Our Story & Journey
Finding the spark
If parents and teachers would make their faith their own, then what is communicated to children will be real and engaging.
~Our Church and Our Children by Sophie Koulomzin, pg. xxv
Growing up in the Orthodox Church, we became numb to the sermon “cliches.” Fast, pray, give alms, read the Gospels and lives of the saints, etc. etc. It was a checklist. It was all surface level.
Don’t get us wrong—these “cliches” are all essential. They are the seeds of spiritual life. But if the soil is never nourished, if the light never reaches them, nothing grows. Nothing changes.
When we became Orthodox Christian parents, we knew we couldn’t coast through our Orthodox Christian faith anymore. Children can see right through something when it is not authentic. We needed to find a way to clear the clouds and let more light in. And we knew that it had to start with us, the parents, the foundation of our family church.
So we leaned in. We got curious. We learned. We read. We researched.
Then one day, something happened. A spark.
You know the feeling—that moment when something stirs deep inside you. A glimpse of Truth. Like waking up and seeing something you’ve looked at a hundred times before, only now, for the first time, you really see it. The seeds that had been planted all along suddenly break through the ground.
That is when we knew.
We knew we needed to share these snippets that led to these sparks. We wanted others to feel the sparks too. So, we created the first Great Feast Study Journal - full of snippets that can lead to sparks.
But this was only the beginning.
Kindling a Fire
What saves and makes for good children is the life of the parents in the home. The parents need to devote themselves to the love of God. They need to become saints in their relation to their children through their mildness, patience and love. They need to make a new start every day, with a fresh outlook, renewed enthusiasm and love for their children. And the joy that will come to them, the holiness that will visit them, will shower grace on their children.
~Elder Porphyrios
The problem with sparks? They’re fleeting.
Man is a forgetful creature. We encountered so many spiritual jewels, yet 90% of what we learned slipped through our fingers. Even after publishing a Study Journal, we quickly forgot what we had written!
We knew those sparks had so much more to offer. We needed something to help us remember—to take these sparks and transform them into little flames.
So we asked: How could we remember better? How could we gather kindling for these sparks?
The answer: The Orthodox Commonplace Book (OCB) System.
Copy work. Reflection. An old-fashioned approach to remembering something: paper and pen—but with creativity, stickers, guides and inspiration. A personalized mini Study Journal where every quote and insight spoke directly to your heart. A tool for both parent and child.
Our OCB System is the kindling we were looking for.
And yet again, this journey was still incomplete.
Fuel for the Fire
Our educational work should be based on the presupposition that any child or young person can attain faith only in an authentic free act of his own.
~Our Church and Our Children by Sophie Koulomzin, pg. 10
A kindled flame can still go out—unless we keep adding wood to the fire.
So what happens after you get your Study Journal? After you start your own Orthodox Commonplace Book?
Do you let the sparks fade?
No, of course not.
Lifelong Orthodox learning isn’t something we can stumble through. It needs rhythms, habits, and a way of life that follows the seasons of the Church. Orthodox Living and Orthodox Learning go hand in hand—one fuels and strengthens the other.
That is why our journey has been so long because we are organically going through this ourselves.
This journey with Family Chotki isn’t about selling you books and moving on. It’s about something deeper. This is a quest to cultivate a Holy Lay Life. A way of Orthodox Christian living that shapes us parents, our children, our homes and our hearts.
Catechism lasts a lifetime. It’s our job as parents to tend the fire in our hearts and teach our children to do the same, to keep it fueled—so that when God sends His flame, it finds a place ready to burn brightly.
