Devshirme

A few important things to note about tomorrow (Sunday) for Cathedral members:

-Turn your clocks ahead tonight!  You don’t want to be the person coming to church at 11 thinking it is 10.

-Tomorrow there is a road race and the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Worcester, so Park Ave. will largely be shut down.  Please plan your route to church appropriately.

-Parking may well be an issue.  Although we have around 200 spaces, this is not nearly enough on a typical Sunday.  There will be little-to-no street parking.  We are also concerned that people coming to the race may park in the church lots.  Normally we love to help out for these events but we need the spaces on Sundays.  There will be pangari team members patrolling to make sure only Cathedral-bound people park in the lots.  I imagine someone coming to the race is more likely to park in the auxiliary lot than the one behind the church (I can’t imagine doing this – I would be terrified that my car would be towed).  So I am encouraging people to park in the Cedar St. lot first, rather than the church lot – let’s fill it up early so we eliminate chances of others parking there.  Of course, if you are infirm or are bringing elderly people then park behind the church.  I hope this all makes sense.  I am looking forward to church as well as the parade.

And many thanks to old friend and fellow UVA alum Nia for adding some literary flair to the blog.  We were all out after church on Friday and there was a chance I would not be able to get home and post by midnight (remember, I am committed to posting every day during Lent).  Nia painstakingly blogged her story from an iPhone – no mean feat.

We kicked Lent off yesterday with, as mentioned, the first Cathedral compline service in a long time.  The service is pretty simple from a rubrics standpoint, but we did not have a chanter and I thought – oh no!  I will have to chant.  We then had the very pleasant surprise of Fr. Ephraim showing up.  He and I alternated on the chanting, and his presence allowed me to cense during “Lord of the Powers” while he sang.  The service was subdued and beautiful, and I am looking forward to next week.

We do a lot of services during Lent.  The rotation this year is compline on Mondays, liturgy of the presanctified gifts on Wednesdays (alternating among the 4 Worcester-area churches) and Salutations on Friday, plus of course Sunday services.  Tomorrow we will be at St. Nicholas in Shrewsbury for service followed by the usual potluck.  His Eminence Archbishop Nicolae will be there, so we are all pretty excited about that.  Next week the service is at the Cathedral, and Fr. Akunda, here on a visit from Africa, will celebrate the liturgy.

One of our traditions at the Cathedral is to have no meetings the first week of Lent (and during Bright Week as well).  Fr. Dean does this so we get the message that it is not “business as usual”.  I bent the rules a bit this year – GOYA met tonight for a church service, which I figured made it ok .  We did an abbreviated compline service, with the GOYAns reading most of the parts, followed by a forgiveness exercise, where everyone goes through a line, embraces each other and asks for forgiveness.  We then retired to the Founders Court for vegetable snacks and lenten Halva.

Blogging has been almost non-existent around here lately, so I decided to challenge myself (and anyone on Facebook who is interested) by attempting to blog for the 40 days of Lent just as I did for the Preachers Institute’s Advent blogging exercise.  I even got Fr. Peck’s cyber-blessings to do this, so here goes…

Today is Clean Monday.  Interestingly, in Greek the term is Kathara Deutera rather than kathari – an adverb is used rather than an adjective.  ”Cleanly” Monday is more awkward but probably more accurate.  For most of us, this begins the true Lenten fast.  This year I am doing the complete vegan thing, with exceptions for fish at mercy meals and the like.  We emphasize the spiritual aspect of fasting – the introspection, almsgiving and focus on prayer that goes with it rather than the food part, but there is also a physical aspect to this.  Fasting has its origins, I imagine, as a “preview of hell” – not eating food is bad for you and makes you miserable.  Our fasting, which is not a total abstention from food as it was back in the day, is an exercise in focus and sacrifice.  It also has many health benefits.  I am increasingly convinced that a vegan, or at the very least a vegetarian, lifestyle is the way to go.  One of these Lenten seasons I am going to go vegan and never go back.  I am not going to go into it too much here – there is a ton of material available on the web analyzing the benefits and potential risks of a vegan lifestyle.  I am writing this merely to emphasize that while the spiritual stuff is more important for us (and as the Bible tells us what comes out of the mouth is more important than what goes into it) we should not discount the cleansing goodness of the Lenten eating lifestyle.  More tomorrow.  Tonight we have compline/apodeipnon service, as we will every Monday at the Cathedral during Lent.  We have not done this service since long before I came to Worcester, so it will be a nice restoration as well as another tool to help us refocus ourselves during the forty days.

Here in Worcester we have received a ridiculous amount of snow with no mild days in between – everything that has fallen is still around.  We have actually had to truck snow out of the Cathedral parking lots since there is no more street parking, there is so much snow talking up spaces, and the construction has temporarily made some spots unavailable.  This is the first time in my 5+ years here that we have had to remove snow.

