Mr. Bill Marianes: Christ is risen! Christos anesti! That’s really great news! Don’t miss it! But I’ve got some bad news for you—that’s what the doctor told me at my last annual physical. “Bad news”: the two words you don’t want to hear from your doctor when they’re giving you test results. Sometimes you’re so dumbfounded with that diagnosis that you ask something goofy like: “Well, doctor, how bad?” as if there’s gradations of bad news, like those infernal pain charts. You know the ones I’m talking about, the ones that every doctor’s office and hospital, with ten faces from smiley to frowny where you’re supposed to say how much pain you’re in on a ten-point scale based on those stupid pictures. I want to throttle the person who came up with that imprecise scale!

But a problem today is that all of our news, in all of our news, it always seems to be dominated by bad health news. And the older you get, trust me, the more of it you hear. There’s no one listening who doesn’t have some health issue right this very moment. You know what you’re facing. And moreover, there’s no one listening who doesn’t have someone they love who is dealing with a serious health issue. You know how much that is weighing on your heart and mine. Perhaps it’s a sore limb or back pain or chronic arthritis; maybe in your case it’s cramps or a knee or a hip that lost its cushioning cartilage.

But unfortunately, for many, the bad news is worse—much, much worse. And then the doctor looks at you and says, “I’m sending you to a specialist.” That’s never what you want to hear. You have to visit someone who knows how to poke and prod you more than Muhammad Ali or will draw more blood than Dracula or who will take more pictures than a social media narcissist as they probe inside you and explore your internal organs. But you do it, and you go to that specialist so that you can find out the answer to that question you asked: “How bad is it?”

The human organ we tend to talk about the most is our heart, whether we’re referring to its endless love capabilities or the compassion it seems to engender. But at the same time, it’s the very heart of our being, pun intended. It’s the nuclear power plant that drives the blood you need through every one of your organs. You can lose a fingernail or even a finger and survive, but without your heart, your heartlessness makes you no longer a living human being.

And yet, while your heart is, without a doubt, one of the most critical organs you have, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. In the US, someone has a heart attack every 40 seconds. Think about that. Just since I started talking, several people in the US have had heart attacks. Another person just had one right now. I hope it’s not you, ever. But every year almost a million people in the United States have heart attacks, and over 6,000 of them are a first heart attack. And, shockingly and horribly about one in five heart attacks are silent: the damage is done, but the person isn’t even aware of it.

My best friend, Johnny, died from a heart attack. The Lord took him before he or we even knew he was gone. I remember being in the emergency room with his lifeless body. The machine he was plugged into had nothing but zeroes on it. His earthly scoreboard was cleared, because there was nothing left in his heart to give.

One person dies every 36 seconds in the United States from some form of cardiovascular disease, not just heart attacks. That’s one in every four deaths, for those of you who are keeping a gruesome score. While the loss of life is the most tragic consequence, it’s not without economic cost also. In one year, just from 2016 to 2017, heart disease cost the United States $363 billion, from the cost of healthcare to medicines to lost productivity due to death, but among the baddest of bad news, there’s an even scarier one. The one word you never want to hear, a word whose linguistic origins you may not have ever even known about, but whose consequences are all too clear. Not surprisingly, the c-word actually started with the Greek.

Some time in the early 400s BC, Greek physician Hippocrates, who’s often considered the father of medicine, used the terms karkinos and karkinoma to describe non-ulcer-forming and ulcer-forming tumors. In Greek, these words refer to a crab, most likely applied to the disease because the finger-like spreading projections from cancer called to mind the shape of a crab. But it was the Roman physician Celsus who, around 28 BC, later translated the Greek term into cancer, the Latin word for “crab.” And another Greek physician, Galen, in around 200 AD, used the word onkos, the Greek for swelling, to describe tumors. Although the crab analogy of Hippocrates and Celsus is used still to describe malignant tumors, Galen’s term is now used as part of the word for cancer specialists: oncologists.

The American Cancer Society reports that human beings and other animals have had cancer throughout recorded history, so it’s no surprise that, from the dawn of history, people have written about cancer. Some of the earliest evidence of cancer is found among fossilized bone tumors, human remains in ancient Egypt, and the ancient manuscripts. Growths suggestive of bone cancer have even been found in some ancient mummies.

In 2020 alone, an estimated 1.8 million new cases of cancer were diagnosed just in the United States. Over 600,000 people will die from that disease, making it the second leading cause of death. The cost of cancer care exceeds $174 billion in the US, and globally by 2040 the number of new cancer cases per year is expected to rise to 29.5 million, and the number of cancer-related deaths to rise to over 16.5 million.

For those of you keeping score, the top 12, if you will, bad news hit parade of most common cancers are: breast, lung, prostate, colon, skin, bladder, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, kidney, leukemia, pancreatic, thyroid, and liver cancer. Now, prostate, lung, and colorectal cancers account for an estimated 43% of all cancers diagnosed in men in 2020. For women, the three most common cancers are breast, lung, and colorectal, and they will account for an estimated 50% of all new cancer diagnoses in women in 2020.

Like many diseases, the cancer mortality rate is higher among men than among women. So much for equality of the sexes! However, fortunately, as of 2019, there were an estimated 17 million cancer survivors in the United States, including several of my guests tonight. And even more hopeful is that the number of cancer survivors is projected to increase to 22.2 million by the year 2030.

But what should be a staggering wake-up call is that approximately 40% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes. Let me say that again. Approximately 40% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes. So when my doctor said that was my potential bad news, I wasn’t surprised. Fortunately, at least for now, additional testing concluded the first test was an aberration, but maybe the news wasn’t so bad after all. Time will tell, for all of us.

But tonight, right before I went on the air, I posted a program promo on LinkedIn, and I saw a tragic response, a tragic post. It was from Maddie Russo, the student at St. Ambrose University. I do not know Ms. Russo, but I’m adding her to my prayers tonight, and I ask you to do the same. Here’s the post from Maddie Russo.

