@George720 did you ever get a response to your inquiry?
Not a word…
My personal approach was so backwards that I really hesitate to set it forth… I took the outside passage of the world and found union with God, and only then was I directed to the EOC… And no man provided me with directions, so hostile was I to all things Christian in that walk… Yet being in union with God, I asked Him, after walking through all the “spiritualities” I could find on earth, "Lord, am I the only one on earth knowing You? And He sent me into the Orthodox Faith, even though there was a spiritually gifted Roman Catholic Priest in my own town.
So from my pov, I find myself not seeking Salvation FROM the Church which is providing it, but instead seeking a Church in which it CAN be found by the one seeking it… So the discipling, at least in its fundamentals, and beyond that in its available literature, is what I look for, and this is, from my own personal pov, wonderfully expressed in the Desert Fathers, and this even though I was not discipled by or through them… Instead, when I first read them, I recognized them as genuine according to what I already knew… And so from this pov, I can only bear witness to that recognition, and not to its methodology, because of the worldly approach I made, and only found success in its failure…
But it was God Who sent me to the EOC, and at least for the Byz-Caths, you should be able to find your way through the Desert Fathers and the EOC literature, to God, if indeed it is God Who is your primary focus, through the denial of self that is their hallmark… But remember that alms then become prayers for the world and all within it, and these only as a consequence of your relationship with God. What I so often see is the subordination of Godly focus to almsgiving, and this apparently because of the ease and perhaps even vainglory of helping one’s neighbor… And that subordination will subvert one’s relationship with God… If you have been Called of God, never forget your first love that was established in you in that Call…
So when you read the errors of translation and editing, one good thing you can do is treat the book as a primary source, and edit for practical understanding, so that you learn from your own labors, and end up with a usable ms, even though you must understand that when you die, you will leave the ms behind, and will only retain the quality of your soul that the process of editing it afforded you…
If your relationship with God is well and good, you cannot fail in your relationship with man… Both self and other men and women… And yes, it is a great struggle, and worthwhile…
Enough!
geo
