I couple weeks ago I was speaking on George MacDonald and the Imagination at the Gold Country Gathering hosted by my parents. A number of people at the conference heard I was an Eastern Orthodox Christian and wanted to know more about Orthodoxy and why I converted to it. It’s always hard to answer questions like that in a short space of time. But part of the answer has to do with the rich tradition of spiritual psychotherapy found within the Orthodox Church. I touched on some of that in my 2016 OCAMPR talk in which I offered an Eastern Orthodox perspective on the psychology of gratitude. I thought this would be a good time to re-post my talk here for some of the new readers I recently picked up. Nothing I mention concerning the spirituality of gratitude is unique to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, but for me it was only after joining the Orthodox Church that I found out about this teaching through visits to monasteries and reading the examples and teachings of the saints revered in our tradition.
