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Read it on Kindle for $2.99
Part of the collection:
The Best of Jonathan's Corner
This is an author's library of free online books, centered on Orthodox books. Whether you want to read online novels, or short stories, or theology and homilies, or other literature, why not look around here?
The most recent addition here is "Physics."
There is also a list of recent additions to this site, sorted by date.
Go to: Orthodox Theology Articles Assorted Creations Journals Miscellaneous Nonfiction Novels Orthodox Humor Satire Short Stories Socratic Dialogue Technology Toastmasters Speeches
You can find works from several Orthodox books here, but this section itself is really one big Orthodox book: an anthology of Orthodox mystical theology.
The works in this collection span many types and genres, but overall they can be gathered into three large categories: hymns and poems, odds and ends, curiosities and creative works, and spiritual writing and homilies. Each of these has author's picks highlighted; the author is personally partial to hymns and poems.
If you are looking for a place to start in these attempts to share the Orthodox Church's mystical theology, I suggest Silence: Organic Food for the Soul or Doxology. Both are taken from the hymns and poems section.
Suggested starting points include Doxology, A Pilgrimage from Narnia, Silence: Organic Food for the Soul, and Why this Waste?.
An akathist hymn celebrating St. Philaret the Merciful of Asia Minor, who was generous and merciful when he had much, and remained no less generous and merciful when he had little or nothing.
We may have hospitals to hide death from our eyes, but all of us are moving towards death, even if we are in denial as a society. But there is another way; love is stronger than death.
A poem to hymn the glory of God.
We thirst for glory. There is only one way that thirst is rightly slaked.
A musing prayer about how to open the eyes of an alchemist.
A celebration of the resplendent beauty of the natural world.
A poem about the labyrinth of technology and other things that we have woven into our society.
A meditation on the Maximum Christ we approach and maximum repentance as the true realization of God's maximum ambition for our lives.
A poem pouring forth mystical theology of eternity, time, and that precious moment we call 'now'.
A poem about closed fists, open hands, and true joy.
A prayer and poem about pilgrimage on earth.
A poem about a pilgrimage that begins with C.S. Lewis's Narnia and ever presses 'further up and further in.'
This was a tool I made for myself after realizing I wasn't spending nearly enough time praying through the Psalms. This will pull up different psalms, and there is a a mobile-friendly version too.
A meditation on spiritual discipline and silence as an organic diet for the soul reaching out to the whole person.
A poem that opens when a woman opens a priceless jar of perfume and a thief asks a question that was deeper than he knew: "Why this waste?"
A prayer.
Suggested starting points include The Angelic Letters, The Best Things in Life Are Free, The Most Politically Incorrect Sermon in History: A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, and Technonomicon: Technology, Nature, Ascesis.
A collection of letters from a senior angel to guide a guardian angel watching over a man, as envisioned by an Orthodox Christian. Inspired by C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters.
A work of mystical theology that looks at life as a great spiritual arena and training ground.
Ever hear a broken record talking about how Orthodoxy has always been a matter of creative fidelity and never a matter of parrot-like repetition?
An exploration, connected with the chalice, of what it means that the best things in life are free.
The Most Politically Incorrect Sermon in History: A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount
A commentary on the Sermon on the Mount intended to unfold just how it appears to be the most politically incorrect sermon ever.
An Orthodox bookshelf covering The Orthodox* Study Bible, some of the Fathers, Neo-Platonism, and one or two works today.
An Orthodox 'Physics', or study of the nature of things, designed to respond to Aristotle's 'Physics.'
A collection of short prayers for different occasions and purposes, offered to and for the Orthodox Church.
Three intimate letters from a father to a son about God, kings, and men.
From Russia, with Love: A Spiritual Guide to Surviving Political and Economic Disaster
The Russian Orthodox Church has a lot of experience living with hard times. This piece talks about not only survival lessons but the spiritual beauty that can come in political and economic difficulties.
We are entranced by technology, and yearn for harmony with nature. But there is more to life than getting technology or taking walks in the woods.
Twelve quotes to explain in particular why Orthodoxy seems to have such a cold response to Catholic ecumenical advances.
Suggested starting points include Creation and Holy Orthodoxy: Fundamentalism Is Not Enough, Exotic Golden Ages and Restoring Harmony with Nature: Anatomy of a Passion, Money, A Pet Owner's Rules, and "Religion and Science" Is Not Just Intelligent Design vs. Evolution.
One thing I have learned as a Christian is what it means for God to look after you.
A look at the hideous strength of C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, and the beautiful strength that is even stronger.
We were made to enjoy contemplation, in more than one sense.
Years back, I wrote a couple of pieces about origins questions. This is a more recent piece that addresses a very specific point about bringing Protestant fundamentalism into Orthodoxy, and it moves away from origins questions towards a more important issue.
You might also read the companion piece, Note to Orthodox Evolutionists: Stop Trying to Retroactively Shanghai Recruit the Fathers to Your Camp!.
