St John Chrysostom

The second Sunday of Great Lent is known as the Sunday of the Paralytic. On this day the Gospel reading is from St Mark (2:1-12) telling of Jesus’ healing of the paralyzed man. This particular Sunday our parish held a “Reader Service” since our priest was out of town.  Monk Paul read the Gospel and followed it with a homily by St John Chrysostom on this particular passage. Several times in the homily he refers to the words of St Paul.  This made me think of something I heard and saw on Mt Athos concerning St John.  While at Vatopedi Monastery we were able to venerate a relic of St John, his skull with his left ear intact and incorrupt.  The relic was in a ornate silver box that had a door on the side that opened revealing the ear.  Having already seen the incorrupt hand of St John elsewhere this was an added “mind-blower”! 

Fr Mathew, the monk that showed us around Vatopedi, told us the story behind the “incorrupt ear”. 
The story goes:

St. Proculus (the spirtual son of the saint and eventually Patriarch of Constantinople) was going to visit St John and entered the room where the saint was working and saw a man standing close at his side appearing to be talking in his ear.  Not wanting to interrupt, St Proculus left and returned sometime later and mentioned to St John that he had come by earlier and found him busy with a visitor.  St John exclaimed that he had no visitors that day and that he had been occupied in writing the entire time.

Incorrupt Hand of St John Fr Mathew told us that legend has it that St Paul would whisper in the saint’s ear as he was composing his many homilies.  What in effect St Proculus had seen in this tale is St Paul himself whispering in the ear of St John! The incorrupt ear is due to it being the ear St John would listen to the God inspired wisdom of the great saint with. 

God Is Glorious In His Saints!

More about St John Chrysostom
Read about the Orthodox view of saints
St John’s Marvelous Paschal Homily read every Pascha (Easter)

WebTales

Over the weekend I heard from a dear old friend, Robin, whom I had lost touch with over the last few years. Robin and I met through my brother David. She had been on tour with David in “A Chorus Line” in the late80s . Robin and her longtime friend Stephen, another Chorus Line alum, lived in Seattle. When David would come to visit me he would always look them up. On one trip he took me over to their place, we had a riot, it was nonstop laughter… we became fast friends. Stephen has since passed away from cancer… that’s a story in itself!

In 1995 Robin, Stephen and I decided to collaborate on an idea I had to create a story to be written entirely online, we called it “WebTales An Evolving Tale of Cyberspace”.  Nowadays, there are probably hundreds of such things online but at the time it was a new concept. To give you an idea of how long ago this was in terms of the web, Internet Explorer 1 had just been released with the new OS Win 95! Netscape 1.1 was the most advanced browser with over 90% share of the market.

Hearing from Robin made me think about WebTales so I decided to look for my old files to see if I still had everything. Fortunately I found a floppy with just about everything still intact. I built the site on a 486 x66PC with 16 megs of ram on a 14.4 modem.  One of the only available web graphics editors at the time was a program called Lview (still available), very primitive by today’s standards. The graphic above was made with it. Style sheets didn’t exist, the use of tables to control layout was relatively new. The design is very simplistic and looking at it now not very appealing. The technologies that support this site,php and mysql didn’t yet exist. 

We didn’t keep the site up very long. We had some interest but in hindsight we were a bit too early. A year or so later the web really took off. It was similar to what I had experienced trying to sell businesses on the idea of a website, “what’s the WWW and why would I want a website?” was the common response. Well, we all know what has happened since then.

See the WebTales site

Atlar Boy Redux

One of the great joys of mid-life (there are apparently a few) has been the chance to rediscover a role I played as a youth: altar boy or altar server as it is more appropriately called in my case. Back then, I was not able to appreciate or understand what it means to play such a vital part in the Divine Services of the Church. Serving every Sunday was just something I did with little thought or reverence for the part. How amazing it is now to see what happens in the Altar and have a real understanding of what occurs during the services.

For the non-Orthodox reader; the Orthodox Church is very strict about who can enter the Holy of Holies, the Altar. It is not a place where one comes and goes nonchalantly. One first must have the blessing of the priest to enter. Women can not at anytime enter the Altar (sorry girls, that’s the rules!). It is a sacred place, where the unexplainable becomes real. A place where simple wine and bread are miraculously transformed into the body and blood of Christ. It is said that many of the saints and holy priests that have served over the centuries could see the descent of the Holy Spirit and the accompanying Seraphim and Cerubim (holy angels) during the Divine Liturgy. Our beloved St John of Shanghai and SF was apparently blessed with this gift.

To assist in what takes place in the altar and to witness things only seen by a few is an honor and a great privilege. Making the experience even better is serving along with my son Michael. Each week we carry out our liturgical duties with little talk, cuing each other with a nod or glance, moving in rythmn with the unseen hosts of heaven that joyously accompany us. Although Michael probably approaches this role much like I did, I have a sense that he has a better grasp on things than I did at his age.

The image above is us with our priest, Hieromonk Tryphon (a monk who is a priest). Up until recently we wore a mix of vestments that were hand-me-downs that really looked awful I’m sorry to say. Michael had managed to outgrow everything over the years and was wearing a vestment he could hardly get into which only came to mid-calf (it came from the parish I grew up in and could have been one that I, or one of my brothers wore). During my recent trip to Greece I had a matching set custom made. Since we are both about the same height (he’s a bit taller) I was able get two. Being vested properly makes a difference psychologically, much like the difference one feels putting on a coat and tie.

Goodbye Feta

During my recent trip to Greece and Mt Athos in particular, I was reintroduced to the marvelous taste of feta cheese. I’ve always liked the strong distinctive taste of feta but like most people only had it on occasion as a garnish on salad.  A sprinkle of the salty curds can transform a ordinary salad into something of real substance. 

While on Mt Athos I had feta not simply as a garnish but as a side dish, thickly sliced often served at both morning and evening meals.  Each monastery had a slightly different version probably homemade, some quite mild, hardly salted.  Eating feta in such large bites is vastly different than eating salad style, overwhelming the taste buds, lingering and satisfying in ways that few other cheeses can.

Ever since I’ve been back hardly a day goes by without a bit of feta.  My current favorite is scrambled eggs with feta.. fabulous!  Yet, beyond taste is the memory it evokes of my time on Mt Athos.  For me it will always be associated with the trip.  As we embark on Great Lent next week (Orthodox Easter is not until May 1st this year) it will be seven weeks of fasting from dairy, meat, eggs, and fish.  Guess what I’ll be having for breakfast May 2nd?