Archive for the 'life' Category

The Unbonding concludes

Published on September 10, 2007 in tomfoolery, travel and life. 3 Comments

I am back home, slightly woozy but none the worse for wear. The Great Unbonding was a failure, in the sense that Olga and I failed to unbond, but it was a success in the sense that we got her settled into her apartment, and had some fun doing it. It was an exhausting week. We drove something over 1000 miles during the week, 400 of that on a quick overnight visit to see my father and stepmother at their home on the far side of Los Angeles. Sadly, I had never managed to see him since he moved there a couple of years ago when he remarried. He is clearly supremely happy, however, and it was very satisfying to see him doing well.

That visit also gave Olga an opportunity to discover that she has relatives on the West Coast. Our last name is fairly obscure: there are maybe about 150 people in the United States that share it. She was convinced that the west was family free, but my father called in the clan, and she started meeting some of my cousins. One is a hospital administrator in San Diego, another is with the LAPD, and a third is a doctor in Seattle. She didn’t meet all of them, but my father’s efforts still bore fruit. Olga immediately recognized and appreciated the quirky, even socially inept, sense of humor that the family shares, and started to feel that there would be people who were willing to be called upon if the need arose. In a new environment, that knowledge is comforting.

Still, most of our time was spent getting her situated in her apartment just off the UC-Santa Barbara campus. She is sharing it with another graduate student, and I was gratified to find that it was what I like to think of as a starter apartment. Two bedrooms, two baths, small, with a little age on it — anybody who ever lived off campus in either undergraduate or graduate school would immediately recognize it. I became a little misty when I first saw it. How many of these places had I lived in! I resolved to come home, sell the house and move into a starter apartment myself. Sadly, my wife will likely veto the plan when she returns from England, but I am fond of it.

It is a good situation, though, for Olga. She is a couple of miles from campus, and only a mile or so from a shopping center with all the necessities (a bakery, a Borders and an organic growers’ farmers’ market on Sunday afternoon) and the more mundane (grocery store, drug store, etc.) She will not have a car, instead relying on her bicycle and the bus system, so close proximity is a genuine plus. Just as important, at least for a Deacon Dad, an Antiochian parish, St. Athanasius, is also within pedaling distance. Olga attended on Sunday, and reported that the choir was incredibly good, the people were friendly, and that one of the priests was from South Carolina and spent some time talking southern to her.

All of this is in a lovely place. Santa Barbara is nestled in a slender strip of land, with the Pacific Ocean on one side, and high, jagged mountains on the other. It is immensely beautiful, and the ocean breezes keep the place cool. I was deeply impressed.

Eventually, though, the time came to leave, and it was a little difficult. As a family, we are uniformly introverted, and it is hard to make transitions very suddenly. Nonetheless, I took my leave, although two hours later, when I found myself stopped dead in traffic on the freeway in LA, gazing at the Wilshire Boulevard exit sign, I had to ask myself why, exactly, had I left. I understand people living in Los Angeles ask themselves this question on a fairly regular basis.

In the event, I’m back home now. Marina and I are holding down the fort, along with Max the Wonder Dog, as we await my wife’s return. I have not adjusted fully. In court today, my mood was horrendous. I snapped at the judge, snarled at opposing counsel, and worst of all, was openly critical of the brand new, just opened, courthouse in which I found myself. Believe me — things can only go up from here.

Summer fades away

Published on August 30, 2007 in travel and life. 3 Comments

I have always been the kind of person who hopes fervently for the end of summer. No Labor Day angst for me. September means cooler weather and falling leaves, and that is just fine with me. As you might imagine, therefore, I’m all psyched for the change, especially since the summer down in these parts has been brutal. Hot and unbelievably dry. I have cut grass only three or four times all summer. Ironically, that is both a good thing (yay! No grass to cut!) and a bad thing. Vegetation is hurting very badly, and all of my wildflowers are wilting. Just as bad, it has been altogether too hot to take Max the Wonder Labradoodle for his daily swim in Little Brasstown Creek. Hiking the mile down to the creek in such hot, humid conditions is too much even for Max, and most evenings we all just lounge lazily in the house, moaning softly.

