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It's time to wrap up our series on The Hours at Home! We hope this has been as refreshing and freeing for you as it has been for us. So much of the emphasis in Orthodoxy can be on doing something "right" or "completely", but this series has been about how we can actually, in practical ways, engage in the daily prayer of the Church that makes sense of our experience of time and reconnects us to the natural cycle of the day, but also addresses how we live our life in the 21st century.
Remember, even if you could only spend 30 seconds, eight times a day, doing a simple act (lighting a candle ((this may be a sore spot for Fr Yuri, listen in to find out)), setting aside your devices, saying a troparion, with a word of prayer and a remembrance of God), this will be transformative of your human experience. Far more transformative, even, than if you spent half an hour or an hour every day charging through a bunch of texts without intention. What's important is the recovery of the connection to God's creation and its inherent cycles, daily, weekly and seasonal, and building a remembrance of God and our vocation as image-bearers.Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri also propose a new way to think of St Paul's call to "pray ceaselessly" that will take the world off your shoulders. You are not doing these prayers alone! In solitude, perhaps, but never alone.
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"Eight Days a Week": a classic Beatles song, yes, but also the Orthodox approach to the weekly cycle of prayer!
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Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri discuss the theme of each day of the week, how they relate to our human experience, and also offer practical advice on how to incorporate the themes into our home prayer life. -
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We come now to the Ninth Hour, the last service of the day, and the time to re-collect ourselves after being disoriented by our many worldly cares and concerns during the day. Fans of "The Office" might transition from work by playing "Closing Time" (if you know, you know), but the Ninth Hour encourages us instead to use this time to focus on the theme of "return" — the cycle of the day returning towards beginning again, returning to our homes, the return of humanity to God's purposes.Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey remind us that these hours of prayer, properly appropriated and used during our day are crucial for our spiritual, mental and bodily well-being. Whatever we can do, even it it's just one memorized verse, if we do it right and do it habitually until it becomes instinctive and a part of how we live, our lives will be so much the better for it. In essence, as Orthodox we need to become "old clockists".
Fr Yuri's book recommendation: "Deep Work" by Cal Newport.
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In Psalm 54(55) we hear, "Evening, morning and at noon, will I tell of it and declare it and He will hear my voice." We've already seen how Matins and Vespers are the bookends of the day, as dark transitions to light and light to dark. Now we see how when the sun is at its unrelenting peak, our daily rhythms also naturally lend themselves to prayer. n fact, it has been a practice of Christians since the early Church, and of the Jews before them, to mark this time with prayer.
Fr Yuri speaks from personal experience how helpful incorporating the Sixth Hour into his day has been, from being the main liturgical gathering when St Maria's first became a mission, to today. Even in our modern world, the practice of setting aside ten minutes in the middle of your day to fully read the Sixth Hour is... dare we say... achievable, and encouraged!
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The Third Hour is generally served between 9am and 12noon, which corresponds for many of us to the middle of our work morning. It's rather a rough time to stop for prayer, risking the interruption of our workflow. But what if — what if! — instead of seeing these services as being in competition with what we're doing in our day, we began to see them as a way of complementing and supporting our activities? Indeed, our activity will be informed and transformed by them. Even if you just have a moment while you get up from your desk and stretch, you can put it to good use.
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Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey discuss the themes of this hour (the trial of Christ, the tasting of the forbidden fruit and the coming of the Holy Spirit), and how we can reflect on them to reorient and recalibrate ourselves that we might approach the busy-ness of our day in the right spirit (pun intended!). -
This is the hour in the daily cycle of prayer that doesn't have a high profile in the communal life of the church, often just tacked on to the beginning or end of another service, if it's celebrated at all. In contrast to the other services, which have fuller expressions in the church and we are offering ways to do it more modestly at home, this particular service comes into its own when taken outside of the church. Here, Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey propose ways of giving this hour more prominence in the daily rhythm of our life.
At that transition moment between our morning routine and the launch into our day, with all that it shall bring, this is the opportunity to stand before God, pledging watchfulness and heedfulness to His word, acknowledging Him as the proper authority in all things. This is our baptismal pledge, that we would live our lives recognizing the Lord as King and God, and it is meant to affect every moment of every day.
Remember, even if you have only thirty seconds to mark the first hour — it will be worth it!
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It is cockcrow, the time when light just begins to break through the darkness, and the time for Matins. But don't go out and buy your rooster just yet (Fr Yuri is still trying to return his!) — the goal of this series is to help you enact the services of the daily cycle at home in a practical and sustainable way.
Thematically, Matins is the mirror image of Vespers, straddling the transition now from dark to light. This transition is a sacramental moment, a transformational act we are all invited to be the priests of, offering up the darkness that God would be able to do something within and through it, and turn it again into light. In essence, this is the Christian life!
