its persistence. Why do so
many people still believe it? It is because we humans
seek patterns and order in this world. Facts, ideas,
and experiences bombard our brains every hour
of every day. Unless we are consciously curious
and open to conflicting narratives, our default is
to accept the ideas that fit our predetermined worldview
and to discard the rest. In the case of the
flat-earth myth, by the turn of the 20th century the
conventional worldview in Europe and America was
one of ongoing war between science and religion.
For much of the population, religion had been relegated
to mere superstition that belonged in the past
and science promoted to the only source of truth.
From such a lopsided epistemological framework,
a rational and scientific Columbus confronting
unenlightened medieval Christians fits the boxes
already present in one’s own mind and is readily
accepted as truth. As this myth became more widespread
during the 20th century, medieval historians
and historians of science presented ever-increasing
empirical evidence of its falsehood, but to no avail.
In an ironic twist, our desire for such stories that
fit our worldview won out over evidence and logic.
This is an all-too-common story in human history:
tidy convenient narratives winning out over facts.
Lest we arrogantly sit in judgment against the
champions of progress or religion’s supposed scientific
enemies for peddling false narratives, we
ought to remind ourselves of how easily susceptible
religious communities are as well to such dubious
storytelling. The lesson is that everyone is vulnerable
to warping the truth to fit a story that promotes
them, their tribe, and its values. Religion is the usual
suspect in this offense, but the Columbus flat-earth
myth demonstrates that science can succumb to the
same. Perhaps it is harder to be objective, neutral,
and scientific than we imagine.
35 jacob's well

The real story of Columbus is much less exciting.
The debate over his travels was not about the shape
of the earth, but rather about its size and the relative
positions of the continents. The best estimates of
his day (dating back to Ptolemy in the 2nd century)
were that the known world of Europe, Asia, and
Africa measured 180° in longitude. The other half
of the planet was ocean to be traversed. Eager to
get on his way with the crown’s support, Columbus
used a more generous (and generally rejected)
225° across. He added 28° more based on Marco
Polo’s travels, fudged Japan out another 30°, and
gave himself another 9° for leaving from the Canary
Islands. On top of spacing out the known world, he
made some unit errors in his assumptions of the
curvature of the earth, making the planet about 25%
too small. At the end of the day, Columbus estimated
a voyage of just 2,400 miles to reach Japan—less
than a quarter of the actual distance of 10,600 miles.
With his crew on the verge of starvation when they
happened upon the New World, Columbus turned
out to be very wrong, but very lucky.
The modern flat-earth myth, which held that
ancient and backward societies thought the earth
was flat until Columbus proved otherwise is, after
thriving for hundreds of years, at last finding its
way to the scrap bin of human ideas. The idea of a
medieval “dark age” is slowly following. Unfortunately,
some of the other myths that go along with
these—the notion that social progress is clean, linear,
and always easy to recognize, or that science and
religion are diametrically opposed—have so far
proven more durable. But while we hope for the
day when those, too, are discredited, we can also
take away some lessons here for our own lives. The
historical arc of the flat-earth myth might remind
us to be more humble and to hold our own assumptions
a little more lightly. It may remind us to look
for wisdom in both ancient and modern sources.
And it should certainly alert to be skeptical about
simplistic stories—especially when they tell us what
we want to hear.
Noah Beck is vice president of active equities at
the investment-management firm Research Affiliates.
He previously worked as a rocket scientist at
Boeing and studied science and religion at Fuller
Theological Seminary. He lives with his wife and
three children in Laguna Nigel, California.
jacob's well 36

Scripture
Heresy and the Scriptural Canon
by Presbytera Jeanne Constantinou
Heresy has played an important role in
Orthodox history. Whatever threats various
heretical movements have posed in the short term,
the Holy Spirit has used them, again and again, to
bring about the refinement of true Christian doctrine.
Had Arius not preached in the 4th century
that Christ wasn’t fully God, there would have been
no reason to convene the Council of Nicea, and the
Church’s fundamental teachings would not have
been set down in the Nicene Creed. Saint Athanasius
might never have written his brilliant tract On
the Incarnation, which remains the best articulation
of basic Christology. And if Nestorius hadn’t
preached, a century later, that Mary should not be
called the “Mother of God,” there would have been
no Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, where her
title “Theotokos” was affirmed as an accurate expression
of the Incarnation of the Son of God.
But this trend has not been limited to the formation
of doctrine. Within the first two centuries
of Church history, two heretical movements also
played a pivotal role in the selection of the Scriptural
canon: Gnosticism and Marcionism. By tracing
how this happened, we can better understand how
the early Christians thought about Scripture and
canonicity, and we can also catch a glimpse of how
the Holy Spirit works through history—in all its
messiness.
Gnosticism
Gnosticism may have been the single greatest threat
to the early Church. It was a religious movement
that combined elements of Greek philosophy, Christianity,
and eastern “mystery” religions. The name
“Gnosticism” comes from the Greek word gnosis,
which means “knowledge.” Gnostics taught that
Jesus was not really human: that is, he seemed to be
human, but he didn’t actually have a physical body.
Rather, Jesus was one of many “aeons,” or divine
spirit beings, who had been produced by the highest
divinity, called the “Unknown Father.” Together, the
Unknown Father, his wife “Silence,” and the aeons
formed the “fullness of divinity” (the Pleroma). The
Unknown Father did not create the physical world,
because matter was evil and the Pleroma was pure
spirit. The creation of the world was a mistake, the
action of an inferior divinity who was not part of
the Pleroma.
Also, according to Gnostic teaching, human
souls were actually divine, but humans were trapped
inside their corrupt physical bodies. Gnostics believed
Jesus was sent to earth to reveal the secret
and heavenly knowledge which souls needed to
return to the Unknown Father. When a person
died, according to the Gnostics, his soul would be
questioned on its path to the afterlife. If the person
knew the answers, the soul could rise upward and
return to the Unknown Father and the rest of the
Pleroma. In this paradigm, salvation had nothing to
do with the death and resurrection of Christ, living
a moral Christian life, faith in Christ, and so on.
Salvation was achieved only by acquiring this secret
knowledge, something akin to knowing the “secret
passwords” or other mysteries of a secret society.
Gnosticism was popular because it incorporated
many beliefs and concepts from Greek philosophy
which many people assumed were absolute
truths. It also appealed to the vanity and elitism of
the Gnostics, who believed they were better than
ordinary Christians who did not know the “secrets”
and therefore had no hope of salvation. But Gnostic
teachings were not supported by the Christian tradition
or the Gospels. The Apostolic writings, all of
which dated back to the first century, describe Jesus
teaching that forgiveness, love, mercy, faith, humility,
and following Him to the Cross were necessary
for salvation, not “secret knowledge.” The Jesus of
the Gospels was fully human: he had a mother, he
was born, grew up, and at times was tired, hungry,
and thirsty. He suffered, bled, and died, and rose
from the dead in the flesh.
Gnostics knew their doctrines could not be
defended by citing the Apostolic writings, so what
could they do to promote their ideas? They wrote
their own gospels and falsely attributed them to
Apostles to try to lend Gnostic teachings legitimacy.
Gnostics wrote false gospels attributed to Thomas,
Peter, and Judas as well as false Pauline Epistles and
a false Book of Acts. The Gnostics claimed these
writings had always existed and had only been
37 jacob's well