Still, the season is drawing to an end, and things are looking up. My wife received an e-mail from the Internal Revenue Service tonight, telling her that if she provided her bank account numbers she would receive a tax refund of $268. As if they didn’t know all about our bank accounts. The letter was copyright 2007 by the Internal Revenue Service, which they had to do because people are always trying to steal the timeless prose of the tax man.

With or without a refund, Olga and I leave Sunday afternoon for California, where I will help her get settled in her apartment next week as she begins grad school. On one level, it will be great fun. We will hang around San Francisco for a day, then mosey down to my father’s house to the south and finally circle in on her apartment in Santa Barbara. But there is a measure of sadness as well. Even though she is a grown woman, we are too close knit a family to easily accept that an entire continent will separate us. When my wife and I took her all of two hours away to her undergraduate school the first time, we left her in the dorm and stumbled back to the car and wept. This should be easier, but I suspect that it won’t. On Friday night, when I leave for Los Angeles to catch an early Saturday flight back to Atlanta — well, I’m not looking forward to it. I should be more mature, I should accept the fact that Olga is 22 years old, for Pete’s sake. But I’m a dad, and I don’t think dads adjust easily to this kind of thing.

On the other hand, Marina is quietly spreading her wings. She is calmly maintaining a 4.0 GPA at her college, and has developed a passion for contra dancing. She’s a baby! Well, 19 anyway. When, exactly, did this happen? Clearly, my wife has a lot of explaining to do.

Finally, after dealing with the wholly unexpected fact that my children have grown up, I return to school as well. As part of the mighty senior juggernaut at Johnstown, my two fellow seniors and I are looking forward to our final year. Settled in our third floor suite / skybox at the seminary, the world will be our oyster. Or something.

I’ll try to blog from California. Pictures of this Appalachian hillbilly deacon surfing, getting my hair tinted, probably shopping for a tie dyed cassock. It should be memorable. Or something.

Adventures in education

Published on May 21, 2007 in Orthodoxy and life. 3 Comments

My diploma, please! My diploma, please!

Such an eventful spring! I can hardly grasp all that has happened. Olga graduated magna cum laud from college, with a degree in in Classics (”Greek only, please. Latin is boring.”). She is now steeling herself to go cross country to start graduate school, where the unfathomable has happened: she will actually be paid money to go to school, in exchange for which she will be expected to do some teaching. That is an innovation that I fully support. Meanwhile, she has the summer during which she must amuse herself, so she has gone to audition for Sound of Music at the local community theater. As a family, we spent more summers than I care to remember doing summer musicals. I can only conclude that she is a glutton for punishment. This conclusion is buttressed by a plan we have concocted. When it is time for her to go to California, she and I will drive cross country, which is something we have never done before. We envision it as either a great bonding experience, or, if the weather is hot and the air conditioning cranky, maybe a great unbonding. A full report later.

Marina, meanwhile, is about two thirds of the way through her time in community college. Our deal with both of the girls is that if they will do the first two years at the community college, and then finish at a state institution, we would send them overseas to study. Olga liberally construed the last clause, spending two summers touring — uh, I mean studying — in Italy, Greece and Bulgaria. The lesson has not been lost on Marina, who has given a high importance level in choosing a college to what kind of study abroad programs they offer.

For my part, last weekend marked the conclusion of my third year of studies in Johnstown. There seems to be some mild uncertainty as to whether or not they want me to come back. Of course, the rational response is to cut all ties with me, and disavow knowledge of my existence. “That deacon?”, they might respond if asked. “Ummm. I don’t think we know that deacon.” On the other hand, however, the diocese is so forgiving that they may be hoping against hope that one more year may transform me into a cleric who, if not presentable, would at least not be a threat to spill live coals all over the floor. Time will tell the answer to that question. In the meantime, I have an exam to finish this summer, but for now I’m letting it simmer. I’ll pick it up eventually, maybe in a couple of weeks.

