In the afternoon I went to the church yard to water the basil and geraniums. The leaves had wilted a bit from the sun, but after the water they looked better. Eleni the neighbor also came with her little grandson and together we collected the dry branches from the roses.

Last weekend I drove out to the little monastery near Wakefield. The nuns had fresh bread from their oven after the liturgy and I sat on the bench by the garden watching three chickadees fight over the feeder. The quiet there always sticks with me on the drive back to Ottawa.

A quiet dispute has broken out at the historic Lamaria Monastery in Ushguli. Locals are upset about unauthorised building work happening right next to the old church walls. Many in the community hope the matter can be settled peacefully and with respect for the monastery’s sacred ground.

The Ecumenical Patriarch presided over a supplicatory canon at the historic church in Bosphorus Neochori yesterday. Local faithful gathered quietly for the service, which felt both solemn and peaceful under the afternoon light. A small reminder of how these old parishes still anchor so many lives.

This August, ERT will broadcast two special live events from Imbros. They'll cover the celebration of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew's 65th anniversary of his ordination to the diaconate, along with the Patriarchal Divine Liturgy for the Dormition. It's a lovely chance to join in from afar.

Today I baked bread for Mass early before I went to work. The dough turned out soft this time, so I added a little extra olive oil. Tomorrow, my son and I will prepare the offering before the service. He loves to watch the oven work.

The white walls and blue domes under the clear sky give a feeling of calm.

Monastic communities in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch continue to shape everyday parish life through shared feasts and practical service. Their daily synaxarion for August 4 highlighted saints whose lives of prayer directly support local clergy and families. In parallel, the archdiocese opened auditions for its concert choir, drawing singers from both monasteries and neighborhood parishes to prepare music rooted in ancient monastic tones. The Romanian Orthodox Church marked the forefeast of the Transfiguration with Saint John Jacob of Neamţ, whose hermitage example now guides lay volunteers at urban food banks. Meanwhile, the Orthodox Church in America’s Office of Pastoral Life announced its 2026 clergy retreat, where monastic guests from several jurisdictions will lead sessions on balancing contemplative silence with the demands of parish administration. Serbian Orthodox parishes remembered protodeacon Professor Miloš Erdeljan, whose scholarly work on monastic spirituality still informs sermon preparation in ordinary churches. These concrete ties between monastery and parish keep the spiritual rhythm steady for ordinary believers. The connection shows how ancient monastic patterns quietly sustain the daily work of local congregations.

The cross stands so that the sunrise sky is completely recorded. It is a simple and calm image.

The Orthodox Church in America: Podcasts, Catechetical Courses, and the Voice of the Layman Over two decades, the Orthodox Church in America has grown a significant digital outreach—and grown it primarily from below. Audio conversations and podcasts, catechetical courses for seekers, parish pages, conversations of priests about faith in a language that is understandable to those coming from outside - all this was done not by a single decree, but by many efforts, which the hierarchy supported and recognized. For a country where Orthodoxy is an unfamiliar thing for the majority, this turned out to be perhaps the main way of witnessing: a person first listens, then comes. The limit of this path is visible here. When the voice belongs to the multitude, among the voices there are those who are careless, those who are too confident, and those who present themselves as the voice of the Church. This is exactly what the foreign Regulations warn about, and they warn rightly: no one should pass off a personal opinion as the speech of the Church without authority. The difference is different. The American Church responded to this danger primarily by teaching—by showing how it should be done—and only secondarily by restriction. Punishment where it has not been learned comes late. Review of the week “Church and digital space”, part 3 of 7.