I just noticed that you blogged last night. You have a computer at home now? That is excellent!!! What kind of gin are you using in your martinis these days? You should post your paper on the psalm. I'd love to read it.

We just got home from church. Wow! I was amazed. I'm not used to orthodox churches with several hundred people and only two of them old. Also, there were more kids than I could count. Had Kind of a modern feel to it though. But I really liked the iconography. All of the titles were written in English so I could tell who I was looking at.

Well, the boy is napping. Cyndi is cooking for the service in SF tonight. I need to do homework.

Glad your computer is up and running. Looking forward to your reply to my post of Jan 27, which was an answer to a question of yours.

Quick note on yesterday:
Went to SF in the Morning. Cyndi had to do some work for one of her clients in SOMA. Me and the boy went to Katz's bagels on 16th Street (I love the old neighborhood. Can't wait to move back). Then went to the Geary Street Cathedral to venerate the relics of St. John of Shanghai and S.F. Met a cool deacon. Saw a startling icon. It was a crowd of Chinese people. THe superscript was "The Martyrs of the Boxer Rebellion". I don't know anything about the Boxer Rebellion. I'll have to do some reading. After that, me and the boy took a spin through the Presidio, met up with Cyndi on Nob Hill, and then the three of us went to dim sum at Ton Kiang. (Most dim sum is lent friendly). Then we went for a walk around stowe lake in Colden Gate park. Then to vigil at Holy Trinity Cathedral. It was a great day.

Well, off to church, now. Today we are going to St. Stephen's in Campbell. Tonight we'll be in SF for the pan-orthodox Vespers.

Socialization issues: I have very strong bias against psychology so I'll try not to get all vehement on this. In general, I think peer to peer "socialization" is over-rated, especially among teens. It mainly reinforces immature behavior and attitudes. I think that it is a contributing factor to 25 year olds acting like 15 year olds. He will be primarily socialized with adults so he can learn to be an adult. (He already wears silk-lined gray flannel pants and shirts with buttoned-down collars.) But as for interacting with people his own age: There the parish. There are several boys his age in the parish, and I imagine they will all be serving as altar boys at the same time. As he gets older there will be Cub Scouts, then Sea Scouts. And of course, he has many cousins within four years of his age. And then there are the sports leagues. His mother wants him to soccer, baseball, and swimming. I want him to do boxing, riflery, and lawn bowling (Golden Gate Park has excellent facilities). We'll work out some sort of compromise.

Henri Nouen: I've never read anything by him. Isn't he a Roman Catholic Cardinal?

So, I'm surfing through the official state website of the Red Koreans (aka sencond member of the Axis of Evil) when I came across this chilling statement: "We track and log your internet address". Should we expect anything less from them?

Okay, somebody, please tell me how it is that I get Orthodox books from Amazon at a lower price than I get them from SVOTS Press or Conciliar Press.

I don't know if you know this or not, but Cyndi and I are about 100% decided to homeschool the little boy. There are at least three reasons for this.
1. I had horrible experiences from the 1st-7th grades but had fabulous experiencebeing homeschooled 8th through 12th grades. (I noticed while reading some Florovsky last night that my high school Greek is coming back to me!!!)
2. Cyndi and I have been observing the cruelty of children to each other. For instance, the other day we were at Barnes & Noble, in the childrens section. Anselm said "hi" to a buch of kids about his age and older. Every one of them acted like he was a freak and moved quickly to get away from him. We do not want him to become so distrustful.
3. There are things we want to teach him that are not going to be taught in school. There will be things taught in school we do not want him to learn.
Anyway, I was looking at Karl's blog and he had a link to this very cool homeschooling site. Thanks, Karl.

Here is a worthy charity.

As you might know Israel/Palestine has experienced a dramatic decrese in the Christian population. Christians are caught between a hyper-defensive Jewish state and murderous Islamic terrorists. Their economic liberty is severly inhibited. As Palestinians they are persecuted by the Israelis. As Christians they are mistrusted by the Muslims.

