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  <title>joshua.seigler.net - faith</title>
  <subtitle>Personal homepage of Joshua Seigler</subtitle>
  <link href="https://joshua.seigler.net/feeds/faith.xml" rel="self" />
  <link href="https://joshua.seigler.net/" />
  <updated>2025-06-28T00:00:00Z</updated>
  <id>https://joshua.seigler.net/</id>
  <author>
    <name></name>
  </author>
    <entry>
      <title>War</title>
      <link href="https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/july-21-2025/" />
      <updated>2025-06-21T00:00:00Z</updated>
      <id>https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/july-21-2025/</id>
      <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Today the USA announced its bombing of three locations in Iran, including Iran’s main nuclear enrichment site, located under a mountain in Fordow. How far will things go?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Here is the only way I know of to have peace: live every day as if tomorrow you will face death, where it will be too late for repentance, too late for a change of heart. As St. Isaac the Syrian says&lt;sup class=&quot;footnote-ref&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/july-21-2025/#footnote1&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;footnote-anchor&quot; id=&quot;footnote-ref1&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote class=&quot;feature&quot;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Take hold of your life before your light grows dark and you seek help and do not find it. This life has been given to you for repentance; do not waste it in vain pursuits.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Woe to us! We neither realize just how valuable our soul is, nor comprehend the type of life we have been called to lead. We place great significance on this present life, on illnesses, on the state of society, and on the sorrows, evils, and comforts of this world.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;However, blessed is the person, O Lord Jesus Christ, who receives help from You. You, O Lord, are the only powerful One. Turn our faces away from the desire for this world so that we may covet You alone. Grant us, O Lord, understanding, so that we may comprehend just how deceitful this present world is, and so that we do not believe in this shadow as if it were the truth.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Seek the Lord, and be strengthened through hope. Seek His face through repentance, and you will be sanctified and cleansed from your sins, on account of the sanctity of His face. Hasten to the Lord, all of you who are guilty of sins, for He is able to forgive sins and overlook mistakes. For He made an oath and declared thus: &lt;em&gt;“I live, says the Lord. I do not desire the death of the sinner until he repents from his evil way and lives” (Ez. 13:23)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;May we not be tested beyond what we can bear, and may we have indestructible peace that is not of this world.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr class=&quot;footnotes-sep&quot;&gt;
&lt;section class=&quot;footnotes&quot;&gt;
&lt;ol class=&quot;footnotes-list&quot;&gt;
&lt;li id=&quot;footnote1&quot; class=&quot;footnote-item&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Quote copied from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.stnektariosmonastery.org/repentance-and-confession/This%20Life%20Has%20Been%20Given%20to%20Us%20for%20Repentance%20-%20St.%20Isaac%20the%20Syrian.pdf&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;noopener&quot;&gt;St. Nectarios Monastery&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://orthodoxwiki.org/Isaac_of_Syria&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;noopener&quot;&gt;OrthodoxWiki&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/july-21-2025/#footnote-ref1&quot; class=&quot;footnote-backref&quot;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;
&lt;/section&gt;
</content>
    </entry>
    <entry>
      <title>Finally, a Coherent Worldview</title>
      <link href="https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/finally-a-coherent-worldview/" />
      <updated>2023-07-14T00:00:00Z</updated>
      <id>https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/finally-a-coherent-worldview/</id>
      <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Around the time of my previous post, I had just been received into the Orthodox church. Since then I have found it to be everything I was looking for, and a great deal more. There is such a wealth of wisdom, going back thousands of years. And it was all there, un-seen, un-read, as far as I was concerned not existing at all! It seems impossible to me that I was so unaware of these treasures by chance.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Father Seraphim Rose, Saint Paisios, Saint Porphyrios, Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica - to name only a few! - lived in this world, recently. They speak plainly and lovingly about modern and familiar concerns. Their example and guidance are a priceless treasure! And not only they help me, but participating in the tradition of the Orthodox Church has… I don’t even know how to say it all. I have experienced how the prodigal son felt when he took a few trembling steps back to his father, and instead of the rejection or anger he had earned, he received joyful, unearned forgiveness. His father &lt;em&gt;ran&lt;/em&gt; to him while he was still far away!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Here is what I know, now from experience: Jesus Christ is life and truth and love. To look for life, or truth, or love apart from Him is pointless! It’s a contradiction, like looking for light by marching into the shadows. God made me, and He loves me more than I love myself. Because this is true, I want to do everything His way, even if I don’t understand it at first.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    </entry>
    <entry>
      <title>Embracing Mysticism</title>
      <link href="https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/embracing-mysticism/" />
      <updated>2021-10-16T00:00:00Z</updated>