Slavonic Gospel
(c. 14th century)
jacob's well 38

“hidden” (apocrypha, in fact, means “hidden” in Greek). But the
earliest of these phony gospels was composed in the mid-second
century, long after the Apostles were dead, and most were
composed in the third century and later.
The fake Gnostic gospels never fooled the Church, which
knew which writings were from the first century and which had
only “suddenly” appeared. The Church also knew which writings
were genuine by their content, since Gnostic gospels were
drastically different from the true Apostolic writings. The fake
gospels emphasized knowledge and secrets rather than purity
of heart, faith, and other virtues. But Church leaders began
to realize they would need to officially separate the genuine
Apostolic scriptures from the counterfeits.
Marcion
The second factor to catalyze the creation of the Christian
canon was the preaching of Marcion, a presbyter from Asia
who began preaching around the year AD 150. He taught that
the God of the Old Testament was not the same God whom
Jesus preached. This was a problem, of course, because there is
only one God, not two. Marcion also taught that Judaism was a
failed religion and argued the Church should reject everything
Jewish, including the Jewish Scriptures. Beside the fact that the
Savior himself was Jewish, as were all the Apostles, Marcion’s
idea posed a practical problem: the Jewish Scriptures were the
only official Scriptures the Church had at the time! Marcion
also disapproved of most of the Apostolic writings. He only
accepted the epistles of Saint Paul and his own edited version of
Luke’s Gospel, which left out the portions that did not suit him.
Marcion’s teachings shocked the Church. Most of the Apostles
had been dead for over 100 years. All that remained was
their teaching in the form of the oral tradition and the few
writings which they had left behind. Now Marcion was rejecting
those writings or deliberately corrupting them. How
could he even think of doing such a thing? Possibly because
in the mid-second century, only the Jewish Scriptures (what
we call the “Old Testament”) were considered Scripture by
the Christians. If Apostolic writings were not “Scripture,” why
couldn’t they be altered? But ironically, Marcion’s threat to
reject or alter Apostolic writings is what prompted Christians
to change their perception of those very writings: Christians
realized that the Gospels were not simply the “memoirs” of the
Apostles, but “Scripture” inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Canonization
The selection of a specifically Christian canon would not begin
until around 200 and the discussion would last for roughly
two centuries before a consensus was reached. But the rise of
Gnosticism and Marcion marked a turning point. For approximately
170 years, Christians had considered only the Jewish
Bible to be “Scripture,” but in this period they began to think
differently about Apostolic writings, to cherish them, seek to
protect them, and to recognize those writings as also inspired
by the Holy Spirit. Christian writers began to quote from the
Gospel from Dečani Monastery, Serbia.
(c. 14th century)
Apostolic books in the same manner that previously had been
used only to cite the Jewish Scriptures. The terms “Old Testament”
and “New Testament” originated in this period, an
indication that Christians had begun regarding the Apostolic
writings as not only equal to Jewish Scriptures but as superseding
them. Although the Church was challenged by these
heretical movements, the Holy Spirit ultimately used them for
the benefit of the Church and for the glory of God.
Dr. Jeannie Constantinou teaches Biblical Studies and
Early Christianity as a teaching professor at the University of
San Diego. She hosts the podcast Search the Scriptures and the
call-in show Search the Scriptures LIVE! on Ancient Faith Radio.
She is a parishioner at Saint Spyridon Greek Orthodox Church in
San Diego, California. Her husband, Rev. Costas Constantinou,
is a retired Greek Orthodox priest.
39 jacob's well

Illuminated manuscript
Uther Pendragon, Aethelbert, King Arthur, and Oswald
of Northumbria, from Epitome of Chronicles of
Matthew Paris. (c. 13th century)
jacob's well 40

History
Aragorn’s Archetype:
Portrait of a Western Orthodox Saint
by Matthew Franklin Cooper
There is a particular challenge to
being—or rather, becoming—Orthodox in a
Western country. One of the largest hurdles that I’ve
heard described when people first enter an Orthodox
church is how ethnic and foreign it feels; this
is a feeling I can sympathize with. The first two Orthodox
churches I visited personally (Saint Mary’s
Antiochian in Pawtucket, Rhode Island and Saint
Aleksandr Nevsky Church in Saimasai, Kazakhstan)
certainly left this impression on me, and yet they
also filled me with a sense of otherworldly beauty.
It was only when I read the History of the
English Church and People by the great English
clerical historian Saint Bede the Venerable, and
his descriptions of the first Christians to arrive in
Kent, England, that I understood that Orthodox
Christianity does not have to be foreign to us (The
Roman monks who converted the English did so
in a procession, with images of the face of Christ
painted on wooden boards!). The Orthodox Christian
saints of the British Isles in late antiquity can,
and should, speak to us converts who arrive from
a Western culture. The Church herself assures us
in her doctrines that it is not necessary for us to
become ersatz Greeks or Russians to be fully Orthodox,
but sometimes we may need reminders that
are more tangible, indeed more iconic. These can be
found in the examples of pre-Schismatic saints such
as Óswald, the saintly seventh-century Martyr-King
of Northumbria. The man looms large in the Christian
imagination of the British Isles, having served
not only as Holy Bede’s model of the ideal king, but
also—to speak to a ready pop-culture reference—the
model for Aragorn in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of
the Rings trilogy.
Óswald was born in 604 and raised in exile, his
family having met with misfortune before any of
the English nobility of the north were ever baptized.
His father, Æþelfríð, King of Bernicia (the northern
sub-kingdom of Northumbria—the counterpart of
York-based Deira in the south), was killed in 616 in
battle against the inhabitants of East Anglia (around
Norfolk and Suffolk nowadays) when Óswald was
probably only 11 or 12 years of age. The boy was
forced to flee with his brothers into the Scottish
kingdom of Dál Riata (in the far west, nowadays encompassing
Argyll and parts of Ulster in Northern
Ireland). He became aware of Christianity through
the Scottish monks on the isle of Iona, and it was
there that he received Christ.
Several of Óswald’s relatives were killed during
his absence, and around age 30, he returned to beat
back the invaders, mustering an army of about 700
Scots and exiled Angles. On the eve of the battle,
he planted a crucifix in the ground and prayed for
God’s favor. At the break of dawn, the Angles attacked,
setting the Britons to flight and cutting them
down as they ran. The crucifix which Óswald had
stood there later worked many wonders and was
known for healing the sick. For a hundred years
after, English folk would still soak wood slivers from
this cross in water, such that sick men or beasts
might be cured by drinking it.
Óswald carried on the missionary work his deceased
uncle had started in the province. He completed
the construction of a cathedral in York, and
brought back with him several Scottish monks, including
the gentle, mild, and moderate Saint Aidan,
to whom he gave the isle of Lindisfarne, which
would later grow to be hallowed and many-storied
through the fruits of Saint Aidan’s ascetic labors.
Saint Aidan at first did not speak English, so Óswald
himself —who spoke fluent Scottish and English—
served as Aidan’s interpreter as he traveled on foot
throughout his kingdom. Óswald also gave great
sums of money for the establishment of churches
and monasteries and invited more holy men and
brothers from Scotland to teach the new English
monks how to live a regular and disciplined life of
prayer. In this way, Óswald became a great benefactor
to the Christian tradition of the Celts.
41 jacob's well