It is with heartbreak and shock that I share the news that my cancer has spread to my blood, and it’s acute lymphoblastic leukemia on top of my original diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Coughing up blood, continuous coughs, severe headaches, sleeping all day, excessive vomiting, and total yucky feeling aside from chemo told me that I needed to get a PET scan and bone marrow biopsy earlier than originally scheduled, once at the end of May. Although that most certainly wasn’t the news I wanted to hear on my birthday, I’m grateful for trusting my gut.

God says my work is not done yet, and I must keep fighting, as there is no other choice. Cancer, you still are not the boss, and no matter how you try and destroy my body, I will win, and I will show up every day to battle with you. That is what being a warrior is all about.

You go, girl! May the Lord provide healing, comfort, and peace to Ms. Maddie Russo.

As bad as cancer is, chronic diseases are even more ubiquitous and a normal condition of life. Chronic diseases are defined broadly, as conditions that last one year or more and require ongoing medical attention or limit activities of daily living, or both. It’s the big three chronic diseases—heart disease, cancer, and diabetes—that are the leading cause of death and disability in the United States, and they’re also the leading drivers of the nation’s $3.8 trillion in annual healthcare costs. As dramatic as the data is regarding heart disease and cancer, more than 34 million Americans have diabetes, and—get this—another 88 million adults in the United States have a condition called pre-diabetes. Then there’s the irreversible progressive brain disease, Alzheimer’s, that affects six million Americans, including one in ten adults aged 65 and older. Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death among all adults and the fifth leading cause for those among 65 and older.

But it’s the next eight bad news disease that are perhaps the most pervasive: Arthritis affects 59 million adults in the United States, which is about one in four adults. Aren’t you glad you tuned in tonight to listen to mind-numbing stats of how poorly we’re taking care of the sacred vessel our Creator entrusted us? But here we are! In various forms of pain or illness that all follows those fateful words from our doctor: “I have some bad news for you.” Well, not tonight, my brothers and sisters.

Tonight we don’t focus on the illness, but instead we cast our vision on the spiritual anecdote. We don’t focus on the disease, but the cure. We don’t focus on the bad news, but on the good news, of life and living, a calling given uniquely to you by your Creator. Tonight we talk with faithful Orthodox Christians who heard their doctor tell them, “I have some bad news,” but instead chose to live the life to which they have been called, to live their stewardship calling, not only in the face of their difficult medical diagnosis, but actually in spite of it. Tonight we bring hope and the light of the world to the darkness of disease. Tonight we share with you some strategies and ideas of how you, too, can face the bad news that you received, or that a loved one received, and stay focused on the light.

Welcome, brothers and sisters, to Stewardship Calling and the first Wednesday series on Ancient Faith Radio. This is Bill Marianes from StewardshipCalling.com, coming to you from the shores of beautiful Lake Lanier in beautiful Gainesville, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. I have a simple premise: that you have been called by your Creator to a personal calling, a reason to your life and a reason for your life, something you need to do with all of the gifts over which God has made you a steward. It’s what I call your stewardship calling. And St. Paul makes it crystal clear that we all have a calling. In his letter to the Ephesians 4:1, he clearly states, “I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”

Until 2017, by day I was blessed to be a partner in two great international law firms of over 1100 lawyers each, where I served in management, including as managing partner of our Atlanta office, and practiced in the area of mergers and acquisitions in corporate law. But my why, my personal calling, is to be a stewardship calling evangelist. I’m here to help people and parishes to discover and live their stewardship callings, so that they may have a good account before the awesome judgment seat of Christ. As we follow Christ’s great commandment to love one another, his great charge to serve one another, and his great commission to make disciples of all nations, welcome to that journey.

Now, this program and a lot of other helpful tools and information about effective churches and stewardship and church strategic planning and stewardship and other topics can be found at my always-free website, StewardshipCalling.com, and you can reach me at Bill at StewardshipCalling.com. And to all of our listeners tonight, we want to invite you to join us by calling in and interacting with my special guests that I’ll introduce shortly, by calling 1-855-AF-RADIO; that’s 1-855-237-2346.

From the Holy Unction service that Orthodox Christians celebrated just a few weeks ago on Holy Wednesday, we prayed:

Illness and distress have worn us out. Being compassionate, O Savior, wash away the pain and trauma and suffering in the river of your tender love, O Christ, and also through your priests, as they anoint us with the holy unction, through this cleansing, O Lord, may we gain our health.

I mean, how powerful are those words when you hopefully recited them just a few weeks ago! “Illness has worn us out!” I mean, some days illness has flat worn me out! The day I received this blessed sacrament of Holy Unction was the very day I had had cataract surgery, so that I could see more clearly. But tellingly we refer to the Lord as the “Physician of our souls.” Indeed, the seventh prayer of the Holy Unction service begins:

O Master, Lord our God, Physician of souls and bodies, it is you who soothes the chronic pains and heals every infirmity and malady of the people.

So again, our faith teaches us to whom we should look for comfort and cure. Yes, we should trust the doctors the Lord has put in our path to help us, but in a piece that was entitled “Sin, Sickness, and Salvation,” Fr. Chad Hatfield wrote:

It is also recognized that often only sickness and suffering can waken us out of our empty isolation from God and pursuit of transient pleasures. Thus in a widely used prayer for Orthodox Christians, there is a “Prayer in Time of Trouble,” with the petition:

Have mercy upon me, and deliver me from this trouble that besets me, for which I know I am deservedly suffering. I acknowledge and believe, O Lord, that all trials of this life are given by thee for our chastisement when we drift away from thee and disobey thy commandments.

In chapter nine of an amazing book entitled, Health and Medicine in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition, the late, great theologian, Fr. Stanley Harakas, makes mention of the fact:

Nearly all of the services of the Church include some mention of healing. This focus on healing is central to an appreciation of the liturgical rites and pastoral practices of the Books of Needs. Yet Orthodox Christians recognize this connection between sin, suffering, and salvation, finding it expressed in the prayers of the Orthodox Christian Church. Sickness and suffering are understood to be avenues of salvation, and a participation in the glory and joys of the resurrection of Christ, and life in the kingdom of God. This is why the Orthodox Church teaches her faithful to accept suffering as something that has the potential of bringing them further along in the process of theosis.

