Bishop Alexander Needs Your Prayers

Many of you may already know that Bishop Alexander (Mileant), of the Diocese of South America, has been struggling against cancer. According to a report I received just a few minutes ago, the cancer has spread to his stomach and intestines. The doctors have prescribed morphine; and he has reportedly been told that, short of a miracle, he has just a few weeks to live.

Please remember the servant of God, Vladika Alexander, in your prayers. The originator of the message has asked that everyone offer an akathist to the Theotokos, the Healer of cancer.

As more information about Vladika's condition is available, I will pass that along to you here.

Sad Times at Agios Nektarios Institution

Sidirokastro, Greece, is a quaint and attractive town on the banks of the Kroussovitis River, not far from the border between Greece and Bulgaria. On a hilltop outside Sidirokastro, at the end of a steep, unpaved road is the Agios Nektarios Institution. It is there, at the Agios Nektarios Institution, that children and young adults who have been born with anything from a simple physical impairment, such as poor vision, to severe mental retardation, autism, and cerebral palsy, are housed.

When Karen Crider, an administrator with the Kyrene School District in Phoenix, Arizona, entered the Institution during a vacation, she was greeted by the smell of unwashed bodies and human waste. She saw children who never left their mattresses, many of whom did not even have a sheet or a blanket. Toys are virtually unheard of; and there are few other resources that might be used to help anyone dwelling at the Institution to have anything like a normal life. Those who can move on their own spend their days sitting on the floor. Those fortunate enough to have a wheelchair are often left tied in place in a dim hallway all day. There are no educational, recreational, or rehabilitation activities of any kind. Children are bathed only once a week. The lack of dental hygiene and professional care means that the teeth of the residents rot away, and their gums are sore and bleeding. Many of the residents suffer from malnutrition, and those left in their beds have their muscles atrophy. These suffering people have been abandoned, and have little or no connection to their family.

This is not the result of cruelty. The families are poor, and do not have the means to provide the care needed by those members who are disabled. There is a cultural stigma to having a family member who is disabled. The Institution’s staff is not trained to work to help the residents to develop themselves; and even with some knowledge or training, lack the resources to do much of anything. But the end result of all this, even if unintended, is a harsh and cruel existence – certainly not “life as we know it” here in the United States.

Crider’s initial response was to spend two weeks of her vacation working with the residents and staff at the Agios Nektarios Institution. She said, “I played with them, got them to clap their hands,” speaking of persons ranging from babies to adults. “They were looking for someone to look them in the eye. They wanted to feel attention; they wanted to feel love and are; they wanted your time. That’s all.”

Now, Crider, working with the internationally recognized and accredited non-governmental organization, Global Volunteers, is organizing a team of volunteer teachers, and physical and occupational therapists to go to work with the residents and staff of the Agios Nektarios Institution during the summer of 2005. Ideally, one team of fifteen will go for two weeks during June 3-17; and a second team of fifteen will go during July. The teams will take teaching equipment and toys for the residents that will remain at the Institution. The teams will work both with the residents, and with the staff, working to educate and equip the staff so that after the volunteer teams leave, the staff will be able to raise the level of care given thereafter.

All of this takes money. Each volunteer needs about $4,000 to cover airfare, ground transportation, meals, and lodging; and funds are needed for supplies and materials as well.

My wife, Michele, is a special education teacher. When she heard about this project, she spoke with a genuine excitement about the possibility of being part of one of the teams with some of her colleagues from the Kyrene School District. There was more to her excitement. Not surprising, when you think about it – an Orthodox Christian with an opportunity to go and be of service in an Orthodox country.

So, here’s the point: Will you help make her trip possible? Yes, I know there’s always more need than there are resources to meet it. If you can’t, you can’t. But if you can, you will make an offering that will be a double blessing; for it will not only help my wife to fulfill this dream – it will also help those to whom she will minister.

Donations can be sent to:
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
P.O. Box 91492
Phoenix, AZ 85066-1492

Be sure to put “Agios Nektarios” on the memo line. Oh, your contribution will be tax-deductible; and 100% of your offering will be directed to this program, and this program only. If there should be funds above what is needed for Michele to travel, we will use the additional funds to assist other team members, or for materials.

Thank you; and may God bless your generosity!

St. Anthony and the Parking Lot

In the life of St. Anthony the Great that is found in the Prologue from Ochrid, it is said that he began to pursue the ascetic life in the village of his birth; but after a few years went off into the desert on the shores of the Red Sea to “escape the disturbance of men.” After a few minutes in the parking lot at the local grocery store last night, I can really appreciate that sentiment.

Try to picture, if you can, sitting in the passenger’s front seat. To the left, on the driver’s side, is a parked car; and just to the left of that car is the shopping cart return. So, anyway, there I am, waiting while some essential supplies are purchased as we are on our way home from doing a house-blessing. The people in the car to the left return, put the kids in the car, empty the shopping cart into the trunk – and then push the cart behind our car and drive off. As they backed up and then drove away, they watched me get out and move the cart into the cart return without hesitating a moment. I am not a saint; and I must confess to harboring the thought of wanting to push the cart into their departing vehicle, rather than into the return lane. Glory to God for restraining me in my anger.