TROPAR TO SAINT OSWALD
Mighty works did the holy Óswald King
Accomplish for the Faith: For in his great and surpassing love ,
He willingly laid down his life for the people of God.
Wherefore, Christ God filled his sacred relics
With mighty power, to heal the sick
And move men’s souls to compunction.
Óswald became famed for his humility, and for
his love for the poor. As Holy Bede recounts in his
above-mentioned History, on one Pascha, Óswald
and Saint Aidan were about to feast on a silver tray
loaded down with many fine delicacies and rich
meats. Just then one of Óswald’s retainers, whose
job it was to stand out in the street and give to the
needy, came telling King Óswald that a great throng
of poor and homeless folk had gathered to beg alms.
Óswald at once ordered the Paschal feast to be given
to them, and the silver tray broken up and distributed
amongst the needy. When this was done, Saint
Aidan prophetically grabbed the king’s hand and
exclaimed: “May this hand never perish!”
Not only was Óswald a generous proponent of
the poor, but he also was a remarkably effective
prince in political terms. He managed to unify,
without bloodshed, the kingdoms of Bernicia and
Deira into a single Northumbrian kingdom. He kept
up friendly relations with the newly-christened West
Saxons, who had been baptized by Saint Berin. He
served as godfather to Cynegils, King of Wessex,
and married his daughter Cyneburg—they had
one son together, Œðilwald, who would rule the
sub-kingdom of Deira after his father’s death. His
kingdom and his influence indeed extended so far
that Óswald was called “Brytenwealda”: “Wide-Ruler”,
the equivalent of the Irish title of High King.
Bede recounts that Óswald was steadfast in
prayer and often rose early in the morning to keep
the service of Lauds. The king would also pray constantly
throughout the day, and whenever he sat to
eat or rest, he would do so with his palms up as his
mind was constantly on the Lord. He ruled Northumbria
for eight years.
Óswald fell in battle against Penda of Mercia at
the Battle of Maserfield in 642, at the age of 38. He
is said to have been praying for the souls of his soldiers
when he was killed. Penda had Óswald’s body
beheaded, and his head and right arm mounted on
stakes for display. Óswald’s successor Óswíu would
later visit the place and remove the holy king’s relics:
the head and body were translated to Lindisfarne,
while the arm that Saint Aidan had blessed was sent
to Bamburgh, where it proved to be incorrupt as
the saint had prophesied. Some years later Óswíu’s
daughter Saint Ósþrýð—a fast friend both to the
Church and to Óswald’s widow Cyneburg—would
have her uncle’s relics translated to Bardney Abbey
in Lincolnshire (the arm is now in the care of Peterborough
Cathedral).
Bede waxes at length about the number of miracles
later attributed to Óswald’s cross, Óswald’s
relics, and the spot where Óswald fell at Maserfield.
When one of his arms touched the ground there, a
holy well was said to have sprung up. A little boy in
a monastery was cured of the ague when he went
to pray at Saint Óswald’s tomb. A sack of earth from
Maserfield, hallowed by the saint’s blood, was hung
from a rafter in a thatch-and-wattle house which
caught fire; only the beam on which the sack had
been hung was spared from the flames. Later, many
poor folk would take a pinch of this earth with some
water to be cured of various maladies.
Saint Óswald remained highly popular throughout
the Old English period, and his name graces 70
churches throughout England. His good name even
spread to the Continent—particularly France and
Germany—but seems to have fallen into obscurity
after the Norman Conquest of England in the 11th
century. Still, the literary figure of Aragorn seems
to prove that King Óswald’s hold on the English
imagination was fairly indelible. Holy and righteous
martyr-king Óswald, friend to the poor and bringer
of the Gospel to Northumbria, we beseech you to
intercede with Christ our God to save our souls!
Matthew Franklin Cooper is an elementary
schoolteacher. He maintains the website The Heavy
Anglo Orthodox (heavyangloorthodox.blogspot.
com), where he writes regularly about Orthodox
Christian history (including saints in the pre-Schismatic
West), books, geopolitics, and post-Soviet
film. He is a father of two and a parishioner at Saint
Herman's Orthodox Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
jacob's well 42

parenting & Family life
And Then You Came for Me:
A Story of Adoption and Faith
by Matushka Lauren Huggins
One morning in the fall of 2008, as the
sun rose over our home in Colorado Springs,
my two-year-old adopted son and I were sitting at
our breakfast table. He was born in Ethiopia and
had been living with us for about a year. Between
bites of cereal, he said something that took me
aback: “Mommy, when I was in the orphanage, I
was looking all around for you.” His eyes became as
big as saucers, and he turned his head from side to
side. “I was waiting and waiting for you and wondering
when you would come... and then you came
for me!”
Since our engagement, my husband and I had
known we would like to adopt. We had been inspired
by a family in our church who had adopted
five brothers and sisters from Mexico, though they
already had several birth children in high school.
They were not wealthy, but it didn’t seem to matter,
as they always had joyful smiles on their faces. After
I gave birth to a son and daughter, our desire to
adopt only grew stronger. I was working as a nurse
and my husband taught special education. We knew
the love that parents have for children firsthand and
we wanted this love to multiply. For us, as a young
family, it was a way of striving to fulfill Christ’s
commandments.
Why did we decide to adopt children from Ethiopia?
In part, it was because we had family living
in Africa whom we had visited previously. Another
factor was that Ethiopia has a large Orthodox population
with deep historical roots. We wanted to
help our children connect with this piece of their
heritage.
The paperwork was overwhelming! The adoption
agency put us through an extensive home study,
delving into personal issues from our past. We went
through background checks and psychological
testing, and we had to prove we could provide financially
for the new children and give them health
insurance. We were also surprised by the up-front
cost: the fees, we learned, would amount to at least
$25,000, and might run as high as $50,000. However,
we applied for several grants and thankfully received
one. We sold a car. Our extended families
chipped in, and the Ethiopian ladies of the church
cooked a feast to help us raise money. The hardest
part of the process was, was… WAITING. I would
check my email several times a day, hoping for any
piece of news. We had to remind ourselves that our
child had suffered much more to be in the position
to be adopted.
After 12 months, the time came for us to travel
to Ethiopia and finally hold our new baby in our
arms. We went to a large, well-organized orphanage
in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia. From
our guest house, we were awakened each morning
by the sounds of roosters crowing and the Orthodox
morning prayers being chanted in Ge’ez (an
ancient Ethiopian language) over the loudspeaker
throughout the town. After that, the Muslim prayers
would start over the loudspeaker as well. It was a
joy to walk into the room where our new little one
was being cared for by attentive nannies. A year after
we brought him home, we returned to Ethiopia and
adopted a second child, a 7-month-old girl.
43 jacob's well

