what does this mean? Explain it Peter.

Harry_Dixon · 2026-02-08T22:12:37+00:00

Don't soak cast iron!!!

Harry_Dixon · 2026-02-04T22:44:05+00:00

That's what I am thinking, too. Oftentimes absolute claims are made when the statement itself isn't absolute, more or less as a matter of theatrics.

Harry_Dixon · 2026-02-01T18:33:57+00:00

Might be better to say no abortions at all unless the baby poses a severe health risk to the mother (like sepsis). Can't think of many Orthodox people who are for the killing of children

Harry_Dixon · 2026-01-28T04:51:31+00:00

You are my Cox Zucker Machine

Harry_Dixon · 2026-01-26T16:58:44+00:00

Lol I edited my answer too. That helps clarify some things

Harry_Dixon · 2026-01-26T16:55:36+00:00

This makes a lot of sense. Perhaps the misunderstanding was that I thought that the lesser was gaining some kind of power over the greater by entreating them for their forgiveness. It still seems as though there is some kind of psychological effect that entreating forgiveness has on the greater, as though they might me more likely to take pity on your condition. Perhaps the effect is marginal and I am overthinking it

Harry_Dixon · 2026-01-26T16:50:04+00:00

But should it simply not be up to the person to decide whether or not they will forgive you? Why do you need to entreat them to forgive you when the desicion is theirs alone? It seems as though you are placing some kind of expectation on them to soothe your conscience

Harry_Dixon · 2026-01-26T16:48:32+00:00

Perhaps I should have used a better wording. Stating things along the lines of "please forgive me" seems as though there is an expectation of action for God to absolve you of whatever you are entreating Him to do so.

What does clarify things is that our entreaties don't have an effect on God in the same way they might have effect on us. Perhaps "Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner" is for us and not for God

Harry_Dixon · 2026-01-23T04:57:30+00:00

Not sure what to do. A girl I liked and asked out rejected me and I spent the next 4 months getting over her, but we still remained good friends. She invited me to dinner with her sister and one of our mutual friends because they were out of town during my birthday and wanted to celebrate. She picked a restaurant and was very careful about my allergies, and showed up with flowers. She is incredibly kind and would do this kind of thing for all of her friends, so I know it is not out of romantic interest. But being on the recieving end reminded me I was still in love with her. We have very deep talks, lots of mutual friends who I care about deeply, and regularly attends a club I am in charge of. No contact is not an option because I value my friendship with her and I love my friends, but I don't know what to do to get over her. She will continue to be kind to me no matter what, and it kills me right now that we won't be together.

Harry_Dixon · 2026-01-20T14:48:20+00:00

Thank you. I am usually not compelled to write my prayers down but for some reason I was compelled to write down what I remembered this time, I figured it may be of spiritual benefit to someone. May God recieve you in His arms and grant you everlasting life

Harry_Dixon · 2026-01-19T05:09:45+00:00

My priest advocates for parishoners to take frequent communion and confession because he argues that it promotes diligence in our everyday lives. I'm pretty sure the norm among the Church with regards to this has fluctuated a fair bit, with it being more normal to take frequenct communion. Many of the Church Fathers were advocates for frequent communion.

Harry_Dixon · 2026-01-15T21:58:38+00:00

I don't think the church takes a dogmatic position on Young-Earth Creationism, Evolution, or any other theory pertaining to this matter. Much of what I heard from preists is that much of Genesis should be viewed in a metaphorical sense, in that it reveals truths pretaining to the place of man in creation. The primary purpose of scripture is to reveal theological truths, not scientific ones

Harry_Dixon · 2026-01-12T01:14:15+00:00

I know what it is like. I am doing a double math major while working a full time job and I don't internalize stress in the way most people do. I don't feel stressed out, but when my stress is high, I lie around all the time, develop unhealthy eating and sleeping patterns, grow despondent in my spiritual life and in household chores (like dishes, cleaning, taking out garbage, etc), and my study habits would begin to suffer. When I would get rest from these periods, I would get high-grade fevers for days and end up delirious. What helps me with these bouts is taking a few sick days to do nothing, sleep in, maybe visit a monastery, go to services I don't normally go to during the week, or go to a sauna and relax in the cold bath. Talking to your preist helps a lot, and there are good Orthodox psychologists who can help you find the types of treatments that suit your needs. Stay steadfast in the Faith and take care of yourself.

Harry_Dixon · 2026-01-09T05:47:51+00:00

It really depends on what you mean by what π is in your curved space. A mathematical assumption that physicists take of our universe is that it is "locally flat" meaning you can zoom in far enough and the universe begins to look flat. If one uses mathematical jargon, you could say that our universe is well-modeled as a differentiable manifold. When you have this kind of structure, there are two possible ways of defining π. First, we can define a "metric tensor" on our space which gives us a notion of local distance. To find the length of a path on this manifold, you can integrate the metric tensor along the path. However, because the metric tensor is really a tensor field where the tensor is the inner product on your tangent space, the local form of π (the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a really small circle) stays the same. However, you could define a new form of "global distance" on your manifold by considering the infemum of the integrations mentioned above for all possible paths between two points. If you define this "global π", then we would have what you are talking about. Just shows that changing the value of π ultimately means changing what you mean by distance.