But first, in the midst of all of this education, I have found a book about a man who helps us keep perspective. In the past, I have written about the love I have for modern Greek elders. There have been some amazing people living in Greece within the last century. Never let anyone tell you that there are no saints in our time! One of those is Elder Porphyrios, who reposed on Mount Athos in 1991. He was a man who completed only one year of school. After that year, his family’s poverty required him to start working, when he was only seven years old. At 12, he ran away and went to the Holy Mountain, where he became a monk at the age of 14. A serious illness forced him to leave Athos before his twentieth birthday, and he eventually became the Chaplain and confessor at a large hospital in downtown Athens. He later established a monastery near the city. The Elder was given great gifts. He memorized the Psalter and the Gospels shortly after reaching the Holy Mountain, and had the uncanny gift of being able to discern precisely what physical illness people suffered from. He had to study medical texts in order to learn how to convey the information to physicians, but his insights were always correct. More than anything, though, the Elder was characterized by enormous humility and a heart overflowing with love.

So, as I prepare to start my exam, and proudly watch the girls doing wonderful things, I am reading a relatively new book about the Elder, titled Wounded by Love. It consists of many years of notes and recordings made by his spiritual children, and transcribed for the book. In some respects, it will remind you of the Father Arseny books, although the context is very different. Father Arseny was a highly educated man who entered the priesthood from an intellectual world, while Elder Porphyrios was almost illiterate. What Father Arseny and Elder Porphyrios both teach us, though, is that God does not look at the outer person, or at his or her intellect. God looks for a heart that loves Him, and it is there that He will make His home. It is a good thing to keep in mind, as we celebrate the achievements of those we love, and consider our own hopes and our dreams, and what we hope to do during our remaining years in the world.

Back up again. Maybe

Published on February 23, 2007 in life and Uncategorized. 3 Comments

As an excuse for not writing, this is even better than ‘my dog ate my homework’. As some readers know, some undefined glitch took down the blog upwards of two weeks ago. I was unaware of my problem for several days, but when I finally found out about it got on the phone with tech support at my web host, and innumerable attempts were made to solve whatever it was. Nice guys, those techs. They have a difficult job, and a technologically challenged deacon is just another in a long series of crises.

To make a long story short, the site was up, it was down, it was up again and then down for good. In the meantime, I had rescued most of my posts and stashed them on a free site. Everything else, including all of the pages (including Orthodox writers), seemed to be lost. I thought I had found the writers in a file, but that turned out not to be the case. I was very reluctant to simply wipe out everything, and that caused me to dawdle for several days, but finally there seemed to be no alternative. I called tech support, asked after the family of the now familiar voice at the other end, and asked him to delete all traces of wordpress. I had actually attempted to do that, but there was a recalcitrant shell of a data base, which would not delete itself for me, and to which new installations were attaching themselves. The family was fine, the tech said, and a half hour later he announced that the dogged database was gone.

A couple of days later, while working on my laptop I found what proved to be a zipped backup of the web site from January. I had not seen it before, so I was mildly surprised. I opened it, and discovered that among other things it included a pre-crash copy of the old Wordpress database. Under the theory that I could always start over again if the information was corrupted, I uploaded it yesterday morning, took a deep breath, and went to the site. Everything was there.

The lesson here is not that God rescued the blog. Shoot — the odds are at least even that He was trying to tell me to quit wasting time. After all, this is the third time the blog has crashed since I started writing it about two and a half years ago. No, the lesson here is, as my father sometimes says, that even a blind pig will find an acorn every once in a while. I, of course, am the blind pig. Call me Wilbur.

On the plus side, I was gratified to see that the world continued despite my absence. That is a lesson to all of us, especially Wilbur here. As the spider said, Wilbur is a humble pig. The current version (Wilbur 2.0?) is not humble enough, but working on it. It is certainly a virtue to cultivate.

So, I’m back. I’m also off to Johnstown in a few minutes. I’m at least as excited about that as I am about having the blog back up. There is a lesson in that as well. Blogs are fun, and even therapeutic, but they cannot begin to replace the flesh and blood world of the Church and our worship there. So Wilbur 2.0 is off to Atlanta, then to Pittsburgh, then to Johnstown, then tomorrow night reversing that trip at least as far as Atlanta. And, it’s Lent to boot! For this blind pig, there are no complaints.

