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Never Forget
I was 11 years old and in the sixth grade. I heard the news at school but didn’t really understand. Kids kept being picked up by worried parents; rumors flew that Houston would be next. I got home that afternoon and sat in front of CNN until my parents got home while watching the planes–the footage Continue reading
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Fall and the Coming Renewal (4)
Every year around this time I move from hating (but tolerating) the summer sun and heat to actively hating it. The reason for this (I surmise) is that this is the time of the year when school restarts, and it seems monstrous to me to have school starting while it is summer outside! In any Continue reading
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The Temptations of Christ
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. Looking back over his shoulder, he walks from surety into the mouth of Hell. Alone, he trembles. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. Craving discernment, longing for clarity–he has Continue reading
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My Approach to Sexual Ethics in Church
If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you know about my (re)conversion to an orthodox Christian faith beginning in February of 2013. While my last holdout was an affirmation of same-sex marriage as a legitimate Christian option, I was (by December 2014) finally able to say that I affirmed everything that the Continue reading
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My Approach to Politics
Summary: “The business of a conservatism with integrity is not to impose an idealistic ideological narrative on reality but rather to try to see the world as it is and respond to its challenges within the limits of what we know about human nature.” -Rod Dreher * * * It has been a long time Continue reading
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Benedictine Spirituality: Work, Prayer, and Study
Back in late September I went on a three-day retreat to St. Gregory’s Abbey in Michigan. St. Gregory’s is a Benedictine community of male vowed religious from within the Episcopal Church. There are currently seven monks living in the community, and of the seven four are priests. I went on this retreat with a lot Continue reading
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Fall and the Coming Renewal (3)
Every year around this time I move from hating (but tolerating) the summer sun and heat to actively hating it. The reason for this (I surmise) is that this is the time of the year when school restarts, and it seems monstrous to me to have school starting while it is summer outside! In any Continue reading
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Literature as a Mode of Knowledge
During the last three weeks of July I had the marvelous opportunity to participate in a program at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. This program is for K-12 teachers and its purpose to get teachers reading the Classics, writing about them, hearing lectures, and discussing them with each other in seminar. This summer Continue reading
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OCD and Me: Some Explanations and Reflections
My goal as a blogger is to write one long-form article for the blog each month. Occasionally, I will also post quotes I find valuable or share poems I have written. As you are no doubt aware, I failed to post anything in May (or June; technically this post counts for June since I started Continue reading
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The Practice of Simplicity
In just a few short weeks I will be on summer break. Hands down, one of my favorite things about being a teacher is the time off. I will have twelve weeks this summer that I can dedicate to time with family, friends, and my own personal pursuits. Last summer, only nine days before we Continue reading
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How Rote Worship and Ritualistic Prayer Saved my Faith
A common attitude that I encounter in the low-church Evangelical subculture in which I am immersed is that real prayer or worship requires an authenticity rooted in coming to God “just as we are.” This is usually defined in opposition to more ritualistic prayer/worship praxes which are simply “dead religion.” Tellingly, it is not uncommon Continue reading
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Lent 2017
We are getting close to the beginning of Lent (Ash Wednesday is just around the corner on March 1). Lent is a big time of the year for me. Liturgically, I don’t like it as much as Advent. I prefer the hopefulness and longing of Advent to the repentance and asceticism of Lent. I prefer Continue reading
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Rose Against the White
As the sun sets in a sky bedecked with crimson and gold, she opens her dancing green eyes, which glint like emeralds against the shadows. She is rose against the white, lying among the pillows in the splendor of her hair, framed only by the flickering light of a candle in the corner that softly Continue reading
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Beauty
Beauty is the word that shall be our first. Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach, since only it dances as an uncontained splendor around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another. Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient Continue reading
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Art and the Naked Body
I have been upfront on this blog about how my pornographic past, along with the purity culture of which I was a part, warped my sexuality in ways that are still damaging. Of the various effects my past has had on me, one is that it has so warped my desires that I have had Continue reading
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Searching Hope: A Poem for the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord
His cries mingled with hers amid the longings of shepherds and angels and men from afar against the ascendant darkness, long vigilant for even the faint echo of a searching hope. For he was midwifed in the humility of flesh made once, long ago, in the first light of Creation now fallen into sin and Continue reading
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The Virtuous Life: Benedictine Spirituality
Every few weeks or so I find myself chanting Vespers with an eclectic group (mostly mainline Protestants, but also a Catholic or two) of Christians. After we chant the evening office, we practice lectio divina, have a discussion of the Scriptures and a spiritual formation text, and then return to the oratory to chant Compline Continue reading
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Election 2016 Thoughts
Since the election a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been searching for the right words to express the way that I feel about things. I wrote a lengthy (and now deleted) post on Facebook the Wednesday morning after the election expressing my frustrations and fears. Since then, I have dropped my use of Facebook (I’m Continue reading
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A Candle in the Dark: My Spiritual Practices
I am what psychologist Richard Beck calls a “winter Christian.” By that I mean that my relationship with God largely centers around my struggle to make sense of the crap in the world. I am not a critic of God or of the Church or of the Faith, but I am sensitive to shallowness and Continue reading
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Great Books vs Technocracy and Academics
The biggest difference that I see between the kind of education I received and the kind of education my students are receiving is located in the telos toward which each system of education is ordered. The kind of education I received was ordered toward me having success in college or in the workforce; it was Continue reading
About Me
Gregory C. Jeffers
Anglican Christian | Husband | Father | Teacher | Scholar | Poet
G. C. Jeffers 