Faith

Last Sunday, as I mentioned in the previous post, I was at a Krking service in New Hampshire. The minister spoke about faith and about how much time we spend on the "things" of life. He asked us to ask ourselves how much time we spend doing things other than practicing our faith. I have been thinking about that this week. How much time do we spend on other things? What else could we be doing? Makes me stop and ponder.

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Sunday

Today is a very strange day for me. For the first time in the more than 2 years since I have been ordained, I am not celebrating the Divine Liturgy today. I am on a little vacation with my family in New Hampshire and I have been invited to participate in an ancient ceremony called the Kirking of the Tartans. This ceremony dates back to the time when the tartan was outlawed in Scotland and people would sneak a small piece into the church. At some point in the service, the minister would bless the small swatches. This is a very moving ceremony as it calls to mind a time when all was not free in Scotland. Although it has been many generations since my family lived in Scotland, it is still nice to keep up the old traditions.

Otherwise the time has been fun. Lots of rain yesterday but it did not dampen the excitement of the pipe bands, dancers, and others who have come from so far to participate in the activities of the weekend. It is also nice to be back at Loon Mountain. What a great place this is.

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Radio

It would seem that your host and Fr. Greg might just be starting a radio ministry. The Council of Eastern Orthodox Churches here in Worcester has the ability to get some air time on a local station WCUW a public radio station. The time slot is 4:30-5:30 on Wednesday afternoons. This is hot and I think it will be great. We need to do some work on this so stay tuned for more information. Try and tune the station in 91.3 on FM. Post here if you can get it. Of course whatever we do we will make available on the web somewhere.

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Liturgy of St. James

On Monday, October 23rd Fr. Greg and myself will celebrate the Liturgy of St. James. This rather involved liturgy is as old if not older than the present Divine Liturgy used in the Orthodox Church. The Liturgy of St. James is usually only celebrated on his feast day. Stay tuned for more information. If anyone has more information on the Liturgy, please feel free to post it here.

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Your Host is off for a little R&R in New Hampshire. This weekend is the New Hampshire Highland Games at Loon Mountain in Lincoln, New Hampshire. Although the place I am staying advertises that is has wifi, we shall see. I might be able to post some pictures during the weekend if not, look for a complete report early next week.

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New Blog

There is a new person in the world of blogging today. It would seem that Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston will begin to blog on his trip to Rome. A story in today's Boston Globe speaks of the Cardinals desire to be in touch with people in Boston. O'Malley is off to Rome for meeting and to take possession of his titular church. No address was given for the site, but stay tuned. Welcome to blogging Your Eminence! Sphere: Related Content

I have begun research for a Ph.D. that I am pursuing in Romania. My area will be Church History, but more specifically American Church History. I have a theory that I would like to explore and see what comes of it. The theory is this. Communism affected the church in America both in it's formation and in it's decline. Continuing along this train of thought, some hold that during the time of communism, specifically during the 1970's the Orthodox Church in America was very close to uniting in one cohesive group. Then the wall came down and more immigration began and we retreat back to our ethnic corners. So this is the theory. Communism slowed down immigration and the church started to become more indigenous, or more American, and with the fall of communism the church became more ethnic and less American. Not that any of those things are bad on their face, just a theory.

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Things have been quiet around the old place. Not much is happening, but I think this is the calm before the storm. Wednesday night we had a liturgy for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. I like evening liturgies. The sun beginning to set and people singing. It's nice. I wish more people would come to liturgy during the week, but we had a nice group there. Saturday will see some construction here at the church. We need to remove some short walls around the outside of the church to prevent water from coming in. I don't understand all that stuff but the people who do say it needs to be done so off we go. Perhaps there should be a class or two in seminary about all this stuff.

I got myself involved in a little online snit. I belong to several yahoo groups about different things. One of them has to do with Eastern Orthodoxy. What I have found is this group seems to be full of people who want to be part of the orthodox church but for some reason have started their own branch. I am amazed at how many bishops there are out there. So I got into it with this guy, who claims to be a bishop. I guess I should not have, but I have been reading about American Orthodoxy and I just cannot understand why we can't just all become one. I mean in this little town we have three Orthodox Churches. The town can barley support one and we have three, all different jurisdictions. I will never understand.

that's my rant for the week.

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Fr. Mychal Judge.

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9/11

Today is the 5th day of remembrance of the events of 9/11. I remember exactly where I was when I heard what happened. It was my first year in seminary as well. I would hope that we all pause from our busy schedule today and say thank you for the brave men and women of the fire, police, EMT's ect. as well as your troops still serving in the Middle East. We owe them that much.

Two years ago I became a Fire Dept chaplain for many reasons. One of those reasons was the example of Fr. Mychal Judge. Fr. Judge, a Franciscan Priest, was the chaplain for Engine Company 1/Ladder Company 24 FDNY and was the first casualty. Fr. Judge ran to the be with his guys in their moment of need. Now I serve a small town, and we don't have any large buildings like the World Trade Center, but my guys put their life on the line everyday to keep the citizens of our community safe. I would like to think that I would have the same sense of duty that Fr. Judge had and run to be with my guys in their moment of need. I wear a silver bracelet on my wrist engraved with the name of Fr. Mychal Judge and he is constantly in my thoughts as I hear to "tones" go off and I rush to be with my guys. Sphere: Related Content

There is a story in today's Boston Globe about teachers and blogging. I wish bloggs were the thing when I was teaching.

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Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Yesterday I gave the GPS system a work out and set my sites on Pittsfield, Massachusetts. This city is located 30 miles east of Albany New York. I set the little device to take me on the back roads and that it did. I think it took me more than two hours to get there, but I took the highway back and it was only an hour. Nice ride and a beautiful day. There is a little OCA parish there in the town St. Nicholas. Looks like a nice place. Might have to visit again.

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Sunday Thoughts

This past Sunday we had a pretty good crowd in the church, and some of the regulars were in attendance. Usually people go away for the weekend but most people seemed to be around. It was good to see some people back from their summer off from church.

This week the theme was giving up. I should say that the Gospel verse for this Sunday, Riches and the Kingdom is often miss understood. In the story, Jesus tells the man to go and sell all that you have, give to the poor, and follow me. I don't believe that Jesus is asking each of us to do this. I believe that Jesus is telling us not to love our possessions more than we love life, or more than we love God. Possessions are okay as long as they do not rule our life. For the man in the story it would seem that he loved his possessions more than God. We should be careful not to amass more than we need, and we also need to remember the poor. If any of you have a big plasma TV that you feel you need to divest yourself of let me know, it would look great in my TV room.

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Red Sox

So it would seem that the Red Sox season is over. We are like 1,000 games behind the Yankees and now we begin to look forward to football season. It just was not in cards, so to speak, for the Sox to win this year. Many injuries and other things and now it is all over. Still a few more games to play, but just for fun now. I did look last night to see what tickets were selling for. The only seats available for the game tonight at Fenway were selling for $85.00 Man I can remember when it was like $20 and that was expensive. Oh well, it's now a rich mans game. Of course we can only get the games on NESN so you have to have cable to watch them on TV. I guess you can always listen to them on the radio.

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St. Giles

Today is the anniversary of the death of St. Giles patron saint of Edinburgh and Elgin in Scotland. More information can be found at the catholic encyclopedia site.

In short, this saint was born on Athens and moved to France. He established a monastery and set about to serve to beggars and down trodden in the area. Nice guy I think and maybe we all can learn something from his life.

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