Journey Stories

In the beginning, a very well known phrase, I was born into a totally Jewish family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I did all the things a normal kid would do, and a lot I shouldn’t have. We really didn’t go to the Synagogue a lot. Back then you had to be a member and pay dues, and for the High Holy Days, you had to buy tickets at an additional cost to the membership dues. I questioned this and all my father would say is that I was too young to understand. As was the custom, I had my ... [Read more]

My journey to Orthodoxy began as a very small child, at the unknowing conditioning of my mother. You see, my parents raised me in the Episcopal Church because, 1) my Presbyterian-raised father wanted “Catholic values without the guilt” and 2) my Roman Catholic-raised mother wanted to marry a man who was going to be an Episcopal priest. Dad never did become a priest. In fact, he wasn’t really involved in my religious or spiritual upbringing. My mom was the head of the household when it came to ... [Read more]

My journey to Orthodoxy began before I was born. It began before my parents were married; before they had even met. My journey to Orthodoxy began with a man in Anchorage, Alaska named Harold Dunaway. In 1971, Mr. Dunaway was able to buy a large piece of property, a former Catholic Monastery in the growing town of Eagle River, Alaska. Mr. Dunaway was only able to purchase the property because of a very generous and unexpected donation. He fondly remembers that this was “how we found our home.” ... [Read more]

It all began late one evening in the spring of 1967. I was sitting alone in our family room watching the movie King of Kings on our first-ever color TV. It was a movie about the life of Jesus, and it held me in rapt attention. At the end of the movie, I started to cry. After I turned off the TV, wave after wave of tears of repentance flooded over me. That night Jesus started me on my journey. The next weeks were the best of my life up to that point. I knew I had a new purpose: to serve my Savior ... [Read more]

I feel blessed to have been born Greek. What a wonderful culture we have with the strong family traditions, the delicious foods, the great stories of how our pappous and yiayias came to this country and made a home for themselves and their family. The celebrations we have for name days, baptisms and weddings truly point to an appreciation for life. What wonderful parties I experienced growing up in a Greek family. The Church was the gathering place for Greeks that were spread throughout ... [Read more]

I was born into an Orthodox family and was baptized at a very young age, thereby making me a “cradle” Orthodox. In looking back on my formative years, I now realize how green the grass was in my own backyard, but at that stage in my life, I did not take full advantage of it. Being a native Oregonian, the bulk of my years, minus a handful during which we lived in California when I was very young, were spent attending Holy Trinity here in Portland. As a child and through my teenage years my ... [Read more]

I was raised in a loving but nominally Christian home. I remember irregular attendance at various Lutheran and Presbyterian churches before the age of twelve. By that time I think my parents had stopped going to church. As a result, my teen years had little to do with Christ. I was just an average kid who (generally) stayed out of trouble, and who was blissfully ignorant of any need for God. One sadly amusing memory from those days was throwing my morning paper route with my cassette player ... [Read more]

My father was raised an Orthodox Jew. As a child, I remember visiting my grandparent’s home as they prepared for the Passover holiday. They kept a Kosher home, which meant that they followed Jewish dietary rules. During the eight days of the Passover season, we would go down to their storage area and exchange their normal set of kitchenware for the special kosher kitchenware. I didn’t understand why we did this, at that early age, but it was tradition. I also experienced going to their synagogue ... [Read more]

My father was raised Catholic by his Irish immigrant mother. His father, who was a kind and spiritual man, never attended these services. My mother was raised Presbyterian. When my parents began dating, my father had many unanswered questions about Catholicism, including the demand that my mother convert in order for their marriage to be recognized by the Catholic Church. Because of this, they were married in a Presbyterian church in Cleveland, Ohio and soon moved to Seattle where my father ... [Read more]

The story of my journey to Orthodoxy is not one involving a major conversion. Instead, since I was born into the faith, my journey has been discovering how important the Orthodox Faith is in my life. My mom took me on my first pilgrimage when I was three-years-old, to a women’s convent in California. Although I don’t remember this pilgrimage, it was the first among many pilgrimages that I would take with my mom and family. The first pilgrimage I remember was a trip to a women’s monastery in ... [Read more]