St. George Parish in Taybeh is helping to alleviate the suffering of Christians in the Holy land via a novel approach to housing. You can learn more about it here.

If you are looking for a way to give money this Lent, you might want to consider this project.

Donations may be sent by check to Taybeh O.C. Housing Project, P.O. Box 867, Ramallah, Palestine VIA ISRAEL.

Donations may also be sent electronic transfer to Arab Bank-Ramallah, Swift code ARABPS 22090, Al Balad Branch Account # 9090-662656/4/510 Taybeh Orthodox Club Housing Project, Via the Arab Bank New York, swift code ARAB US33.

If a USA address is prefered, donations to help Taybeh can be made out to:

Metropolis of Boston Holy Land Housing
And maild to: The Metropolis of Boston, 162 Goddard Avenue, Brookline, MA 02445.

Jeff, remember when we were talking on the phone yesterday? We were talking about Fred Price driving a Rolls, and Benny Hinn buying a multi-thousand dollar coffee table. Well I came upon a couple of Orthodox snippets today, and I thought they were on topic. Here they are:

"Be subject to all in every good work, except to those who love possessions or money." - St Isaac of Syria
(I think that one takes care of Price and Hinn.)

"A brother who had sinned was turned out of the church by the priest; Abba Bessarion got up and went with him, saying, "I, too, am a sinner." " - Sayings of the Desert Fathers
(I think that one takes care of me.)

The Wisdom Jesus Son of Sirach. That is what I read last night. It freaked me out a little bit because on Monday night I prayed something like "God, please take my sin away from me and make me humble and strengthen me to resist temptation, but please do not humiliate me in the process". I used the word "humiliate". Now here is why I was kind of freaked out by what I read lst night. In the second chapter of Sirach it says:

"My son, if you come to serve the Lord, prepare your soul for temptation. Set your heart aright, and endure....Whatsoever is brought upon you take cheerfully, and be patient when you are humiliated. For gold is tried in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity. "

So, there it is. God has made it plain that if I am going to be his servent, I will have to endure temptation and will be humiliated. But there is hope. Psalm 50 (51) says: "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice." All of this bone breaking and humiliation ends in joy. Have mercy on me, O God.

I'm a little bummed. I had a long list of things I wanted to do today and barely got any of them even 1/2 way done. And as you can see by the time on this post I am not at church tonight. very bummed about that. But I did manage to read the book of Tobit today. It was fun.

Okay, everyone. I just talked to Jeff. He has been out of town, sick with the flu, and is still computerless and probably will remain computerless until next week. But he did say that he is going to adress my post of Jan 27 as soon as he gets the new machine. I don't know about you all, but I am looking forward to it.

Jeff, you haven't posted anything in a long time. What's up? Are you out of town or something?

Well, I just got the boy to bed, did the dishes, ate two olives and a big glass of Metamucil. Aside from its advertised use, it is really good for making you feel full when you are eating a lot less. It also does all the good stuff for your heart that oatmeal does. But since I don't eat much oatmeal I do a lot of Metamucil.
Church tonight was amazing. Nothing like doing Orthodox services with a bunch of former charismatics. At my parish, Holy Trinity, mostly just the choir sings. At St. Stephen's everybody sings. Its pretty neat. Also, their music is very middle eastern sounding, which is appropriate since they are Antiochian.
Now, the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete is amazing. It is a very long song that is broken up into parts, each part being sung on the different nights of the first week of lent. I was in tears about the middle of the second ode and had to kind of distance myself from it to keep from blubbering.

Here is a section of the 1st Ode:

"Where shall I begin to lament the deeds of my wretched life?  What first-fruit shall I offer, O Christ, for my present lamentation? But in Thy compassion grant me release from my falls. Come, wretched soul, with your flesh, confess to the Creator of all. In future refrain from your former brutishness, and offer to God tears in repentance. Having rivaled the first-created Adam by my transgression, I realize that I am stripped naked of God and of the everlasting kingdom and bliss through my sins. "

If you are interested in reading the whole thing click here. Or just pop into any Orthodox church on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday evenings of this week.

