Why Pray?

If God is omniscient and truly knows our needs better than we do, then what is the point of prayer? I thought about this because of an email I received from a church family member and the many responses to it.  The email was addressed to five of us.  It was about one of our parishioners - a sweet woman that we all think of fondly.  This woman is a regular at church but she is a private person.  Some of us had noticed her absence on Sundays, and the email that I received was about that.   "Has anyone heard from Rose?  I heard that she's not well.  If any of you have her phone number, please let me know.  Let's keep her in our prayers."

Between the next few hours that passed after receiving the initial email, each recipient wrote in.  Whatever information any of us knew was shared with one another.  Her phone number.  When they had spoken to her last.  Someone wrote that she was going for treatment.  And each of us said we would pray for her.   Not one of us, however, asked what type of treatment, or what illness she was suffering from.   I really love this about our church family.  The need for acquiring information is not to use as a source of gossip, but out of genuine concern.    You ask someone to pray for you, and they do.  It doesn't matter if the reason for the prayer is shared with you.  It doesn't even matter that you know the person's name.  God knows all of that.  All we have to do is keep them elevated in our consciousness and amazing things happen through God's love.

The mere act of praying for someone bringstheir needs - instead of ours -- into focus. And when we know that someone is in need, we act on it.  In Rose's case, some  reported back that they had spoken to  her and relayed her progress.  Another had run into her in the market and shared with her that we missed her and were praying for her.  And what I really appreciated was one of the email responses brought into perspective that Rose is a private person, and asked that we please keep this in mind and not "share" any personal news about her with others but to just keep praying.  Incidentally, I did change Rose's name out of respect for her privacy.

The answer to the question, "Why pray?" is this:  Because it elevates our souls into acting out of love for one another - by reaching out, calling, visiting, caring for that person and in so doing - really doing God's commandment to love one another.  Praying is for US - to help us focus; to remember that all things are possible through God's love.  There is a specialness in belonging to this type of family.

Facing Genocide Awareness and Thinking Beyond Armenian-ness

Today is April 25.  It's the day after April 24 - our Armenian Genocide Day of Remembrance.  The flags on the cars are off now.  The Armenian political parties have all settled down.  The April 24 programs are over and done with in our schools, and we're back to life as we know it.

It feels like once a year, everyone comes out of the woodwork to show their Armenian-ness.  The Facebook profile pictures change for April 24.   Red, Blue and Orange; eternal flames, and messages of "Never Again" started popping up a few days before the 24th.  Don't get me wrong.  There is nothing wrong with remembering our past.  The atrocities committed by the Turks against our people were horrific, barbaric, inhuman, and there is no justification for it.  We should never forget, but, we should also not wallow in our past.

Both of my grandmothers were genocide survivors.  They both lost their families in front of their eyes. Both came to the U.S. with nothing and made something of their lives.  I remember growing up in their shadow.  They - who had experienced the unimaginable - didn't dwell on their past.  Instead, they brought us up to love God, get an education, remember to vote, love this country and be kind to others because truly, others had shown kindness to them.    In other words, they focused on their lives in the present.  The past was there, and yes, when we asked, they would share with us with tears.  But they embraced this new country  - the U.S. - and taught us that you can bloom where you're planted.

On my way into work yesterday, I read a text from my sister Susan in response to the day.  It said, "Remembering and resurrecting are not annual occurrences, but embraced tragedy transformed to living love."  We are a strong people with a proud heritage.  It does us no good to say, "Armenians were the first nation to accept Christianity  if we don't accept the Christian response - to love one and care for one another.

We can't honestly say, "Never Again" when there is a genocide going on today - TODAY - in Darfur and we turn our backs on it because the victims are not "our people".  We can't look at the photos of our starving people and then turn our backs on those that are hungry and homeless in our community and globally.

The time is here for resurrection!  The best way for our people to acknowledge the genocide is to show that we are victorious over the systematic annihilation of our people that was the dream of the Ottoman Turks.  I am proud to be involved in our outreach organization, In His Shoes.  This organization was started as a direct response to our Armenian genocide.  We as Armenians have "been there and done that!"  We have been hungry, hurt, homeless, poor, lonely, starving, and yet we are still here!  Now it's time to give it back.  Thank God for our resurrection by walking In the Shoes of others who are suffering.

