a brief account of Jim’s journey to Holy Orthodoxy

My first memories of Christ are from a very early age. I was two years old, and dying of a blood disease yet undiagnosed. There was much talk of Heaven and Jesus, and I am told that I consistently asked about Heaven because I wanted to go there.

One night in particular stands out to me, and that is when I told my mother, from under sheets at bedtime, that I had asked Jesus into my heart 1000 times that day, just to be sure he heard me.

A praying mother dedicated me to God in a hospital room, where I awaited a bone marrow test the next day. During that evening, she saw a man dressed in a white robe, with long, flowing hair and a cropped beard, come into the room. He picked me up and held me for a time, then gently placed me down on the hospital bed. She never spoke to him. In fact, she is not even sure if someone really was in the room holding me or if it was all a dream. However, when blood was drawn the next morning before the bone-marrow test, a dramatic change had taken place such that the test was no longer necessary. Within a few days, I was leaving the hospital with no trace of the blood disease in my body.

While growing up, I attended church regularly, and my older brother and I went to a Baptist school. My parents were in the choir. Therefore, between a religious education at a church/school and my regular evening attendance at the Baptist church for choir practice, the wafts of spirituality were everywhere. I grew up loving to be in church. It felt safe, and for that very reason it was my favorite place to fall asleep, to the dismay of my parents!

High school saw an increased awareness in my spiritual interests, and I took to reading voraciously. My friends and I could often be found at Dunkin’ Donuts at 2 AM on school nights debating the truths of Christianity (as much as we were able to understand them). We could also be found in class the next day arguing with the Bible teacher or sociology professor (and sometimes winning!) because the conservative Baptist way of doing things seemed archaic and out of step to us. Our faith was our own.

It is that last statement that led me to inquire about and discover the Church of the New Testament, Holy Orthodoxy, these many years later. Moving from conservative circles to non-denominational circles to post-modern circles, I became painfully aware that there were hordes of us out there with "our own faith". Unity and community, in my experience, became nothing more than boiling our lives down to the lowest common denominator for the sake of such unity and community.  Our deeply held foundational religious beliefs were opposite one from another, yet we all claimed to be led by one Spirit of God and all claimed to adhere to one Bible.

As this collective of individuals sought to find relevance in how the church related to today’s culture, I became discouraged and nearly gave up on Christianity altogether. But where was I to go? I could not go back to the hyper-conservative leanings of my past, too legalistic. I could not move forward with the collective, too far away from the church fathers, who I knew to be Martin Luther and the other Protestant Reformers.

Then an Orthodox deacon in NY, whom I had met on an online forum, suggested that I read Becoming Orthodox by Fr. Gilquist. Up until this time, all I knew of the Orthodox was that they were Jews with unique hairstyles. However, as my wife and I read this book, we began to see a connection of the present day to the past… even past Martin Luther. I began to see that my knowledge of Church history consisted largely of Jesus>Acts>Martin Luther>grandma>me, and that there really did exist a church between the book of Acts and the Protestant Reformation. It became clear that this same church still existed today.

My wife and I had read enough of the book to know that we could no longer refrain from confronting this ancient church, and so I emailed the deacon in NY asking if there was a parish in my area. He sent two addresses to me, one of which was seven minutes from my home. I emailed the pastor of that parish at 1:30 in the morning, telling him of my discovery and asking if we could meet with him. The next day we walked into our first Orthodox Church. Talk about a culture shock! Father Gregory, the pastor, spent a little over an hour talking with us. He confirmed what we had learned, corrected the false assumptions of our self-study, and invited us to continue our journey into Orthodoxy by attending Divine Liturgy.

The following Sunday we attended our first Divine Liturgy. When people speak of not knowing if they are in Heaven or on Earth during an Orthodox worship service, they’ve got it right.  The worship mirrors that of Heaven itself as seen in Isaiah. Before we knew it, we were catechumens being taught the Orthodox way. There was much to study, much to learn and much to un-learn. It was not long before any remaining doubts I had as to whether or not this was, in fact, the Church Christ started ceased in totality. In His Church, I have found that there is safety. I can rely on Her teachings, for they are Her Master’s teachings.

Today, my wife and I take part in an ancient and epic faith. We are privileged to kneel on the shoulders of countless martyrs who proved their faith with their lives. We adhere to the seven Great Councils that placed a wall around Her teachings to protect them from heresy. We follow in the footsteps of the patristic and ascetic fathers who rightly divided the words of truth and showed us how to deny ourselves. We cling to Apostolic teaching, on whose foundation all of the above sit solidly, immovable.

In Orthodoxy, we have found a timeless beauty that transcends both our imaginations and us. Here, we no longer have to create our religion; the fundamental questions have already been answered and have been passed to us in their fullness. We glorify Christ with the saints of the ages, partaking in His mysteries, and joining with them in the ongoing worship of Heaven. Here we are human, in all our frailty and weakness, and we are safely taught how to grow up by the Church that Christ Himself built, on the foundation He aligned with Himself: the Chief Cornerstone. To that end, we are part of something bigger than we are, and we are no longer alone.

In short, coming home to Holy Orthodoxy, Christ’s True Bride, has changed our lives.

Glory be to Jesus Christ!

(more on the journey in the Sept - Dec Journeyman James Blog Archives, and most notably here.)