Glory to God for the Coronavirus

The Covid-19 coronavirus, and the Great Corona Panic of 2020 that it has inspired, have undoubtedly had some negative results. It is likely, in our degenerate culture, that some of the people who have gotten sick and have died of the disease did so without repentance, a situation that pains God Himself. Furthermore, a large number of people have lost the ability to support their families, which should be a matter of immense and pressing concern for us Christians. Thus, I don’t mean for the title of this post to be flippant, but rather for it to be a challenge to me to remember to give glory to God for all things, as St. John Chrysostom did with his last breath as he was forced to walk himself to death. Let us then turn from the enumerations of the negatives of the coronavirus pandemic and panic, which there are undoubtedly more of, and consider the many reasons to thank and glorify God for the gifts He has given of both the pandemic and the panic.

Perhaps the most obvious gift, and simultaneously one of the hardest for us sinners to glorify God for is the gift of physical pain, sickness, and suffering. Our first response to sickness and suffering is not generally to glorify God for it, but rather to ask Him to take it away from us, or even to question how He can allow it to fall upon us. Yet we are told by St. Peter that bodily suffering cleanses us from sin. This is echoed in the Akathist of Thanksgiving:

+   Glory to Thee for raising us from the slough of our passions through suffering.

And again:

Priest: How near Thou art in the day of sickness. Thou Thyself visitest the sick; Thou Thyself bendest over the sufferer’s bed. His heart speaks to Thee. In the throes of sorrow and suffering Thou bringest peace and unexpected consolation. Thou art the comforter. Thou art the love which watcheth over and healeth us. To Thee we sing the song: Alleluia!

I am reminded of a man I remember from my childhood. His name, appropriately, was John Christian, and he emanated holiness. He also suffered from very severe and crippling gout. And yet he was joyful. I remember hearing him say that getting gout was the best thing that ever happened to him, because it brought him to God. The pain and suffering of his body purified and perfected his soul.

Suffering is not the only gift God has given through this situation. Another rather obvious gift is that families are once again spending time together. The artificially created fast pace of life has shattered, as families are no longer running back and forth between dozens of obligations. This creates time for family togetherness, and also creates time for silence and thought. Modern man tends to fill his every waking moment with work, entertainment, or noise to avoid ever having a moment alone with his thoughts and God. This escapism has become harder to maintain in the current situation.

Finally, the much bemoaned economic collapse is a gift of God. Realize the the majority of what we refer to as “the economy” is an edifice built on two pillars of sand: Materialism and Usury. Both of these pillars are collapsing before us. With non-essential retailers shut down, and significant restrictions in place at essential retailers, with people freed from the soul-draining daily rush of dozens of artificially created obligations designed to reduce man to nothing but a consumer, the veil of materialism is being lifted from many people’s eyes. People are even turning back to the true and original toil of man, as can be seen by the fact that seeds are sold out in so many places. Furthermore, the inevitable collapse of the predatory system of usury is well underway.

What happens with usury is that banks create money “out of thin air” by also creating debt.

People often state that fractional reserve banking creates money out of thin air, but this is not quite right. In fact, usury within fractional reserve banking creates money out of thin air. To quote the late, great Zippy Catholic:

When you introduce usury, though, is when the black magic appears. If the loan issued by the bank is usurious then the bank is issuing a new security against its balance sheet in return for a wink and a promise by the borrower. The bank then enters the wink-and-promise of the borrower onto its balance sheet as if it were actual property.  So in the case of banks which issue usurious loans, many of the loan ‘bricks’ in their balance sheet castles are imaginary; and in the case of collateralized full-recourse loans the ‘bricks’ are made of weaker material than they appear.

The majority of the current “economic collapse” is really just a collapse of a false economy as banks are erasing money from the books that never really existed in the first place except as debt.

So let us care for those around us who sick and suffering, for those who have lost their jobs, and for those whose allotted time for repentance on earth is drawing to a close. Let us be merciful and compassionate. But let us not forget to glorify God for the many goods things that He is bringing out of this crisis.

+    Glory to Thee for all things, Holy and most merciful Trinity.

