Dear Brother in Christ, Alexey, We were glad to hear of your joyous Pascha and the spiritual profit from these holy days for the Etna Orthodox community. Do not worry about the increased responsibilities and new souls that come your way; God will not send you more burdens than you can bear, and what can

Dear Sister in Christ, Nina, Here I promised you an “epistle” in Bright Week, and I’m sending you instead half an epistle the next week. Please forgive my negligence and pray for me and us all so that we won’t be entirely fruitless servants of Christ our risen Saviour. Glory be to God, the last

Dear Sister in Christ, Nina, Rejoice in the Lord! Will try to answer your questions one at a time. Concerning particular questions like job, people problems — individually they aren’t important and they really can’t be solved one at a time. Instead, try to keep the whole picture in mind. Where is your heart? If

Dear Brother in Christ, Alexey, Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ, We have started the new Orthodox Word, so typing on my letter to Kalomiros is just beginning. We just spent four evenings, after evening trapeza, listening to the whole Kalomiros letter and then my reply. I can safely say that the whole Brotherhood was

Dear Brother in Christ, Alexey, Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ. I pray this has found you successfully laboring after three weeks of the fast. After the labor of fasting, what joy in the week of Pascha! (The services are also very short — how wise the Church is with our fallen nature!) I have

Dear Dr. Kalomiros, Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ. We have received your letter concerning “evolution,” for which we thank you very much. I have read it, trying, as you said, to remove all Western conceptions from my mind. I hope, if God gives me the strength, to study your points carefully and write you

Dear Brother in Christ, Alexey, Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ. We received yesterday the long-awaited epistle of Dr. Kalomiros on “evolution” — 40 pages long! I must confess that it is shocking beyond our expectations — giving the “evolutionary” teaching quite unadorned and unqualified, complete with the “evolved beast Adam” and “he who denies

[Fragment of letter to Alexey Young, p. 3 only]: Fr. P. mentioned a little the question of evolution (I didn’t mention your forthcoming article on the subject), enough for me to see his basic attitude and fears, I think. His concern about “fundamentalism” seems to stem from a fear that the Orthodox battle against evolutionism

Dear Sister in Christ, Nina, Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ. From the sound of your letters, you are in need of an “epistle.” I really can’t give it, but being a like-minded American Orthodox dreamer, I must give you at least a paragraph or two. Yes, the Church situation in San Francisco is gloomy,

Dear Alexey — Just a note to go with the Teilhard article — I think it was Sarah who sent it to us, but maybe it was you; in any case you might as well keep it in your “evolution” file. It is well done but, of course, “unpublishable,” as she says. Most people will

Dear Brother in Christ, Alexey, Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ in Whom rejoice! Here are some more notes on evolution, specifically your chapters which we are returning herewith. II. Chapter on the “context”: too broad, and in the wrong place. The study should begin with a “bang” (after the Preface, which should be written

Dear Brother in Christ, Alexey, Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, our mountain was rather drenched with rain also, and all that snow that Nina and Barbara trudged through was washed away in less than two days! For a day or so all the bridges between us and the Sacramento Valley were under water,

Dear Alexey — Greetings on the feast of our 20th-century wonderworker! I’ve been finding more patristic citations, and the “patristic notes” I sent should really be expanded into a little treatise on the Orthodox view of the creation, including the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge — but how can you keep

Dear Brother in Christ, Alexey, Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ. We have an extraordinary request to make of you — if it is possible and if things turn out as expected. For twenty years Fr. Herman has known a female convert to our Church on the East Coast, Nina Seco. (I’ve known her, chiefly

Dear Father Lev, Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ. We received your note and learn with astonishment that doe Acquisition of the Holy Spirit of I. M. Kontzevitch is being printed in English, it would seem, without the widow of the author (who actually wrote half of it) even being informed of it, despite the

Dear Brother in Christ, Alexey, Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you for the new Nikodemos, which was full of spiritual food from first to last, including the “fillers.” May God give you the strength to continue giving this spiritual food to those who are starved for it (often without knowing it). We received

Dear Brother in Christ, Daniel [Olson], Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ. We are glad to hear you are safe. Your letter states again your “position,” which is exactly as we understood it to be when you left. My words now, on the other hand, are intended once again, quite deliberately, to “avoid the question”

Dear Brother in Christ, Alexey, Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ on the Feast of the Glorious Nativity of His Most Holy Mother! This is just a note to acknowledge your letters and clippings. We haven’t read the “Secret Gospel” clipping yet, so have no comments on it. Your projected “prisons” series sounds promising and

Dear Father Neketas, Evlogeite! Please forgive our long silence. This summer has been an extremely busy one for us, and our two new brothers have only increased the work we have taken on. But I will be frank and add this: your letters and attitude regarding Alexey Young have left us so shocked that we

Dear Father Ioannikios, Blagoslovite! We send you greetings on the glorious feast of our Lord s Transfiguration. Thank you for your letters and the copy of your letter to Alexey Young. We are very glad to see your sound counsel to Alexey, which I think is basically what we also have tried to tell him.

Dear Alexey — Just a short note, Fr. E s letter has sunk in a little deeper, and it makes us even more disturbed than at first. This is not an answer to anything, and is a disservice to English-speaking Orthodox Christians. Such “theology” we do not need. We thought of writing a note to

Dear Father Ioannikios, Blagoslovite! We have talked with Vladika Anthony about Vladimir Anderson, and indeed it turns out that Vladika had in mind only that Vladimir go to Jordanville to be tested, and perhaps to spend a few days there, meet the seminary instructors, etc. And so, apparently we will be mostly conducting his “course,”

Dear Brother in Christ, Alexey, Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ. We received Fr. Ephraim’s “Open Letter” today, together with your note. Yes, we found too that he completely missed the point, and all the very nice quotes from the Fathers on the different degrees of knowledge mean nothing when one stops to realize that

Dear Brother in Christ, Alexey, Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ. Both Fr. Herman and I read the article on Humanism and received about the same impression from it: that each point taken by itself makes sense, but that the whole article is too long, tries to include too many different citations and strands of

Your Grace, Dear Vladika Laurus, Blagoslovite! Please forgive us for disturbing you once again with a “problem,” but this “problem” is fortunately not one that concerns us personally, but is rather something more general, about which we think you are probably well aware already. We are rather upset by it, and we beg your advice