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Side 1:
[0] Father Demetrios was born in Pereas, Greece
in 1963. He was born prematurely and was a high risk for
fatality.
[1] When Father Demetrios was four months old he
got blood poisoning from an insect bite on his back and
had to have an immediate operation. There was only a ten
percent survival rate. At the time of his operation,
next of kin were not permitted to stay at the hospital
in Greece, so his parents were forced to return home.
That night two mean appeared to his mother and aunt and
told them that Father Demetrios would be okay, and he
was. His mother later recognized the two men as two of
the mercenary saints.
[3] When Father Demetrios was six years old his
father was offered a job working as a tailor for a
company in America. When the family got to America, the
company had sent a Greek worker to pick them up. The man
was abusive and charged Father Demetrios’ family twenty
dollars per person to sleep in an abandoned house with
no doors, on disgusting mattresses. The next morning the
man showed up again with two bananas and charged his
father twenty dollars for each banana. That day
Demetrios’s father took them to the train station. He
had decided that they would return to Greece. At the
station they ran into an old friend from Greece who told
them to go to New York. That he had friends there who
would help them, and they did.
[7] For a while they lived in a crowded apartment
with another family who had strange hours. Eventually
they moved into their own apartment in Jamaica, which
was like the ghetto. There was an infestation of
roaches, and one man died there from an overdose and no
one knew until the body started to smell.
[8] Father Demetrios attended PS 86 in Queens. He
was picked on because he did not speak English, and
wanted to go back to Greece because he missed his
cousins. Both his parents worked, and saved their money
so they could buy a house in Jamaica. They attended
night school in order to learn English.
[9] He grew up during the 1970’s and became
Americanized listening to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.
He visited Greece for the first time since he left and
felt so comfortable that he did not want to leave.
[10] In his freshman year of high school, Father
Demetrios, did well. In his sophomore year he became so
fed up with the racial issues between African Americans,
Hispanics, and whites that he dropped out and decided to
make a career out of working with his hands.
[11] He learned the plumbing field and went to
work with his brother-in-law. As a teenager, Father
Demetrios, questioned religion. He attended church only
on major feast days. Then one day when he was at the
beach with his friend Nick, Father Demetrios, lost his
keys. When he prayed to God for help, God answered. He
heard a voice telling him to climb back up the mountain
of sand. When he got to the top of the mountain it was
as if the heavens had opened and a brilliant light
cascaded down and fell on his keys. A gush of wind came
and Demetrios had an out of body experience, where he
heard God speak to him. God told Demetrios that we lived
in a fallen world, and that he wanted him to become a
priest and serve me. Demetrios decided to go back to
school to become a priest.
[20] When his parents got home from the wedding
they were attending, Demetrios recounted his experience
to them and told them that he was going to become a
priest. His father was skeptical because Demetrios
always quit what he started because he was searching,
but his mother was happy.
[21] Friends started to make him doubt about
becoming a priest. His friend Teddy told him about how
the great the navy was and he started to think about
joining the navy himself.
[22] Went to York college to get his G.E.D. He
aced the class but was sick during the final exam which
was six hours long. He prayed and told God that if he
wanted him to become a priest he would have to help him
because he was so stopped up he could not think. Three
weeks later he got word that he passed his final.
[24] Started doubting if the priesthood was right
for him. Decides instead to join the navy. The morning
he was suppose to take his military entrance test he had
a dream about an evil presence behind him and there were
people all around him praying. He shouted three times
that he was not going into the military. When he woke up
he told himself it was just a dream and went and took
the test anyways. He just barely failed, because of a
low algebra score. He got a tutor and planned on
retaking the test. Then he started having more dreams.
Then the night before his test he had an out of body
experience. He was in this beautiful, majestic field.
Where he felt completely at home and had no idea how he
got there but he did not want to leave. Then these men
came and took him to change his clothes and prepare him
to meet God. God asked him what he was doing there, and
he told him that he needed to go back and finish what he
told him to do. So he was expelled and he felt himself
falling, and then he turned to see himself lying on his
bed, and he fell back into his body, and he was jolted
awake.
[29] At the time that he decided to become a priest
there was a new priest at his church. He mentored Father
Demetrios.
[30] Father Demetrios went back to York college and
took a math course and a writing course. He made an A in
the math course and wrote a ten page research paper on
prohibition. In 1982 he was accepted into Hellenic
College in Brookline.
[31] When Father Demetrios went to college he had
a naïve outlook. He believed everyone had a calling; he
left after the first semester. Then he had dreams went
back and left in second semester so then he went to
Queens college. He majored in philosophy and minored in
anthropology, and only needed to complete his electives
in order to get his degree. Then he met his wife. They
dated for two years and then got married.
[33] Went to Greece and served in the military
[34] He came back to America and stayed with his
in-laws. He finished college and worked as a plumber to
support his family. He got his bachelor’s degree and
went to graduate school for three years and got his
masters. He was ordained in 1998 and has been a priest
for ten years.
[35] Loves Asheville, sometimes he gets upset as
a priest, seeing the state of our world, then he
realizes that the media is just trying to get viewers
and the important thing is to help people because
helping one person is worth a million dollars.
Side 2:
[0] Was ordained in Atlanta, Georgia on St.
Nickolas’s feast day. He became Assistant Priest in
Clearwater, Florida for four years before going back to
New York.
[1] Worked as
third priest in New York. He enjoyed working with the
kids when he taught Religious school but did not like
living there because it was as if September 11th
never happened. People still remembered 9/11 but they
were mean to each other, and he did not want
to raise his kids there.
[3] He wrote the Bishop who ordained him and
told him what was wrong. He told him about Asheville, so
Father Demetrios called his wife and asked her to look
up Asheville on the internet. She told him that it was
beautiful and so they moved to Asheville in 2004. He
loves Asheville; he has found a new family in his
congregation.
[5] Most people are entering the workforce
looking for jobs with high income. There is no abundance
in spirituality, which is why he teaches a spirituality
class every Wednesday. We live in a fallen world but we
are all fallen so we have no right to judge, only God
has that right.
[7] Only reason women do not become priests is
because orthodox arrives from the Judaic religion, and
is based on tradition.
[8] Right now there are about ten converts in the
congregation. He hopes that the congregation will
continue to grow. There is a Greek festival in September
where they have a booth with information about the Greek
Orthodox community.
[9] In twenty years he predicts that the entire
service will be in English, instead of the half English,
half Greek, but he does not see the community dying out.
[10] When he went back to Greece as a teenager he
was Americanized but still fit in with his cousins
because he still spoke Greek.
[11] Asheville is a diverse city that accepts all
beliefs. Father Demetrios thinks that it is beautiful
how we all coexist, and that it is the fanatics who
cause trouble. Religion can always be abused by becoming
a fanatic. He hopes that Asheville will not become
completely industrialized though, because God made us
care takers. We are here to plant and flourish.
[13] Orthodox is orthodox. Russians were converted
by Greeks. The Czar had representatives from each
religion to come present to him and then afterwards he
chose Orthodoxy as the National religion.
[15] Due to there being many orthodoxies, in
celebration of Easter the holiest time of the year, they
go back to the ancient calendar so it can be celebrated
in churches around the world at the same time. The
Orthodox Easter always occurs a week after the Jewish
Passover.
[16] Olive oil is used in a baptism as a symbol of
reconciliation, because being baptized is becoming anew.
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