Rather to my surprise, I have decided to revive this blog, having abandoned it when I became a member (and a priest) of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch in January 2012. A little later I tried hiding behind a new blog called Speculations and Certainties which was supposed to feature the earnestness (not to mention the humourlessness) which I thought appropriate to the remarkable turn which my life had taken.
In some ways I was very intimidated by Orthodoxy, even from the safe distance of the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, a distance which becomes ever greater and safer as time goes by. Like many good High Church Anglicans, I was occasionally given to talking about Holy Orthodoxy in somewhat hushed and reverential tones. Indeed, for some forty years I was quite convinced (as I still am) that the Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch had not erred (the 39 Articles notwithstanding) just so long as they were the Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch which had stayed in communion with the Great Church of Constantinople, as others bearing the same names had not.
But, like most New Zealanders, I had virtually no experience of the actual Orthodox Church, and distance had made the heart grow somewhat overconfident, so that when I suddenly found myself immersed in the considerable complexities of the Byzantine rite, not to mention a completely different social and religious culture, a certain loss of confidence inevitably followed. Not good for the writing of blogs! But I am recovering somewhat now and so we shall see what we shall see.
