Dear friends,

            Have you experienced how hard it is to rest in today’s world? My last scheduled parish visit on the East Coast—so far—was a trip to Yonkers, New York, where I spoke after the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. Then, with nothing else on the schedule, I didn’t know what to do except plan more things. I had to force myself to slow down for Holy Week. What priest has time to be answering his email then anyway? Stopping to pray was worth it. Christ is risen! Or, as we say in Swahili, Kristo amefufuka!

As a priest, I hear confessions. In fact, I hear confessions all the time, not simply when I am officiating the formal Sacrament. But, many times when people think that they are confessing to God, they are really telling me of an event in their lives that continues to cause them pain. That is, they are not telling me that they did something wrong, but rather that something wrong was done to them that still causes them pain.

I confided in a close friend last week that the thing that makes me most nervous about Holy Week, besides losing my voice, is distributing Communion on PalmSunday, because as you saw last Sunday, it took over 40 minutes.  Forty minutes is a long time to stand still in one place under any circumstances—take a chalice, full of Communion, move up and down dozens of times for the children who are receiving, try to remember every name, and not drop anything, that’s hard.  Try to do it with a neurological condition that causes unwanted, involuntary twitching, the task becomes not only daunting but a little scary.

Now there was at Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. In those days she fell sick and died; and when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room.

This Paschal season, there has been a calendar controversy that has been missed by most of the Orthodox world. 

This is shocking because controversy loves to rear its head during Great Lent. 

If you don’t know about it, you are forgiven.  It’s a local problem only affecting approximately 2000 Orthodox Christians, but it’s a problem nonetheless. 

On Mother's Day 2013, a storm is brewing over Merida's makeover. Yesterday, the main character of "Brave" was officially crowned a "Disney Princess."  

A “Disney Princess” is not just a fairy tale character who happens to appear in one of Disney’s films.  A Disney Princess may or may not be of royal blood as such, or marry into royalty. Whatever she did in her film—scrubbed floors like Cinderella, saved the day like Mulan, or spent a lot of time with her nose in a book like Belle, what matters now for each of these characters is her look.

The past year has been a difficult one for my family for a number of different reasons, which I won't go into.  Let's just say that I have cried many, many tears during that time.  There have been times when I've fallen to my knees pleading with the Lord to lift even just a bit of the suffering from us.  I asked Him why He, the Good Shepherd, was not chasing after His sheep in danger.  I begged Him to end the trials we were enduring because our faith is not as strong as Job's.

Dinner has ended and the sweet aroma of name day bread is wafting its way towards the table where four anxious children await a slice.  You see…today is my son, Christopher's, name day and we are just about to begin our family’s name day tradition.

I love casting my mind back over all the movies I have seen to find the gems of pure truth that sometimes glint out of the most surprising places.

But for Bright Week, there's only one I can think of that seems appropriate.