Abandoned by God

You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.
O Lord, why dost Thou cast off my soul?
Why dost Thou hide Thy face from me?
I have suffered Thy terrors and I am in despair.
Psalm 88 of Matins

Why? Listen here

First Divine Liturgy

We finished hanging the icons on the iconostasis last night. These are the temporary icons on our "temporary iconostasis" made out of used doors, some pine boards and a few dollars worth of moldings. This is our Mission's patron, Saint John the Evangelist and Theologian.
We had a lot of visitors today even though we didn't announce our "grand opening". There were 60 people in the building and room for twice that, easily. This is Fr. Damian's first homily.

This is the choir's side of the nave.
This is a close up of the Theotokos icon after the lampada and festal icons were hung.
I'm uploading videos of vespers and the beginning of the Liturgy. They will be posted soon.

Move in Day

After a couple days of interior finishing and construction there is tons of dust to be removed before everything is moved in.
While the cleaning is going on, I finish the "gingerbread" on the iconstasis... and of course create more dust.
The choir gets moved.
The Reader's stand (kliros) gets set up.
All of the icons are brought over.
The iconostasis gets painted.
I get a helper who is a real painter... Yay!
A short break before vespers begins.
We start on hanging the icons, but the altar area is still in process and there are hours of work left to do, so the choir does a "reader's vespers" while the workers continue to work in silence.
Several people are working on setting up the altar area and cleaning the outside of the building where all the tools, saws, painting equipment and debris is still strewn about. All the tools have to be put away, the trash hauled and the debris picked up. A couple of us finished putting up the Festal Icons on the iconostasis. Not bad for a bunch of used doors and moldings that came up to less than 200.00.
I left after 9 pm. Father Damian was still there with several people finishing putting up the curtains for the Deacon's doors and altar and a few loose ends. Stay tuned for a video of our Reader's Vespers and a video tour of the building.

Tomorrow we have our first Divine Liturgy in our new Temple.

Glory to God.

Finishing Touches

We are working feverishly to have everything ready for Vespers and Divine Liturgy this weekend. This is the "dirty work"... cleaning up the yard debris and tree trimmings from the property. Dale brought his chipper over and some of the Mission folks fed it branches all morning. (For those new to blogs, you can click on the pictures and they will enlarge for more detail).

This is Dale close up. He's an old friend from the ECUSA days who is also the AC contractor for the Mission. He donated a 4,000.00 high efficiency AC unit to us that he removed from a customer's house and refurbished for us. He hadn't seen the building since the first week when he roughed in the duct work. He liked the dome.
We got laminate wood flooring (dirt cheap... again), and this is what several of our Mission members did on their days off this week.

I came in right behind them and started installing the baseboard (found at Habitat for Humanity's thrift store for 20 cents on the dollar). I hate to keep bringing "cheap" up, but for folks who are looking at building a Mission Church, you don't have to have a half million in the bank to do something really nice.
Installing baseboard is like doing all of your Lenten prostrations in one day.
This is the finished baseboard (and corbles by the way).
And now we begin the temporary iconostasis. We bought 4 used doors and 3 closet doors for $ 50.00 at Habitat's thrift store and we're creating panels out of them with 1" x 3" pine boards.
We anchor the doors to the front of the altar raised floor with 4" screws for stability. A closet door is cut and becomes an arch over the deacon's door.

We mirror the assembly on the other side.

And we cut another closet door for the arch over the altar door which will be topped off with a cross and an icon. This is the basic structure. Fr. Damian practices coming out of the doors to see if they are wide enough (no comment...grin!). Tomorrow while our Mission work day moves everything from the house to the Church, I'll add all the "gingerbread" moldings, candle shelves and paint it, the icons go up and we pray Vespers tomorrow night.

And the most important part... clean up. Teri is giving Fr. Damian dust mop lessons. Blue fuzzy side down, Father.

We're IN!

It is down to details and final connections and things required by city and state building codes. The inspectors don't care about paint, flooring and drapes, they want to see exit signs, smoke detectors and handicap accessibility. Matthew and his kids in his tech school electrical class come and do the final hookups of the emergency lighting and exit signs etc.