3 Mistakes I Made while Leaving Seventh-day Adventism

I can remember hearing many times growing up that Seventh-day Adventists never convert to any other religion. Supposedly, they may stop coming to services, but the SDA “truths” are so incontrovertible that those who once believed them are never able to stop believing them. I also remember, sometime around the age of 12-14, meeting a former SDA who had converted to Lutheranism and thinking she must be an extremely rare individual, a statistical anomaly, the exception that proved the rule.

It wasn’t until after I was well into the process of my conversion to Orthodoxy that I realized that there are plenty of former SDAs who have converted to other religions, particularly Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholicism. For example, my family aren’t even the only former SDAs in our small parish, and I have come to know of many others.

So, this post is for those SDAs who are searching, reading, studying, and finding answers that are leading them away from Seventh-day Adventistism. I am certainly not trying to dissuade you from this path, but I would like to warn you of some pitfalls that I discovered along the way on my own journey to conversion. Perhaps you can learn from my mistakes, and not repeat them.

One of the first mistakes I made in my conversion process was falling into the trap of anger. As I began to read church history and the writings of first-century Christians, I began to be angry at Seventh-day Adventism, at the SDA high school and college I attended, and even at individual people for not teaching me any of this information. In my mind, there was a plot within SDAism to hide information about the early church and the writings of early christians like St Ignatius and Justin Martyr, because these writings so clearly and easily proved that the church of the Apostles explicitly rejected certain SDA doctrines. Now, a few years later, I can see that there was no ill-will on the part of my various teachers. One cannot teach what one does not know, and they were as illiterate about the early church as I was. What they did know they taught well and diligently. I now thank God for this early molding, where I was taught to love God, to read the scriptures, and where the hunger in my soul that eventually led me out of SDAism was first awakened.

Another trap I fell into on my journey was the trap of pride. As I gained a minuscule amount of knowledge of the early church and early christian writings, I began to compare myself to my SDA friends and feel pride over this new knowledge. I felt that I was somehow better because I knew this little bit of information, even though I wasn’t fully applying what I knew and living up to it, while many of my SDA friends were living up to the knowledge they had.

A third trap I fell into was retaining the SDA love of argumentation, proof-texting, and “convincing” people for far too long. Rather than simply living out the teachings of the church, working on my own repentance and salvation, and doing my best to be prepared to give an answer when asked the reason for my hope, I got drawn into countless arguments to no profit. I tried to convince people of the truth, instead of letting God do the convincing. To be honest, I still struggle at times not to be drawn into profitless argumentation.

So these are three mistakes I made while leaving SDAism. I’m sure I made far more mistakes than just these three, but these ones stand out. I hope that this post can help you avoid making these same mistakes in your journey.

An Orthodox Perspective on Roman Catholicism

Some of my Roman Catholic friends have asked me in the past what the real difference is between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Other friends, like the protestants I grew up with, are even less sure of the differences. Many of the videos on YouTube that address the differences do so pretty superficially, without going deeply into the theology behind difference practices or beliefs. I came across this video the other day that I think does a good job of explaining the theological differences, and I share it here for those who are interested.

Post-Move Project Update, 4/11/2020

Since we moved, projects have had to compete with unpacking and sorting (still more to do as we pare down), so only the more important projects have been done. Courtney painted the kids’ room within the first week or so, from a bright peach to a blue/gray color. Since that room also has our only real east-facing wall, it also is the prayer room, and I hung the icons and put in the small table that holds our candles and incense burner.

The bathroom also required some immediate attention. I replaced all the toilet guts due to sticking and running, I also removed all the old and deteriorated caulking around the tub, and re-caulked it. Finally, I had to replace the pop-up drain assembly and S-trap on the bathroom sink due to both leaking.

Most of the outlets in the house are non-grounded, so I have been going along replacing them with GFCI outlets to so that we can plug in 3-prong appliances and have some ground protection. Also, at Courtney’s request, I installed a floating shelf above the kitchen sink. Since we have extremely limited cupboard space right now, this shelf holds our most used dishes–everyday plates, bowls, and cups, as well as coffee cups.

