What a powerful closing prayer! And thank you for sharing bits of your journey. So encouraging. Blessings.

I have been going on a binge of your videos now and find that the thing I appreciate most about this channel is the candor. Being in a dogmatic branch of the Church has its safety but also can be stultifying if a person doesn’t have some brutal honesty. I find myself always in a battle between decorum and what is appropriate on one hand and total honesty on the other. Not an easy walk

I appreciate you sharing your thoughts here my friend, your comments concerning remembering that we are creatures I find gives me food for thought. Thank you for sharing.

Dale would be willing to create a video that shares your prayer rule and what books you use daily so that we can all pray communally?

One of the concerns that pops up in my wanderings is that much of us are doing what's right in our own eyes and heaping up teachers after our own lusts having itching ears.

I enjoyed "The Shape of the Liturgy" - what would you recommend for more recent scholarship?

I really respect that you’ve become (or I suppose remained) open throughout your life. I’m actually trying to put guardrails on myself right now, as someone who just chose to dive in after studying earliest Christianity from a secular perspective the past year. I came to respect a lot about it, & I’ve become enamored with Orthodoxy (but haven’t yet even gone to my local church - very fortunate that there is one here in downstate IL). I always respected but never understood spirituality & have been a hedonistic materialist since young adulthood, as it’s the only thing that ever made sense to me. But I recently discovered Orthodoxy and it clicks with me. It offers a way of life that feels almost designed for someone with my struggles. It’s still very difficult for me to think of myself as Christian - and that’s probably appropriate, as if I am, it’s only in the loosest sense - and that may be the case until or unless I get chrismated in the distant future. My personal issue is that I don’t know how I could ever believe that I possess THE truth. Not just in an anti-ecumenical sense, but that God has not revealed himself elsewhere, that the Buddhists, and Hindus, and countless others, have simply deluded themselves, that the Heavenly King, Comforter and Spirit of Truth is not _really_ everywhere present, filling all things, because the language by which He is understood is different. But I’ve seen the kinds of people who know THE truth, and I’ve never much respected them…I take to the open and the curious. So can I become Christian, much less Orthodox, without becoming what I despise? Could I really be wrong to despise it? Anyway, this is a self-indulgent, rambley way to say that, despite presently seeking to confine myself to a single tradition, it’s helps a deeply insecure guy like myself to see someone rich in faith, rich in knowledge, someone like myself who takes great comfort in history and tradition, remain open to different streams of the faith.

We have come Full Circle. This reveals we have an End, if we had no End, there would be No Revelations. The Gentiles now Worship as the Jews did at the Temple. Rituals, Rules, Laws, Traditions, Fancy Dress and Grand Titles, the Worship of Structure, and Not its Roots. Thus when the Root of their Religions turns up in the flesh, their Religion Cannot Recognise Him. And When Christ Returns, they shall be Terrified

My own concern about "diet" was indeed one of the issues that led me to Orthodoxy (after a period of Ayurveda practice). My father, by most people's account, was a very consistent Christian, but he was significantly overweight, often ate unhealthy foods (he loved Totino's frozen pizzas "doctored up" with New York Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese), and died of cancer at 69. Not to throw stones, but fundamentalist Christianity definitely has a blind spot when it comes to gluttony.