Fr. Stanley Harakas also went on to write in a piece called “The Orthodox Christian Tradition: Religious Belief and Healthcare Decisions,” and he said that

The Orthodox Church regards human life and well-being as gifts from God, [who] is the creator and sustainer of life, as well as the prime source of healing. […] The Church perceives the healing of a physical illness by the medical professional as a God-given art, which […] serves God’s purpose [… it] helps restore [people…], so that their spiritual and moral growth in community can continue.

And he concludes by saying:

The Orthodox Christian views suffering is a consequence of our broken and sinful condition which comes to human beings in various ways. […] The Orthodox Christian Church teaches that preparing for death is primarily a spiritual responsibility.

Indeed, in the Divine Liturgy, we actually pray that prayer from 2 Corinthians 5:10 where we talk about the end of our lives: be without pain, painless and peaceful.

So how do we do this hard work? How do we receive the diagnosis of bad health news and the consequence of medical treatments or testing, and carry on? See, this is hard. We must know that God has uniquely called us to a purpose, something to do with our lives, and yet we’ve received another, secular diagnosis of disease. So then what? How do we cope? How do we proceed?

Well, as it turns out, the answer is easier to articulate than it is to practice. You see, as it turns out, it’s as simple as the number one, and as simple as the duration of one day. The concept of “one day at a time”: that’s it, just one day, and only one day. And where does this wisdom come from? Well, let’s start with the most important physician’s desk reference. Not that huge book that’s on medical doctors and their offices. I’m talking about the physicians of our souls’ desk reference, that we should all use daily: the holy Gospel. In the gospel of Matthew 6:27 and 43, we read:

And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his lifespan? Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Think about it, and listen to this powerful phrase again: “The day has its own trouble.” In other words, don’t worry about tomorrow; instead, focus on today. That’s enough trouble for one person. Or maybe just focus on the next few hours; or maybe even just the next few minutes. In the next thing you do, you can make a difference; you can bring about hope or joy or love. In the next few hours, you can temporally block from your mind the pains and the diseases ravaging your body or the body of a loved one and instead focus your mind and your heart and your soul on the critical work God has called you to do. In that moment, who is the person I can help? What are the problems I can solve? What is the specific work I can do? That wonderful gift of free will which my Creator gave me, and you. These are all the questions you should ask yourselves.

I heard a powerful message from Pastor Annie Stanley who famously said, “Believers didn’t change the world; doers changed the world.” Not that belief isn’t important, but rather that belief alone isn’t enough for us to make a difference in the world. It must be followed by the actions our Lord and Savior taught over and over and over again. He was always preaching about doing something, actually talked about getting something done. Free will, that great gift from your Creator, gives you the choice to focus on your pain or your problems, or your disease or your illness, the things you cannot control, or instead to use that free will gift to focus on what you can do to make a difference in The Kingdom, capital-T, capital-K. Free will, perhaps one of the greatest gifts God has given each and every one of us. If only we could master it, one day at a time.

Where else do we hear this clear solution? Perhaps the most successful program for one of our most pervasive chronic diseases. According to the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 86% of people older than 18 have drunk alcohol at some point in their lifetime. Indeed, 26% of people 18 years of age and older have reported that they’ve engaged in binge drinking in the past month. And there are at least 15 million people struggling with alcoholism right here in the United States today.

While “one day at a time” is perhaps one of the best-known sayings of Alcoholic Anonymous programs, it’s also a major principle in mindfulness. Many people who are working towards sobriety or overcoming some debilitating illness are triggered when they experience overwhelming negative emotions, such as worries over their future. But when you live one day at a time, you focus on your present goals. Staying focused on one day at a time allows you to live in the moment by remaining positive, even in challenging moments, finding self-love and affirming why you are worthy of that love as a child of God; embracing a mindfulness practice that you find meaningful, like prayer or meditation or being in nature.

But there’s another mantra that helps you make progress in the face of a bad-news medical diagnosis, and that is: “Nothing changes if nothing changes.” Let me say that again. “Nothing changes if nothing changes.” By staying focused on a short-list of one-day goals that you can go to bed each night knowing you accomplished what you set out to do, soon it may feel easier to add to your daily goals and use prayer or mindfulness to acknowledge hurt feelings without dwelling on them or letting them trigger you. Sometimes the concept of even living one day at a time is too hard. The pain or the illness or the concerns are just too great. In those cases, if you find living 24 hours unachievable, change your mantra to living one hour at a time, or maybe even living five minutes at a time.

Tonight we hear from amazing Orthodox Christians who’ve done just that. They’ve received bad news, horrible news from doctors, and juxtaposed it against the good news they received from their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. They put one foot in front of the other and just kept on moving towards the fulfillment of the calling to which they had been called, as St. Paul repeatedly reminded the Ephesians and us. And it’s time that we hear from them.

I’m going to take a short break right now, and when we return, I will introduce the first of my three special guests, Rip Kastaris, as we discuss living your stewardship calling after a diagnosis of serious illness. Please remember, we’d love to hear your questions, so feel free to call in at 1-855-AF-RADIO; that’s 1-855-237-2346. Okay, let’s take a short break, and we’ll be right back.

Mr. Marianes: Welcome back to Stewardship Calling and our first Wednesday program as we start to explore living your calling after a diagnosis of a serious illness. Rip Kastaris, a dear friend of mine, gained international recognition by creating artwork that combines historical tradition with a contemporary vision. He is the principal—he is the only—he is the exclusive artist behind an epic mural entitled “Kyklos: Circle of Glory” that’s on permanent display inside the Athens Olympic Stadium in Athens, Greece. And he’s done it for images on an interactive DVD for the rock star, Sting; and he’s also done it for rendering 15,000 square feet of iconography at St. Josaphat Ukrainian Cathedral in Parma, Ohio.

