After twenty years of wedded bliss living in a small apartment full of books, an Orthodox couple’s marriage has been challenged by the purchase of too many ebooks.

At first, Emerentiana Wilson thought there was something wrong with her husband’s ebook reader as he racked up hundreds of dollars of charges buying ebooks they already owned in paper form.

“Why did you buy ‘For the Life of the World,” and ‘the Eucharist'” by Father Alexander Schmemann?” she asked, holding paperback copies that were 30 years old. “It’s right here on this shelf that keeps the fridge from opening fully. We really ought to move that.”

“Yes, but I was looking for one paragraph that had really helped me 15 years ago, and I couldn’t remember where it was. I knew it included the word ‘doxological’ so I used the search function on the ereader to find all the times Father Schmemann used that word,” her husband, Frumentius Wilson, replied.

“You spent $10 to find one paragraph? Couldn’t you just page through the book?” she said.

“That would take too long.”

“Okay, did you find it?”

“No, it turned out the paragraph wasn’t in For the Life of the World, so I had to buy ‘The Eucharist’ next, and it wasn’t there, so…”

“Father Schmemann wrote nineteen books and he used ‘doxological’ all the time,” Emerentiana said, putting her hand on her forehead.

“That’s right. And then it wasn’t in there, so then I thought maybe his son-in-law Father Thomas Hopko might have written it and been paraphrasing Father Schmemann, and so I needed to search all of those, too,” Frumentius said.

“And he published 10 books and now our credit card is maxed out,” she said.

“But it was for church, dear. You don’t want me to understand the Orthodox faith? I became Orthodox so I could marry you,” he said, tilting his head in an unsuccessful effort to look adorable.

“Okay, now you have them. Let’s give the paper books to the church and then we can free up enough space to open the refrigerator door and to close the bathroom door all the way,” she said.

“We could never do that,” he replied, his eyes wide and aghast. “Paper books are so much better for reading all the way through.”

“No more ebooks,” she shouted and attempted to stomp out of their apartment’s living room but tripped over a stack of books in the process.

Shortly before this edition of The Daily Podvig went to print, a reporter called Emerentiana for an update, but she was not able to take the call as she was stuck on hold with both her mobile phone and her land line, attempting to get Amazon and Barnes and Noble to put a limit on the number of ebooks her husband could buy each month. In a brief text, she said she hoped she could head him off before he got through all of the Hopko ebooks and then decide that perhaps it was Father John Meyendorff who had written that one memorable paragraph with the word “doxological” in it.