Death, slow and sudden

Published on January 11, 2007 in Orthodoxy, life and law. 0 Comments

This post started out as something else. A case I was involved in came to a sudden, dreadful end, in the form of a murder/suicide. As originally written, it detailed some of what happened, and what had happened in the case up until that point. After only a few minutes, though, I took it down. It didn’t seem right, for a variety of reasons. Mostly, it seemed to me that the details, which were necessarily sketchy, were not the important thing. There are two dead men, one of whom I knew about as well as any lawyer can know a client, but there are also dazed and traumatized survivors, including children. But it wasn’t until this evening that I could begin to understand the true significance of what had happened, of what terrible things like this mean to us, as a wisp of scripture came to mind.

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
 Mt 5:21-22

When things like this happen, we are aghast, and our first impulse, usually almost unconscious, is to distance ourselves from the act. The sheer horror of it allows us to reassure ourselves that something like that could not happen in our safe world, even as we sympathize with the victim. Yet from a spiritual perspective, these crimes are years in the making, even if perpetrator and victim become acquainted only at that last fateful moment. It is not that we are inherently depraved, as the Calvinists would argue, nor is it always the direct result of demons, although they have a role and love to see blood shed. Instead, we each drag around after us chains, huge shambling piles of them, the first links of which are forged in our cradles, and new ones added every day. Our passions are both the result and cause of the shackles we wear. Pride, anger, lust, vainglory, fear…you name it, and it can be found in the heart of bruised and wounded people.

Each and every person in this tragedy — each and every one of us — bears the scars of life. In a line that only God can truly trace, there are years and years of slights, indifferences, resentments, misunderstandings. Needs are not met, and a cycle of petty cruelties ensues. Even when the end result is not so spectacular as in this case, the quiet toll is just as devastating. Here is the truth: however we may meet our physical demise, we all die spiritually in the same way. Not in one thrust of the enemy, but in the moral version of death by a thousand cuts. A tiny slice here, another there. We scarcely feel each individual cut, but the cumulative effect of slights and hurts, of disappointment and rejection, leads us to destruction. And we not only bear our own chains. We forge the chains of others.

Do you see? This tragedy began in infancy, it blossomed during adolesence, it bore a poisonous fruit in a marriage, and it was harvested on a quiet winter’s day. But you and I cannot segregate this from our own life. Jesus teaches us that we commit spiritual crimes with each cruel word, each deliberate slight, each crime of the heart. We are each the man, wounded almost to death, who was rescued by the Samaritan. But we are also each the robber, and we assault each other behind polite words and smiling masks, leaving loved ones and strangers alike lying helpless and damaged.

No wonder the second great commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves! If we ourselves do not break the cycle of pain and hurt being suffered by those around us, by those who bear the very image of God, then who will? What Christ calls us to do is struggle past our own wounds, to offer oil and wine for the hurts of others. We must see within ourselves the potential for murder, of the spiritual variety if nothing else, and the crimes that we commit every day.

Would that the circle be broken

Published on December 30, 2006 in life. 0 Comments

In a twist both ironic and unexpected considering its source, the New York Times has carried two stories, one on Friday and the other today, which reflects the continued eroticization of our culture. This is a trend which has been noted for some years, yet inexplicably continues to worsen, even as we individually think that it cannot continue to do so.

The first article, an opinion piece titled Middle School Girls Gone Wild, is the more expected of the two. The tendency to sexualize children of ever younger ages is not new, and is certainly accelerating. What is somewhat unexpected is that the Times would pay much attention. Author Lawrence Downes, however, had the unfortunate experience of attending his daughter’s middle school talent show. He had not been forewarned at what the sixth, seventh and eighth graders were talented at:

They writhe and strut, shake their bottoms, splay their legs, thrust their chests out and in and out again. Some straddle empty chairs, like lap dancers without laps. They don’t smile much. Their faces are locked from grim exertion, from all that leaping up and lying down without poles to hold onto. “Don’t stop don’t stop,” sings Janet Jackson, all whispery. “…Ohh. I’m so stimulated. Feel so X-rated.” The girls spend a lot of time lying on the floor. They are in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.

As each routine ends, parents and siblings cheer, whistle and applaud. I just sit there, not fully comprehending. It’s my first suburban Long Island middle school talent show. I’m with my daughter, who is 10 and hadn’t warned me. I’m not sure what I had expected, but it wasn’t this. It was something different. Something younger. Something that didn’t make the girls look so … one-dimensional.