Outside the house, I started a worm bin in the garage for compost, and ordered 2,000 compost worms from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm to get it going. I bought 8 Rhode Island Red chicks at Tractor Supply, along with a pre-built coop. I’m not sure if I’ll stick with the pre-built coop long term, but I have too much else to do at the moment to build my own again. My parents gave me the steel frame for a picnic table 2 Christmases ago, and I finally bought lumber and assembled it. This allows us to eat outside when the weather is nice, a good thing when you live in a small house. Finally, I dug out my sidewalk leading to the front door, allowing me to see what needs replacing and what doesn’t.

Holy Week at Home Booklet

My Godmother, encouraging me to persevere in the rather unique (and for me, difficult) Lenten struggle that God has seen fit to allow us to undergo this year with the Great Corona Panic of 2020, provided me with a helpful little booklet. With the Churches temporarily closed (at least to laity like myself), having this simple guide to celebrating Holy Week and Pascha at home has greatly eased my mind. This booklet is published by the American Capatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, and can be accessed here. I hope you find it helpful as you prepare for the struggle of this particularly holy time at home.

A Big Move

We moved.

We sold our 3-bedroom, 1.5 bathroom, 1900 square foot house and bought a 2-bedroom, 1 bathroom, 970 square foot house with not a level floor in the house. This cut our monthly mortgage payments essentially in half, and provided us with the cash to buy a 22 year old Astro van with less that 90,000 miles to replace our 15 year old Impala with 370,000 miles. The van is AWD, and unlike the Impala, can continue to accommodate our family if we have another child–in fact, it can accommodate 2 more children!

The move new place has its drawbacks and benefits. I’m working on remedying the worst of the drawbacks as I can. One benefit is that we now have roughly 3x the land as the old place–1.2 acres as opposed to 0.4 acres. This means more room for gardens, and we’re still trying to determine where to locate them. Another benefit is that we now have river frontage on a small river, which opens up opportunities to catch fish in our own backyard. An additional benefit is that I am now less than 30 minutes from one of the properties where I deer hunt.

The main benefit, of course, is the lower payments. At our previous place, our minimum payments were about half my monthly income. While were able to keep up with it for quite a while, with each child it got harder, and after Helen was born we began to accumulate credit card debit (which is now gone). This is the opposite of what we want. We want to live inexpensively, save a little, and have money available for charitable giving.

We also found that having such a large house allowed us to accumulate a lot of stuff that we didn’t need or use. It wasn’t that long ago that I moved myself and all of my possessions from Virginia to Florida in a Ford Ranger, but this move required a 26 foot long U-Haul truck. We are continuing to work on paring down the number of things we own, while also working to replace low quality things with high quality ones, and single function items with multi-function items where reasonable.

Its a work in progress, and the past few months have been incredibly busy. But hopefully this move will create more time (in that I won’t feel the need to work as much overtime), and I’ll try to post project and purchase updates as we continue to settle in.

Recent Project Update: 10/1/19

Before…
New sink

Most of my recent project energy has gone into the kitchen. First, I found a stainless steel sink on the side of the road, and replaced the existing stained-up porcelain sink. Courtney did not like the porcelain sink because it sat so high above the counter top that you could not put a drainboard next to the sink. The new-to-us stainless sink sits much more flush, and allows the use of a drainboard. I also installed an under-sink filter to replace the on-faucet filter we previously had. 

Before…
Much more sturdy of a cook surface

The next big project was to replace the stove. Some friends that were moving gave us a gas stove, which Courtney greatly prefers to the electric stove that we had. The trivets that hold up the burners on the electric stove were prone to bending under the weight of Courtney’s pressure canner, and she found that gas much more evenly heats the cast iron pans her prefers than electric burners do. Unfortunately, there was no gas line run to the kitchen, so I had to install new gas line from the water heater in the basement up to the kitchen. I brought it up through a cabinet, and forgot to factor in the length of the valvecock, so now the stove sits a few inches away from the counter and a few inches off of the back wall. Courtney is so happy to have the gas stove that she doesn’t mind this, and I may build in some kind of a spacer eventually.

After the stove, the next project was to begin painting the cabinets. We started with the bottom cabinets, and then did the top cabinets above the sink, which we just recently finished. We have decided to hold off on painting the rest of the top cabinets until after we paint the walls. The poop-brown wall behind the stove particularly has to be painted to a more appealing color.

