Rev Chris Roth

2 KINGS 5:1-14; PSALM 30; GALATIANS 6:1-16; LUKE 10:1-11, 16-20 In our reading from 2nd Kings we encounter a powerful man, a commander of an army- and an enemy of Israel. This powerful man, named Naaman, contracts a skin disease. All his warrior strength, and wealth, and political power were unable to protect him from this. … This powerful man was powerless against this skin disease. In this powerful man’s house there was a little girl. She was not powerful. She was kidnapped by Naaman’s army, and he gave her as a slave to his wife. This powerless little girl becomes the key to healing this powerful man. … This little slave girl speaks to Naaman’s wife, and this little girl seems to have compassion for this man who has enslaved her. … She says,  "I wish my master would go and see the prophet who is in Samaria. He would heal my master of his skin disease." Naaman takes these words seriously. His king sends him with an official letter addressed to the king of Israel, who is an ...

    This is the book we used to guide our parish retreat. Dee Pennock was converted to Christianity in her twenties by two volumes of the "Philokalia" that landed on her desk at The Macmillan Company in New York City, where she was working after her graduation from Stanford University. Later study of the Bible and early church fathers alerted her to the Adam Complex―the patristic description of human souls and their "passions," based on the scriptural Adam and Eve account. She found that ancient patristic theology analyzed the make-up of all human nature in terms of the behavioral patterns of Adam and Eve. It described symptoms of the three major passions of the soul that characterize the Adam Complex. The patristic physicians of the soul gave detailed instructions on how to overcome these inborn passions, and how to restore a soul to spiritual and mental health. Dee Pennock worked as an editor in three publishing houses and was the manuscript editor for the facu...