New Year's Eve 2006

The last day of 2006 was a Sunday. What a perfect way to end the year with the Divine Liturgy! This year I served at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation which is one mile from where I live. Annunciation is a wonderful community and it is the first Orthodox church where I served at a service since moving to Baltimore.

I showed up in the altar and Fr. Dean's face just lit up immediately when he saw me. So did Fr. Matthew's face. Eventually I also greeted George the sacristan. Later I also greeted one of the cantors.

The Liturgy went smoothly as expected. There were no surprises. I was especially pleased to hear the Anaphora said aloud. The prayers in the Orthodox services are extremely beautiful and it is a shame that many people never hear many of them.

After the service, we had a really nice coffee hour. There was plenty of tasty food and people mingled and several people greeted me, many even by name, which was a pleasant surprise. I did not realize that so many people there actually know my name.

It was also Fr. Dean's birthday yesterday and we had a cake for him. One of the woman in the parish offered to take a photograph of me with him. I think that this is the only photographs of the two of us. There are others in which we both appear, but they were of some function or activity in which we both happen to be there.

Then I helped to dismantle the Christmas decorations so that we can prepare for Theophany which is this Saturday. What a joy it was to see so many people working together in harmony to accomplish this. To this moment, I am not really sure who was in charge,but one woman seems to know what needed to be done and it was to her that I asked my questions. Besides taking photographs, I also pitched in and helped. There were many odd jobs that needed to be done. Some people knew exactly what they needed to do and they did it. Others, like me, needed directions and we did receive them. I did not hear one hint of disagreement the whole time. I think that we all just allowed the Holy Spirit to do His thing and everything went extremely smoothly.

Thank you, Fr. Dean, for putting out the request for help. Thanks to the Internet I learned that the parish needed the help and I was able to assist. Now I am ending this year on a very positive note.

Later in the evening I attended the 14th annual New Year's Eve Interfaith Prayer Celebration at St. Ignatius Loyola Roman Catholic Church. I look forward to it every year although I am offended by the Call to Prayer done is the Islamic tradition which claims that Mohammed is God's prophet. I also have a problem with labeling as the "Christian tradition" a relatively recent Protestant practice. I wantd to walk out in the middle of Methodist Rev. James Taylor's prayer when he addressed God as "Father, Mother, Creator." In my mind, only Archimandrite Constantine had the Christian perspective when he ended his with a Trinitarian doxology.

The Reflection was by Dr. Kirk Gaddy, principal of St. Katherine's School. He said:

Dr. Martin Luther King said “Hope is the refusal to give up and give in.” We must try to obtain unity in our families, churches, and nation. We must define ourselves as people of faith and vision, not good will. We must work for effective works and not inabilities to build and maintain our communities together and to make our brothers’ problems our problems. We definitely have to do something about crime. People must earn a just and living wage. We need some creativity. We have to sustain the faith, to believe in our heart all people are made in the image of a Greater Being. We must work for justice if we want peace in the new year. Every one of us needs to take out time in our busy schedule to stretch out a helping hand to those who don’t have what we have. Everything comes down to justice and peace. We must go back and give each person human dignity and human rights.

Many people who attend this service are surprised to find out that I am an Orthodox Christian. One man was delighted to find somebody who went to St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary because he was aware of the seminary and this might be the first time that he met somebody in Baltimore who went there.

st. Ignatius Loyola Catholic Church
	One of the waitresses serving us wonderful food	Hew Baldwin, the MC and a priest from the community
Ralph Moore and I used to be active in the Transit Riders League together	This cute girl was difficult to photograph.	She wouldn't stand still.
Her mother is really happy that I got the picture.

since Wednesday 6 June 2007.