For Carrie

My wife told me that her friend was asking if I was feeling more spiritual as I try to fast for Lent. My first thought is that it is a little boastful for me to claim some greater spirituality from anything I do. If anything trying to observe Lent just tells me all the ways I manage to not observe the fast, and how if I wanted I could be more strict in my observance. I read recently that Orthodox spiritual practice exists in a continuum (I think this was in the Mathewes-Green book I am reading). What she means is that as you practice you take on new ways to express your spirituality and that is okay in orthodoxy. I was talking with a couple people at my Church recently about how some people make the sign of the Cross and bow touching the ground, while others just sweep their hands low. I have not seen anyone go up to any other person at a service and tell them that they need to do it another way however.

This kinda reminds me of when I first attended Holy Resurrection around 10 years ago. I remember being in the Church and watching everyone. I would sit and write in my journal during service because I didn't know what to do. The way the service was conducted, the way people moved, the attitude of the parishioners was completely foreign to me. I felt standoffish toward the icons and I was stuck in my protestant mindset that these images were somehow devilish. I felt compelled by an expression of Christianity that was completely strange to me and at the same time my familiar expectations of spiritual expression were challenged. For me that experience of being challenged and compelled attracts me to Orthodoxy and that mode of Christian practice.

A more direct, but still obtuse, answer to Carrie's question is this: When I graduated from college I didn't feel like I knew more than when I had begun, but I did have a realization of the scope of knowledge there is to be learned. So as Socrates might say, I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance[in ways of spirituality and wisdom].