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Just what my Little Church Needed

Revisado: 05-08-20 El oyente recibió este título gratis

In full disclosure, for my honest opinion on Blueprints for the Little Church: Creating an Orthodox Home by Elissa Bjeletich and Caleb Shoemaker, I was given a free audio copy of the book.

Christ is Risen!

It’s hard to say if I’d appreciate this book as much as I do right now, under these unusual circumstances. It’s a very Orthodox Quarantine in our home. And this book finding us, in quarantine, could not have come at a better time.

Everything revolves around the home. We have a stay-at-home order, and we’ve done our best to abide by this, with, I’ll admit, few indiscretions. Nonetheless, for the most part, we spend our time in this home. So listening to this book was a blessing.

As converts, we have been slow to pick up the specifics of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Those are the three essential components, the building blocks, for the Orthodox church. And, as I said, it’s been slow for us. We converted 9 years ago. And since then we’ve moved 4 times, had 3 children, changed jobs 6 times, and changed churches 3 times. It’s been a bit of a blur. Between nursing, diapers, meals, dishes, laundry, an internationally traveling husband, and homeschooling, the building blocks of the church haven’t always been our focus.

So, to listen to Blueprints for the Little Church during laundry folding sessions in the morning/ afternoon has been like having a dear grandma, loving and true, walk me through the importance of each step. It could be Elissa Bjeletich’s voice too. Love and tenderness exude from each word.

My grandma was Roman Catholic, and while she certainly had a love for God and the sacraments, she died before I started my family, so I never got that opportunity to talk to her about “How do you get the kids to cooperate during prayers?” or “How can fasting become more palatable for the little children?” or “What’s your favorite almsgiving opportunity with little children?”

Neither my husband or I grew up in homes that centered their lives around the Orthodox Faith’s practices, so, it’s helped those fragmented pieces of advice over the past 9 years fall into place.

And the blessings have been palpable.

We are fasting together, as a family, today’s a fish day, hurray!

We pray together as a family in the morning and evening. I was use a piece of discarded wood and a wooden spoon to create my own Talanton (an ancient call to prayer). The children have a sip of holy water, a piece of antidoron, and put their cross necklaces on after those morning prayers. We have holy oils at the ready for nights when we feel anxious and upset.

We have limited the amount of screen times that the children and the adults indulge in. That has been one of the greatest “break throughs” I’ve had concerning screens. For years my intuition said that screens and the enticement of entertainments hurt me. I didn’t have a TV for all of my college years and my adult life before children. I just really disliked them. And I couldn’t exactly pinpoint why I did until I was listening to this audiobook.

Elissa and Caleb explain, “The safest road to hell is to be gently lulled into thinking about anything except God. Entertainments need not be spectacularly wicked or even particularly interesting; if they keep us from prayer and from building loving community in our homes, then they’ve succeeded in damaging our spiritual lives. The Psalmist writes, ‘Be still, and know that I am God’ (Psalm 45[46]:11); but where will we find stillness we we keep busy with mind-numbing distractions?” (p. 140)

I took facebook and instagram off my phone. And I felt affirmed in this choice because this morning I read in Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives: The Life and Teachings for Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, “Our life depends on the kind of thoughts we nurture. If our thoughts are peaceful, calm, and meek, and kind, then this is what our life is like. If our attention is turned to the circumstances in which we live, we are drawn into a whirlpool of thoughts and can have neither peace nor tranquility” (p. 63).

That part at the end “whirlpool of thoughts” hit me in the gut this morning. Oh, how social media is full of those right now. And not just social media, even messages from family and friends can be strange and full of that “whirlpool”. I refuse to get sucked in. And I believe it’s the prayers, fasting, and almsgiving, that is giving me the strength to focus on loving Christ, His Church, myself, my husband, my children, and our home together.

Anyways, I’d highly recommend this book to anyone who recently converted to Orthodoxy or who needs a refresher in the basics. I ended up purchasing a hard copy from my church bookstore so that I could refer to more easily throughout the year.

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