PARISH VOICES

Our series looking back twenty years enters its ninth month. Last month I shared the August 2006 issue, a quiet one, with the priest on vacation and the parish singing Paraklesis in borrowed churches. September 2006 is the opposite. Everyone is back, school is starting, and the newsletter is twelve pages of a parish clearing its throat for a new year. Fr. Tom's message is addressed to parents, and it does not waste time. He starts with a newborn's forty-day blessing, jumps to

I don't remember exactly how, or why, I started doing the following. When our four children were young back in the 1990's, I began tucking them in with a blessing using the sign of the cross. To Orthodox readers, this may not seem out of the ordinary. However, I was Protestant at the time. Making the sign of the cross is not a normal Protestant action. The Lutheran church and other liturgical-based denominations use it during services, performed by the pastor. In the Lutheran

A few years back, a friend was talking to me and used the phrase, "Middle-aged people like us." It was one of those phrases that made me stop listening to whatever else he was talking about. I looked around and noted that only the two of us were present. I realized with shock that my friend thought that I was middle-aged. I received a second shock when it occurred to me that my friend was right. I suppose another indicator that I am aging happens when I'm around teenagers...

Jesus loves the little children, All the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, They are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world. —Clarence Herbert Woolston, 1856-1927 We are in Europe. Having a daughter who has lived in Scotland for 14 years and another daughter who has lived across The Pond for 7 years, currently living in Switzerland, has enabled us...