*Sister Magdalen from Essex - 'Reflections on Children in the Orthodox Church Today'*, p.14 `Word about spiritual life in familly.` Christian life is life in the image of God in three Persons – life together with others. It is very rare that someone is cast into complete solitude, or called by God into the desert; then he is obliged to live in isolation. For most of us Christian life means life in a community of one kind or another – and hermits themselves usually have to pass even decades in a community before living alone. As Saint Silouan put it: ‘My brother is my life’. A married person can say – and it is the only theologically correct way to live – ‘My wife (or husband) and children are my life. They are the content of my life; it is living with them that I must learn Christ-like love.’ The criterion of my spiritual health is this: what is the state of the relations between me and those with whom I live? No other criterion is higher. Family life is the measuring-stick of Christian progress for those who live in the world.