The wife and I took three children (our two eldest and the infant) to the Monastery Friends fundraiser that sought to gather a down payment on a new monastery to be located South East of Dallas. I missed the "no children" message due to a mix of travel and the flu, but Sister Barbara (the coordinator and beneficiary of the fundraising effort) was not at all phased and was happy to see our coiffed and laundered children.
Metropolitan Jonah and Archbishop Dmitri were in attendance as were clergy from numerous jurisdictions along with a Coptic priest. I assumed this would be a rather OCA-centric affair, but was pleasantly surprised by the proportional mixture of Greeks, Antiochians, and OCA at the function. Fr. John Anderson emceed the event with words of welcome and appreciation followed by an introduction of the St. Seraphim Cathedral choir. Following the musical selections, there were some words from Archbishop Dmitri on the history of the monastery effort and of Metropolitan Jonah's course from abbot of a monastery in California to primate of the OCA (in his words the jump from Bishop of Fort Worth to Metropolitan in 10 days was cause for "pleasant annoyance").
Central to the evening was a lengthy and inspiring talk by Met. Jonah on the importance of love, detachment, and obedience to the monastic life. He made numerous comparison to the relationship an abbot has to his monks with that of a parent and his children. After the speech he stood at the entrance of the room for quite a long time and spoke to anyone who wanted a moment with him. It was quite an evening.
The recorded audio will be available online soon. When it is, I'll post it up.
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