Our life together is a joy, but it certainly required
adjustments. When we brought our son home, he
spent months screaming louder than any child I
have ever heard. He woke up crying, hourly, every
night. I knew he had been through a traumatic
infancy, and I assumed it was a natural result of
his experience. It was also a coping mechanism. In
the orphanage, he would do that and immediately
get a bottle. He’d been so well fed that he was the
biggest baby there.
Our adopted children have asked questions
about their skin color, their birth parents, and other
details about their backgrounds. We have a good
bit of family information for our son, but now that
he’s 13, it is difficult for him to talk about it. Meanwhile,
we have very little background information
about our 10-year-old daughter, but she talks about
it several times a week. We’ve realized it is important
to let them be where they are in that process. At
the same time, we have tried to incorporate food,
clothing, history, art, music, and a little language
from their birth country into our home.
We moved to Saint Tikhon’s Seminary in 2010,
and then to the small town of Durango, Colorado,
where my husband is now assigned as a priest. Our
children do stand out here. They are not white, but
they don’t feel fully Ethiopian, because they were
not raised there, nor are they part of typical African-American
culture. This certainly may lead to
questions of identity. It is our job to provide them
with a safe, loving, nourishing haven while they
continue to struggle and grow through these crosses.
Because they were so young when we began the
process, adoption has seemed natural for our birth
children. In fact, when our birth son was 5 years old,
he said, “Let’s have another baby! Let’s go to the
airport!” He was used to greeting my husband and
me at the terminal to meet his new siblings. Even
now as teenagers, they feel that our family situation
is normal. They see no difference between adopted
or birth siblings. All of them have said that they will
consider adoption for their own families when they
are parents.
I want to encourage more Orthodox families to
consider adoption—and not only as a fallback when
giving birth doesn’t work out. We can allow Christ
to manifest His love through us by opening our
homes, lives, and hearts to children in need. Some
of the laws and procedures have changed since my
husband and I went through the process—for instance,
Ethiopia no longer allows overseas adoptions—but
the need is still tremendous. According
to UNICEF, there are globally 153 million orphaned
children. In the United States in 2017, there were
690,000 children in the foster-care system. It is hard
to truly comprehend these numbers.
There is a beautiful line in a hymn to the Theotokos
that my husband often sings to our children
at bedtime, praising her as the one “Who rescuest
the perishing and receivest the orphaned and intercedest
for the stranger.” It may be that the Lord
has adoption in his plans for you, or maybe you can
support families who are adopting or fostering. For
example, respite care is needed to give foster parents
some personal time as they can only let certified
caretakers babysit the foster children.
Our infant adopted son had never set foot in an
Orthodox church before we brought him into our
home parish in Colorado Springs. He had a long
birth name, which included Michael, as it was a
family name. As I held him in my arms during services,
he would often reach for a large icon of Archangel
Michael, as if he knew him. He would also
venerate the icons the way it is traditionally done
in Ethiopia, by laying his forehead down on them
and then kissing them. To me, this was a reminder
that though these children had experienced hardship
very early on, God and His angels were always
with them; even in loneliness, even in darkness. I
cannot endorse any particular adoption website, but
see the resource links below if you’re interested in
learning more.
◉ adoptuskids.com
◉ showhope.org
◉ zoeforlifeonline.org
◉ goarch.org/-/service-of-the-adoptionof-a-child
Lauren Huggins is a nurse and the mother of four
children. She is also the wife of Father Benjamin
Huggins, priest of Saint Andrew’s Orthodox Church
(OCA) in Delta, Colorado. She lives with her family
in Durango, Colorado.
jacob's well 44

Liturgy and Life
The Manna, the Tablets, and the Rod:
On the Feast of the Entrance
of the Mother of God
by Hieromonk Herman (Majkrzak)
Every year at the end of November, we
celebrate the Entrance of the Theotokos into
the Temple, the day when her parents brought her
to live in the Temple at Jerusalem until she would
become betrothed to Saint Joseph. This feast honors
in particular the girlhood of the Mother of God.
The surpassingly holy childhood of Our Lady was
unique, just as unique as her surpassingly holy
adulthood. She is, as the poet William Wordsworth
wrote, “Our tainted nature’s solitary boast.” However,
we all share the same human nature as the Mother
of God. We are, all of us, sons or daughters of our
common first-parents, Adam and Eve. And this
means the life of the Holy Virgin is not only an
exalted inspiration for us, but also a model. And
she is a model for us not only in her motherhood,
but also in her childhood.
The feast day’s reading from the Epistle to the
Hebrews is instructive here:
Behind the second curtain stood the tabernacle
called the Holy of Holies, having the golden
altar of incense and the ark of the covenant
covered on all sides with gold, which contained
a golden jar holding the manna, and Aaron’s rod
that budded, and the tablets of the covenant.
(Hebrews 9:3–4)
This passage gives us a list of the sacred objects
that were treasured up within that golden chest,
called the Ark of the Covenant. All these objects
bore some connection to the Exodus from Egypt,
when Israel was delivered from slavery and crossed
the Red Sea. But for the Church of the New Israel—
that’s us—all of these objects are also understood
in one way or another as prefiguring the Mother
of God. They are foreshadowings—or, to use the
technical term, types—of the Holy Virgin, each of
them revealing something special about her. Thus
the Church sings during the vesting of the bishop
at a hierarchical Liturgy: “The prophets proclaimed
thee from on high, O Virgin: the jar, the staff, the
tables of the law…”
The jar containing the manna shows that the
Virgin contained in her womb the Bread of Life, our
Lord Jesus Christ. The tablets of the Law are a figure
of Our Lady who bore the eternal Word of God, not
engraved on stone, but formed from her very flesh
and blood. And the rod—Aaron’s rod that miraculously
blossomed and produced almonds—is, as
the Canon for the feast explains, a prefiguring of the
divine childbirth of the Holy Virgin (cf. Num. 17:8;
Canon 2, ode 4, trop. 6, see Festal Menaion, p. 180).
But the Entrance of the Theotokos gives occasion
to consider these three types or figures of the
Virgin from a somewhat different vantage point.
The manna, the tablets, the rod: each of them shows
us an indispensable characteristic of true and godly
childhood, and, therefore, of true and godly parenthood.
First, manna, of course, was the miraculous
bread that God sent down every day on His quite
ungrateful people as He led them through the desert.
He nourished them despite their frequent complaining
and grumbling. He lavished His love on them.
He fed them with the finest wheat (Ps. 80:16). Our
holy Lady, sojourning during the years of her girlhood
in the Holy of Holies, was fed every day by an
angel, who brought her heavenly bread.
O Virgin, fed in faith by heavenly bread in the
temple of the Lord, thou hast brought forth unto
the world the Bread of life. (Praises of the feast,
third sticheron. Festal Menaion, page 194)
The icon of the feast depicts this angel and this
bread in the top-right corner. God nourished this
holy girl, He lavished His love on her, and she received
with gratitude and joy that which the old
Israel received with grumbling. There are lessons
here for parents and children both. It’s critical to
show children affection, support, and warmth—and,
of course, to feed them (every day!) whether they’re
grateful or not. And kids ought to take it as a reminder
to thank their parents for everything. Every
day, and for every meal, parents deserve gratitude.
45 jacob's well