After Church, Anselm and I stopped by Starbucks and said "Hi" to Cyndi.

Well, it is very late and I am very tired. Goodnight.

I'll be glad when you have a new computer, Jeff.

27 days and no reply to the post of Jan 27. Is this capitulation? Is this resignation? Hmmmm. I do not know.

Lent has begun. It started at Verspers last night, which is actually the first service of Monday. And yesterday was the last day for eating dairy food. After the liturgy the parish had fondue. But Cyndi and I generally do not like fondue so we went to Goat Hill Pizza and had a cheese pizza with red onions, olives and spinach. It was very good. We got to see our regular waitress. When Cyndi was pregnant with Anselm we went there every coupe of weeks. And then after he was born, that waitress was the first non-family member to hold Anselm. Since we've lived in the South Bay for almost a year now, we haven't been to Goat hill very much. But as I said, we went yesterday. The waitress was thrilled to see the boy again. She calls him Anselmo. I am going to get back to San Francisco.

Back to what this post was going to be about, this is the first day of lent. The readings today were from Isaiah, Genesis, and Proverbs. (I think we read through the whole OT during Lent.) I don't know how it is usually done by the Orthodox but what Cyndi and I do in the morning is click on the light and lay in bed, pray "O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Who art in all plces and fillest all things, Treasury of blessings and Giver of life, come and abide in us as cleanse us of all impurity and save our souls, O Good One." Then we read the passages for the day. We usually read the sermons, too. THen we get out of bed light a candle, stand before the Icons and pray the morning prayers. But during lent we add this prayer to the usual prayers:

O Lord and Master of my life
take from me the spirit of sloth
faint-heartedness,
lust of power
and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity,
humility,
patience,
and love to thy servant.

Yea, O Lord and King
grant me to see my own errors
and not to judge my brother;
for Thou art blessed unto the ages of ages.

Amen.


It is the Lenten Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian.

Tonight I will go to church at St. Stephen's in San Jose. This is the Church that used to be a Vinyard. We will sing the Canon of St. Andrerw of Crete. it is one of the longest and most heart wrenching songs I have ever heard. I love Lent. But I love all the feasts and fasts. It is hard to say I love lent anymore than I love Nativity or the or the finding of the head of John the Baptist. I think the loss of the church calendar is one of the saddest things in Evangelical Protestantism. Long ago, before I ever knew of Orthodoxy I remember the joy I felt when I realised that I could pray along with other Christians I had never met, and in the Words of the Anglican Hierarch, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, join my prayers to that great river of prayer that ascends to Heaven.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Well the little boy is asleep, taking his nap. His godmother babysat him this morning while Cyndi and I took three loads of cubicles to the dump. We discovered that they would not be recycled. Aparantly, it costs less to mine iron ore out of the earth, add some carbon, and smelt it into steel than it costs to remove the fabric covers from the steel frames of the cubicles and melt them down. That made me sad. The amount of stuff we waste is amazing. It's not like there is an endless supply of iron ore. I vaguely remember something about iron production in the Sun, from an astronomy class I took once. If my memory is correct, I think iron is the heaviest element the Sun is able to produce. Makes me wonder where the gold, and lead came from. Hmmmm.

Jeff, I don't know if you are aware of this or not, but on Wednesday when George brought up St. Leo the Great, it was actually St. Leo's Feast Day. (I don't remember why he brought him up in conversation, do you?)

I'm guessing you have given the Jan 27 post many hours of thought and research and are ready to blast my argument out of the water. (ha ha ha! not very likely!) I can hardly wait for you to get your new computer.

Jeff, thanks for comming to dinner last night. Sorry about the whole sesame oil thing. As soon as Cyndi gets recipe to me for the bulgar lentil salad I'll post it here. Thanks for bringing the gin, too. It's been too long since you, george, and I have had martinis together. But I feel bad about one thing, I had cigars and totally forgot to bring them out. George is spending the night again tonight. I'm really looking forward to you getting your computer.

Islam is evil and a threat to the United States.

First it was the SecDefs fabulous poetry. Now he is a kung fu master.