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Regardless of the time you rise, Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri offer practical advice for enacting this service, stilling ourselves in the midst of what is and what will come, turning to God and placing our trust utterly in Him. -
Midnight Office is a service that Orthodox Christians rarely do, if ever. But don't worry, we are not going to ask you to set an alarm in the wee hours of the morning, disrupting your much-needed rest! The question this series is attempting to answer is, "How do the Hours make sense in (and how do they help us make sense of) our lives?", and not, "How do we artificially liturgize throughout our day?".
Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri explore the history of how the midnight office developed, discuss an ancient sleep pattern that fell into disuse (thanks, Thomas Edison!), and suggest opportunities we might have to re-incorporate these prayers and hymns of watchfulness, vigilance and protection. Perhaps we should not aim to serve the Midnight Office, the way our modern schedules work, but we should be prepared to serve it nonetheless. This practice might just bring purpose and peace to your middle of the night wakefulness!
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The hymns and prayers of the Hours are intimately linked to the time of day, but also to our human experiences at that time of day. Compline is served in the evening, after supper, when the sun is fully set and our own biological rhythms are slowing down. The service invites us to silence, repentance and forgiveness - in fact, when done in the context of a parish or monastery, it concludes with a rite of forgiveness similar to that done as we enter into Lent on Forgiveness Sunday. After the Compline service, the monastics and faithful would retreat to their beds in the darkness and quiet.
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Far from mandating NO tv, NO YouTube, NO electricity immediately following your evening meal, Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey suggest reasonable ways to mark this threshold between the busy-ness of our lives (with its bright lights, both natural and artificial, activity, food and entertainment) and entering into a reflective and meditative mood, putting both ourselves and our devices and our homes to bed. No doubt this will transform your spiritual life and relationship with God, but also... you'll get a better sleep! -
In this series, we are encouraging you to bring the services of the hours into your home, as a natural extension of communal and liturgical church life. Today's episode will focus on Vespers, that service that straddles the transition from day to evening, from light to darkness. ETK's first public season was a (very thorough!) season on this service, so if you want a deep detailed dive into Vespers, please go check that out on your favourite podcast streaming platform, but today we will approach it in a different way.
Far from suggesting that you do Vespers in your prayer corner at home exactly as it would be done in the church, Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri propose practical ways to take Vespers’ thematic psalm and hymn content and adapt it for home use. And please don't worry! If you're thinking that although you love the idea of doing the hours at home, the idea of carving out extra time is rather romantic but impractical, the trick is to take the things you're already doing throughout the day and turn it into prayer.
It's in simplicity that this will find it's greatest impact and virtue in our lives. Start modestly, with a practice that you can keep habitually and faithfully, and it will become second nature — and transform you!
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The average Orthodox Christian does not actually pray the services of the church at home, the continuing cycle of prayers that Christians have been praying since the early days of the church, but rather prays the morning and evening prayers prescribed in prayer books. This has created a disconnect between the individualized and privatized prayer life that we experience at home and the communal prayer we experience in the church.
In this new series, Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri plan to confront this disconnect and encourage us to renew our participation in the cycle of prayer that is already present and ongoing within the church. The liturgy of the hours is a beautiful collection of hymnody and psalmody, containing a narrative deeply connected to the scriptures and the wider story of God, comprised of seven services within the day - but wait! Before you say, "Seven services a day?! Nope! Sorry!", the purpose of this series is NOT to insist on adherence to overwhelmingly impossible standards, but to equip our listeners with the tools to flexibly and joyfully immerse themselves into the various cycles (daily, weekly, eight-weekly, annual and festal).
Enjoy it. Connect with it. It will be transformative!View/download the PDF document that Fr Yuri prepared for catechumens interested in starting small with these services, which he wanted to share with our patrons. We hope that you will find it useful as you follow along through this series.
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Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri wrap up our series on Narrative Theology and the discussion of Samuel Wells' book "Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics" with an overview of what we've learned and how we should move forward with this knowledge.
While we navigate and improvise the fourth act of this five act play, we must remain faithful to the first three acts as we move the story forward. As the church we can find ourselves safeguarding what we have inherited, neither adding nor subtracting from it, so that when the fifth act comes, Christ will find His church preserved intact. Yet are we not warned in the Parable of the Talents that this is not how we are meant to behave?We need to be willing to "risk it", to act freely not through innovation but through a faithful renewal, anticipating already what God will reveal in the final act, to live and enact the Kingdom with confidence instead of fear. Ultimately, living this way is not a risk at all, since our trust in God is complete, and the fifth act has already been secured.
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Uniquely among the topics we've addressed so far in this series, wealth and accumulation has been an issue that humans have struggled with for all of history. There's nothing new here. There are many biblical examples of what it looks like to block, accept and over-accept into the wider story of God, throughout the Old Testament and also through the words of our Lord himself.
The fact that it is still considered an issue is suggestive of how pervasive and insidious this narrative and its givens are in our culture, and how incredibly difficult it is to separate ourselves from it. We may think that we are not just accepting (prosperity gospel!) or blocking (all materialism is evil!), but how are we actually living our lives? What daily habits are we participating in that are forming us and our actions in the world?
As Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey look at wealth through the lens of narrative theology, we see how if we move to over-accept in the way Christ teaches us, questioning the givens and re-defining wealth, we will transform our perspective and focus and ultimately orient ourselves according to the Kingdom.
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And we're back! We continue our series on Narrative Theology, looking at transgenderism within the improvisation model of Christian ethics. There are again so many offers on the table, and many more nuanced ways of accepting and blocking these offers, but how do we move to over-accept, wrapping this story up within the greater story of God?
In both accepting and blocking, it is taken as a given that one's biological sex predetermines what our gender role will be, and that in order to take on different gender roles, along with the accompanying psycho-social-cultural expectations, norms and behaviours, one must fight against nature. It's time to question those givens!
In fact, what we call gender, the church calls us to transcend. As we hear from many of the Fathers, becoming properly human in the fullest sense means that we will no longer be male and female. The challenge lies on us - we must question the ways we have essentialized sex and gender and return to the story we should have been telling all along.
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In this episode, Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri tackle the topic "Sex & Gender" as they continue to run the issues chosen by our patrons through the improvisation model we've explored in this series. This method allows us to take on a certain way of being in which we faithfully, in every moment, live the fullness of the tradition we have received in the first three acts and which directs us towards the fifth and final act.
When it comes to sex and gender, there are so many offers on the table, with unclear and changing definitions, and no scientific or sociological consensus, never mind a theological one. Ultimately, however, every single one of those offers should be capable of being received and framed in the story of God.
The offer on the table today is: "Men and women, although biologically different, should not be constrained by gendered roles in society or expectations of behaviour and personality." Most today would accept and agree with this egalitarian view, although many Christians would block in favour of a complementarian view. How then do we move to over-accept this offer in light of what we have received from the first three acts and with the knowledge of what is to come?
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Over the next few episodes, Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri will be addressing some of the thorny issues of our modern age, filtering them through the elements of narrative theology that we've been exploring over this series such as forming habits, assessing status, accepting, blocking, etc.
Our patrons chose transhumanism as the first topic: a vision of moving beyond the constraints of mortality, illness and suffering, eradicating poverty and scarcity, and enhancing our condition and current capabilities, through the use of science and technology.Some Christians accept this without reservation as a rather hopeful vision of what's possible for humanity and other Christians move to block transhumanism immediately as incompatible and even Satanic. What does it look like to over-accept instead, re-framing it within the fuller story of God?
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Whether through improv, songs or stories, audiences are delighted when the narrative draws to an end and elements that had been seemingly discarded are brought back into play. In fact, "Reincorporating the Lost" is necessary to bring a fulfilling conclusion to any story (just ask a child whose parent has attempted to summarize the ending to a plot!).
As those lost things that we thought had been written out of the story start to re-appear, we must be aware of the final act drawing nearer, and as a church and as individuals joyfully incorporate those things back into the story. Are we listening to those once-silenced voices? Are we befriending the lost? Are we changing our habits based on the full story instead of just the part of the story we have inherited?
Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey reflect on this and discuss ways of practicing "reincorporating the lost" so that it becomes a habit in our lives.
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Instead of a binary decision between accepting gifts without discernment, or blocking them without engagement (neither of which would make for good improv theatre), there is also a third option, that of over-accepting, which focuses on the way we receive the gift.
Rather than focus on what the gift IS, or what the gift is FOR, or even whether it is good or bad, we can focus on what the gift COULD BE. In the context of narrative theology, how can this gift be understood in a faithful way? What does the way we accept the gift say about the kind of people that we are and want to be? What can this gift become in the larger story of God as we move the narrative forward towards the final and fifth act?Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey discuss the idea of "over-accepting", an active way of receiving that allows us to keep our identity and our relevance in the story, while being faithful to the story that has already unfolded and the story that is yet to come.
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In the previous episode "Accepting & Blocking", we discussed the importance in improv of using the strategy of "Yes, and..." to further the narrative. Of course, there are multiple ways of saying yes, and often this requires us to question givens. The givens we assume can imprison the way we think and act, but when we question those givens we can receive them as gifts and re-connect to the wider narrative.
There is ultimately only one unquestionable given: God and His story.
Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri discuss another maxim of improv theatre, "Don't be bound by your format", and reflect on the current debate in Canada about assisted suicide to illustrate why questioning givens is so vital.
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"I'm not your mom, and you're actually a dog".
A ridiculous reply, without a doubt (especially taken out of context, but you'll have to listen to the podcast for that). Tragically, the Church sounds precisely like this most of the time.
A blocking response like this one is based on fear. Fear that we cannot let go of control of the narrative, fear that the story will not unfold in the right way. And what does that say about our ultimate trust in God?
Accepting an offer, and moving the narrative forward, requires a "Yes, and..." response. Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri discuss how to say "Yes, and..." and also whether there is a place for "no" within the model of accepting offers.
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