Ah, the hagging. Raised Calvinist, and to this day, I wonder if one of the reasons I couldn't really buy into protestantism was that the Things that chased me down on the edge of sleep were so much more real than anything I encountered at church! "It's just a nightmare" doesn't cut it. Not-believing in them doesn't protect you from them, you know?
One of the perks of becoming Orthodox has been that it happens much less often, now (I attribute this to the sacramental aspects), and the repetitive prayer discipline means that the basic routines of daily prayer are now so embedded in my consciousness that when I do encounter the odd malign entity in sleep or semi-sleep states, I remember to cross myself, and automatically launch into the Jesus prayer and then the Trisagion... and they go away and leave me alone!
It does, at the very least, call into question the oft-repeated Protestant complaint about Catholics and their "vain repetitions". Experience says those repetitions are like the hammer-blows of the smith in his forge: it's how you shape the necessary tools and weapons to protect yourself.
From the looks of it, the SOP and LBRP and similar practices seem to serve a similar purpose among JMG's commentariat.
FWIW, I think cancel culture and all the naive dabbling in the nastier side of the occult will, in the end, be a net gain for traditional sacramental Christianity: the nominal (cultural/ethnic) church members will drop out, faced with public censure. And the dabblers who get more than they bargained for will turn up to replace them: the church is, after all, a hospital. This is a time of winnowing. I hope our clergy are up to the task!
no subject
One of the perks of becoming Orthodox has been that it happens much less often, now (I attribute this to the sacramental aspects), and the repetitive prayer discipline means that the basic routines of daily prayer are now so embedded in my consciousness that when I do encounter the odd malign entity in sleep or semi-sleep states, I remember to cross myself, and automatically launch into the Jesus prayer and then the Trisagion... and they go away and leave me alone!
It does, at the very least, call into question the oft-repeated Protestant complaint about Catholics and their "vain repetitions". Experience says those repetitions are like the hammer-blows of the smith in his forge: it's how you shape the necessary tools and weapons to protect yourself.
From the looks of it, the SOP and LBRP and similar practices seem to serve a similar purpose among JMG's commentariat.
FWIW, I think cancel culture and all the naive dabbling in the nastier side of the occult will, in the end, be a net gain for traditional sacramental Christianity: the nominal (cultural/ethnic) church members will drop out, faced with public censure. And the dabblers who get more than they bargained for will turn up to replace them: the church is, after all, a hospital. This is a time of winnowing. I hope our clergy are up to the task!