Librarians, we share things

Well. Hello again blog world, it feels like a long time, the day or so away.

Library land is going a bit better for me - someone at work has been lending a huge helping hand for one part of the work. The rest - well - it is not yet done. But I sure answered a LOT of reference questions!

So in library fashion, it is time to share from my blog reading.

I comment on an increasing amount of blogs, but I still read more than I comment on.

One of these, that I appreciate a lot, is by a man named John, who is aware of the world, various cultures, has traveled, and whose outlook on life I respect. Just wanted to mention his latest post, which reviews an article and outlines some of the challenges of a world that continues to misunderstand Christianity. It is well worth reading. His blog makes me think of friends whom one is better by having.

I also read this very lovely titled blog - Lost in-Elegant Cogitations where Phillipa gave a wonderful quotation (that I repeat below); see this post for an interview with Archbishop John of Belgorod. One of the many things I love about the Orthodox Church is the difference you find in perspective:

"It’s hard not to grumble when we deal with illness or sorrow. But here one can remember what an old woman crying by the church said. When the priest asked her what she was crying about, she answered, “I think God has forgotten about me: this year I have never been taken ill and there has been no sorrow in my life.” "

This reminds me of a quick blurb I heard on Ancient Faith Radio when Fr. Thomas Hopko challenged us to be thankful for the sorrow in our lives.

When ever I think of monasteries and Orthodox Fathers, including Fr. Thomas Hopko, I am very reassured. There are people, by the mercy and grace of God, who can teach us, who we can trust.

I find this shocking when I think of it (I am too often too busy, tired or distracted to remember, to my shame) that I have met, seen and heard spiritual fathers and mothers who are trustworthy and who show deeper Christianity than I once knew*. The small amount of faith I do have, I know is because of ones like these. And they are worth trusting because they know humility is of Christ.

*(I will have to do a post someday on the struggle to explain why I feel I have been given more in the Church than when I was a Christian but not in the Orthodox Church. Between the huge relativism found in parts of post-modernism and my dearly beloved Protestant Christian friends who, for the most part, would say what I have found was where I used to be, I find it a challenge to articulate where I now see myself; not to even begin to explain the Orthodox Church.)