We passed the electrical inspection on the panel and underground pipes and wiring, so we can fill the trench. Alexis is packing the trench under the sidewalk with rocks so it won't cave in.


We were required to put in about 200 feet of sidewalk access to the street and parking lot.

The concrete for the sidewalks was going to cost us about 800.00. Fr. Damian called a half dozen concrete companies to see if we could get a discount. Last Saturday morning he called me at 7:30am and said, "WHERE ARE YOU??" A concrete company called him and said they had a truck leave the yard and the customer called at the last second and cancelled the order... if we wanted five yards of free concrete it would be at the Church in ten minutes. I was five minutes from the Church dropping my daughter at a friend's house. A call to the Rehabilitation Center who sent two men over and a couple of catechumens who came on short notice and four hours later we had free sidewalks.

This week we finished the ramp and handrails and the panic hardware on the emergency exits. We got the handrail for a third of retail cost and the guy at the door shop sold us the panic hardware for about 25% of the cost. A couple of days of details and we called for our final inspection. Here is Dave, the City Inspector, signing our certificate of occupancy. We passed!

Fifty eight days from pulling our permit, with volunteer help and a budget under 6,000.00 for a project that would have easily been 50-60,000. 00 if we had hired a contractor, we have a Church we can occupy. This orange piece of paper is "gold". These are three happy guys!

Now we can do all the gingerbread stuff that the inspectors don't care about. I finished antiquing the corbles and five minutes after we had a signed certificate we started on the raised floor for the altar area and the laminate wood flooring. God willing we'll finish flooring and baseboards by Friday, build the temporary iconstasis and move in Saturday and hold our first services this weekend.

Father Damian and I were talking about sending an icon, a picture of the Church, a thank you card and invitation to a special service for all who donated, discounted and worked on the building, including the Mayor of Tempe, the City Planning and Zoning board and City Inspectors who worked so cooperatively and well with us at every stage of the project.

God is with us, understand all ye nations, and submit yourselves, for God is with us.
May we be faithful to the manifold gifts we've been given.

The Next Olympic Sport?

Whodathunk idle office desktop mindless nervous energy releasers would become an art form?
I think the Japanese have the corner of the "Gold"

Mr. Panos Explains

For those who are inextricably tangled up in the Ortho-web-blogosphere lately and are having difficulty understanding the relationship of the Greek culture to the Church (you know who you are and what I'm talking about...), I've found a couple of Youtube videos in which Mr. Panos explains "all things Greek". I hope these help.

Mr. Panos Explains The Greek Culture



Mr. Panos Explains Greek Easter

Steve the Builder Begins

He builds churches and monasteries. He frames stuff, he does finish carpentry , hangs sheetrock
and builds outrageously expensive birthday presents. How does a minister with theology and counseling degrees end up doing this? And what happens when a former minister takes the Gospel seriously and runs a business according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? The latest episode of "Steve the Builder" tells the story.

The Necessary and the Frills

We're down to the "necessities"... things we have to do to get a "certificate of occupancy". Like the handicap access ramp and forms for the wheelchair accessible sidewalk dimensions.

And the 24 inch deep trench for the underground wire to get power to the building from the other side of this house. Fr. Damian wrestled a trencher for two days and only hit one water line.

But we're also continuing on the "gingerbread". We finished painting the interior lower walls and I installed the corbles on the arches.
Since they are concrete they need something to dress them up, so here is my first experiment with antiquing one of them.
If all goes well and we get the wiring, sidewalks, ramp, and doors installed this week we should be able to start worshipping in the building in about ten days. It won't be finished but it will be functional.

Seballius Meets ZZ Top

Cadillacs and Moral Relativism

What do 1959 Cadillacs, dog houses, rabbits and Congress have to do with the philosophical spirit of the age? Find out on part two of "Philosophical Ketchup" on "Steve the Builder" where I talk about ten things you cannot say as a moral relativist... but wait! THIS podcast goes to ELEVEN!