What particularly stunned Downes, however, was the enthusiastic acceptance of all of this by the parents. He relates a conversation with a school official, who says they have simply given up:

A teacher at the middle school later told me she had stopped chaperoning dances because she was put off by the boy-girl pelvic thrusting and had no way to stop it — the children wouldn’t listen to her and she had no authority to send anyone home. She guessed that if the school had tried to ban the sexy talent-show routines, parents would have been the first to complain, having shelled out for costumes and private dance lessons for their Little Miss Sunshines.

In the end, the obvious moral issues aside, even the Times correctly identifies the overarching impact on the way that these girls develop, when parents “they allow the culture of boy-toy sexuality to bore unchecked into their little ones’ ears and eyeballs, displacing their nimble and growing brains and impoverishing the sense of wider possibilities in life.” And indeed they are right. What are the wider possibilities of life, be it spiritual or intellectual, when self-esteem is found in the skimpiest of costumes?

The answer may well be found in the bookend article, titled The Graying of Naughty, which appeared this morning in the fashion section, of all places. In it, the Times reported on a new breed of porn star, involving men and women over the age of fifty. The article focuses on a fifty year old woman who began a career in pornographic films using the stage name De’Bella. The article reports approvingly that since last May she has shot some thirty scenes, most involving men who are 19 or 20 years old. Her husband approves, telling the paper “She’s doing it for the right reasons” — whatever those may be.

Nor is she alone. Films involving older women are apparently a growing market segment. And, from the other direction, the article includes a reference to 66 year old Dave Cummings, who is filmed with women as young as the men seen with Ms. De’Bella.

In a sense, we see the closing of the circle, the sexualization of both the very young and those who should know better. The very young should not be sexualized at all. For those as old as I am, sexuality should be less about exhibitionism and more about intimacy and communication. Yet we now find all ages held to the same standard of misbehavior. At one time, the immoral were clearly identified as a minority. Now, if only by our silent consent, the moral are themselves increasingly marginalized.

Important news update

Published on December 29, 2006 in tomfoolery and life. 1 Comment

Long time readers may remember that a couple of years ago I discussed the scandal surrounding the Annual Possum Drop held in the village where we live. Briefly — for those who do not wish to read that entry again, or are simply distressed by even thinking of such a thing — the man who owns the gas station downtown (so to speak - in the aerial photo, it is the wide place in the road) holds a big New Year’s Eve bash every year, which features gospel singing, a womanless beauty pageant (don’t ask) and assorted types of merriment, and is capped by the lowering of a caged possum to the ground at the stroke of midnight. Riotous celebrating ensues. In any event, while we were in Greece several years ago, PETA threatened to sue over the event. The organizer didn’t help his cause, since he reported that “…once the crowd leaves, we turn him (the possum) loose. He runs across the road, and we run over him and eat him for New Year’s dinner.” Still, they were so chastened by the threat that they released that year’s candidate and found a dead possum on the road, which they washed, blow dried and propped into a life like position, and carried on.

It occurred to me this morning that there may be readers who have fretted ever since, wondering what has happened to the Possum Drop. I am here to tell you that it is better than ever. Our local paper, The Cherokee Scout, carried a large front page article on developments. The good news is that the organizers have discovered that the key to success is to follow all the applicable laws. In this case, that means that before they go to catch the possum, they have obtained three state permits and one federal permit. This is rather puzzling, since I doubt that any of the possums one sees dead in the middle of the road were run over by persons holding all of the necessary permits, but there you have it. In any event, it means that even as I write this a live possum is enjoying the best catfood available, and waiting for New Year’s Eve.

PETA is still upset about the event. The Scout quoted their representative as saying “Obviously, PETA is amazed an event as ill conceived and cruel as the Possum Drop is still taking place in 2006. Capturing, confining and forcing an animal to take part is needless and inappropriate. I know everyone thinks it’s harmless fun, but the truth for the possum is its a terrifying event. I saw a videotape of last year’s event, and the animal was exposed to a scary situation. It was in a glass box with lights all around and suspended in mid air for the duration of the event. I cannot imagine how terrified the possum is awaiting his fate.”

