Hello everyone, my name is Jeff.  You might know me as Protestant of almost forty years, but today, I want to introduce myself as someone new: a Orthodox Christian seeker (pre-catechumen). For me, It's still very fresh, like newly baked bread, fragrant with possibility.

Truth be told, I stumbled into Orthodoxy more than I walked. I was searching for something deeper, something beyond the closed box of everyday life. A whisper of beauty kept pulling me towards the Church's saints, their holy lives shining a different kind of light. The liturgy, felt like stepping into a whispered conversation between heaven and earth. But most of all, it was the theology that demonstrated that repentance and suffering leads to holiness (that I still barely understand), yet one thing I do believe; the Church's claim to have preserved this true understanding from the very beginning.

There's so much to learn, of course. Saints with names I can barely pronounce, prayers in languages I fumble through. There's a sense of entering something very old, very true and very unchanging, a woven tapestry of generations linked by stories of Jesus, who loved the world enough to bring about the death of Death and set us, the captives free.

I don't have hardly any answers, and sometimes, the theology feels like a dense forest at dusk. But there's a glimmer of something, a crack in my blindness letting in a light I haven't seen before. So, here I am, a fledgling traveler on this ancient path, excited and terrified in equal measure. Wish me luck, friends, and feel free to point me towards the Fathers, when I get lost. This is just the beginning, I know. But for now, it feels like coming home.