      <id>https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/embracing-mysticism/</id>
      <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Logical arguments no longer work. This has been especially visible in the pandemic response in 2020. If you dug even a little below the surface of any mainstream narrative in the past two years, you likely found points of disagreement. But showing people scientific papers, charts, statistical analysis, or other types of evidence accomplishes nothing, or worse it invites accusations of being part of the Other Team, one of those backwards, wrong, stupid people.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In mid-2020 Vin Armani (now Cyprian) started calling this change “The Dim Age”&lt;sup class=&quot;footnote-ref&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/embracing-mysticism/#footnote1&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;footnote-anchor&quot; id=&quot;footnote-ref1&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. He suggested that most people still see the world as exclusively physical, oblivious to patterns of reality that are plainly obvious to more mystically aware people.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In an attempt to remedy my newfound illiteracy, I started exploring symbolism, which as I understood it dealt with identifying and understanding meaning. I found Jonathan Pageau’s project &lt;a href=&quot;https://thesymbolicworld.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;noopener&quot;&gt;The Symbolic World&lt;/a&gt;, which has some very accessible videos breaking down movies and other pop culture artifacts from a symbolic perspective &lt;sup class=&quot;footnote-ref&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/embracing-mysticism/#footnote2&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;footnote-anchor&quot; id=&quot;footnote-ref2&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. These commentaries did not seem arbitrary or speculative, but pointed to cultural trends that I couldn’t un-see once I understood them. I binged a bunch more of his material, including eventually a book his brother Mattheiu wrote, &lt;em&gt;The Language of Creation: Cosmic Symbolism in Genesis&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sup class=&quot;footnote-ref&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/embracing-mysticism/#footnote3&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class=&quot;footnote-anchor&quot; id=&quot;footnote-ref3&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. Through this I discovered a side of reality I had been almost completely oblivious to, and what’s more, an aspect of my faith which had somehow completely passed me by.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;From there I started listening to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/lordofspirits&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;noopener&quot;&gt;Lord of Spirits&lt;/a&gt; podcast. I learned that commonplace, obvious understanding of existence as material &lt;em&gt;and spiritual&lt;/em&gt; has been mostly lost, displaced by modern confidence that the material world is the limit of reality, over which sovereign mankind rules. The ancient faith of Christianity, known now as “Eastern Orthodoxy”, corresponds with reality, especially spiritual patterns of reality as we see more plainly every week, better than anything else I know.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For a while I think my highest values have been freedom and truth. A desire to be solely responsible for myself, and a desire to understand myself and the world fully and accurately. But I didn’t realize that my chief obstacle is hardly megacorps and governments: I am ruled by my own out-of-control desires: for comfort, pleasure, control, satisfaction, even self-mastery. In a paradise where my every whim was manifested, I would still be a slave to desire, consuming and &lt;em&gt;wanting&lt;/em&gt; more and more.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Investigating eastern orthodoxy, this ancient Christianity, revealed a better path to freedom and truth: aiming higher. Every action and choice is in service to something. Instead of serving little tyrannical gods like comfort or pleasure, or potentially nobler gods like a country or even a “liberty movement”, I will attempt to serve the Most High.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr class=&quot;footnotes-sep&quot;&gt;
&lt;section class=&quot;footnotes&quot;&gt;
&lt;ol class=&quot;footnotes-list&quot;&gt;
&lt;li id=&quot;footnote1&quot; class=&quot;footnote-item&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://freemanbeyondthewall.libsyn.com/episode-478&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;noopener&quot;&gt;Free Man Beyond The Wall episode 478: We’ve Entered The ‘Dim Age’&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/embracing-mysticism/#footnote-ref1&quot; class=&quot;footnote-backref&quot;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&quot;footnote2&quot; class=&quot;footnote-item&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://thesymbolicworld.com/videos/symbolism-propaganda-in-popular-culture/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;noopener&quot;&gt;Symbolism and Propaganda in Popular Culture&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://thesymbolicworld.com/videos/the-fall-of-loki-into-the-multiverse/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;noopener&quot;&gt;The Fall of Loki (Into the Multiverse)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/embracing-mysticism/#footnote-ref2&quot; class=&quot;footnote-backref&quot;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&quot;footnote3&quot; class=&quot;footnote-item&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://amzn.to/4iBOExr&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;noopener&quot;&gt;The Language of Creation: Cosmic Symbolism in Genesis: A Commentary&lt;/a&gt;, ISBN 978-1981549337 &lt;a href=&quot;https://joshua.seigler.net/posts/embracing-mysticism/#footnote-ref3&quot; class=&quot;footnote-backref&quot;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;
&lt;/section&gt;
</content>
    </entry>
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