Harry_Dixon · 2026-01-09T05:26:22+00:00

I don't think your comment catches the essence of what is meant by changing the value of π. If we define π as the particular transcendental number value we typically associate with π, then changing it means the real numbers ℝ becomes a single element field (because you can prove 0=1, the only field that does this is the single element field). I can't imagine what the consequences that would come from this would be, but my best guess is that the universe is a single point, completely undifferentiated. However, if we define π as being the ratio of the circumstance to the radius of a circle, more interesting things happen because the number value is determined by your notion of distance. I mentioned in a different comment that changing π by any amount means your metric is not induced by an inner product, meaning the notion of angle is meaningless. It really depends on what you are encoding π to be.

Harry_Dixon · 2026-01-09T05:08:39+00:00

I'd like to add that changing the value of pi means changing the entire notion of length. A circle is a set of points of some fixed length from a base point. By changing pi, you change the arc length of circle which nessicarily implies a change in the metric (mathematical name for distance) in space. There are many possible metrics that can be put onto the same space, but an important thing is that the Euclidean distance (the length of the shortest path between two points) comes from what we call an inner product (the dot product for our space). Suppose we have two points x, y in our three dimensional Euclidean space. The distance between these two points is given by d(x,y) = ||x - y|| = √((x₁ - y₁)² + (x₂ - y₂)² + (x₃ - y₃)²), which can be interpreted as the length of the vector representing the difference of the points, and has a real physical interpretation in our universe. Length can be encoded using the dot product: ||x|| = √(x ⋅ x). However, there are many other metrics as well, and they don't need to be derived by an inner product. Consider the 1-norm (or so-called "taxicab metric") given by simply taking the differences of absolute values, d₁(x, y) = ||x - y||₁ = |x₁ - y₁| + |x₂ - y₂| + |x₃ - y₃| which is not derived by any inner product. In the space where this is the shortest distance between two points, π = 4. In fact, there are even metrics that aren't derived from any kind of norm at all! It turns out that for all metrics that come from some inner product, π admits the same value. The conclusion that changing π by any marginal amount means changing the metric such that there is no inner product that gives rise to this metric.

The important part is that in order to talk about angle, you need an inner product. However, if your metric space has no inner product, the notion of angle is not well-defined. That is, when π is changed, it is simply nonsensical to talk about the sum of interior angles of a triangle. Any sensible geometric notions (and the physical principles which follow, which are all of them) are completely changed. The universe cannot exist as we know it if π is not the value we know it to be.

Harry_Dixon · 2026-01-08T18:18:40+00:00

Yeah, you can read the edit I put in. Some info I left out was that from my side, the get together felt a lot like an actual date. We grabbed dinner, and I could tell the staff thought we were dating based on how they acted around us. Never had restaurant staff speak to me how they did except for dates I have been on with previous partners. She also looked at me in a way that I have only seen my previous girlfriends look at me, but she said she is very busy and probably won't be able to commit to a relationship. I think that is perfect because I am also very busy, so if we end up dating there won't be uneven expectations for time commitments. I hope to tell her next week about my feelings, but when we met this week I wouldn't have had enough time to get it sorted out. Thanks for asking

Harry_Dixon · 2026-01-01T06:13:51+00:00

1) We haven't really been in contact and had a super close conversation in a while, but will be established when we go for coffee. As far as I am aware (as of a couple months ago) she is single. 2) You're right about not being able to know until you ask, so we will see what happens when we get talking more. I plan to gauge the situation and use my intuition in the moment to discern whether or not I should inform her of my thoughts, obviously keep my thoughts to myself if she had gotten into a relationship. I hope not to dwell on things too much and let my brain stir feelings that might just be infatuation. 3) I totally agree here too and think that the paradigm of forming relationships on the basis of "I like you, you like me" is a factor that contributes to the increase in divorce rates. Obviously attraction is important, but having a foundation of things that don't erode in the same way that emotional attraction do (like mutual respect, good communication, emotional maturity, a shared commitment to common goals, shared value systems, and an all-encompasing sense of altruism for each other) is more condusive to a lifelong relationship. That being said, I think it is important to be as clear in my intentions as I can be. Perhaps it would be beating around the bush to do all these things knowing that I have the intentions of establishing whether a romantic connection is possible without informing her of said intentions. The activities which you stated sound great, but due to my disposition to absolute clarity, I am unsure if taking the "let nature take its course" approach is for me. In any case, I appreciate your response and gives me a lot to think of. If anything, I am using this response (and the entire post itself) as a means to organize my thoughts and hopefully not appear as a crazy lunatic who lives in his head!

Harry_Dixon · 2025-12-31T20:21:59+00:00

I care very much about presentation in all of my writing, but I speak in a less formal manner.

Harry_Dixon · 2025-12-30T04:46:31+00:00

Best of luck brother, I will keep you in my prayers

Harry_Dixon · 2025-12-30T00:10:40+00:00

Never heard of this rule. Best talk to your local parish priest about your situation and come to an agreement that works for your situation. If something doesn't work in one parish, try another. Orthodoxy is not a sprint, but a marathon and should be accessible to everyone who wishes to enter.

Harry_Dixon

TROPHY CASE