The Spirit Moves, pt One
Signs Point to Yes
I know it may be a little silly to begin this post with a quote from the Magic 8-ball, but isn’t drawing lots an ancient version of everyone’s favorite childhoood prognostication device?
Anyway…
I can’t recall if I’ve previously mentioned this but, Father Stephen has Valdyka’s blessing to set up chapels or shrines around the area. These would be served by a caretaker who would read Reader’s Vespers a couple times per week. Bascially it would serve to 1)sanctify the area and 2)make a greater Orthodox presence in East Tennessee. Nothing has really happened along these lines, but the idea lingers. I have this dream of founding a mission in my hometown and this Chapel/Shrine would be the first step in that direction.
[Aside: I subscribe to the Field of Dreams theory of evangelism: build it and they will come. If I have a chapel and start having services, the Lord will send others to join me.]
I have been keeping an eye out for a place to put the Shrine, but to no avail. As a renter I really didn’t think it would work for me to have it at my house. And so I let the idea…ferment. I came back to it from time to time. But always I knew that if it was God’s will and in God’s time, I would know. I wouldn’t be able to avoid it.
In the past few days I’ve been in a funk. Just got the blues. Spiritually I was in the dumps. I couldn’t read anything edifying without my eyes crossing in boredom and my prayer rule consisted on Mealtime and bedtime with the kids. Real poor. Then I remembered something Fr. Thomas Hopko said in one of his taped talks. “Sometimes, when things aren’t going your way it’s because you’re not doing what God wants.”
Several months ago, when I re-approached the subject of Paul’s baptism with Lainey and she consented, things turned around very quickly. I knew that I had to give my son to the Lord. I still know it. Finally admitting it and doing something about it cleared the spiritual logjam I was caught in. I honestly believe that someday he will be my spiritual father. [But that's another post.]
So I was thinking about being blue and what I needed to do and whammo! Prayer. It’s easy, just ask Christ to take it from you, give your burdens to him. And this haze that had settled in my mind cleared. I prayed for a while and took a shower. Suddenly it dawned on me: it is time to build the Chapel. It was that clear. Kind of like I was having a conversation with someone and suddenly understood their point. I just smiled and said, “I am supposed to get to work on the chapel aren’t I.” I had, in fact, already been planning on building a work shed for my mower and other implements of destruction.
continued in Pt 2.