In all of that, Rip expresses his timeless vision, using a wide variety of media. Kastaris is a four-time official Olympic artist, and the first Greek-American to be commissioned by the US Olympic Committee to create original art representing American athletes. He’s been featured on the PBS documentary, The Greek Americans, and national publications such as US Art, the National Herald, and the Hellenic Journal, in addition to making appearances on Greek and European satellite stations, such as ERT, Mega, ANT1 Television. In 2003, [Rip] Kastaris received the Artist of the Year award from the Elios Society in San Francisco, and won the 2007 National Award of Excellence from the Associated Church Press.

As the son of a Greek Orthodox priest, born in Greece and returning there both creatively and spiritually, Rip Kastaris brings an authentic vision to Byzantine iconography. His icons range from small panels to murals filling the five-domed structure at St. Josaphat Cathedral in Ohio. Based Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy, completed this entire project in 2018, and perhaps this is where Kastaris will leave his greatest mark, for these images are surely going to remain long after his lifetime. He’s rooted in the past, but his images tell a timeless story with meaning for today, and continues the Byzantine art form in his personal, unique manner, and I have several of his more modern pieces hanging up on the walls of my house.

Brother Rip, finally I get a chance to welcome you and to speak with you again here on Stewardship Calling here on Ancient Faith Radio. How you doing, brother?

Mr. Rip Kastaris: I’m doing great, Bill, and it’s great to reconnect with you. And congratulations on all the great work you’re doing.

Mr. Marianes: Well, thank God. Thank God. Look, I just gave your bio, but there’s always so much more to someone, particularly someone like you, than their official CV, so would you please share with the listeners a little bit more about your upbringing and your background?

Mr. Kastaris: I guess my story is one of a kid that came from Greece very young. My mother tells me that I took my first steps on the boat from Athens to New York. It seems like all the steps I’ve taken since then have been some way of connecting or bridging the gap between the world we came from and the more modern one that we entered when we got to New York Harbor in 1961.

Mr. Marianes: How old were you when that happened?

Mr. Kastaris: So, yeah, I took my first steps: I was a year old when I…

Mr. Marianes: One year old!

Mr. Kastaris: One year old when we came to the United States. My dad took the invitation from Archbishop Iakovos to leave the old country and help Greek communities here, and we moved a number of times, but, you know, having a name like Euripides, the first day of class was a little tough.

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] Yes, for those of you who don’t know, that’s his first name. So even though I introduced him as Rip, his full name is Euripides. I can’t imagine what that was like when you showed up at school.

Mr. Kastaris: I mean, everybody turns around in class and says, “Who the heck is that?” And you kind of long to have a name like Rick rather than Rip when you’re that age, but as you get older, you keep running into your Greekness. You go to college, and every subject that you study, they say, “Let’s start at the beginning, in ancient Greece.” It’s such an honor and so meaningful to be Greek and American, because Greece has had such an influence on everything from the… I mean, when you go to Washington, DC, you’re looking at a resurrected Athens that’s come across the water and reconstructed itself as part and parcel of what it means to be an American. So being from two places has always been my story. Being part of a Greek Orthodox community, as my dad was the leader of our church, we had no relatives here.

Mr. Marianes: None!

Mr. Kastaris: I was born in Thessaloniki, and then everybody is still back in Greece. So when I would go back to Greece, I wasn’t Greek either; I was Amerikanaki, you know. But it’s been a great adventure, and I’ve learned so much from being here and having the opportunities. My parents made every effort to come to the United States, not because my dad needed to be paid more or because he looked for adventure. He and my mom wanted their kids to get the greatest education that they could, and they said that we would be able to do it here. So those values about… even though we run a restaurant, our kids are going to be graduates of the best universities, and they’re going to be professionals, and they’re going to do that. [31:45] is the call to be exceptional; it’s in our DNA.

And so there’s just so much to being Greek. I’ve had a great experience, because I’ve always been part of the content that gets shared amongst people in a community. I was always able to— And you hear about some things that aren’t so exciting sometimes. Some people are better than others, but, overall, as a kid, growing up in a Greek Orthodox church, you hear the presidents of the AHEPA and the Philoptochos and the visiting authors and the real doers and the shakers and the people that create things: you really get influenced by that, and your parents make you feel like your great-grandparents built the darn Parthenon, you know?

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] Yeah! What are some of the places that you’ve lived? What are some of the places where you’ve lived and been here in the United States?

Mr. Kastaris: We first came to Ohio and were in a small town named Lorraine, Ohio. I know, I remember we left there when I was just about going to kindergarten, and the snowdrifts were taller than me there. [Laughter] I joke about it, because my parents were from that very mild climate of Athens, Greece, and I say, yeah… I heard a conversation where my dad was speaking to Archbishop Iakovos, and he said, yeah, we’re very honored to be here in the United States, but could you move us a little further south, Your Eminence? [Laughter] So from there we went to St. Louis, where my dad had a parish here. It was just perfect for me, because it went from… I could see the Arch being built from my kindergarten window in St. Louis, and it was completed in 1965 when I first started school. Then my dad got a new commission to go to New York: New York, Queens, Jamaica, St. Demetrios Church, in 1978 when I was graduating from high school. They left, and I stayed. I went to Washington University in St. Louis; I went to the art school here, which is a great art school, and part of an awesome university. My parents also had a church in Canton, Ohio, the home of the Football Hall of Fame.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, the Football Hall of Fame!

Mr. Kastaris: And wound up in… The last two commissions that my dad had were in Florida. I said, “Dad, you did such a good job for the Lord, he sent you to Disney World, I think.”

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] That’s good!

Mr. Kastaris: He didn’t have to shovel snow, and he was in Gainesville, where he loved being with the professors and the students that had come from Greece. He was a special person. Everybody, when I went… When we wept over my dad at his funeral, I can’t tell you how many people who said, “See all those people over there? Your dad was really a better friend to me. He was really special to me,” and everybody felt that way. Regardless of whatever else happened, he was a person who was never in doubt of what his mission was.