So this April 22, we partnered with Ascencia, Glendale's homeless shelter and our crew prepared dinner for the residents there in memory of our past.  This is in addition to our monthly homeless outreaches to downtown's Skid Row where we have fed and clothed the people there for close to 5 years now.

We are fasting weekly for Darfur in Stop Genocide Now's 100-Day-Fast and donating our food money to the Little Ripples program - which will give young displaced Darfuri children a chance at education.  And just yesterday, a small group walked - not with flags and banners, but with their hearts full of love and compassion - 17.5 kilometers from Pasadena to the Armenian Genocide Monument -- remembering one genocide, by working toward stopping another one.  We have the power.

There is a beautiful remembrance banner I saw on Facebook yesterday.  It says, "Cut my branches, burn my leaves, but you'll never touch my roots".  Let's remember where our roots lie - with Faith in God, Hope for a brighter future,  and Love for one another.  Armenian or not.

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You can hear the audio version of this blog post on this week's episode of "The Next Step with Fr. Vazken" on epostle.net  or available for download at your itunes store.

To get involved or donate to In His Shoes, please visit www.inhisshoes.org

The Right, the Left, and a New Look at Direction

Today was election day.  We voted for city officials.  It's always amazing to me how much junk mail is generated at election time.  Most of the time, I don't even look at it...it goes from mailbox to trash.  But all the junk mail and phone calls to vote for this person or that person got me to thinking about my own views, not political but spiritual.  And I started thinking about the Left, the Right and what makes them so.

One of the groups I follow on FB is called The Christian Left.  I can't say that I always agree with them, but for the most part, we are aligned in our belief that Christ and his teachings are all about love and compassion.  So what makes them "left"?  We tend to think of the left as more liberal; and the right as being conservative.  I even sent off an email to my brother and said, "We are the AOL - The Armenian Orthodox Left" because at our church - our many ministries focus on a more global outreach rather than the usual ethnocentric views of other Armenian churches.

The Left side tends to be more rebellious and radical in their ideas traditionally sharing and distributing the wealth more among the needy.  While the Right is more set in their ways, more about growing business and wealth.  And then there's the Christian Right.  The ones that give the rest of us Christians a bad name.  They're the ones that judge (even when we were told "Judge not lest ye be judged." Matthew 7); and they have a lot of  hatred in them (when they condemn those that are different from themselves).  And so what they are successful in doing is drawing people further and further away from Christ's teachings in the name of Christianity.  The way that I defend my faith when I explain their actions is by telling someone who asks my opinion in comparison to theirs? - Their Jesus is not MY Jesus.  I mean seriously...we believe that God is Love...Christ is love incarnate...so what Christ is commanding us is what our God is commanding us.  It's not  just some guy off the street telling us that we should love one another and care for one another.  It's God telling us.  And if God said it, then that's good enough for me!

Okay, so now, here's where it gets tricky.  So, as an orthodox Christian, I adhere to the teachings of Christ. We follow the rules of our faith - what I like to call "Applied Christianity".  We believe that Christ is love incarnate.  To follow His teachings is to follow a path of love and compassion.  We follow the fasting traditions and dietary restrictions of our faith. We feed and clothe the needy and care for those that are suffering.  So if the RIGHT is traditionally the ones that are supposedly "conservative"; then shouldn't we be more aligned with the Right?  It seems that it all got jumbled up somewhere.  The extremists should be on the Left as they've taken the tenants of Christianity and rewritten it to their own liking.  And then there are those of us that believe in the true message of Christ who are just practicing what He preached:  Love one Another.  Take care of one another.

So forget what I said about calling ourselves the  AOL - I think we should be known as the OAR - The Orthodox Armenian Right!   Just paddling through the flotsam in the sea of life!  We should strive to live our faith through action as Christ taught.  We are not so much conservative as we are traditionalists - Traditionally, our Christ was free thinking, a non-violent revolutionary, non-condemning, loving and compassionate and forgiving.  .  Those are the qualities that I work on following in my spiritual path.

So there it is.  Something to think about.  New definitions.  It seems to me that what was Left, is now Right; and what was Right is just, well...wrong.