Well. I guess so. In the meantime, don’t tell PETA about the cans sold there labeled “possum”. It is available both in regular and diet configurations. The Scout took a poll of neighborhood kids, and none of them showed any interest in eating any of it, although one adventurous boy volunteered “Sure I’d eat it, if you gave me money.” More startling, a tourist admitted that she actually spent a moment considering “whether to buy the lite or regular variety”, before coming to her senses.

Oddly, I report all this as a person who avoids the Possum Drop himself. Ever since the New York Times picked it up a couple of years ago it has become too big to be believed. Still, it is fairly consistent for our village. With only 240 souls, it possesses a sense of humor far out of proportion to its size. When the thousands of merrymakers return home, that makes this a very decent little place to live.

The effect I have on people

Published on December 25, 2006 in Orthodoxy and life. 1 Comment

Last night, on Christmas Eve, I stayed in a hotel since the drive home and the drive back to Atlanta on Christmas morning didn’t make much sense. The Hampton Inn was surprisingly full, but thankfully, was very quiet last night. This morning, however, there were a lot of people having coffee and pastries in the lobby. I heard them as I got off the elevator, and could tell that they were having fun and carrying on. As I walked into the lobby, though, wearing the collar and carrying my vestments, absolute silence fell, and everyone watched me check out and walk out the door. Without uttering a word.

I have never had such a startling effect on people. I’m not sure what to make of it.

Other than that, this is what I learned in my thirty hours in Atlanta:

1. Do not think that you can go into a coffee shop and have a peaceful cup of coffee when a family is sitting two tables over arguing with Junior about whether or not they treat him differently after they learned he was gay.

2. The people in my parish are unbelievably kind. Despite rookie problems in my first two liturgies, they continue to tell me that they love me.

3. Nothing is as good as coming home to family on Christmas afternoon, after thirty hours in the big city, even if that did include two liturgies and the Christmas Eve service. At Christmas, there really is no place like home.

At the dry cleaners

Published on December 19, 2006 in Orthodoxy and life. 4 Comments

Having returned from Johnstown, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to put the cassock in for cleaning. I don’t know exactly why I thought that, except that if you put it in the corner it stood up by itself. When that first happened, I toyed with the idea that perhaps we had a miracle in place here. Reality soon set in, however. None of this was helped by the sweltering heat in Pennsylvania this past weekend. Global warming is real, my friends, when Johnstown reaches sixty degrees on a December day.

Anyway, I was a little concerned about the garment. I had never taken it to the dry cleaners before, and I’m fond of my cassock. I mean, when you spend as much time in an article of clothing as I do in my cassock, you get attached. Plus, my wife had persuaded me to have grapevines embroidered on it by the people at Istok, and so I wanted to make sure that it was properly cared for.

So I walked purposefully into the shop Monday morning, dropped the cassock on the counter and told the girl I needed it back by Friday. She nodded in a distracted sort of way, but her eyes were fixed on the black heap on the counter.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A cassock,” I replied. “I wear it in church.” I was trying to make this a teachable moment.

She nodded again, and reached out and gingerly picked it up with two fingers. It began to make an effort to stand up. She dropped it hastily. I’m pretty sure she had never seen one at the Baptist church.

“How do you spell that?” she asked cautiously.

“C-a-s-s-o-c-k,” I answered, and watched her write it on the receipt.

She handed me the ticket. “It will be ready Wednesday afternoon,” she said, still eying the creation. I took the ticket, but she made no move to take the garment off the counter. I knew that as soon as I left, the other people working there would be over to examine the strange thing.

I’ll be glad to get it back, in time for Royal Hours on Friday. And if it persists in standing up even after cleaned, I’ll call the Bishop.

As an aside, thanks for all the kind comments on the last post. For those who want to see a little more, a few more pictures are found on the front page of our parish website.

A sigh of relief

Published on November 20, 2006 in life and law. 0 Comments

After feeling like Jimmy Cagney all weekend (”Come and get me, you dirty coppers!”), I am happy to announce that the State of North Carolina has corrected my driving record and reinstated my license. I made them promise that they would never again print a citation with my license number on it.

But I was still very, very careful driving to our vesperal liturgy tonight for the Entry of the Theotokos. Just in case Georgia hadn’t yet gotten the word.

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