Other than the kitchen, the only recent project I can think of is moving the chicken and duck pen. They had worn the grass down pretty bad, so I pulled out all the t-posts and fenced off a new area of the back yard. Eventually, I hope to have two separate areas fenced off, where I can rotate between the paddocks weekly to allow the grass a chance to grow back. Maybe next year.

As you can see, it was getting pretty worn down.

Frugal Friday: Laundry Soap

I found this picture on the internet

I made my own laundry soap once or twice before I got married using this recipe. After we got married, Courtney began using this recipe as well, and has been making her own laundry soap ever since. After she taught herself to make her own bar soap using lard, lye, and water, she stopped buying Fels-Naphta and began using her own bar soap. This results in a totally unscented laundry soap, while the Fels-Naphta gives a nice subtle piney scent.

Here’s the recipe:

1 box of Borax
1 box Super Washing Soda
1 box Baking Soda
3 bars of Fels-Napha soap, shredded on a cheese grater, OR 1 lb grated homemade soap

Mix well in a large bowl or tub, then portion into smaller containers (Mason Jars work well). Use 1-2 tablespoons per load. Mason Jars of laundry soap that sit for a long time before use may have the soap shreds settle to the bottom, in this case shake or mix well before use.

Some blogs say that homemade laundry soaps don’t clean well, destroy laundry machines, or leave a soap residue in clothes. None of these are necessarily true, however, there are a few tips that you should use with this recipe.

First, fill the fabric softener compartment with white vinegar. Second, always use the warmest water and longest cycle suitable for the fabric. Third, always use the extra rinse cycle. Here’s why you want to do these things:

Why should you add vinegar to the fabric softener compartment? Because your clothes likely have a lot of bacteria on them. These bacteria create smells, which are masked by the artificial fragrances in your commercial laundry soap. Without the masking of artificial fragrances, you can get a musty smell in your clothes from this bacteria. The vinegar will kill these bacteria and fight the odor at the source, rather than just masking it.

Why should you use the warmest water and longest cycle suitable for the fabric? Because the soap shreds need to be completely dissolved in order to get maximum cleaning. Also the Borax cleans by soaking, so the longer the clothes soak in the Borax, the better. Hotter water dissolves the soap faster, meaning that it is dissolved for more of the cycle.

Finally, why use the extra rinse? This is to ensure that the soap is fully rinsed out. If the soap doesn’t dissolve fully until partway through the cycle, it may not rinse out fully with the normal rinse cycle. The extra rinse makes sure that all soap residue is rinsed out. we haven’t used a commercial laundry soap in over three years, and are still happy with our economical and effective laundry soap.

Learning to be Thankful: Or Why I Missed Church this Morning

All the kids were dressed and buckled in. Courtney was ready. I got in the car and turned the key.

Nothing.

I tried again.

Still nothing.

I turned on the lights.

Plenty bright.

Oh great, the starter’s out. Just what I need.

I told Courtney. She suggested I take Elgin and go to church in my pick-up, which has only 2 normal seats and a tiny jump seat in the back. I thought about it. I wanted to go.

“If I don’t fix this now, you won’t be able to go to Vespers tonight, and we won’t be able to go to church tomorrow morning.”

I got on my moped and headed to O’Reilly’s.

$130? For a re-manufactured one? Ooof. Just what I needed. Guess I’ll have to throw it on the credit card like everything else.

I put it in the basket on the back of my moped and started home.

An hour later, I was done. I turned the key, and the engine started up.

Thank God!

I should have been thanking Him much earlier.

I started thinking of all the reasons I had to thank God in this situation.

Thank God that the flywheel teeth were sharp and intact–I didn’t have to replace it.
Thank God my Dad taught me how to use tools and fix things–a mechanic would have charged me at least $350.
Thank God the starter went out at home, and not last night when Courtney was at church with the kids and I was at work–or yesterday morning when she was picking apples with the kids an hour north of here.
Thank God O’Reilly’s had a re-manufactured starter motor in stock.
Thank God I had the time to fix it before going to work–and even had time left over to spend some time with the kids.

All in all, I was blessed this morning, and I’m learning to be more thankful for my blessings.