Above: The Theotokos and Christ
Apse at Hagia Sophia
(Mosaic, c. 867)
opposite: Entry of the Theotkos
Manuel Penselinos
(Fresco, c. 14th century)
The food on the family table does not come down
miraculously from heaven. No, it is provided and
prepared by parents’ hard work.
Second, the tablets—the stone tablets on which
the Commandments of God were inscribed by His
finger (Exodus 31:18). Here we see an image of the
duty of parents to instruct their children: to teach
them, to raise them in the fear of God. From the
depths of the sanctuary, Our Lady, throughout
her childhood, listened attentively to the words of
sacred Scripture being read to the people in the
forecourt of the temple. God was instructing her; He
was forming her. And when she heard these words,
she kept them (cf. Luke 11:28). Saint Luke tells us,
“she kept all these things, pondering them in her
heart” (cf. Luke 2:19, 51). Indeed, the Church hails
the Mother of God as the “living book of Christ”
(Canon of the Akathist, ode 1; see Lenten Triodion,
page 427).
As all parents know, they are their children’s first
and most important teachers. But many of the curriculums
our kids are likely to encounter later in
life, perhaps especially in high school and college,
may serve to undermine the intellectual and moral
foundations necessary for a lifelong commitment
to Christ. So as teachers, parents must make the
Christian foundation laid at home as firm and stable
as possible. Parents in the Church must make that
foundation as firm and stable as they can. And let
the children in our parishes remember to listen to
their parents’ lessons and, like the Mother of God,
carefully treasure their parents’ words in their memories
and hearts.
Thirdly, there is the rod—the rod of Aaron that
budded. A rod is used to guide and to correct. Now
Our Lady, as a girl just as an adult woman, was
sinless. She never once wavered from the will of
God, and so Saints Joachim and Ann never had
occasion to correct her. But they did guide her.
There’s a touching detail in the events we remember
on the feast: having arrived at the Temple to
fulfill their vow to dedicate their daughter to God,
Joachim and Ann are concerned that Mary, after
taking her first steps toward the priest, might turn
around and run back to her parents. After all, she
was only three! So, as we sing at Vespers of the feast,
they arrange for her friends, young girls her age,
to go before her, carrying lit candles and torches,
in order to attract her by the beauty of the lights
toward her new home in the temple (cf. Aposticha,
3rd sticheron, Festal Menaion, page 171). In other
words, Joachim and Ann deliberately plan a way to
encourage their daughter to walk toward God—and
away from them!
jacob's well 46

This is the kind of guidance that all parents are
called on to give their children. Not that children
should leave their parents by walking toward the
world, not that they should show any dishonor to
their parents and, by so doing, breaking one of the
Ten Commandments, but that they should walk
toward God—toward the God to Whom we owe
the first place in our lives, Whom we must love
more than parents or children or friends (cf. Mark
10:29–30).
And whenever parents give such guidance, it
always involves self-denial. This is even more the
case when it comes to offering correction or even
punishment. We live in a culture characterized by
overindulgence in every area of life, so it can be easy
to feel guilty whenever we take steps to check the
indulgence, the whims and desires, of our children,
or indeed of anyone for whom we bear responsibility.
Correction is almost always unpleasant for
the one receiving it, certainly, but also for the one
dispensing it. Yet, like that rod of Aaron that budded,
correction can blossom forth and bear the peaceful
fruits of human maturity, discipline, and flourishing
(cf. Hebrews 12:11). And that is certainly a more
worthwhile and lasting gift for our children than
letting them be blown about their entire lives by
every wind of passion, emotion, and instability (cf.
Ephesians 4:14).
Of course, accepting chastisement with humility
isn’t just for kids. After all, our God, as a true
Father, chastens all of us, throughout our whole
lives, because He loves us and desires that each of
us will come to share His holiness (Heb. 12:10). This
process can be difficult and painful. But we can take
comfort in the fact that Our Lady, the most pure
Mother of God, is praying for us all. She’s praying
that when God corrects and disciplines us, we will
not despise it but will take courage, accepting it
with humility and even (if we can manage it) with
gratitude (cf. Hebrews. 12:5; Proverbs 3:11). And the
Holy Virgin is praying for us also that when God,
as our true teacher, gives us a word of instruction,
we will “hold it fast in an honest and good heart,”
not being distracted by “the cares and riches and
pleasures of this life” (Luke 8:15, 14). And, above all,
she’s praying for us that when God lavishes upon
us the great gifts of His love, His nourishment, and
the delights of His grace, we will receive them with
an open and soft heart, so that we too, like Saint
Mary, may bear abundant fruit: the fruit of Christ
in our lives.
the rev. Herman (Majkrzak) is a member of the
monastic brotherhood at Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox
Theological Seminary, where he teaches liturgics
and edits liturgical publications for the monastery
press. He previously taught liturgical music at Saint
Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in New
York and Saint Herman’s Orthodox Theological Seminary
in Alaska.
47 jacob's well

notes from seminary
Trusting the Pastoral Call
Early in 2018, I knew the time had come. The
small business that I’d been building for six
years was bringing in peak profits. My wife and I
were living in Asheville, North Carolina, and we
loved everything about it. But we decided to give it
all up and move to Pennsylvania, where I was ready
to enroll as a seminarian at Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox
Theological Seminary.
I have felt a pastoral call since childhood. When I
was a business major in college, my spiritual mentor
advised me to work hard on my career, so that when
the time came to answer that call, I would have something
to sacrifice to God. I followed his advice and
became a home inspector. I spent a year and a half
studying for three different state licenses. After my
licensing was completed, I handled inspections for
two local insurance companies. By the end of 2017, I
was contracting with many national companies and
my services were in demand. I had more work than
I could handle. I finally had something to sacrifice.
Sacrifice is inherently difficult, and it’s especially
foreign to us in the consumerist culture of 21st-century
America. But in the Scriptures, we find that God
turns sacrifice upside down—rather than resulting in
loss or death, it brings life. Abraham waited until the
age of 100 before God granted him his first-born son,
Isaac. Shortly thereafter, God commanded Abraham
to sacrifice Isaac upon an altar. As Abraham lifted the
knife to slay Isaac, God stopped him, seeing that he
had proven his faith. God then revealed the life-giving
beauty of sacrifice, stating, “Because you have
done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your
only son—blessing I will bless you, and multiplying
I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the
heaven… in your seed all the nations of the earth
shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice”
(Genesis 22:16–18). Through Abraham and Isaac’s
descendants came the nation of Israel, and through
them eventually came the Virgin Mary and our Lord
Jesus Christ, Who indeed has blessed innumerable
people from “all the nations of the earth” with eternal
life.
My wife, whom I met in college and married in
2007, would have been content to stay in Asheville.
We had many friends and a wonderful church family
there, and we loved being surrounded by the mountains.
But I could no longer ignore my calling, and she
by Jeremiah McKemy
strongly agreed that I am called to the ministry. So, in
the spring of 2018, I closed down my business, laying
it upon the altar and trusting God to take care of us.
I made numerous repairs to our home so it would
sell quickly, and in the meantime I was accepted into
Saint Tikhon’s.
With our house under contract and our move to
Saint Tikhon’s quickly approaching, I began to panic.
I could find neither public nor private student loans
for my studies. Knowing I would not be able to work
while attending the rigorous program at STOTS,
I called the seminary to ask for guidance and was
assured by the administration that there were scholarships
available—without which few students would
be able to attend the school. All that was required of
us was that we make the leap of faith and trust that
God would catch us if we acted in obedience to Him.
The experience has been difficult at times for both
my wife and me. We still don’t know where we’ll end
up after we leave the seminary; the Diocese of the
South, which we belong to, runs all the way from New
Mexico to Virginia. However, how can we say that we
trust God if we are unwilling to make sacrifices? I
have seen the fruit of trust and obedience blossoming
forth in our lives and our marriage. As we “commend
ourselves, each other, and all our life unto Christ our
God” (the Divine Liturgy), He has blessed us with
a deepening inner life and the joy that comes with
following the path that He lays before us.
With one year of seminary behind me, my trust in
God is deepening and my appreciation for numerous
unsung heroes is growing. I am referring to those who
have answered God’s call to generosity—these faithful
stewards who work hard to provide for their families,
support their local churches, and make donations to
our seminary. Without their sacrifices and obedience,
we would have no beautiful churches and no
seminarians. Their sacrifice, combined with the men
and women leaving their homelands like Abraham
to answer the call to seminary, ensures the future of
our life-giving Orthodox Faith in this American land.
Jeremiah McKemy is a seminarian at Saint Tikhon’s
Orthodox Theological Seminary.
Bobak Ha'eri, Bobak, License CC-BY-SA-3.0.
jacob's well 48

