A handsome, charming twenty-eight year old, “Michael” had spent recent years making money, dating successful women, wining and dining and feeling fulfilled. I met Michael in an isolated, stark white room, in the locked psychiatric unit of the hospital where I served as chaplain. Michael had attempted to take his own life the night before, by swallowing extreme amounts of painkillers.

The first time I was scheduled to serve overnight as the on-call chaplain, I was paged at five a.m.  I groggily called the Intensive Care Unit, and spoke to a nurse who requested that I visit an anxious, weeping patient who would be undergoing surgery later that morning. I was told that the patient, "Andrew," was Orthodox Jewish. The nurse said that Andrew had a tracheotomy, and therefore could not speak.

On the first day of my chaplain residency, a nurse called me to provide spiritual care for a grieving couple on the hospital's birthing unit. This was my first crisis referral, and the couple was Greek Orthodox. I entered the room quietly, and met "Ana" and "George." When I told them I was the chaplain, and that I was Orthodox, they embraced me, kissing me on both cheeks." There was an immediate closeness among us.

In September, 1996, the World Council of Churches, which had designated the years from 1988-1998 as Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women, invited me to serve as a resource and spokesperson at the meeting of Orthodox Christian women to be held in Damascus in October, 1996. The theme of the meeting was “Discerning the Signs of the Time,” which focused on the life of women within the life of the Orthodox Church.

At the recent Clergy-Laity Congress, Archbishop lakovos urged members of Philoptohos organizations to find their "missing sisters." This means that some Orthodox women are "lost to the church."