He is not going to like this, but Chris Fourkas deserves a huge shout-out.  Chris, among other sterling service to our church, plows us out each year at no cost.  This saves us, I imagine, 20-30k annually.  Chrysostom not only plows but has been coordinating the removal.  He also turns up at the Cathedral at odd hours to move snow.  Last week I received the thrill of my life when I got to drive his Bobcat around:

In other Cathedral snow news…we had the flat roofs – the auditorium and the office/Tonna Room/hallway link –  cleared yesterday of snow.  I had been thinking about this after seeing reports of up to 100 different roofs collapsing in Massachusetts in the past few days.  We kind of hemmed and hawed on whether to clear the snow, and then on Friday the engineer for the building project strongly suggested we do it.  So yesterday a team of 19 guys got up there and shoveled all the snow off.  This was packed, heavy snow which only would have become heavier with tonight’s freezing rain.

How about some photos of the latest stage in the construction process?  The Founders Court and classroom areas (and my office) are completed, and work has begun on the auditorium itself.  This all started a few weeks ago.  I rolled into the parking lot one day and it looked like the parking lot was being strip-mined!  It turned out to be digging for the “Bump Out”, as we are calling the stairway shell and dedicated space for the Orthodox Food Pantry.  Here is a picture – from the lack of mountains of snow you can tell this is not the most recent picture:

You will have noticed that the seal is in place in the foyer.  There were rumblings about why there was a delay with this, and you know how stories can take on a life of their own.  The original seal was broken in transit and had to be sent back, so in the meantime the space was bare.  George K. – a true artist – came and put in the replacement when we received it:

Here is the last picture ever taken of the floor with the Grecian keys still in place.  The building project is awesome, but there is also a sad aspect – we will miss some of these things, but it is all for the best:

These are photos of the Cotsidas Auditorium abatement.  One of the main thrusts of this stage is, well, pushing back what was the stage area so there is more room.  The theory is that stages are used, in our case, five or ten times a year, so why not have portable stages that can be stored away, freeing up more room?  One irony in all this is that our architect did the Grecian frets design around the stage by hand when he was a 14 year old intern during  the original construction – this is bittersweet for him as well:

This annual post is one of the most popular here on the blog with Cathedral people.  It is the yearly count of sacraments.  It is one – just one – measure of where we are, but like any statistic should be taken with a grain or shakerful of salt.  Two years ago, for example, we only had two weddings, but it was not the end of the world.  Here we go:

Funerals: 31.  This is about what we normally do but obviously this number can get wildly skewed – we have had 50 some years.

Baptisms: 33.  This is a bit on the low side – it is usually 40-50.  No need to panic – our baby boom continues, so I anticipate a lot of baptisms this year.  I should also point out that we usually do between 5-10 adult baptisms a year as well – we have several coming up.

Weddings: 13.  This was a big jump from the two in 2009.  Many factors come into play here – people get married in Greece or at out-of-town churches, people wait to get married because of the economy, whatever.

So there you have it.  Today is a snow day – tons of snow outside – and I am off to snowshoe.

I am fascinated by the history of the our Cathedral and especially the Orange Street era, which ran from roughly 1924-1954.  Part of my fascination comes from the fact that not only is the old building no longer extant (unlike the original Assyrian or Romanian church locations, for example, which are easy to locate) but the street itself no longer exists.  My understanding is that Orange Street was leveled as part of the building of the Worcester Public Library – I imagine someone who remembers can pinpoint the location of the church at the library or in the parking lot, but there is certainly not a trace remaining.  In fact, I don’t think I have even seen a picture of the interior, although I have seen the outside – several pictures are hanging in the main hallway at church.  One of the many ideas I have on the back burner is to start a literary ‘zine and call it _ Orange Street (when I find out what the street number was) because it represents to me this mysterious past world that is almost a blank canvas.

Anyways, why am I babbling about this?  Beyond my natural interest in the history of our community, I recently found a cache of icons that I imagine come from the old church.  I was digging around in the “Maintenance Room” – the name for our gigantic closet of ecclesiastical items (the show Hoarders has nothing on our Cathedral) – and could not find an Epiphany icon from our set of the icons of the Lord’s feasts.  I started looking through a stack of framed icons that were obviously really old.  They had that western, neo-Byzantine look that many of our churches here adopted back in the day, and, although not faded in any way, the muted colors and the worn frame suggested a bygone era.  I put out the Epiphany icon below on our children’s stand.  Almost immediately Mike C found the one from the set that I probably passed over four times while looking, and we replaced it, but I decided to examine the picture further.  It is from 1939, which puts it squarely in the middle of the Orange Street era.  It is in what must be its original frame.  Were these hung in the old church?  The only other explanation is that we somehow inherited this set from a closed-down church or one that was moving, and that is entirely possible – again, the Hoarders thing.  But it is cool to know that these are a tangible connection to our past, and now, since I plan to occasionally put these icons out, to our bright future.

