Some people may be intimidated by a book that's an inch-and-a-half thick, especially if they are not familiar with the author. For interested parties, the slender volume of A Small Taste of Jonathan's Corner was made to provide a very gentle introduction before buying anything big.

But at least one reviewer found the collection to stand on its own, and seemed to be grateful for it.

The Luddite's Guide to Technology is one of the author's three major critiques (the other two are The Seraphinians: "Blessed Seraphim Rose" and His Axe-Wielding Western Converts and Orthodoxy and Contraception).

I'm not sure when exactly this book was in my heart; I started writing a "Luddite's Guide to Technology" years before I became Orthodox, and dropped it then because I was just writing junk. But as a rule, technology can be useful and can also have a nasty backswing. And not just with the elephant in the room of a socially mandated utility including a sewer's worth of porn.

This book is intended to put people in a better place to use technology profitably.

I remember some bit of adult conversation recently where someone talked about how the next generation is creating an artificial world.

I would temper that remark: the vanguard may be pushing things like augmented reality forward, but the Renaissance magus had all of the spiritual and practical human problems even with no electronic technology. Or to come close to home, most of us are not living in natural surroundings; we live in man-made homes of wood, glass, and plaster. In the ancient world, the higher-up you were socially, the less exercise you did; in our world, you can be a fitness nut and spend less time exercising than a king in ancient times.

Economics is in origin a moral discipline, and it is refreshing to see an author newer than Adam Smith treat it as such.

If I were to summarize this brief pamphlet of a book in a sentence, it would be a question that is still relevant amidst present serious crises: "Was economic wealth made for man, or was man made for economic wealth?"

The English Standard Version may represent a surprising choice, both because it is not "off the beaten path" like I suggested, and it is not the obvious Orthodox choice compared to the Orthodox Study Bible, which I also endorse.

There are too many major Bible translations competing for attention; most people need a shortlist. The English Standard Version as a well-written rendering that captures some of the beauty the King James Version also captured, and I would suggest that it belongs on a shortlist, or belongs as one of two or more complementary translations that you read.

For English speakers interested in Russian and Slavonic, this is a fairly complete prayer book that shows the Slavonic on the right and English on the left. They don't always line up right, but usually they do.

If you are an English speaker learning Russian or Slavonic, I invite you to read Learning a Language Like Russian. I would advise deferring study of the Slavonic Bible as there is a very helpful parallel translation with modern Russian in a RUSV ("Synodal Version") - KJV Bible.

Several years ago, my brother asked me what I would like for Christmas; I asked for a brown leather trenchcoat. More recently, my Aunt gave me a black leather trenchcoat along the same lines. These coats are built to last, and for that matter are biker coats intended as a sort of armor to provide partial protection to bikers in an accident.

The Best of Jonathan's Corner is the flagship not only of this site's works of theology, but all of its works.

This work represents my fourth and most popular novella, although strictly speaking it is not a novel or novella but a romance patterned after the style and technique of storytelling in earlier medieval versions of Arthurian legends. Readers have told me they've been riveted.

John Burroughs in the Midwest Book Review wrote,

Down through the centuries, the Legend of King Arthur has been used as an icon for so many literary works in the western world. The Sign of the Grail is a collection of memorable literary works by CJS Hayward centering around the Holy Grail and what it means to orthodox religion, as well as those who follow those teachings. Tackling diverse subjects such as iconography and an earthly paradise, he pulls no punches when dealing with many of the topics laid out through the legends. The Sign of the Grail is a unique, scholarly, and thorough examination of the Grail mythos, granting it a top recommendation for academia and the non-specialist general reader with an interest in these subjects. Also very highly recommended for personal, academic, and community library collections are CJS Hayward's other deftly written and original literary works, essays, and commentaries compilations and anthologies: [he lists all of the other half dozen books I had in print].

You might (or might not) have run across a T-shirt, proudly sported by Eastern Rite Catholics and some others, saying, "Orthodox Communion in Communion with Rome."

This shirt offers an answer: Orthodox Christian in Communion with CHRIST.

(This response is, perhaps, better and more politicthan an earlier T-shirt saying, Roman Catholic in Communion with the Archdruid of Canterbury.)

