Heavenly Realm

Book Review
Regarding the book  Heavenly Realm

In 1984, two years after Fr. Seraphim's repose, Platina published a collection of lay sermons that Eugene Rose had written for the San Francisco Cathedral bulletin back in the 1960's.   The book, titled Heavenly Realm, is out of print, however the lay sermons have been re-collected on this blog from various places (see sidebar).  Several years after Fr. Seraphim had submitted his lay sermons for publication, he looked back as a priest on the value of his earlier new-convert writings  –  he assessed the value of those sermons both for the reader and for himself as the writer.

If you have the chance to visit somebody who just might have old parish newsletters, such as the one mentioned in the preceding paragraph, please ask to see them, and photograph them, or if possible, scan them, and please send them to me.

What Fr, Seraphim told to Fr. Alexey Young

from Letters, page 22

August 16/29,  1971

... Nonetheless, even without a newspaper, it doesn't hurt for converts to share ideas with each other.

Some years ago I wrote brief articles somewhat in the same vein, at the insistence of Archbishop John, who wanted at least a page or two of English material in the San Francisco diocesan bulletin (now defunct).  I don't know who if anyone read them, and looking back on them now I find them, despite the "feeling" I put into them, somewhat "abstract," the product of thinking that hadn't had too much experience as yet, either of Orthodox literature or Orthodox life.  Still, for me they served as important function in my understanding and expression of various Orthodox questions, and even in my Orthodox "development," and Vladyka John "pushed" that.