About Simeon

Sat, 23 May 2026 15:22:47 -0700

When one is received into the Orthodox Church, one takes the name of a patron saint. My patron saint is Simeon the God-Receiver.

I welcome you to take a moment to read some of his life provided by OrthoCal:

There is an ancient tradition that the holy, righteous elder Simeon, who came from Egypt, was one of the Seventy learned Jews chosen in the days of the Pharoah Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-246 BC) for the task of rendering the Hebrew Bible into Greek, and that to Simeon was assigned the translation of the book of the Prophet Isaiah. When he reached the famous passage where the Prophet foretells the virgin birth of Christ, saying: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel (Is. 7:14), he was so perplexed that he took a penknife to erase the word ‘virgin’ in order to replace it by ‘young woman’. At that moment, an angel of God appeared and prevented him from altering the sacred text, explaining that what seemed impossible to him was, in fact, a prophecy of the coming into this world of the Son of God. To confirm the truth of this, he promised that Simeon would not see death until he had seen and touched the Messiah born of the Virgin. When, after many long years, Christ was brought into the Temple at Jerusalem by the All-Holy Mother of God, the Holy Spirit revealed to the Elder Simeon that the time of fulfilment of the promise had come. He hurried to the Temple and, taking the Child in his arms, he was able to say wholeheartedly to God: Lord, now lettest thou Thy servant depart in peace according to Thy word, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation (Luke 2:29). For indeed, the Elder Simeon was the living image of the ancient Israel of the Old Testament, which having awaited the coming of the Messiah was ready to fade away and give place to the light and truth of the Gospel. The relics of the holy and righteous Simeon were venerated at Constantinople in the church of St James, built at the time of the Emperor Justin.

If you’d like to learn more, the OCA has a more comprehensive account of his life available here.

About Me

Sat, 23 May 2026 10:19:44 -0700

I was born in Manhattan, but grew up in Seattle. In the second grade I picked up the guitar, and in the sixth I picked up Linux, and these two seemingly disparate interests formed the basis of what would define my early adulthood.

When I was in early high school, I’d determined I’d wanted to pursure an undergraduate degree in music composition, as I had developed quite an affinity for classical music at this time, and had enjoyed composing solo guitar pieces. My high school music teacher at the time however required that I spend some time learning the art of recording and audio engineering if I intended to study at music college. After some initial resistance, I took to it, pivoted away from composition, began my undergraduate studies at Berklee College of Music, and later graduated with my degree in Music Production & Engineering.

Much of my time in my final years at Berklee was spend recording classical performers at New England Convervatory, and working on Hi-Fi recordings around the Boston area. Upon graduating and moving back across the country to Seattle, I continued in this field for several years both doing freelance work and spending time at scoring stages in the area.

After some time, it became clear that this career path was not the path to the life I wanted to build, so I left for the tech world based on my prior interest and aptitude, naïvely believing that having more worldy resources would lead to the life I wanted. While I learned a lot, the process of trying to find any stability in that world can be described at best as demoralizing. It was about this time however that I was led to the Church, and began the process of converting to Orthodox Christianity.

Among many things, the Church has taught me that having faith and trusting in our Lord is far more valuable than any worldy thing, and this is of great comfort as I continue to refocus my energy and efforts on working out my salvation.

Simeon Stein

About Simeon

About Me