from my youth
An IOCC Conference in
Minneapolis
This summer I attended a conference with the
International Orthodox Christian Charities
(IOCC) in Minneapolis. There, along with two
dozen other high-school seniors from all over the
country and from various Orthodox jurisdictions,
we spent a week helping the poor and learning
about leadership.
A most memorable experience stemmed from
serving dinner at a soup kitchen. I ate with a man
who had moved to Minneapolis from Washington,
D.C., where his dad worked for the Department of
Agriculture. He had originally come to the Midwest
for college, but he dropped out and then his life
fell apart. As I listened, I realized he just wanted
someone to talk to, to see him as another person,
and to hear his story. The encounter impressed on
me the importance of being present and meeting
people where they are.
During the trip, we also worked with Habitat
for Humanity to build a home for someone in need.
I contributed by helping to paint the exterior. Although
we didn’t get to meet the person who was
to live there, the experience made me think of the
blessings I have. I have a comfortable home to live
in, and I never need worry about having clothing or
by Josh Brad
food. It is all too easy to go about my daily routine
without thinking of those in need. Our work in
service to others brought awareness that I should
do more to share God’s blessings.
Throughout the conference, we regularly celebrated
the different services of the Church: Matins,
Vespers, and Divine Liturgy. Worshiping with my
fellow American Orthodox Christians reminded me
that while we may be divided by jurisdictions, we
are still one Church—the holy Orthodox Church.
The conference also highlighted the close connection
between service and our worship and prayer
lives. Christ meets us in worship and prayer and
equips us with His grace to go out and serve a
broken world.
All told, the conference was a great opportunity
to put my faith into action. I think the conference
is a wonderful experience and would be great for
other teens to experience too.
Josh Brad is a high-school senior and a parishioner
at the Orthodox Church of the Holy Cross in
Medford, New Jersey.
49 jacob's well

Gary Bembridge, License CC-BY-GA-2.0.
from my youth
Holy Land Pilgrimage
Daniel Rogozenski, a senior studying at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, spent
his spring break touring the Holy Land on a trip organized by the Orthodox
Christian Fellowship, the national association of Orthodox student groups on
college campuses. We asked him to describe what he witnessed in Jerusalem and
his broader experiences as an Orthodox young adult.
jacob's well 50

You’re a college student?
Yeah, I go to Rutgers University in New Brunswick. I’m studying computer science.
Were all the students on the trip from New Jersey?
No, they were from OCF chapters all across the country. I went with two friends
from my home parish. The rest of the students, maybe a dozen, were of similar faith
and background.
What was your itinerary like?
We flew into Tel Aviv and then boarded a bus to Jerusalem. Definitely the highlight
of the trip was visiting the Holy Sepulcher. We were accompanied by a bishop, and
he let us go behind the scenes to a room where we venerated an actual piece of the
Cross. It's not a place that tourists are allowed to go. That was probably the closest
I've ever felt to Christ in my faith.
But the most beautiful places we visited were the Monastery of the Holy Apostles
and the Monastery of Saint Mary Magdalene. We also visited Jacob's Well Monastery
and drank from the well. There's a staircase that takes you down beneath the
monastery to a small room where the well is. So, we got to pull water up and drop
it back down.
Did you spend nights at the monasteries or attend services there?
Well, we visited about a dozen churches and monasteries a day, so no. We went to
about a hundred different places in a single week. But we did have one Sunday service.
Any other highlights?
We also got to see the Monastery of the Dormition, which was the burial spot of
Joachim and Anna. You're not allowed to take pictures, but there were chandeliers
or lights hanging from the ceiling, and you went inside this little place. You had to
crawl in, and that's where they actually were. And then you said a prayer and you'd
crawl out.
Also, our guide on the trip was a priest. Not only did he tell us the stories of what
happened and where, but he also spoke about the differences between our religion
and what some other religions believe. That's not typically something you hear
about all the time.
Did the trip have an effect on your spiritual life?
It definitely brought me closer to Christ. It's interesting to actually see and visit the
places that we've learned about and heard about our whole lives.
There’s a lot of fretting these days about young people leaving the faith—and with
good reason. Could you talk about your own decision to stick with it?
I've always been a strong member of the faith. I grew up in a pretty religious town—
East Brunswick. It’s not just Orthodox people; the town is also very Jewish. But in
my experience, not many people in my church have dropped off. When you go to
college, it's harder to find time to practice your faith, but it’s still doable.
51 jacob's well

book Review
On Modern Psychology
and Ancient Wisdom
There is a mental health crisis playing out
on America’s college campuses. Over the last
decade, college students’ rates of depression, anxiety,
self-injury, and suicide attempts have all risen sharply.
Why is this? Are America’s young people facing more
pressure to succeed than in previous generations?
Are they too glued to their screens to get proper exercise
or sleep? Are they worried about finding a stable
career or establishing stable romantic relationships?
Are they terrified of rising global temperatures and
the future of the planet?
In The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan
Haidt, a social psychologist, and Greg Lukianoff, an
attorney who litigates for free speech on college campuses,
argue that the primary cause is a culture of
“safetyism” that has come to dominate parenting and
the academy in the last 10 years. Drawing insight from
such varied sources as the stoic philosopher Epictetus
and the Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
they make the case that well-intentioned adults have
inculcated the youth with what they call the “three
Great Untruths”:
◗ The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t
kill you makes you weaker.
◗ The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning:
Always trust your feelings.
◗ The Untruth of Us vs. Them: Life is a battle
between good people and evil people.
To understand the authors’ perspective, it helps
to start with Lukianoff ’s personal story, which he
relates in the book’s opening chapter. Lukianoff has
been involved with the non-profit organization FIRE
(Foundation for Individual Rights in Education),
which has focused on protecting free-speech rights
on college campuses since 2001. He has had a frontrow
seat during the last 18 years to see where threats
to free speech have come from, and more important,
the justifications used to limit speech. Up until 2014,
he says, the people pushing for disinviting campus
speakers and limiting hate speech (mostly administrators)
used as a justification the curtailment of racist
or sexist speech. In 2014, the justifications for these
events became medicalized. The typical argument
by Ben Keaster
was that certain ideas from speakers, or even in literature
or coursework, could interfere with students’
ability to function. Lukianoff was surprised because
it was, in many ways, the opposite of what he’d been
taught in therapy in 2008, after he was hospitalized
with depression. His own journey from being suicidal
and depressed to regaining the ability to function was
facilitated by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) was formalized
in the 1960s by psychiatrist Aaron Beck. It is a
short-term, goal-oriented method that is widely held
to be the gold standard in psychotherapy. One of its
key insights is that thoughts, emotions, and behavior
are causally linked and proceed from one to the next.
Put as simply as possible, if you are experiencing “bad”
emotions (such as depression or anxiety), it could be
the result of “bad” thoughts (I am unlovable, I am
fragile, I am in danger). CBT teaches patients to look
critically at their thoughts and to change the ones that
aren’t true, as a way to break a dysfunctional cycle of
thoughts-emotions-behavior-repeat.
As Lukianoff began to get well, he noticed that
campus administrators often modeled cognitive distortions
for students. One of the “bad” thoughts they
perpetuated was that students were in constant danger
and in need of protection (whether from hateful
words, challenging ideas, or discussions related to
specific traumas). It was this new insistence that
censorship was needed for psychological wellbeing
that led Lukianoff to seek out social psychologist
Johnathan Haidt, who confirmed his understanding
that there was indeed a contradiction. Haidt and
Lukianoff are convinced that many of the discussions
about the need for safe spaces, trigger warnings, and,
most alarmingly, treating speech as literal violence,
contain and promote what CBT would identify as
cognitive distortions.
The argument is at its strongest in relation to
anxiety. There is wide agreement amongst the diverse
schools of psychological thought about how to help
someone overcome anxiety. It’s firmly established in
psychology that the best way to overcome fear and
anxiety is from voluntary exposure, in small but increasing
doses, to what frightens the patient. The idea
jacob's well 52

