The Mission of Transformation, Part 2

 

As I wrote recently, our little space was something in need of a little massaging.  Just a little TLC to bring it up to speed.  We did that, and you can see the fruits of it in the photos on the previous page.

But since Father Seth arrived, it has been transformed all the more, sometimes on a weekly basis.  I joked with him several weeks ago:  "I like you Father Seth -- every time I come here you give me a brand new church!"

The point of this post is not to laud Father Seth's decorating skills, though they are laudable.  It is to note that when all the puzzle pieces of the Church fit together, things happen exponentially more than they happen with any of us alone.  We need one another, mostly to transform ourselves and each other.

Like us, our space still has some of the features of its old decor. The exit sign just to the left of the iconostasis. The antiseptic lighting that only absurdly bright flourescent bulbs can render.  The glass front, including a glass door, that still looks more commercial than sacred. The floor is still concrete. Some friends and I stayed after to talk yesterday and we could hear people yelling through the walls. Our only disagreement was whether it came from the Subway next door or the escape room on the other side.  Suffice it to say, we are working with what we have, not what we would prefer to have.

But this is not merely lipstick on a pig. There are reasons for the changes we have made.

Father Seth added battery powered lighting over some of the more prominent icons.  You can see one of those in the photo above, over the icon of the Platytera behind the altar (the Platytera icon is also new, as is the iconostasis).  In addition to highlighting those icons, this practically means that during the prayer offices, we can turn the flourescent lights off and have a more intimate and prayerful setting.  He added lampadas all around the nave, including over the icons on the iconostasis, and many of the ones along the walls (which are mainly the 12 Great Feasts, but there are some others).  He procured an actual chanter stand and battery powered lighting for that, so we can expand the choir and have a comfortable space for everyone, along with storage for the books we need.  He brought us new analogia and lampstands and all sorts of other things to adorn the temple.  If you squint a little and don't pay too much attention to the glowing Exit sign or the suspended ceiling, you might actually think this place is beginning to look like an actual church!

The thing is, as I noted in my prior post about fatherhood, you're not really a church until you have a priest. If the Archdiocese gave us no priest, we would have no head to take a look at these things and make them reality.  And as is obvious from our own attempts to adorn the temple, we were not nearly as well equipped as he is to bring that to reality.  If we didn't have Father Seth, we would still be playing church.  Likewise, Father Seth's ownership of this space is due and owing to the fact that the Archdiocese sent him here.  He doesn't do freelance church decorating as a side gig.  He is adorning this temple because it is his, and we are his.  

All of this works together.  A parish with no priest is no parish.  A priest with no parish is no priest.  A father must have children, and spiritual fathers must have spiritual children.  That's what the word "father" means, after all.  More, Father Seth did not do this alone.  We began the work, and we have continued to assist him in carrying out his vision.  My point is more about the completeness of having a family together and whole.  We can do more together than any of us can do alone.  This is true of adorning any temple, whether the place where we worship or the temple of our bodies and souls.  A healthy parish requires a strong father and solid, obedient children.

As I wrote many, many years ago in yet another previous post, we are saved in community.  We need each other.  We are the means of each other's salvation.  Our temple speaks that now.  May it ever.