I got back into the car. It didn’t take long for the next episode. The people traveling in the car in the next aisle, just to my right, returned with their shopping cart. Mind you, they are a total of three car spaces from the cart return area. They empty the cart, and then the woman pushes the cart towards the cart return. The intermediate space has a vehicle parked in it, and she moves behind that; but the space next to the cart return is vacant; and that is where she abandons the cart, not more than two cart-lengths from the cart return. They drive off, having blocked a parking space.

Meanwhile, in the drive lane behind our car, someone has pulled up to a stop and dropped off a passenger, who heads into the store. Rather than pulling into a parking space, the car just sits there. It does not move until the shopper who’d left the car a few minutes before returns with his shopping bag. (Thankfully, no cart was involved here.) While this car is blocking the way, another car, off to my left in another lane, backs out of a space, but is unable to drive off as the SUV that had been waiting for that parking space pulls in ahead of the departing vehicle, cutting that car off. Straight ahead, a man in a newer pickup truck pulls in at an angle opposite the pattern of the lines marking the parking spaces, taking up parts of three spaces for his vehicle.

At this point, I was ready to join St. Anthony in his desert solitude. I’d like to think of myself as a “people person”; and, as a priest, I labor in a people-directed and people-intensive endeavor – the salvation of souls. But at that moment, as also happens frequently when I am out in traffic, I can’t stand people – the last thing I want is to be around the people I’m meeting anonymously. What a bunch of jerks! (Of course, I know enough to know that it takes one to know one… No one can be a more rude or inconsiderate person than I am in such situations…)

What has happened to common courtesy? What has happened to civility, and respect? I must be getting old. I don’t remember things as having been like this. Once upon a time, in my youth, when dinosaurs walked the earth, there was a measure of respect, and self-restraint, and of foregoing one’s advantage, if not rights, in order to allow another person to pull in ahead of you at a merge-point in traffic, or into a parking spot. By the same token, there didn’t seem to be as many people trying to milk one more car-length out of the merge lane, forcing themselves in ahead of your car, rather than filling the empty space behind.

Our holy and God-bearing father Anthony, by his ascetic labors, overcame the passions and defeated the assaults of the demons. I wonder how he would have done if he’d had to take the freeway…

Holy father Anthony the Great, pray to God for us.

SpongeBob Gay? Gimme a Break!

There are a number of things that are taking place in our culture today which are worthy of concern, and deserve our attention and action. Many times, these are identified for many Christians by the group, Focus on the Family, started by Dr. James Dobson. However, the recent "flap" over the video, We are Family, produced in 2002 by the We are Family Foundation, and being offered now to schools as part of a curriculum to promote tolerance, is not, in my opinion, one of the matters deserving our attention or concern.

Don't take it from me: Go to this link at MSNBC.com and watch the video for yourself. You'll have to sit through a report by Keith Olbermann; but the video is shown in its entirety. There are also articles by Michael Ventre and from Reuters News Service about the video, and the attacks being made against the video and curriculum.

Details of how the curriculum builds on the video are not immediately available. We have to concede the possibility that the promotion of "tolerance" in the classroom will probably include being "tolerant" of those who live an "alternative lifestyle"; a catch-phrase that, more often than not, means, "homosexuality." Parents with children in schools that are going to use the video will certainly do well to contact the school and find out the details of what their children will be taught -- but they should be doing this now, anyway -- right?

In a way, there is something to be said for tolerance. First of all, "tolerance" does not automatically equal "acceptance" or "approval." OK, it comes close; but doesn't God "tolerate" us, in spite of our sins? I haven't yet decided if we can say, in Orthodox terms, the popular slogan of the protestant world, "hate the sin, love the sinner"; but when I consider how the substance of my confession has a regular and recurring core of thoughts and words and deeds that are repeated, don't I need the "tolerance" -- read, "long-suffering" -- of God, while I make the effort to do what is in my power to work towards the transformation to which God is leading and helping me? And if this is true for me, why should it be any different for anyone else?

As for SpongeBob being gay: Get real! He's a cartoon character, for crying out loud! What, his occasional appearance in only his underpants means he's secretly living with Patrick, or Squidward, or Mr. Krab? Give me a massive break! And if the report that SpongeBob is popular with gay men means that this is because SpongeBob is, himself, gay -- someone has been spending way too much time in front of the television set!

I need to stop now, before I blow a fuse...

Disaster in Asia: IOCC Response to the Tsunami

Words do not begin to describe the aftermath of the fourth-largest earthquake in a century, and the tsunami triggered as a result that has devastated the nations along the Indian Ocean, from Indonesia to Sri Lanka and India, and even as far west as the country of Somalia, on the eastern coast of Africa, over 3,750 miles away. As of this time, the death toll stands at over 23,000 people, possibly half of whom are children. The number of homeless now at risk from disease and exposure exceeds 500,000.

The International Orthodox Christian Charities, together with many other humanitarian organizations around the world, is sending help. They have set an initial goal of raising $100,000 for the first phase of the relief effort. Please go to the IOCC web site to make a donation on-line.