of encouraging students to stay away, in safe spaces,
from words or ideas that they are afraid of is akin to
upgrading the home-security system for an agoraphobic.
The very short-term reduction in anxiety comes
at the expense of personal development. The agoraphobic
not only will not get better but will become
even less likely to leave home than before getting the
security system. This way the agoraphobic, and the
students, are robbed of the long-term recovery that
comes not from learning that the world is safer than
you thought, but from learning that you are stronger
than you realized. This analysis alone, which is not
heavy-handed or particularly ideological, makes this
book a valuable resource for anyone interested trying
to make sense of the past decade.
What may be of even more interest for Orthodox
readers, though, is the foundation on which this
criticism is leveled. Lukianoff and Haidt lay out a
grounding ethic for public discourse that not only has
the potential to cut through the morass of red/blue
electoral politics, but also leaves room for historically-minded
Christians to contribute. You see this quite
clearly in the standards they set for what constitutes a
“Great Untruth.” For something to qualify as a “Great
Untruth” it must meet three criteria:
◗ It contradicts ancient wisdom (Yes!)
◗ It harms individuals and communities
that embrace it (Yes!)
◗ It contradicts modern psychological
research (hmm)
Public discourse centered on these first two principles
is certainly a welcome respite from the tribal fear
and outrage generators that dominate much of our
current landscape. But what about the third principle?
Given that the field of modern psychological research
is in pretty poor shape, it would be understandable to
greet criteria #3 with more skepticism. However, even
here Haidt and Lukianoff have a valid critique, mostly
because when they talk about modern psychological
research, they’re talking about CBT—which overlaps
substantially (although certainly not totally) with the
views of the Eastern fathers of the Church.
To name but one example, Cognitive Behavioral
Therapists typically urge patients to step back and
observe their thoughts dispassionately. Interestingly,
it was the stoic philosopher Epictetus who wrote in
his Encheiridion, “It is not things themselves that
disturb men, but their judgments about these things.
For example, death is nothing dreadful, or else Socrates
too would have thought so, but the judgment
that death is dreadful is the dreadful thing. When,
therefore, we are hindered or disturbed, or grieved,
let us never blame anyone but ourselves, which means
Fibonacci Blue, License CC-BY-GA-2.0. Changes made.
our own judgments.” This quotation was cited often
by the CBT pioneer Aaron Beck. But Epictetus was
equally popular in certain Christian circles during
late antiquity. A Christianized version of the Encheiridion,
supposedly adapted by the monk Saint Neilos
the Ascetic, was circulated widely in the 5th century—
and it kept the above quotation intact.
Haidt and Lukianoff have produced a profoundly
insightful book, one that covers such broad topics
as safe spaces, administrative bureaucracy, student
protests, social media use, parenting practices, political
polarization, and cognitive distortions. The
real genius of the book is its use of basic and proven
cognitive behavioral psychological principles as
the starting point for the cultural analysis of these
issues. Let this approach be an inspiration that it is
still possible, albeit difficult, to have a genuine discussion
of important cultural issues without resorting
to name-calling tribalism. Let it also remind us that
a great rubric for generating solutions is to notice
where there is agreement among ancient wisdom,
modern psychological research, and considerations
of practical utility.
For an excellent review of the various ways a classical
Christian anthropology interfaces with Cognitive Behavioral
Therapy, a better book cannot be found than
Father Alexis Trader’s Ancient Christian Wisdom and
Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy.
Benjamin Keaster is a social worker of 15 years.
He is a father of four and a reader at Holy Ascension
Orthodox Church in Albion, Michigan.
53 jacob's well

Joël van der Loo, License CC-BY-SA-4.0.
television review
The Cost of Lies
by Presbyter Matthew Brown
jacob's well 54

In April of 1986, in a small industrial town in the
north of Ukraine, a test on a nuclear reactor went
haywire, leading to an explosion and a fire that released
massive amounts of radiation into the air. It is
still considered the worst nuclear disaster in history.
But Chernobyl isn’t history, it’s legend. For people
around the globe, Chernobyl is the story of technological
catastrophe. It functions as an archetype
of human error and man’s inability to control his
own technology. But the error of Chernobyl was not
technical in nature; rather, it was rooted in a fatal
flaw. Machines didn’t fail, people did. This series
reminds us of the lesson of Chernobyl: that man
has a very precarious relationship with the truth.
This year’s five-episode mini-series by HBO,
titled “Chernobyl,” attracted more than 7 million
viewers and received massive critical acclaim,
earning a 9.4 rating on Internet Movie Database—
tied for second place as the highest-rated TV show
of all time. What makes this shocking is that the
show’s writer, Craig Mazin, is better known for his
work on less well-received films such as Scary Movie
4 and The Hangover Part III. Yet, Chernobyl delivers
excellent writing, acting, and cinematography. It is
a beautiful production, based partly on the book
Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear
Disaster by the Nobel Prize-winner Svetlana Alexievich.
The first episode introduces us to the life of ordinary
workers in Pripyat. The town is presented as an
idyllic image of Soviet life as children play, mothers
smile, and men head off to work. At the same time,
the drab Soviet architecture, the blocky and cold
apartment complexes, and the washed-out cadaver
tones of the show’s cinematography communicate
the falseness of this utopia. Everything seems fine
but there is a sickness in which all the characters
are colored. Long before we are presented with this
falsehood in the story line, it is hinted at by the
cinematography.
The acting—particularly of Jared Harris as the
scientist Valery Legasov and of Stellan Skarsgard as
the senior Communist Party official Boris Shcherbina—is
superb. These two characters shoulder
the load of mitigating the disaster and potentially
saving millions of lives. Legasov realizes, long
before anyone else, the magnitude of the disaster,
and finds himself fighting against those who refuse
to acknowledge the evidence. The degree of incompetency
and group lying in the first episode is astounding.
And the persistence of lies throughout
the series, even in the face of the real possibility of
repeating the disaster of Chernobyl, is unbelievable.
In one instance, the administrators of the Chernobyl
plant dismiss Valery’s warnings because the
dosimeters—devices for measuring radiation—
read only 3 roentgen, a relatively low amount. But
Legasov points out—as he did earlier at an important
meeting with the USSR’s president, Mikhail Gorbachev,
and other high-ranking party officials—that
3 roentgen is the upper limit of those dosimeters.
Legasov fights repeatedly and hard, eventually
with the help of Boris Shcherbina, to get a highrange
dosimeter. And ultimately—unsurprisingly
to viewers—the new device reads 15,000 roentgen!
“What does that mean?” asks Shcherbina. Legasov
replies, “That means it is giving off nearly twice the
radiation of the bomb at Hiroshima and that’s every
single hour, hour after hour.”
As the story’s hero, Legasov is the lone voice
speaking truth in a society gone mad from telling
too many lies. His is a story of courage. In the final
episode, “Vichnaya Pamyat”, which is set in a Soviet
courtroom, he is faced with the moral task of telling
truth even when doing so will mean suicide. He
knows the disaster at Chernobyl would have ended
far worse had it not been for his efforts.
Boris Shcherbina, sent by the Party to oversee
the disaster’s containment, is transformed over the
course of the series. At the outset, he epitomizes the
self-delusion of Soviet society. But between Legasov’s
efforts and the horrific experiences of Chernobyl,
he comes to realize not only the magnitude
of the disaster, but also the deep sickness of lies
which pervades his country. Slowly, he understands
how the system he’d believed in has betrayed him.
Profound character transformation is difficult to
portray convincingly, and it is a sign of good writing
when it is executed well.
The climax of Shcherbina’s transformation comes
when a robot, borrowed from the West Germans to
perform a critical task in the cleanup, fails in its task.
Shcherbina realizes the robot has failed because
Chernobyl’s administrators were not truthful with
the West Germans about the amount of radiation
the robot would be exposed to. Had they been,
perhaps modifications could have been made or
another robot used. But protecting the Soviet image
of superiority was more important than the lives of
millions across Europe. The scene ends with Shcherbina
having a meltdown of his own, screaming on
the phone to his superiors—an almost unthinkable
action for a Soviet bureaucrat. For him, that’s when
the lies stopped.
”Chernobyl” focuses not only on the leadership,
but also ventures into the lives of ordinary people affected
by the fallout. It shows just how many people
suffered as a result of the denial and cover up. We
get an impressive cross-section of all the lives and
different lots intertwined in this disaster. In each
55 jacob's well