I remember being fascinated with Swiss Army Knives even before I watched MacGyver. It was the first Christmas gift I specifically remember asking for, and I was fascinated to no end by blades or tools that all folded like clockwork into a single handle.

The models I have carried have been a Huntsman, chosen in particular because it included a pair of scissors, a Champion, SwissChamp, and finally a SwissChamp XLT, which was at the time the thinnest model that included both Cybertool functions and a magnifying glass. (N.B. Now you can buy the streamlined CyberTool Lite, which contains all the most essential features for indoor use.)

Some people have said that Paradise is where the saints are. Father Arseny was a priest in a concentration camp, and amidst a Hellish situation brought the Light of Heaven.

(One reader told me that Father Arseny was like a character that would be found in one of my stories.)

St. Philaret the Merciful was a saint whose generosity to the poor was chiseled in letters ten feet high. Rich or poor, he had an open hand and trusted God's providence regardless of what earthly goods he did, or did not, have. The nastier of an economic situation we are in, the more St. Philaret has to tell us. I wrote an Akathist to St. Philaret the Merciful and included his story in God the Spiritual Father.

My Mom told me about how my Dad read The Chronicles of Narnia to my brother and me when we were little, and she would sometimes peek into the room and see one nodding-off father holding two very alert little boys. I have read The Chronicles of Narnia too many times, and while I have since received some formation from Orthodox classics, it was reading C.S. Lewis more than anything else that taught me how to write.

C.S. Lewis in the preface to The Great Divorce mentions a common belief that things that are not good can be adjusted or refined or improved to be good enough, and we don't ever have to reject anything whole cloth as evil. He answers, "This belief I take to be a disastrous error. You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys; on one journey even your right hand and your right eye may be among the things you have to leave behind... If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell." And that goes even to letting go of the cords that bind me to a cardinally formative author.

This book is intended to convey at least a little of what I've seen in Orthodoxy after I have begun to take a pilgrimage from Narnia.

This watch is a Swiss Army Knife worn on the wrist.

I have purchased an Apple Watch, but after seeing its limits gave it away and returned to using my sturdy, adventure-ready Pathfinder watch.

The watch that self-charges in sunlight with 20bar (~200m) water resistance, compass, alarm, barometer, stopwatch, altimeter, very flaky thermometer, very nice timer that warns you ahead of time when the timer is close to reaching zero, moon phase, second world time zone, and tide information all wrapped up in one sensible package.

The world was not created six thousand years ago, nor was it created 13.8 billion years ago. It was created at 3:00 PM, March 25, 33 AD, on the day when our crucified Lord said, "It is consummated."

This picture, of Christ crying out from the cross on that momentous Day, was from 1993 and is far and away the most powerful piece of religious artwork I have made.

I'm still looking for a good place for the original; if you want it, contact me.

This was the first book I read about Orthodoxy, and I prefer it to another title by His Eminence KALLISTOS, The Orthodox Church, which has become the standard English-language introduction to the Orthodox Church.

The Orthodox Way captures something of the mystical pulse that is slightly buried in the other, more comprehensive and systematic treatment.

This book was loaned to me when I was a freshman in college, and I didn't at the outset understand the recommendation. But it introduced me to something I had never seen before, and was perhaps something of an early step just a little bit closer to Orthodoxy.

It's a collection of stories roughly half a page to a page in length. When I used "The Crystal Globe" to open a basic Competent Communicator-series speech at Toastmasters, I was advised to enter that speech in the next International Toastmasters Competition.

At a time where it is not just far away that people actively seek out warrior classics like Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Miyamoto Musashi's The Book of Five Rings to give them some kind of secret insider edge or even a full blueprint for business plans, Leadership Is an Art stands out sharply. Its unstated thesis is that the Sermon on the Mount, which is deeper than the works of Sun Tzu, Miyamoto Musashi, Niccolo Machiavelli etc., also offers a solid foundation for running a business.

The book is soothing and peaceful to read, and there is nothing else like it that I have read in a business setting.

Some of my most popular works are fiction.

