SSWI — When in doubt, buff it out.

8 years ago today, Heather and I stood in front of friends and family consenting to be joined as one for the rest of our lives.

Many things have changed since then: how we look, how we dress and where we live just to name a few. We are now three instead of two since the birth of our son Jakob. There is a lot more grey hair, and in my case a lot more weight. But with all these things that have changed, a couple of important things have stayed the same.

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Truly, Joe Cocker gives the truly white hope. Yes Timmy, you can Read the rest »

And it seems like it came out of nowhere.

I have not been one to look forward to Great and Holy Lent; it is a time of hard work and abstinence. Not that these two things are bad, on the contrary they are the very essence of what is good and right.

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Glorify Him

I just wanted to take a moment before heading off to Liturgy to wish all of you out there who read this silly little blog a Festive Holiday season.

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Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and all that rot to all my friends out there in internet land.  I am going to be away from the internet for the most part, until January 3rd, so if I don’t respond its nothing personal.

I will leave you with these two gifts, firstly if you click ‘All Comments’ that you see under each Recent Commenter you will see a chronological listing of thier comments on this site.  For example you can see all of the comments by Michael Heilemann by going to http://www.chrisjdavis.org/history/Michael Heilemann/.

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It is unbelievable how behind I have gotten on some more personal tasks.  Ever since I started the new job my time has become less and less free.

This morning I finally got around to importing the last 105 photos I took from Pascha (Orthodox Easter) this year, now I just need to weed out the bad ones and create a gallery of them.  Here are a couple to wet your appetite:

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Happy Pascha everyone!

Heather and I just returned from Paschal Services and it is 3:59 am… we left the house at 11:10.  There are no words to describe the Paschal Service, other than to repeat the words I spoke to my wife while we were waiting for our car to warm up outside of the temple space.  “Pascha is why I am Orthodox” I said to her, and she responded “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

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This is an image from Forgiveness Vespers held on the Sunday preceding Great and Holy Lent.  During this service Orthodox Faithful that have received their traditions from the Russian Orthodox Church take a moment to ask each other for forgiveness for any sins we may have committed against each other so far this year.

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I will be out of contact until the last week of December/first week of January, so I am posting this now.

Troparion in tone 4

Your Nativity, O Christ our God, Has shone to the world the Light of wisdom! For by it, those who worshipped the stars, Were taught by a Star to adore You, The Sun of Righteousness, And to know You, the Orient from on High. O Lord, glory to You!

Kontakion in tone 3

Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One, And the earth offers a cave to the Unapproachable One! Angels with shepherds glorify Him! The wise men journey with a star! Since for our sake the Eternal God was born as a Little Child!

Parting Words

May all the blessings of Our Great God and Saviour be with you all this blessed season. Read the rest »

I have posted pictures from my trip to St. Tikhon’s Monastery a few weeks ago.

Caution, harsh usability waters ahead.  I love Pictorialis, at least the severely hacked up version I am running, but there are some things that are painful about it.  For the time being if you wish to see the images in order, you will need to click the following link and then use the previous page link.  If you do that you will see the images in the order they were taken.

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