“Transgenderism” isn’t a thing.

But there are fully human persons who—for reasons that we cannot possibly begin to comprehend—feel so disconnected from the biological sex of their own body that the effort just to stay alive becomes day by day a losing battle.

To speak of the slowly ebbing strength to go on living is no exaggeration for too many transgender persons. It’s a stark, statistical fact: unable to escape their own anatomy, and the mockery or hostility or impossible expectations of their families, their societies, their churches, they peer in alarming numbers into the abyss of non-being and see no other recourse but to fall headlong into its bottomless depths. 

I can’t speak or write of these things without tears flowing down my face. I’m the father of a 35-year old transgender son. He’s probably the person I love most of all in the world. This isn’t to say that I love him “objectively” more than my other four sons, or more than my granddaughter, or my soon-to-be-born second granddaughter.

I mean that he occupies a place in my heart that I did not know existed, a place deeper than the rest of my progeny because a place more painful—and more painful because I cannot fathom the courage it takes to live his life, to walk out the front door and face the world morning by morning, moment by moment. Read More

Protopresbyter Nicolas Kazarian

I am the Church.

This sentence may seem presumptuous for many, and I completely agree with them. Who would dare to say that he or she is the Church? Who has the authority to claim to represent the whole body of Christ? No one! However, I am not talking about the Church’s authority, but rather the Church’s opportunity to be present in one’s life.

I would like to reflect here on the priesthood and the life of the Church after the powerful lesson I received while visiting George (his name has been changed) at the hospital. He is dead now—may his memory be eternal—but I have kept in mind a private thought I had after one of my visits: “I am the Church.”

Let’s go back to the beginning. A couple of months ago, the church office received a call from the nearby hospital. A 40-year old Greek Orthodox man, George, was very sick and about to start chemotherapy and 24/7 dialysis. He had married less than a year earlier, no kids. He was often sleepy when I came to visit him, due to the painkillers he was prescribed and the fatigue of the treatment. Read More

Silouan Green

The consequences of death and destruction have become old friends. Friends I meet daily in my work helping law enforcement, veterans, communities, and trauma victims understand how to overcome the horrors that life can bring to bear upon us. Last week was a normal one, heartbreaking. Here are just some of the experiences explored in my talks and workshops during that time:

• A young veteran who described the horror of grabbing at his burning leg after being hit by a rocket, and then pulling away his hand to see it dripping with melted fat and flesh.
• A rookie police officer of only a couple of weeks who rolled up on a scene to find a dead 6-year old, whom he had to carry in his arms to the wailing screams of the young child’s family.
• A woman who was violently and repeatedly raped as a child by family members, and now had dedicated her life to helping others like her, yet was still wrestling with her own demons.
• A former Marine who shared the toll of war on the company he served with in Iraq: 11 suicides and counting.
• A young woman who was going through a divorce and facing life alone in a city without family.
• And during all of this, I was preparing for a weekend with families who had lost loved ones serving in the Armed Forces. 

Just a normal week.

Read More

This is the second article in our Reformation 500 Series.

Saint Constantine Equal-to-the-Apostles and the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council with the Nicaean Creed

I can claim no more than the generalist knowledge of any reasonably educated Westerner of my generation concerning the Protestant Reformation and the situation of the Roman Catholic Church at the end of the Middle Ages that some say made it inevitable.

Much less can I claim to speak for the Orthodox Church. I offer the personal reflections of one Orthodox Christian.

Yet I hope that my readers will discern some measure of authenticity in my thoughts; that the main outlines of my presentation, if perhaps not every detail, will bear the ring of truth for my Orthodox brothers and sisters; that they will recognize herein, for the most part, the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Faith that we Orthodox hold in common, “traditioned” (παραδοθείσῃ, traditae in the Vulgate) once for all to the saints; and finally, that the truth that I attempt to speak will be heard by those outside of the Orthodox Church as spoken in love. Many of my Protestant and Catholic readers are known to me personally. You enrich my life in ways immeasurable with your presence, your friendship, your deep love for Christ and His Gospel, your patience with my often inelegant and bumbling efforts to articulate this Faith of which I am unworthy to call myself an heir.

The fundamental question, it seems to me, is one of ecclesiology. Our theological understanding of the Church as Church will condition in large part how we view the Reformation. Here we should note that the Reformation eventually introduced categories into Christian discourses about the nature of the Church herself that exist nowhere in the New Testament, and nowhere in 1500 years of the Church’s self-understanding: “denominations,” “confessions,” the “branch theory” of “Christianity.” Read More