case, these ordinary people simply accept the official
story line, even though it obviously didn’t add up.
They don’t question or object even in the face of the
surreal and absurd.
One story line that wends its way through most
of the series is that of a young mother-to-be. Her
husband, a firefighter and first responder to the disaster,
suffers from radiation poisoning. Her love
and care for him is inspiring, and the fate of her
unborn child, tragic. But throughout her arduous
journey, she too fails to admit to herself the obvious
truth: that her husband is dying and that the story
given her by the doctors is a lie.
There is a moving story of miners conscripted
to dig beneath the power plant, knowing full well
their own fate for doing so and yet knowing the fate
of millions if they do not. The interaction between
the party official who must coerce them to do this
job is humorous, if you find the awkward funny. The
official’s discomfort also speaks to the persistence
of class differences, despite our best efforts to dispel
them. For all their rough edges and impropriety, the
miners possess an authenticity and self-confidence
that is often lacking among the well to-do.
A tangential story is that of a young military man
who, along with two older and experience-hardened
men, is ordered to sweep through the abandoned
villages and cities of the region to kill pets and farm
animals, preventing them from infecting humans
with radiation. The scene is surreal and gruesome;
by the end, their pickup truck is piled high with
animal corpses. It makes for a most odd and unfortunate
coming-of-age story.
If there is criticism surrounding this series, it
concerns inaccuracies of technical and biographical
details as well as the role the series plays in refueling
anti-nuclear hysteria. Fair enough. There are an
inordinate amount of uninformed and overly emotional
opinions regarding the future role of nuclear
power in solving energy and environmental problems.
We can blame Chernobyl for that hysteria to
a large extent. But these criticisms miss the point
of this series. It is not to scare us about the dangers
of nuclear energy, but rather it is to warn us of the
dangers of telling lies.
It’s the moral of the story of “Chernobyl” that
makes the series great. It was not incompetence, or
even inferior technology, that caused the disaster. It
was moral failure, and, specifically, the failure to tell
the truth. Chernobyl is what happens when a whole
society stops being honest with itself. When we tell
lies, repeat them, and pretend we believe them, our
grip on reality grows weak. It is only when we are
honest and truthful about our problems that we
can hope to fix them. Denial is a sure way to remain
stuck in the morass you find yourself in.
I am reminded of a quote from Metropolitan
Anthony Bloom that can help us see the spiritual
dimension of this series: “God can save the sinner
you are, but not the saint you pretend to be.” Telling
the truth, in every facet of our lives but especially
in our spiritual life, is a matter of life and death.
“Chernobyl” makes this plain to see. When we lie
long enough and large enough, we risk a disaster
like Chernobyl. But when we are honest with our
sins and problems, we have hope. This is a lesson
as relevant to our individual lives as it is to our own
contemporary society.
To Mikhail Gorbachev, the Chernobyl explosion
was “perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the
Soviet Union.” He saw it as a turning point that
“opened the possibility of much greater freedom of
expression, to the point that the system as we knew
it could no longer continue.” In his book Private
Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of
Preference Falsification, the Turkish-American
economist Timur Kuran explores the consequences
of the lies that make disasters like Chernobyl
possible. Preference falsification is when, because
of social pressure, threats of violence, or to gain
social favor, people pretend to agree with the prevailing
opinion or order. Kuran argues this is why
the Soviet Union fell so precipitously. Nearly everyone
had stopped believing in the Soviet project, but
everyone was still pretending they did. It just took
the right circumstances, and brave souls, to get the
dominos falling.
This ought to serve as a warning for us. Religious
communities are acutely susceptible to preference
falsification. We ought to be aware of our use of
pressure, especially guilt, in producing falsified
beliefs rather than adherence. It is a reminder of
the impossibility of making anyone do or believe
anything. It reminds us that creating a culture of
honesty and openness in our parishes and in our
homes is crucial to living authentic spiritual lives.
We must be sensitive to the dangers of judging
others and pressures toward conformity, which can
have the exact opposite effect of what we desire. We
can end up just like the Soviet society portrayed in
this mini-series. And everything could come crashing
down around us in a moment.
The series concludes with this haunting line from
Valery Legasov: “And this at last is the gift of Chernobyl:
That I, who once would fear the cost of truth,
now only ask, what is the cost of lies?” The specter
of lies that is Chernobyl should always haunt our
dreams. Some nightmares are gifts.
jacob's well 56

After Holy Communion
by Nick Skiles
It is possible to ring with crystalline purity
like a wineglass traced by fingertips.
Each of us bearing Fingerprints,
evidence in clay.
Whether we be muddiest earth
or turned perfectly transparent,
Our heart of hearts remains
Hidden even to us.
Whether it be holy of holies
or den of demons….Well,
How does it resonate?
Do its walls reverberate
with that lone immutable Note?
Consume the Word and hear
His name sung on your palate.
Taste and see that the Lord is good
Make your heart His palace.
Clench your lips tight; dare not
Speak His mysteries to enemies.
Careful not to purse those lips in a
Pose of betrayal.
Nicholas Skiles’s essays have been published in Front Porch Republic and The
House Blog at Solidarity Hall. He is the author of a self-published, digital chapbook
of poetry titled Unseasonable Poems. He is a father of three and a parishioner at Holy
Assumption Church in Canton, Ohio. This poem originally appeared on Conciliar Post.
57 jacob's well

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