conversion Archives - Saint Sophia

The Apostle Paul. Paul’s Conversion Experience

02/04/2019

All of Paul’s major themes are contained in seed form in his conversion experience, of which there are three descriptions in Acts written by Luke (chapters 9, 22, and 26). Paul’s own account is in the first chapter of Galatians: “The Gospel which I preach . . . came through the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:11-12). Paul never doubts this revelation. The Christ that he met was not the Christ in the flesh (Jesus); it

Paradox: Overcoming Contradictions

06/25/2018

Sadly, a large percentage of religious people become and remain quite rigid thinkers because their religion taught them that to be faithful, obedient, and stalwart in the ways of God, they had to seek some ideal “order” instead of growing in their capacity for love. These are not bad people; they simply never learned much about living inside of paradox and mystery as the very nature of faith. Dictionaries define a contradiction as two things

Transforming Our Pain

10/16/2017

Spirituality is always eventually about what you do with your pain. It seems our culture has lost its own spiritual foundation and center, and as a result we no longer know what to do with universal pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will always transmit it–to our partner, our spouse, our children, our friends, our coworkers, our “enemies.” Usually we project it outward and blame someone else for causing our pain. In

Unitive Consciousness

06/12/2017

After conversion, self-consciousness (in the negative sense) slowly falls away and is replaced by what the mystics call pure consciousness or unitive consciousness–which is love. Self-consciousness implies a dualistic split. There is me over here, judging, analyzing, labeling that or me over there. The mind is largely dualistic before spiritual conversion and even foolishly calls such argumentation “thinking.” In true conversion the subject-object split is overcome at least for a moment. You can’t maintain this

Monday of the 4th Week of Pascha. Peter Really Got It Right When It Counted

05/08/2017

Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.” (This He said to show by what death He was to glorify God.) And after this He said to him, “Follow me.” John 21:18-19 (From the Eleventh Eothinon Gospel of Sunday

Molding Interruptions

09/09/2016

While visiting the University of Notre Dame, where I had been a teacher for a few years, I met an older experienced professor who had spent most of his life there. And while we strolled over the beautiful campus, he said with a certain melancholy in his voice, “You know … my whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.” Don’t we

Meditation and Worship (Part IX)

08/31/2016

We see that we cannot partake deeply of the life of God unless we change profoundly. It is therefore essential that we should go to God in order that he should transform and mange us, and that is why, to begin with we should ask for conversion. Conversion in Latin means a tum, a change in the direction of things. The Greek word metanoia means a change of mind. Conversion means that instead of spending

What is Conversion?

07/19/2016

“Suddenly, while he was traveling to Damascus and just before he reached the city, there came a light from heaven all around him. He fell to the ground and then he heard a voice saying, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ he asked, and the voice answered, ‘I am Jesus, and you are persecuting me.’” –Acts 9:3-5, Jerusalem Bible I believe that almost all of the great themes of Paul’s

Archive

The Apostle Paul. Paul’s Conversion Experience

Paradox: Overcoming Contradictions

Transforming Our Pain

Unitive Consciousness

Monday of the 4th Week of Pascha. Peter Really Got It Right When It Counted

Molding Interruptions

Meditation and Worship (Part IX)

What is Conversion?

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