I want to wish you a happy Independence Day as well as the lesser-known Interdependence day. Interdependence day is of course not an official holiday, I made it up, but if we want to tell the truth of what it means to lead a good life, especially a good Christian life, we should start celebrating…
Worship in the Armenian Church also works on another level, a faith before words for those who are attuned to it. So when you come to worship in church don’t just read the words that point you to God, read the icons and symbols and movements of our worship, and read yourself into the great…
As I struggled this week to get words on paper, I remembered again that, by any metric, Mother’s Day beats Father’s Day. Mother’s Day was made a holiday back in 1913, Father’s Day took all the way till 1972. Average weekend spending for mother’s day $300, average for Father’s day $200. Hallmark sells 50 million…
If our church’s building projects have only to do with surfaces and stones, we risk becoming like a Hollywood film set, beautiful to behold from a distance, but empty and off-putting inside. Neither Etchmiadzin, nor Antelias, nor St. James in Jeruslaem, not St. Hagop is meant to be a film set for Armenian heritage or…
We have lots of ministries to avail ourselves of at St. Hagop. Those who wish to serve can do so in many ways, on parish council, on the altar or choir; as a greeter or lector or even on mission to Armenia. Today though, the Apostle James reminds us of a church ministry which is…
Perhaps we know so little about the birthday of the church and so little about our own births, because birthdays aren’t buried someplace in the past. Birthdays are an ongoing, everyday miracle, that everyday new life is granted to us.
There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings. -Goethe A parishioner sent me an article this week from the Wall Street Journal titled ‘Eastern Orthodoxy Gains New Followers in America,’ which traces a small but growing trend of those with no ethnic…