Well evening Vespers last night was the first time that my wife and I have attended an OCA service presided over by our own priest. You would think that a little thing like ordination wouldn't change the feel and presence of a man, but strangely it does.

It is not that I suddenly respect the man more, or even that he has some new authority over my life in my eyes. I had already long ago decided that this man would be mine, and my families spiritual father, and we in turn would be his spiritual children. It is hard to quantify what the change is, could it be that now I simply percieve him differently, and that nothing about him, or within him has changed? Or is it something deeper. That my soul, that spark of the divine that was bestowed upon me by the Creator and Architect of all time and space, is responding to an imparting of authority and responsibility derived during his ascension(or de-ascension) to the deaconite and then the priesthood.

Am I in my lostness and overwhelming slavery to Death, seeing a lifeline to healing and wholeness; an escape from the lies that have been forced upon me since birth and a chance to enter into, finally, the truth of salvation: That we are not alone on our walk, that through the salvation of the Life-Giver, we enter into communion with the Church, that body of believers that stretches away behind us in to the past and ahead of us into the future. That all the Saints and Martyrs that have gone before us still pray for us and watch over us.

I have come to the realization that I don't know what the answer is; and I really don't care. I have awoken from the nightmare of what life was "supposed" to be and been given the most precious of all truths:

I am not now nor will I ever be alone.