Here is my attempt at recreating what I talked about today in church.  Hopefully I don’t leave too much out:

This time of the year we always have a bunch of services with John the Baptist as a major character – the Sundays before and after Epiphany, the two services of Epiphany itself and on Jan. 7 the feast day proper of John.  John is of course a major figure in Orthodoxy, and he seems to run an impressive third in importance after Christ and Mary – his birthday, along with theirs, is one of the only three we celebrate on the calendar, to give just one example.  There is a lot to talk about concerning John, but one thing that interests me about him is that he is the patron saint of godparents.  Makes sense- he baptized Christ himself.  Godparents have been on my radar screen these past couple of years because of the birth of our children – we had to think about and choose good people for our own kids, and in the meantime Prez and I have become godparents to some truly wonderful babies and toddlers.

What is the purpose of a godparent?  They are there as a sponsor for baptism, but ultimately their purpose is to make sure the godchild is being brought up in the faith.  That means if your godchild doesn’t go to church or live the life of a Christian, you need to get involved and do your best to make this happen.  Our criteria for choosing a godparent is often to honor a friend or a sibling, rather than choosing someone who will keep an eye on the religious upbringing.  The Church considers the godparent-godchild relationship to be even more important than a blood one – that is why you cannot marry the godchild of your own parent, for example.  Technically, you are not supposed to even have relatives as godparents but I imagine this practice came about in small villages, where you would not be able to marry anyone if the small number of families there all had godparent connections.

It is convenient that the barrage of days involving John the Baptist comes at the beginning of the year because this is when, as Fr. Dean pointed out, people make the dreaded new year’s resolutions.  Such things have become almost points of ridicule because few people actually follow through on resolutions to lose weight, get the taxes done by the end of January (that one was me last year, and I failed miserably) and other things.  But resolutions have a good side because at the least they raise our self-awareness and make us think about our lives.  We all have godparents, many of us have godchildren, and some of us may have to pick godparents for our children now or in the future.

So, I will not ask you to make a resolution, but I think in the spirit of John the Baptist we can challenge ourselves.  Reach out to your godchild if he does not go to church or if you have not been in contact in a while.  Don’t browbeat him, but invite him to church and then lunch afterwars one Sunday.  If you have lost touch with your own godparent, get in contact and do the same.  If you are having a baby or planning to baptize a child, or even if you are getting married, choose the sponsor with care.  Remember, you are not doing it to honor someone – you are doing it for the well-being of your child.

These challenges are very doable, and in the first two cases require nothing more than a phone call and a calendar.  Reach out and/or choose wisely, whatever the case may be, and make this a priority in the new year.

Christmas weekend at the Cathedral has ended.  I celebrated with a monster nap Sunday afternoon as the snow began to come down hard.   We are getting one of those huge New England blizzards – our clergy family retreat at the camp has already been cancelled – and I am looking forward to going snowshoeing tomorrow at some point after digging out.  Here is how the weekend unfolded:

Friday evening we had the vesperal liturgy of St. Basil followed by the Christmas pageant on the soleas of the church.  Several people asked me “is there communion tonight”?  so I figure an explanation is needed of how the Christmas services work.  We normally have two Christmas liturgies – one the night before (the liturgical day starts at sundown the night before) and one the morning of.  This tradition came about to make it easier for people to attend a service.  If Christmas falls on a Sunday or Monday then there is supposed to be only one service – the usual Sunday service if a Sunday, and since people are unlikely to go to church twice in one day if Christmas eve is a Sunday then just the Monday service.  The service this year on Friday evening was vespers, the evening service, into the liturgy of St. Basil with orthros and the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom on Christmas morning.  The liturgy of St. Basil is almost identical to the usual liturgy except the priest’s prayers after a certain point are much longer – for this reason it is thought to be an older service, with Chrysostom’s liturgy containing shortened prayers (unusual for something in the Orthodox world to get shorter rather than longer:)

So…Christmas Eve was great, with the customary huge crowds.  The pageant was beautifully done – a mixture of students reading the narratives and the choir quietly singing in the background and during processions in.  Vaia participated this year as a sheep – the sheep wear special coats and earmuffs of fuzzy material – I guess wool – and they are very cute.  Here is a picture of the gathering after the Wise Men (actually 1 boy and 2 girls this year) presented their gifts:

Saturday morning we had a nice orthros and liturgy, and it was a joy to have Fr. Emmanuel participating as he celebrated his name day.  We had maybe 150-200 people, so it was much calmer than the night before.  I prepared two chalices but only consecrated one – thinking that many of the people there had been the night before and would probably not receive again. Big mistake.  I ended up going out alone and communed about half the people there, seemingly, so it took a while.  Fr. Emmanuel gave out the antidoro solo so that everyone could wish him chronia polla.

Today we had another nice service but the combination of Christmas fatigue – two services plus family events – and the impending giant storm kept people home.  We had a small crowd similar to Grecian Festival Sunday.  Fr. Dean left early to make an emergency hospital visit, which just goes to show you that even on a holiday weekend with a blizzard about to swoop down on us you never know what is going to happen.

When you next see Fr. Solon, whether at the restaurant or at church, make sure you wish him a happy birthday.  These photos are courtesy of CNS Photography: