By TERRY EVANS tev...@star-telegram.com
EULESS -- St. John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church is bursting at the seams
and has plans to build a new worship center.
The new building's architecture is Byzantine, a design style that originated
in Greece, Turkey and Romania, said Joe Sullivan, building committee chairman.
"We're excited about being able to worship in a church that's the correct
style of architecture," he said.
Greg DeGiovanni, office administrator, said construction should begin within
the next couple of weeks.
"I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen them out there already," he said of
construction crews.
But while the church's 100 or so families eagerly await the construction of
the 8,300-square-foot edifice that will seat about 260, some neighbors aren't
happy with the plans.
Sherry Brauchler isn't looking forward to the new church building in her
Cullum Drive neighborhood.
"I'm not a curmudgeon," she said. "I just feel that there is a responsibility
to the neighborhood."
The architect who developed the concept drawing, Mirela Tudora, is the wife of
the parish priest, the Rev. Vasile Tudora. She's also schooled in the
Byzantine style of architecture, Sullivan said.
That style is a burr under Brauchler's saddle. She had no problem with the
church's first construction project, which in 1987 put an 8,000-square-foot
brick building on the back of the 303 Cullum Drive property. That building
will become classrooms, offices and a fellowship hall when the new building is
finished.
"The building they have now is nothing like what they're going to build, with
turrets and that type of architecture," she said. "The neighborhood is a
beautiful slice of country in the middle of the Metroplex. I don't have
anything against the church, but that drastic architecture doesn't fit in."
Euless Mayor Mary Lib Saleh disagreed.
"The church is gorgeous," she said. "They put a lot of thought into the
architecture. It will enhance the neighborhood, and we're going to see that
it's not going to disrupt the neighborhood."
Saleh and the City Council approved the building's site plan at their June 8
meeting.
But its design wasn't the only subject of protest letters that Brauchler and
another neighbor, Muhuntha Arumugam, filed with the city's planning and zoning
committee.
Arumugam, who lives on Colonial Lane, said that the church's annual Mid-Cities
Greek Food Festival makes him miserable.
"I'm a Christian," he said. "I'm not against church. I'm against having too
much crowd all over the place. We cannot even enter our own house, and the
music goes to 1 or 2 a.m."
Arumugam said he also fears that this expansion won't be the last.
"We are accommodating," he said of himself and his neighbors. "But we're like
the farmer who let the camel put its head in the tent when it rained. The
camel kept coming until the farmer had no room for himself in his tent."
Arumugam said it's fine for the church to grow, but it should "go grow
somewhere else."
He suggested that the festival be moved as well.
Sullivan said that festival -- this year's, on Oct. 8-10, will be the 19th --
is the church's primary fundraiser and draws guests from across the region.
It's critical, considering the $2.4 million cost for the new building and the
2,500-square-foot addition to the current one. The church, he added, has
addressed neighbors' complaints.
"One of the things we've done is enact a parking plan that puts up parking
barriers so nobody can park against their land," he said. "We have parking
monitors and get as many folks as we can to park in an adjacent property we
own to keep them off the street."
Sullivan said the church stakes highly visible marker tape along private
property on Cullum Drive to warn drivers not to park there.
He said that illegally parked vehicles are towed away if owners don't respond
to announcements over the PA system within a reasonable amount of time.
Saleh said the festival has become part of Euless, and she regrets that some
neighbors find it intrusive.
"Yes, it is a big festival," she said. "They have a lot of people and music.
Some people just don't like that."
The mayor urged tolerance.
"Let's be accepting of one another," she said. "If there are true problems,
call us and we'll come out and do what we can to help you."
TERRY EVANS, 817-390-7620
http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/07/02/2311291/neighbors-object-to-architecture.html
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
> http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/07/02/2311291/neighbors-object-to-a...
>Steve hayes , do you consider all East European Orthodox are
>wogs ?
"No problem at all. Just scroll down to the bottom of the page and
read backwards."
"Only thing is ... I forgot where we started."
"How right you are."
"Yeah ... sure does make us stand out, doesn't it?"
"Maybe they're just not as clever as we are."
"I wonder why nobody else top-posts?"
"That's nice."
"I'm a top-poster too."
"Yes."
"Are you a top-poster?"
"Hi."
"Hi."
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://khanya.wordpress.com
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
"She believed in nothing. Only her scepticism kept her from being an atheist."
-- Jean-Paul Sartre
- = -
Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist
http://www.panix.com/~vjp2/vasos.htm http://www.facebook.com/vasjpan2
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---
[Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards]
[Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Phooey on GUI: Windows for subprime Bimbos]
>Well, a lot of USA colleges have a rule requiring "non-prosletysing
>dialogue" but then objected to post communist states banning
>prosletysation. (I only favor such a ban temporarily, say ten years,
>in countries that have previously lived under atheistic
>dictatorships.)
Aye, but this isn't about proselytism, it's about architecture.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Aye, and even if it was about proselytizing, this is *America*, not
Russia. Many Americans are ignorant fools on many subjects, but in this
country that's largely a self-inflicted injury where it's true. We have
access to accurate and largely complete information on almost any
subject if we dig a bit for it. Most of us also understand that we
can't safely take just any information from any source at face value.
Most of us have developed a health bit of scepticism and some critical
thinking skills. (Many of us, IMHO, have overdeveloped the first and
become cynics, which is sad but also a different problem.)
I vehemently disapprove of laws restricting exposure to other religions.
As a convert myself, I see those as an attempt by society to decide
something for the individual that the individual is ultimately
responsible for choosing for themselves. However, Russia and other
formerly closed societies that practiced heavy censorship and provided
limited information to their public are facing the fallout from those
policies now. Underneath all of the self-interested attempts to
continue restricting information is a real need not to overwhelm people
who may still be adapting to the new reality.
That simply is not the case in America. There is *NO* excuse for most
attempts to limit free speech between adults.
However, it sounds as if in this case the issue is a couple of neighbors
who don't want their neighborhood to change. At all. Even for the
better. And that is sad. :(
Under His mercy,
--
Catherine Jefferson <ar...@devsite.org>
Personal Home Page * <http://www.devsite.org/>
The SpamBouncer * <http://www.spambouncer.org/>
It is also worth noting how official status was once enshrined into
state law as seen by the Manhattan Greek Cathedral quote below.. In my
neighborhood, Korean Catholics have private chapels which may
therefore operate independent of the Catholic diocese.
Manhattan Cathedral Centennial: "Up to this time, the Greek Orthodox
churches in New York State could incorporate under its then existing
Religious Corporation Law only as part of the Russian Orthodox Church
jurisdiction. Because of it, neither the Holy Trinity nor the Annunciation
churches had incorporated. The Athena Brotherhood in 1905 petitioned a
special statute, under Chapter 749 of the Laws of the State of New York, and
it was approved. This statute allowed The Holy Trinity to incorporate under
the name of 'The Hellenic Eastern Orthodox Church of New York'."
I recall reading something about Abp Tikhon being outraged, at finding
a STATUE of the FALSE GOD ZEUS in a Greek run church.
This is where culture and ethnic focus gets you, placing FILTHY
ABOMINATIONS the idols of your pagan past in a place of the
worship of God. (and I might add, in ancient times homosexuality
was promoted by some of the escapades of zeus and others.)
You should be ashamed. Whatever was going on regarding finances
or politics, your ethnicism was out of line. So is the rest of your
racist rant. The homosexuality issues you raise may have been true
sometimes. But it was Christianity which OPPOSED ethnicism
which eradicated it from the Greeks who were famous for this
shit.
I have some problems with the slav scene, but it is because of
their ethnicist driven gullibility.
Where errors of practice, morals or even theology start creeping
in, or one bishop is too strict or another too lax, or there is
corruption,
it is good to have different jurisdictions nearby and hop ship. I like
some things about the Greek churches.
But your attitude is the pits.
Justina (OCA, convert, non Greek non slav.)
And his own style. *All* his own. ;)
I've kill filed many of his sock puppets. Getting pretty crowded in my
kill file;)
Is Mokosh, only Mokosh!
We must return to the moist, soft, warm, Slavonic,
obshchina, peasant deity of Mokosh and abandon the
urban, reptile, mechantile religion of the Greeks and
Jews, who want to turn us all into wolves while we are
sleeping so they can suck our blood. We Slavs are
just one big extended family with no bounds of
ownership, we are embraced by our great thunder father
Tsar and our long armed earth mother Mokosh. The Tsar
is the most wise thundering high priest of Mokosh. The
land is our fertile mother Mokosh who nourishes us,
that which we put into the ground she returns to us.
Plowing is like taking a knife to tear my mother's
bosom, then when I die she will not take me to her
bosom to rest. Land is loaned, not owned, it is our
mother heifer, the great round egg of fertility, which
holds the blood of our ancestors in its yolk. No, we
must warm the earth with fire and water it so that our
ancestors may be with us when our doors and windows
are open as the roots of our tree, whose crown is
Perun of Thunder, father of all Tsars. We must sew
the scalps of the urban reptile people into a big tent
where our ancestors may visit us to be warmed by our
fire. Cattle are sacred for we must be as cattle and
live in herds and abhor the abomination of
individualism. It is the wondrous glory of our women
to be white heifers. We must get all humans to be as
cattle in one grand obshchina for their salvation.
Fear of censure binds all into collective behavior for
their can be no individualism or privacy. The Greeks
and Jews tried to destroy our great communal bonds,
with greed, inequality and competition, but we softly
fit into the landscape with equality and brotherhood.
Mokosh reveals the weather to those who put an ear to
the ground and even greater secrets to those who sleep
on the ground. Mokosh always works in circles, wind
whirls, seasons cycle, history cycles, the sun is a
round blini. Birds make their nest in circles, for
theirs is the same religion as ours. Moskosh is the
big round toilet bowl which whirls us all back home.
Any attempt to break the cycle of history by
modernization can only result in times of troubles.
Turn East and say: "Moist Mother Earth, subdue every
evil and unclean being so that he may not cast a spell
on us nor do us any harm." Turn West and say: "Moist
Mother Earth, engulf the unclean power Veles in your
boiling pits, in your burning fires." Turn South and
say: "Moist Mother Earth, calm the winds coming from
the south and all bad weather. Calm the moving sands
and whirlwinds." Turn North and say: "Moist Mother
Earth, calm the north winds and the clouds, subdue the
snowstorms and the cold."
>https://sites.google.com/site/novgorodnik10021/
>
>Is Mokosh, only Mokosh!
>
> We must return to the moist, soft, warm, Slavonic,
>obshchina, peasant deity of Mokosh and abandon the
>urban, reptile, mechantile religion of the Greeks and
>Jews, who want to turn us all into wolves while we are
>sleeping so they can suck our blood. We Slavs are
>just one big extended family with no bounds of
>ownership, we are embraced by our great thunder father
>Tsar and our long armed earth mother Mokosh.
Thank you, Vasos. Now back on your meds.