A New "Must Read" Pascha Book

I'm putting this on my bookshelf right next to my service books for Holy Week.

Painting the Church

We started the painting yesterday. We needed to return the scaffolding so we decided we would finish the high ceilings and dome then work the bottom part of the Church after the scaffolding was out of the way. I have a commercial airless spray paint rig and an extention pole. I sprayed the dome first with primer so it could be drying while we painted the rest of the ceiling.
The "two man" trick to painting the 14 foot ceilings is I sprayed them with a heavy coat of paint, then Javier comes behind me after a few minutes and "backrolls" the still wet sprayed paint. That lets the paint soak into the drywall surface and the roller evens out the paint and puts a stipple on the surface so if there is touch up later the touch up won't "flash". (The difference between a sprayed surface and a rolled or brushed touch up is the texture of the paint...that's what you usually see when a touch up shows).
After we finished the ceilings, I sprayed the dome with a lighter white finish coat then cut in the bottom edge with a brush.

The test of a drywall and paint job: Let there be light. It looks a little streaky because the paint is still wet. (The Christian joke is "Drywallers and painters hate the light because their finish jobs are evil.)
The light shines and it looks good. We took the scaffold down and now have an unobstructed view of the whole building. It looks a lot bigger without the scaffold in it. This is the view from the altar. The door will be the entry to the Church at the back of the nave.
This is a view of one side of the nave from across the room. The choir will be on one side and the chanter's stand will be across it under the arch to the right.
This is a view of the altar from the doorway. The iconostasis will be just to "this side" of the door you see on the left. It will be about 9 feet tall and you will be able to see the 4 by 6 foot Panagia icon that will be mounted on the high wall between the windows.
One of the amazing things about this whole project is the cost so far is under 5,000.00. Father Damian returned the scaffold and they charged us one fourth of the price of a one week rental and we had it for 3 weeks. That is typical of how people (who are not members of the Church) have helped us. We've had to buy lumber and some supplies, but Fr. Damian is not shy about just asking people if they'd be willing to give us things. An A/C contractor donated the air conditioner unit, an electrician donated all the electrical supplies, we got 1,500.00 of insulation for 200.00, a drywall supplier donated 70 sheets of drywall, we got the paint on Craig's list for 40.00, and we've bought quite a bit of stuff from Starlight, the Habitat for Humanity construction thrift store. We've gotten help from the Homeless Shelter, a tech school teacher who brought his class over and wired the building, and our Church members (not to mention Javier, my helper who has put in hours and hours on our days off without asking to be paid.)

I told my wife last night, this has gone so well it is almost too good to be true... we are either being REALLY blessed, or we're being set up for a huge delusion. But, all of this has basically "fallen into our laps" and we've stepped up, gone out on a limb and taken some big risks. I can only pray that if we stay faithful in the small things and don't bury our talents God will continue to open the doors to greater service.

Mudding the Church

We passed our "nailing inspection" that makes sure the drywall was installed properly. Now we begin "mudding". This is the finishing of the drywall. I've been a drywall finisher for 26 years so this is my main skill. I'm running the "bazooka", putting the tape in the corners (angles, if you are in the trade), while Javier and Elijah put fiberglass tape on the joints. I'll coat those with that rectangular box you see leaning against the window. With the drywall taping tools I can do literally in a couple hours what would take two people all day to do.

Four hours later we've put about three hundred pounds of joint compound on the walls and have the lower half of the building taped and mudded.
Tomorrow we put a second coat on everything and we'll be ready for painting.
This is Father Damian in his "civvies" taking a break from cleaning the building out in preparation for painting the dome and ceilings tomorrow so we can move the scaffold out.

Almost Lenten

With a little tweaking, this could become a Cheesefare Sunday Troparia in an American Orthodox tone. (I like the icon of Elvis in the background.)

Forgotten

From my sixteen year old daughter's blog HERE

Redgrass Music

My dad is from Arkansas, my mother is Chinese. This is perfect.

Not Lenten, but...

What passion, what a voice and who knows what pain that drives someone like this in the path she took.