Orthodixie

This photo is courtesy of Houston seminarian Michael Sakran who currently hangs out at St Vlad’s (when he’s not learning humility here).

Fr John Peck recently published an article that has now been sent to me by a Roman Catholic layman, an Orthodox priest and a bishop. Rod Dreher has even commented on it over at BeliefNet.

Here’s the article. (UPDATE: The article has been removed by the author. I have a copy but, given its removal, shall refrain from reposting or commenting at this time.)

The Orthodox Church in America shall soon, God willing, choose a new Metropolitan.*

[* When I was in seminary our Liturgics professor said, “When you have your ordination invitations printed, don’t put on there ‘God willing’ … I mean, the bishop’s gonna ordain you!” We understood his point. Forgive me.]

God willing — and I mean that — this will bring one chapter to a close (the one with the pink elephant in the room) and hasten toward a new chapter (the one with a beacon on a hill). However, in my magnificently unworthy opinion, I don’t believe the page will be turned unless the OCA looks outside of itself for leadership. I mean, in a big-O church, why settle for the longest straw in a tiny pile? Narrow vision, blinded by good-ol-boy loyalty, won’t get you very far. That should be a closed book, not one that just needs editing.

WICHITA – If you’ve driven past St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral lately, you might have noticed some work going on. However, if you actually stop and take a look, you’ll notice this is no ordinary face lift.

“It’s a tremendous sense of joy for us to see these installed,” Father Paul O’Callaghan said.

For the church these mosaics are an 18 year dream.

“It really proclaims our faith and our belief in a really brilliant and visual way,” Father O’Callaghan said.

To make the mosaics a reality, the church had to look thousands of miles away to the Tuscany region of Italy …

Here’s the news story.

Better yet, here’s the newsreel.

Thanks to FWD from Fr Josiah Trenham.

Back in 2005, my family and I moved from our native North Carolina to Houston. My son, who was 7 at the time, was not excited about moving to Houston. He’d heard they had hurricanes. Fr John Salem, the priest at St George, encouraged me to tell him that it had been a long, long time since a hurricane had hit Houston. Not to worry.

That’s what I did. I’d also found a house for us to live in with a pool. The latter was enough to pump the boy up: Hurricane, pool, pool, hurricane. The pool easily won.

So, we moved. We spent our first few nights in the new digs on the floor, in sleeping bags. There wasn’t a hotel room in the vicinity thanks to the infamous Katrina [which hit New Orleans on August 29th, 2005]. By Tuesday morning folks were already talking about approaching weather. Thus, I had to have a serious parental talk with my children, especially Basil. “Sometimes hurricanes do hit Houston.” But, I assured them (as parents are wont to do), “We’ll get through it.”

Before I get too carried away talking about Hurricane Rita in the summer of ’05, let’s Fast Fwd to just last week.

Wait. Make that 3 weeks ago — with the approach of Hurricane Gustav (which ended up turning toward New Orleans) …

Which now brings us up to the now infamous Hurricane Ike.

But, wait! I can’t even start there.

The day before we welcomed Ike to Houston, the nation remembered the tragic events of 9/11 — 7 years earlier. In reality, of course, that event was at least a hundred years ago.

Right?

* * *

Have you ever seen the sky turn green?

How ’bout orange?

How bout green and orange … over and over … again and again … and trees lay down under 100 mph winds only to pop back up again, flinging their branches dry … only to repeat the aerobics over and over, again and again.

I know. I’m starting to sound melodramatic. Forgive me. There’s just no way to do justice to a hurricane on the radio. It’s a visual thing.

* * *

Watching Hurricane Ike beat up on the trees in my back yard, watching the sky turn green and orange, hearing nature make sounds that are indescribable and still undefined …

That part was magnificent.

The next day, as I related the awesomeness of it all, my kids asked:“Why didn’t you get us up?”

I’d thought about it, but …

The Orthodixie Podcast on Ancient Faith Radio.

Fr Serge Veselinovich, of Ss Constantine & Helen Serbian Orthodox Church, is hosting a blogsite hoping for information from Orthodox folks in the Galveston area.

“Fr. Serge and Christopher Bolan emptied out the church on Friday, September 12th at 4:00 pm. All liturgical items, vestments, church records, icons, etc. have been removed and are being housed in a safe location. The only thing, unfortunately, that was not taken out of the church were the icons on the iconostas.”

If you have heard from parishioners from the following churches, please post information regarding their status (to this site):

Sts. Constantine & Helen Serbian Orthodox Church
4109 Avenue L
Galveston, TX 77552

Holy Assumption Greek Orthodox Church
1824 Ball
Galveston, TX 77550

Galveston Orthodox

Since regaining the Internet, I’ve been wanting to post pics of Hurricane Ike’s “art work.” Alas, the storm must have slowed DSL service (or some such), I cannot upload pics to Blogger. It’s just as well, with all the images of total destruction coming from the East Texas Coast my daughter’s shots of jumbled suburbia could seem petty.

There was still no power at the church yesterday, so I decided to make some hospital calls. Gosh. Getting around Houston’s streets sans stoplights, among a million others, with a fuel shortage — E. T. C. — was taxing.

Then, I got to my first hospital stop. They had no power and were operating on generators. All entryways were locked except for the Emergency Room. In other words, everyone had to check in with the same personnel. The ER was packed, as it was doubling as the hospital’s Waiting Room. By virtue of my apparel I was allowed to visit a parishioner. First, they banded my wrist with an info tag, my name and the patient’s name and room number. As I made my way toward the ICU, I noticed hospital furniture all pushed together, seemingly at random; I had to go around sections that were taped off because, I assumed, of water damage. There were portable rotary fans everywhere and noticeably less blinking lights on hospital gadgets. Imagine lots of high tech equipment, everywhere … mostly dormant.

A couple of the registration gals said that when they saw me come in they thought I might have come for one of the families who’d just left. They’d had someone to die; it was traumatic. As I looked around at the wounded and the waiting, I understood what they meant. Here, in this one big holding tank, a family had learned that their loved one was gone. Under normal (modern) conditions, there’s special waiting rooms out by the ICU where information, and grief, such as this is shared. Here, after Ike, it was all on display. Raw.

My next call was at Hospice. They, too, were on generators; their elevators were out. It was quiet.

It was quiet.