Christ's crown of thorns has every relevance to our daily lives. Is it something we can have on our own terms?
A meditation on covetousness, desire, and true happiness.
Dissent: Lessons From Being an Orthodox Theology Student at a Catholic University
When I was studying at Fordham, the question of dissent loomed large. This is an attempt to respond to what was "in the air" at that school.
We have a lot of rights these days. Or at least we think we do, and the list of our rights is growing longer and longer.
What if I told you that people can get along well without thinking in terms of rights?
In Orthodoxy, there are seven sacraments, officially speaking; but there's a great deal of truth in saying that there is only one sacrament, or that there are a million of them. This is a look at one among many of the "other" sacraments.
Exotic Golden Ages and Restoring Harmony with Nature: Anatomy of a Passion
There is a perennial cry in some quarters to reclaim former glory. We thirst for the exotic, but not always in the best places. Do we appreciate what we have?
A meditation on God as the Game Changer who responds to sin, evil, pain, and death by changing the game.
A collection of quotes and reflections on God the Father in light of the spiritual fatherhood in Orthodox monasticism, in its relevance to us today in an economic depression.
I enjoyed Halloween for many years, but it looks different as I begin to understand Orthodoxy.
The Horn of Joy: A Meditation on Eternity and Time, Kairos and Chronos
A meditation on eternity and time.
Would you like to know how to survive an economic depression? People have survived every kind of disaster from recessions to economic collapses. The way they have survived may have had something to do with spirituality and faith. Do you want to dig deeper into how to survive a depression? You might find some answers here.
A look at humor (off-color and otherwise) in the light of Orthodox Christian classics.
An written for the Feast of the Nativity and the Fast before it, about Incarnation that unfurls in deification.
When we pray the Jesus Prayer, God uses it to build silence in our hearts and untangle those things we have knotted inside.
An Orthodox artist looks at art as a variety of icon.
A meditation of mystical theology about kings and kingdoms, monarchs and monarchy.
A homily touching on a subject that doesn't get much treatment for how important it is.
Orthodox Christians may believe in evolution, but when Orthodox claim that the Fathers' overall teaching goes hand in hand with evolution, there is something fishy going on.
You might also read the companion piece, Creation and Holy Orthodoxy: Fundamentalism Is Not Enough.
There is something that is not quite right about the Western Rite in the Orthodox Church. (Really? When they are trying so hard to reconstruct the authentic Western Orthodoxy of the first millenium? Yes!)
An open letter about an elephant in the room that Orthodox are painfully aware of and Catholics seem not to see at all.
Some of us wish, or are tempted to wish, that we lived in the age of the great Christological controversies, or nineteenth century Russia, or perhaps the Middle Ages or the Baroque era.
But God has placed us here and now, and ordained for us our ordinary lives to live out. Has God made a mistake in doing so?
God is like a pet owner who has only two rules.
A look at the pleasure-pain syndrome that for an instant crystallizes in the discussion of the Philokalia under a work attributed to St. Maximos the Confessor.
A look at the venomous hydra called narcissism and pride, by which Satan fell from being an Archangel in Heaven to being the Devil.
It isn't good for us, either.
"Religion and Science" Is Not Just Intelligent Design vs. Evolution
In my own experience, I started from a very scientific background; I have math awards and letters after my name in the sciences. And this science has been the start of a journey of repentance; it is a starting point of things that would find healing in Orthodoxy. And entering Orthodox theology, mystical theology, has meant unlearning not only the content of my knowing but what it is to know at all. Science is cut from the same cloth, or bedrock to, what it was that I needed healing from the Church as I was reconciled from the kind of background one gets in the sciences.
Do Swiss Army Knives offer a lens to see God with?
Take Your Shoes Off Your Feet, for the Place Where You Stand Is Holy Ground
The Fathers see something in the Lord's command to Take Your Shoes Off Your Feet, for the Place Where You Stand Is Holy Ground, and it has every relevance to Great Lent.
What do the Fathers see? And what does it have to do with Great Lent?
Everything we say of God is inadequate. Yet this God who is far beyond anything we can say has a vicar on earth: not the Pope, but every person who crosses our path.
Calvin and Hobbes said, "There's treasure everywhere!"
And really, there is.
One of the moments is long ago. The other one can be right now.
What Makes Me Uneasy About Fr. Seraphim (Rose) and His Followers
A look at what exactly about Fr. Seraphim (Rose) and his followers could disturb an Orthodox Christian.
Among Christians, there's a debate about "headship". And those involved can miss something very important.
(You might also be interested in material from other sections of this website, such as The Christmas Tales, Stephanos, and An Orthodox Looks at a Calvinist Looking at Orthodoxy.)
Go to: Orthodox Theology Articles Assorted Creations Journals Miscellaneous Nonfiction Novels Orthodox Humor Satire Short Stories Socratic Dialogue Technology Toastmasters Speeches
Jonathan's Corner
(Sitemap)
> Orthodox Books Online, and More
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