Greetings in the Lord!

These unworthy reflections stem from Russian Orthodox Christian tradition as lived by a sinner in Northern Appalachian America. The header photo for the blog is of Tall Timbers, a local nature preserve, which includes some old-growth hemlock trees. The Orthodox Cross on our rural mission land not far away is made from hemlock wood. You can see a sequence of two photos below during the blessing of that Cross on the site of our future temple, by Bishop Nicholas of Manhattan. The downpour that came quickly amplified the blessing of the holy water, in what he called a good sign of the heavens duplicating the holy water spread in the blessing, in effect baptizing and watering the Church’s growth.

This blog seeks to reflect Orthodox Christian perspectives on οἶκος and λόγος, meaning respectively “home” or “household,” and, in multiple meanings of logos, “story,” “word,” “harmony,” “purpose,” “reason,” “bond,” “intermediary,” “unifying principle.” Together, οἶκος and λόγος are roots for ecology, suggesting an alternative meaning for it as the “story of home,” or “meaning of home,” extending to reflecting on life as meaning. The Logos is the Word, our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. The logoi of the Logos, the words of the Word, can be thought of as articulating the uncreated energies of God, or grace, while constituting the purpose of all beings and non-being in Creation in Christian “pansemiotism.” Related terms include “ecosemiotics,“ arising from the Tartu-Moscow-Copenhagen school of semiotics: oikos + semiosis,” a making of meaning in the context of home, drawing on the term semiosis coined by the nineteenth-century Pennsylvanian Anglican-Christian philosopher Charles Peirce. Then there is “ecopoetics,” which stems from oikos + poiesis, or “the shaping of home” — the highlighting of meaning in Creation as done in Orthodox apologetic theology highlighted by Prof. I.M. Andreyev, and in the Orthodox philosophy of S.L. Frank. For application of Orthodox Tradition about life on earth to current issues, see also the “Social Concept” (2000) and “Human Dignity” (2008) documents of the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church.