Tag Archive for: Newborn

Tested in Birthing Rooms

/0 Comments/in ,

Armodoxy for Today: Tested in Birthing Rooms

A foxhole is a hole in the ground used by soldiers as shelter against enemy fire. It’s been said that there are no atheists in foxholes. It’s an aphorism to suggest that in times of extreme fear or threat of death people will appeal to a higher power. In other words, when looking in the face of death, even the atheist will admit to a God.

Many years ago, I discovered another place where there are no atheists. The night my first child was born, it occurred to me that there aren’t any atheists in birthing rooms, either. When looking in the face of life in its most delicate and novel state, that is new life, untouched by the world, uncontrollably you lose yourself to your emotions. That loss of control is a recognition and acknowledgement of being in the presence of something greater than yourself. The details of paper-thin fingernails, the sculpting of beauty in the features, point to the fingerprint of God and the realization that the miracle of life as anything but an accident.

I tested this theory a couple of times after that first experience and most recently with the phenomena of grandchildren. Same conclusion: There are no atheists in birthing rooms.

We pray, Lord, in the simplest expressions of life we find You. Keep our senses ever-alert to Your presence all around us. Watch over and protect those little expressions of Your Love. Amen.Whispers of the wind, held in a breath—each filament a fragile thread of nature’s poetry.

Humility as the Separator

/0 Comments/in ,

Armodoxy for Today: Humility as the Separator

In this week following the feast of Discovery of the Holy Cross of Christ, there is a common thread tying together all the messages we have presented. The thread, in fact, makes up the fabric of what we refer to as Armodoxy, namely, understanding ourselves as people and God as God. This may sound odd, but as humanity take more and more control over the elements of life, the line between the Creator and creation becomes more blurred. We succumb to the illusion that everything is subjected to the will of man. And along comes the unexplainable. The mysterious.  

Death is inevitable, we know and we can prepare for it, but the painful hurt of parting with a loved one catches us off guard as we scramble to contain our emotions. We see evil manifest in the forms of intolerance and even greater, in the form of war, and we ask the question, why can’t we live together? We can create weapons of mass destruction but have yet to find a way of producing even the simplest expressions of life, such as a single paper-thin fingernail of a newborn which is packed with the DNA code that will guide her through a lifetime. And of course, on the larger scale we look into the depths of space, and expand our mind into the thought of multiple universes, and all the while learn that most of our own planet’s surface – over 75% of it – is unexplored.

The Discovery of the Cross is to search, find and absorb humility. That Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, sacrificed himself, is an open invitation to all of us to find the definition of Love in that sacrifice. In the Armenian Church Tradition we have a saying: God became man so that man can become god. It is a simple meditation to understand ourselves as people, on a journey, together as humanity and our only salvation is loving and caring for one another.

From the Book of Hours we pray, Peace and life, our Lord and Savior, the Only-Begotten Son of God, give us Your peace, that You grant to Your holy apostles by breathing into them Your life-giving and all powerful Holy Spirit, so that having found our peace from all worldly commotions we may become a temple and a habitation of Your grace. Amen.