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TAW seems to have gone onto minimal life support. The posters who are still here are mostly people who have been in the Church 15 years or more. I don’t think any young ones (relatively new members, ten years or fewer) are left, and those are the ones who make up the demographic you describe.
Learned something new - I never heard the term OrthoBro before.
it’s those online, uber opinionated Orthodox laymen. usually really involved in apologetics and such.
Like I said, I don’t know what to say. I’ve offered my main contributions, on language, on education, on the situation in Russia, and people have either accepted and acknowledged the value and truth in what I’ve said, or refused to do so and deny it. Most people are going to refuse to believe the schools are deliberately designed to wrest the children from their parents’ views, they are going to continue to talk about a person’s “gender” instead of “sex” and say that people are “gay”, and as many as half are going to deny the general corruption of their favorite Patriarchate while demonizing the one “on the other side”. Some will still think divorce a normal and acceptable option for Orthodox couples who aren’t getting along, though both remain in the Church, some will continue to confuse agendas of this world with the main mission of the Church and promote worldly struggles against climate change or racism in the name of the Church, etc etc etc. Unless someone really doesn’t know what I’ve said over the past twenty years, which has changed almost not at all, the things I think I can comment intelligently on have mostly been said. Or not. I don’t know. Other than anecdotal experience of my new life in the Balkans, which I hope ends soon, I don't have too much to say. I’m falling away and trying not to fall away.
God has given me many trials with my health the past five years or so. Insomnia is the worst of them. I’m up now after having only slept two hours. I went to church yesterday driving clear up there on 4 hrs 44 minutes of sleep. I’ve been up reading my kathisma psalter. Miserable. One health trial after another….Like I said, I don’t know what to say. I’ve offered my main contributions, on language, on education, on the situation in Russia, and people have either accepted and acknowledged the value and truth in what I’ve said, or refused to do so and deny it. Most people are going to refuse to believe the schools are deliberately designed to wrest the children from their parents’ views, they are going to continue to talk about a person’s “gender” instead of “sex” and say that people are “gay”, and as many as half are going to deny the general corruption of their favorite Patriarchate while demonizing the one “on the other side”. Some will still think divorce a normal and acceptable option for Orthodox couples who aren’t getting along, though both remain in the Church, some will continue to confuse agendas of this world with the main mission of the Church and promote worldly struggles against climate change or racism in the name of the Church, etc etc etc. Unless someone really doesn’t know what I’ve said over the past twenty years, which has changed almost not at all, the things I think I can comment intelligently on have mostly been said. Or not. I don’t know. Other than anecdotal experience of my new life in the Balkans, which I hope ends soon, I don't have too much to say. I’m falling away and trying not to fall away.
I appreciate that I can still ask for prayers here; I have a number of unresolved situations and have been living on the edge of poverty for a long time now. It’s weird to have an iPad, talk to you guys, and yet struggle to pay the bills. But that’s the crazy world we now live in.
But if anyone ever wants to resurrect those issues, or discover GK Chesterton, the unofficially Orthodox guy keeping me in the Church, I’m still plugged in here.
Minimal life support is a good way to describe it. I think that TAW is suffering from the same general trend away from internet forums and message boards that has been going on since the dawn of social media. Things that did not help here were the Wikonian Reforms of 2007 and when the former owner changed the name. Both actions push A LOT of people away.
cracked open Orthodoxy for the first time and the insights he has are mind blowing.But if anyone ever wants to resurrect those issues, or discover GK Chesterton, the unofficially Orthodox guy keeping me in the Church, I’m still plugged in here.
While I think ecumenism in terms of formal practice and worship is actually really bad, I think as a spirit of loving other heterodox Christians and being friendly with them to be very good. In short, the doctrinal differences really, really matter, but you are totally right about Christian love. My favorite writers are not Orthodox. I read the wise sayings of the saints and appreciate them, and try to apply them to my life, but it’s those pesky English apologists that have forced me to see that there is nowhere else to go. if I was ecumenist, I would really think there was somewhere else to go. But I’m not, and there isn’t. So I'll keep my Catholic and Protestant friends, though I am not going to play at being in communion with them.
I take this stuff called Donormyl. Not every night, but it's really effective, at least in helping me get back to sleep after waking up in the middle of the night. I manage 5 or six hours of sleep with it.
I've got a copy of Chesterton's Orthodoxy sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read. I haven't read any of Chesterton myself, but my Latin teacher in high school spoke very highly of him, and I've been wanting to get started reading his works. Right now my hands are full with a couple of books my priest has recommended, The Pilgrim Continues On His Way and St. Cyril of Jerusalem's Catechetical Homilies.But if anyone ever wants to resurrect those issues, or discover GK Chesterton, the unofficially Orthodox guy keeping me in the Church, I’m still plugged in here.
I personally found "Orthodoxy" a bit difficult to read, but as someone else used to say, "I am a bear of very little brain".
