This is sort of off the point, but I want to thank you all for this discussion. I have a cousin who was totally shunned by the rest of the family because he had become a member of some kind of offbeat Protestant offshoot (Watchman Nee\'s group, if that means anything to any of you - and it doesn\'t mean a lot to me) and was behaving in ways I now see and dislike in some recent converts to Eastern Orthodoxy.
We cousins found him once and invited him to a family reunion. He came, but we were all wary of him. And the rest of us lost touch again. This discussion reminded me that I need to love him and to connect with him. Our fathers had been very close when they were alive. All of the cousins are now between our mid-sixties and our late eighties, so there\'s not much time left to heal this.
This discussion set me to thinking about the \\"religious outsider\\" cousin. Day before yesterday I started looking and found him immediately; we have been exchanging e-mails and pictures. Unfortunately, the cousin I am closest to is already too much in the grip of dementia to be able to enjoy this.
A lot of years have been lost, and all because of someone\'s new-convert behavior and the way the rest of us reacted to it. Dear Orthodox Christians, please don\'t alienate others! There is too much to be lost.
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