Hey there. Thanks for taking a look at these Letters. If you’ve looked through past posts and gotten anything out of what I wrote then God bless. If you haven’t, try going back to the beginning and experiencing the research I went through as I began expressing my conversion story from Protestant to Orthodox, first to family, then to friends, and finally publicly.
I’ve been thinking for a while now about what to do with the blog. I’m now Orthodox, and while I’m very much still working on expressing my thoughts on Orthodox conversion issues, I don’t think that this anonymous platform can get me where I want to go. At the same time I’m loathe to change things up. This stands as a nice slice of my life, and I had good reason for presenting things the way I did. I don’t really want to change that. The content here is still good content. I would probably write it differently now, but I stand behind it as is.
So, I’m saying sayonara to this blog. I’m leaving it in place, as is, for anyone who wishes to look at the content.
Thanks for reading along with me on my journey. I will still respond to comments, but don’t expect any further posts here.
Letters on Orthodoxy 
Mark–do you have a podcasts on AFR?
No fair asking. 🙂 No, I don’t, though I have interviewed John and Bobby Maddex.
Please do keep this site available. It’s got a lot of valuable stuff particularly for Protestant Christians or, like myself, Anglican Christians.
If you ever decide to write more here are some article requests.
1) Icons; when does veneration become idolatry?
2) Artwork in early Church; where does artwork become a form of Iconography?
Hey Patrick,
I don’t plan on ever taking this site down. 🙂 As long as wordpress hosts it for free, at least. I would’ve appreciated reading this during my journey, so I always hope it’ll be helpful to others. I’m not sure about adding to it though. I go back and forth, but I try to just trust my 2013 self when I decided not to add more content here and let it stand as is. I’m still not sure if this is a good platform for writing more.
However, I really like your questions. I think you are feeling a common difficulty Protestants have with Orthodox religious practice. For me icons were not hard to accept, but I know a LOT of people who encounter them and struggle. In practice I don’t think many Orthodox Christians have trouble with turning veneration of icons into worship. It can certainly happen, and probably the place where we need to be most careful is with those icons that are miracle working. As long as the icon is opening a “window into heaven” then it is doing its job and there’s no problem. I find them very helpful in my prayer practice. I’m ever so much more aware of the saints around me and present in my reality than I was when I was an iconoclast.