This collection spans across more than a decade. If you were to pick three, I would suggest "Within the Steel Orb," a science fiction dialogue and story set in a teacher's wondrous realm, and "Unashamed," a story about innocence lost and even more about innocence regained.

I'm sorry if this entry is banal, but one key to dental health is not just to rub a tooth once with floss, but keep on scraping until you hear a squeaky sound from a literally squeaky-clean dental surface.

I've found it easy to find different kinds of plastic ribbons etc. that effectively eliminate the squeaking signal that tells you that you can move on. Squeaky floss is good but remarkably rare. It's on Amazon, but I've had trouble finding it in drugstores.

I consider Listerine woven floss, formerly Reach woven floss, to be the best floss I've found yet.

I'm quite fond of messenger bags. They're a lot easier to take on or off than a backpack, and you can put things in or take them out without taking the messenger bag off.

One alternative messenger bag that will hold a 17" Mac laptop and looks classy is the Wowbox messenger bag. It appears solidly built and sports a classy, vintage appearannce.

Book Darts are the sort of thing that you use once and then do not want to ever stop using again.

A Book Dart is a bookmark, but better and more precise. It doesn't just mark which two pages you might have stopped reading it. Instead, you slide it onto the side of the page at the exact line you stopped reading. When you next open them up, the dart is pointed to the exact spot on the page that you saved.

St. Seraphim is not one saint among others. The Theotokos, with St. John the Theologian, said, "He is one of us." And this may be a phenomenon local to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, but well over half of the archimandrites I've run into have chosen the name of Fr. Archimandrite Seraphim.

In addition, this is not one saint's life among others. It's different from other saints' lives, and not just because of the saint whose story it tells. It represents a first attempt to capture in writing the living form of an oral tradition.

The result is breathtaking.

This leaflet is written by a former president of the Jung institute in Zurich.

It helps explain why "trying to have an identity" in today's sense is simply not helpful.

Numerous treatments could be written along other lines. A lot of what we ingest spiritually is spiritual junk food.

I'm an animal lover, and I am grateful for a suggestion, after I clarified that I want to go to Mount Athos in (now) a few months and am consequently not in a position to adopt a pet responsibly: the suggestion was, "Perhaps you're not in a position to adopt a pet now, but is squeaky-clean ethical to go to a pet shelter and visit; most shelters welcome people who will give the animals some gentle attention." Or as one shelter I know puts it: "[Your attention] enhances their value as pets."

This pet is quite simply the first electronic pet I found enchanting. Playing with a rare kind of Furby seemed almost vampiric, a point explored in The Sign of the Grail; I tried to be enchanted with that specific toy and it simply didn't take. At all. This has been the first electronic pet that drew me in. When I leave, I want to leave it with the shelter so they can show it to people in living color when the situation is really not quite right for a pet adoption, at least for now.

I would also comment specifically that this pet is intended for multiple audiences: young children to be sure, but with seniors explicitly in mind. If you have a loved one in a nursing home, you might consider this.

One note: as I write, there appear to be only four "Joy for All" products on Amazon, but numerous "Perfect Petzzz" options. The "Joy for All" pets come in around $100 and are intended to respond to human interaction and act like something that's awake, receiving ratings around 4.5 stars; the "Perfect Petzzz" seem to come in somewhere about $30, with ratings around 4.0 stars, and are intended to serve as the cute form of a puppy or kitten, quietly breathing and asleep. These two are not mutually exclusive purchases, but if I had only one of the two I would want a "Joy for All" pet that was specifically intended to give the customer a few of the pleasures of interacting with a sweet-natured pet.

An adventurer's ("rugged") computer.

I first learned about rugger computers by searching for a computer that would work well in the sun. But I found a lot more about what would b practical at the winding mountain paths and steep ravines on Mount Athos. No computer is indestructible, but this one might have a fighting chance of escaping completely unharmed if I slid down a ravine while carrying it.

These things are built to be an investment, and built to outlast most purchasers, which is a desirable thing at a monastery. Please note that it costs a whole lot more to make a computer that will stand up to rough blows and last for decades than to make a basic Dell.

This book was introduced to me by my best friend some years back; it is a collection of short stories, and the title story is a captivating and inspiring view of life in the Spirit and how Christian education all too often settles for less.