Yes, I am still alive...

Well, it has been a long time since I posted here.  Judging from the occasional emails that come in or the comments that aren't spam (oh, boy, there are a lot of spammers out there), people are still reading the >4 years worth of almost-daily posts.

 

I stopped posting because of two reasons: one, I felt like I was starting to repeat myself; and, two, my life is unmanageable.

 

As to the first, I am working on some new theories, but I'm not entirely comfortable with speaking them aloud until I've had more time to examine the evidence.  Until that happens, what I have to say I have already said.  You may like it, or you may not, but it is there for the world.

 

As to the unmanageability of life, it is just that: I am stretched too thin.  I have young kids and an old body (thank you, modern life).  My health is as neglected as the fixer-upper house that constantly challenges me to learn new skills in construction and repair.  All of that with a moderately-sized parish with its own unique set of demands.

 

I have not given up on the message, but the messenger himself is weak.  The vessel is more than cracked... it is worn out.

 

That does not mean that I have utterly surrendered.  My priorities are to get my family through the next few years and my house in a more livable condition.

 

At the same time, I am gradually collecting information on what it would take to start a long-term, Orthodox-oriented, sober-living house.  We're talking about a post-treatment home where a group of sober Orthodox Christians can live and work. 

 

Sobriety (and one could include abstinence from all manner of temptations, including crime) is often defeated by returning home and finding all the well-worn paths just as they were left.  Old friends arrive on the doorstep, and the siren-call of the old life is often too much to bear.

 

Sometimes, a 'geographic' is exactly what the newly-sober needs to get on with life.  When your home is a tomb, life requires you to move out of the cemetery.

 

Of course, it takes money to get something like this going.  And, money requires willing partners, and those partners need a plan.  That's the tough part.  There is not precedent for it, and no existing infrastructure.  It is something new.

 

Please pray.