We argued a lot about politics and ideas when I was a young artist, but in the last two years of his life, I was starting to do icons, and he became my historical consultant, then my Orthodox scholar that I could ask. Sometimes we both didn’t know the answer to something, so we would go research and then talk again. While he didn’t see the work that I did, doing the Pantocrator, a huge size in the last cathedral that we painted, he was always interested in and was very touched and was very glad to see that whatever art that I did had wound up being part of the Church. He said, “Would you please send me anything that you do,” and I remember a call I got, he said, “Rip, I like that you are doing the Orthodox iconography, but I want you to know that you are very good, very good.”

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] That’s great! That’s got to be so special, both for him… Because he was delivering the Lord’s message in a unique way that only a clergyman can do, and you found a way to deliver it using an entirely different art form, but in a way that is intentionally as expressive and as personal as anything else is. And that had to make him…

Mr. Kastaris: Yes, and it’s such a big part of our faith, the visual part of our faith. It’s inextricable. You cannot have a Greek Orthodox church without our visual… And then it’s so old that people didn’t even read or write, most of them, back then. And the icon, while books, when they first came out… We didn’t have a Bible in everybody’s hands for 1600 years! And a lot of people forget that. But the icons were a Bible made visible that everyone can share, regardless of what your economic stance is. And within those images and within those storytelling-capable paintings, the entire story of salvation, of eternity… When you’re in a Greek Orthodox church, you’re both in heaven and on earth at the exact same time. God is there. Christ is in the dome. He’s just above where we can touch, but he’s there. He’s immanent. He is in everything there.

And the whole language of the Church, with the four evangelists on the pendentives that are on the pillars that support the ministry of Christ. And then the whole structure is so worked out in the Byzantine tradition. I was transfi— I never thought I was going to be an iconographer. I remember telling my friends in art school, “Boy, I’m glad my parents moved to the United States, because if we were back in Greece I’d probably be stuck doing churches.”

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] Yeah, it’s funny how things come around, isn’t it!

Mr. Kastaris: Oh, so-and-so, I’m working in advertising and everything. And I get to the point where everything’s half an inch deep, bring in the beer, bring in the girls, bring in the horses, okay, it’s over— Well, I mean, at some point you say, “I don’t want to put ‘free’ on anything else any more.” I went to Greece, and the hair on the back of my neck would go up when I would go into these ancient churches where you’d only see part of an angel, or only one eye looking back at you, or know that something was there thousands of years ago, and that these broken icons were heroic survivors and wounded healers themselves. I started doing some images that were really not iconography for churches, but they were just… the emotions and the feelings that I got when I went to these ancient places.

I went to IV, and we went to Mystras. There’s just so much beauty almost in the decay of some of the things that you see, and you say… And there’s the beauty of the tradition in the Byzantine art, even if you only get a fragment of it, you get the whole story, because we follow that tradition, and you know that that sword is held by Michael; you know that that orb is held by Gabriel. Because our structure is one that has not varied, then it’s easy for you to kind of read between the lines and within the gaps, and you can say, “Well, if even the images of God and the eternal are turning to dust, maybe it’s in the dust as well.”

It just had a real profound effect on me, and I wound up not being able to stay in advertising any more; I just had to do work that reflected the kind of feelings that I got when I went into monasteries that looked out over vistas that were just amazing, and how there seemed to be things that repeated within our culture that just seemed to connect all the dots for me. It’s really been quite an adventure in always trying to take the courageous step and doing what I thought was right as opposed to what might pay me more or what might be a safer way to go. I’ve had the opportunity, with you, to work on art that went into Olympic Stadium in Athens. I was able to do projects for all kinds of things that are kind of like once-in-a-lifetime things. And it’s been quite a privilege and an honor, and a sense of doing art not for myself, but for a community to be kind of like the tuning fork for all people.

There’s really a more ancient or classical way of doing art, that you do it for the tribe as opposed to you’re going to do some crazy thing, and the more different you are the more you’ll be respected, no. In traditional art, everyone wants to make that image, but certain people are given that responsibility. I felt like I’m part of a tradition that goes back to the apostles, to ancient Egypt. If you continue to do those same images in the same places, using the same colors for the same reason as an artist may have 1500, 1800 years ago, it’s a pretty awesome feeling.

Mr. Marianes: Well, you know, listen, like I said, I’ve seen your work now over decades, and one of my favorite pieces, it’s what I call the Kastaris transition periods. We’re going to have names, like different artists have different periods. But it was when you had first started doing that, and you did those half-angels, those half-Gabriels, those half-things, and we had one of them going up the stairs in the house, and so every time I went upstairs, it was perfect, because it was going up. So I see this image there and whatnot.

But just to kind of put— The eloquence of your words are its own beautiful artwork and its own graphic visual imagery, and we’re going to get into that in a second, but I recently, in fact, not so long ago, you went through an incredibly serious health issue and health challenge. I’d like for you to share whatever it is you’re comfortable sharing with our listeners so that they understand what you have just survived.

Mr. Kastaris: I’d be happy to. As a thumbnail, I went to Chicago where our family was going to come together for Christmas and a cocktail, and I wound up staying for six weeks, because I had a coronary incident. I had no idea that that was going to happen. We actually picked a hotel where we’d be 15 or 20 minutes from everything so that we could get exercise. We’re getting older; you think that you’re doing the right thing. I’ve always tried to watch what I eat, try to get exercise. You can’t help but put on a few pounds over time, and you don’t know that tomorrow could be your last day sometimes, and it almost felt that way.

After walking around the city for a while and saying, “Do you think, guys, that we could slow down so I could catch my breath a little bit?” That night—it was two days after Christmas—I woke up an hour after I had gone to sleep. We had gone out to listen to some music, went to sleep about one o’clock in the morning. I just stood straight up in bed. I felt like I had a 50-pound weight on my chest, and I had gotten a new Apple Watch for Christmas, and I looked down and it said that my heart rate was 126 beats a minute. I said, “126? That’s when you’re running, not when you’re sleeping!” I said, “I want to go to the hospital right now. I don’t care if I’m embarrassed.”

But I was so lucky, so blessed, that we were only two blocks away from a world-class cardiac surgical hospital, Northwestern University, and an ambulance was there in two shakes. I was in a great deal of discomfort, but they put some nitroglycerin underneath my tongue, and everything kind of settled down. I had quite an ordeal at the hospital, because COVID had made the hospital full, and there was no room at the inn, you know. So I had to be put into a room without any windows. They didn’t have room for me to get into the surgical line-up. I was there for a week, ten days. Next thing you know, after one of the scans that they did, they said, “Oh, we can’t operate on you before we take out your furthest-back wisdom tooth; there’s a little infection in there.” Because I guess anything in your mouth goes right into your blood stream.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah. So, wait, you had to have the wisdom tooth before you had the heart surgery?

Mr. Kastaris: They would not cut me until I had that tooth extracted.

Mr. Marianes: Wow.

Mr. Kastaris: So now it’s two weeks, and I’m just sitting around in a room without any windows, and I sniffled once, and my daughter who lives in Chicago says, “Dad, I’ll bet you got COVID while you were here.” I said, “There’s no way! I feel fine.” And the doctor said, “We can test him for that.” Well, they gave me the test, and he came back in what looked like a space suit to me, and he said, “Why do you think I’m dressed this way?” I said, “Because you’re going to a really good party tonight?”

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] Yeah, exactly!

Mr. Kastaris: So I got COVID when I was in the hospital. Now I had to go to another room, but—thank God—it had a window! Oh, I was so glad!

Mr. Marianes: All right, so you’re moving upstream.

Mr. Kastaris: I had to go ten days without any visitors or anything. I had plenty of time to pray and to think about what was going on. You know, when they did the test on me, they go: “Well, we did the test, and it’s not just a stent that you’re going to need. We’re going to have to do open-heart surgery on you. We’re going to cut your sternum in half; we’re going to pull your ribs apart. And not only do you need a triple-bypass, but we’re going to give you… You need a new heart valve transplant as well. We use a bovine valve. But don’t worry,” they said, “we can do it all at one time.” [Laughter] And they said that I would be asleep; I would be in surgery for over eight hours. They said that my heart would be stopped for over four hours, that I would be on a heart-lung machine. The surgeons would hold my heart and cut it apart and put it together again; and that they would cool my blood that went through this machine so that they actually refrigerate you so that you slow down. And that I would wake up and that I, hopefully, would have a new valve and have new circulation, that I could really get oxygen to my brain and to my organs.

I don’t care how many procedures you went through, to know that that’s what you’re going to do is quite a spiritual confrontation, to say… because, you know, yeah. You just start to think about your life a little bit differently, and it can be quite emotional. So there were a number of things that came to me that were revelations while I was there. There’s three things—

Mr. Marianes: Like what? Share. If you don’t mind, share something.

Mr. Kastaris: Sure. Okay, so these are such important things that I learned while I was there. Number one was that, in all our lives, we can be faced with a situation that looks like absolute disaster on the surface, but that disaster may not be a disaster; it may be a gateway to a much better life situation and a much better spiritual situation than we had ever imagined. You know, you’re faced with being debilitated and not even being able to carry yourself, being dependent on the skill and the love and the care of other people, and that you may never be the same again and that your life will be cut short. But it may be a gateway to a much better life, and that is what it was in my case so far.

Number two was that we think we’re alone, and I was blown away. There were people I hadn’t talked to for 30 years that poured their love on me. I got notes from hundreds of people that were praying for me. When I went into that operating room, I was not alone. I felt Christ himself, I felt the angels, and I felt friends and relatives, like I had an army with me when I went in there. I had more support than I could ever have imagined.

And then the third thing, that is that all people come to a Golgotha, to a Calvary in their life, where there’s no way that they can solve their problem, like you’re totally at the mercy of other people or the situation itself. Whether we deserve it or not, that there is a spiritual element that always comes to give us the courage, the patience, the support, the understanding by those that depend on us, so that we can be healed, and God himself and the power that moves the planets is the same power that moves the healing process within my very heart. So I came to that realization that, in most cases, we need to use effort, but in some cases it’s time to surrender fully, that idea of hesychia, [51:20 idamia], to be like a reflection of water that doesn’t move.

Mr. Marianes: Stillness; it’s the complete stillness.

Mr. Kastaris: Right. That tradition that’s such a big part of the monastic movement, hesychia. It’s interesting, because all the things that we see that are for our health in today’s modern medicine are the same as they were in our ancient traditions all along, like intermittent fasting, not eating meat by-products, not eating eggs and cheese and all these things. We need a break from that. Our Church knows that; our faith knows that. And so I realized that even within the greatest illness, the allness of God is still there, and that we can relax in it. And when we do, rather than letting our minds—and it’s not easy—when we can settle ourselves down, our healing process works better than anything that we can do personally to try to make it happen, in letting go and letting the power of God work, the power of healing, the power of nature. In surrendering to that, we have the absolute best outcome possibilities that we can.

And those things are true for all people, not just me and being in a hospital waiting to be in a major surgical situation.

I took it upon myself to report and blog a little bit about what was happening, because I said: What’s my responsibility in this? My responsibility is to have the courage to show others, too, that they can do it. I wrote this piece the night before I went into surgery after waiting almost a month in a hospital without being able to leave. I wrote this piece called “Effort and Surrender.” Another friend had surgery on his neck near his coronary artery there, and he said he went in—he was in a full-blown panic and he was not going to go to surgery. And after he read what I wrote, it calmed him down enough, and he said a prayer, and he said it gave him the… it gave him a little insight and a little power to say his prayer and then let go. And he said what he read from me really helped, and that made me feel so good, because we can all help each other.

When I was in Sunday school, we had these yellow Bibles that they gave out that said, “Come, receive the light,” and it had quotes in the back of it from the saints. I will be forever informed and influenced by a quote that I read from St. Basil that said, “The Spirit is everywhere present, and shared without being divided. But to the degree that we serve others, we understand or experience the Spirit.” In other words, when we have our hat out, asking God for stuff, we’ll get the help, but we don’t feel the Holy Spirit; we feel the sense of power and Spirit in our service to others. That’s where we really—it shows up on our radar screens.

So if we want to heal, the best healers are wounded survivors. People that have been burned will not even listen to anyone, but when the burn victim comes in and says, “I’ve been through what you’ve been through, and I can help you…” I remember going to a burn conference where I was doing some work for a foundation, and there was a man there that had been burned all over his entire body when he was 12 years old. He jumped out of his school window, on fire. He had gone on to get his PhD, to be the pastor of his church, to have a wife, to have children, to have grandchildren; and he got it—he sat at that podium: he had a wig on, he had a suit on, he held a pen between crinkled fingers that couldn’t extend. And he was at that podium, and he said, “We have to be more than survivors. In Christ, we have to be victors.” And it had such an effect on me.

Mr. Marianes: Wow. Wow. Yeah.

Mr. Kastaris: Because life always gives us the stick, but do we get the right end of it? [Laughter] Are we…? We think that it’s the worst thing because we’re being punished or sick or whatever, but can we learn the lesson that is there for us to learn? I think that there’s a great deal of power in that, and a great deal of overcoming. As you said in your introduction, it’s the people that do things that make things happen. That’s where the faith is the most dynamic. And healing is just such a great demonstration of our ability to have faith.

One of my favorite quotes is that “When you pray, believe in your heart that what you ask for, it’s already been given to you, and it will be so.” So it’s more than just saying, “I believe in, I believe in, I believe in”—faith is more than a belief in something; it is a jump off a platform that we’ve been given that says, “I’m going to let go, and I’m going to deal with whatever happens, because I’m going in the right direction.” But I always feel like if we take one step towards what we intend on, towards what we want, God always takes two or three or ten or 20 steps towards us. So to be part of it, where you test that and see the dynamic process…

I just feel so lucky, because I couldn’t even blow into a tube that made a little plastic ball that weighed nothing go up in the air when I came out of surgery. In fact, my lungs collapsed when I was in the ICU, and they had taken the breathing tube out of me, and all these doctors came in. They were looking at all my charts, and they were whispering to each other. I know that something’s wrong; I said, “I know that something’s wrong.” You can tell! And so one of the surgical nurses there said, “Mr. Kastaris, you have to— I don’t care how much it hurts: you have to breathe deeper and more and harder, or else we’re going to lose you.” And for a second, I said, “What’s the date today?” I wanted to know the day I died.

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] That’s crazy, now! Did they appreciate why you were asking, or was that just kind of…?

Mr. Kastaris: I only did that for a while, because when there’s work to be done, I get on it.

Mr. Marianes: Okay, there you go.

Mr. Kastaris: It was hurting, and, you know, I always use an imagery, and I imagined that my lungs were like these two envelopes that were just closed and flat. I said, “I’ve got to get those pieces of paper separated,” and I got a little air in there, and they were all encouraging me, and I got to the point where they said, “Yes! Your numbers are better. You’re going to make it.” I mean, It was pretty dramatic. It was interesting, but it was the beginning of how I feel today, and I feel fantastic. I’ve got oxygen-rich blood going through my veins. I’ve got a new valve. Last week I walked every day of the week. I go to rehab three days a week, and I’ll just either ride my bike or walk on a treadmill on my own. I rode my bike an hour on Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon. I also became a vegan since. I mean, it was Lent anyway! I mean, it was already Lent anyway.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, prefect timing.

Mr. Kastaris: So I said I’m going to just try to go without animal products for Lent and see how that goes. And I… It’s a new… I’m having so much fun. I made vegan moussaka day before yesterday, and I created something that tastes so meaty with portobello mushrooms, crushed walnuts, and broccoli that’s toasted and stuff. Yeah, it’s amazing! There’s a million plants to pick from; there’s only so many meats. So it becomes another challenge, another adventure, and it’s really been a lot of fun. Like I say, I thought I was a disaster, but I might be living the healthiest life I ever could because of what happened. And I am committed to having my wheels on my bike rather than my chair for the next 25 years, Bill.

Mr. Marianes: There you go! That’s what I wanted to hear! I mean, look, Rip, normally I would interrupt and ask questions, but, brother, you were on a roll. You delivered the best homily I think I’ve heard in a very long time. I’m really, really grateful, but it’s how you ended it, to say that you’ve been through the ordeal. I mean, I know you went in with uncertainty, and you got a new tooth pulled, you got a new valve, you got a new heart, your lungs are better. Good Lord, COVID, so you got antibodies. Brother, you got it all.

And I will tell you that I don’t know how much you kept up with your own Facebook page and hosting and stuff like that, but I was part of that long army of people contributing in there, and I will tell you it was awesome to see everybody’s prayers and hope. I think the point that you said about how even when we feel like we are alone in our illness and our disease and our pain, we are not alone. Not only is the Lord with us, not only are the angels and the archangels and the seraphim and the cherubim, but all of the people whose lives we’ve touched and who are praying for us are part of it. You’ve just done such a beautiful, beautiful job of capturing that. I’m just grateful.

So what’s next? What’s next for Rip Kastaris. Let me just let you look to the future and tell me where you’re going from here in terms of living and continuing to live that calling, now that you’ve been given not that second chance, but that well-deserved revival.

Mr. Kastaris: I mean, I do feel like I have a responsibility now, that I do have another chance. I’ve had two friends that had heart attacks this month: one of them made it, and one of them did not.

Mr. Marianes: Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.

Mr. Kastaris: And so just to know that life is precious is a lesson in itself. It’s been difficult, Bill, because when you’re trying to heal and get your life back in order… Like if you’re at the hospital four days a week, I’m used to putting in really long hours and so on: you can’t do that, can’t stay up all night any more, because I’ve got to take care of myself. But I pray that— And I’m just about… I’ll be out of cardiac rehab soon, and I’m working on stuff all the time, where I can be helpful to others. I’m actually doing a film for our priest’s 25 years at our parish right now, making the film on that.

Mr. Marianes: Wonderful!

Mr. Kastaris: I’m involved at the metropolis level to be the judge for the— In our metropolis, when we do the oratorical festival—you also—in our metropolis, which is not true in all of them—you can chant or you can make iconography and be judged on that as well, which— They’re so kind to make sure that I get involved with that. Even though they’re in Chicago and I’m in St. Louis, they have me come up, and it’s such an honor to be part of that. We all, we’re the go-to guys for certain creative things with our parish, and not only on a local level, but at the metropolis level, and then at a national level. It’s always great to help Greek institutions like the Elios Society or the Hellenic Spirit, the National Hellenic Society. I get a chance to help the AHI with what they do in Washington, DC. And so I just pray that I continue to stay healthy so that I can express the life in me.

Art has always been my way… I couldn’t do my assignments, but I was drawing and painting every day. I had a little watercolor set from a friend of my daughter’s, and that was the kindest gift. It had all this watercolor paper and these watercolors. I was just making images of hearts, and almost diagrams of…

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, I saw some of them; they’re incredible.

Mr. Kastaris: It was a study; it was a meditation on the mechanics of what was going on inside of me, but also that idea of healing and of how the heart is so much more than just a muscle. I have an idea. I would love to— I’ve been posting the pictures of the food with the tomatoes and all the vegetables and all the—

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] You’re going to do a cooking show now? You’re going to go into cooking!?

Mr. Kastaris: I would love to do a book called Recipes and Art from a Mending Heart.

Mr. Marianes: Oh, I love it!

Mr. Kastaris: And it would be healing from the vegan kitchen.

Mr. Marianes: I love it!

Mr. Kastaris: It would be my story and kind of a diary of what happened. I mean, I can’t help but make. I made movies about what— But just short little films. It was snowing outside… But through art we can inspire, and that’s my job. That is my job, to bring a vision to people so that they can be empowered. Our icons are not the thing, but they’re a touchstone to eternity. They are the windows to heaven, and we can through art and through communication touch people at a level that nothing else can. When I show my art and icons, that series of broken angels that you talked about—

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, I love those.

Mr. Kastaris: —people come in and talk about the miraculous to me as if they’ve known me all their lives. I hear about the healings and about the special synchronistic kind of moments that they had in their lives, how their son or their daughter was about to be lost, but God had an effect on their situation, and that they’ll forever be grateful; and how all things come together. I just feel like I have both a responsibility and a job to continue to make images that touch that part of people’s lives, which is what art has always been. People may not realize this, but did you know that in all the museums in the world, 85% of the paintings and art pieces in those museums are about either the angelic or the heavenly realm of things?

Mr. Marianes: Really!? I did not know that.

Mr. Kastaris: Mm-hmm. And they used to say—anthropologists used to say that humans were the animals that made tools, but so many animals are using tools these days, they now define man as the animal who makes art.

Mr. Marianes: I love it.

Mr. Kastaris: We could see… I mean, we can retrace everything about who we are, I mean, especially being Greek Orthodox, because the imagery and the iconography is such an integral part of who we are and what we do. When I teach about the architecture and the art, Agia Sophia in itself is a musical instrument. When you say one little word, when you hum, when you drone, it bounces off of all those hard surfaces. The light moves and changes coming through those little windows as the incense, the smoke from the incense goes through there. It is a transformative experience where we have that revelation that—ah! There is more to me than this bag of bones that I was born in. There is—

And regardless of whether you, what you believe in, the Church is the place where the theologian Paul Tillich said, it’s the place where we consider issues of greatest concern; it’s where you think about what your relationship is to your wife, to your kids, to your grandparents that are no longer there, to your mom and dad. You look up at the saints; they look back at you. They’re not smiling; they’re concerned, they’re praying for us, but they’re all inviting us to be part of the internal community, to help each other, to love each other as Christ loved us. And every one of those saints is like a ball player that has a card that has statistics that we could never live up to, but we can still be part of that team. Anybody that can; anybody: we’re all invited to that party, and we’re all invited to contribute. Fortunately or unfortunately, it comes in the form of, “Pick up your mat and walk.”

Mr. Marianes: There you go! Well, brother, I’ve got to tell you, you have done such a beautiful job of sharing not only the vision of what you see in your immensely creative mind, but also the faith that your father and that the forefathers and grandfathers and everybody else and grandmothers and everybody else placed in you. And for you to still be inspiring others by sharing your incredible art is just going to be an amazing, amazing gift. I look forward to seeing that next series that you’re going to do.

For those of you that are interested, you can find Rip’s work at R-i-p Kastaris, K-a-s-t-a-r-i-s, RipKastaris.com. And you can see some of the amazing iconography he’s done, some of the incredible pictures and paintings, including modern features, the work that he did for the Olympic athletes. You can see the incredible job that he worked on that I was blessed to be working with him on, the “Kyklos: Circle of Glory,” the completion of that beautiful visual imagery of the Olympic movement. And, my brother, I hope and pray that you continue to have many, many, many years of useful and productive art. I thank God that you’re still with us, that you’re still kicking around. You’d better stay on your bicycle and eating your vegan diet and doing all the right things, because I’ve just got to see more of your beautiful art.

Thank you so much for everything you’ve done and everything you’re going to do. God bless you, my brother. Okay.

Mr. Kastaris: God bless you, Bill. You’re doing great, great work, and I appreciate you having me on your show. It’s an honor, and so good for us to reconnect again. Thank you so much.

Mr. Marianes: All right, well, God bless, and I hope you have a joyous wedding for your daughter coming up and your trip to Greece.

Mr. Kastaris: Thank you so much.

Mr. Marianes: Thank you very much. We’re going to take another short break right now, and when we return, my second guest, Tracy Namee, and I are going to continue the discussion of living your stewardship calling after a diagnosis of a serious illness. Again, we would welcome your calls or your questions at 1-855-AF-RADIO; that’s 1-855-237-2346. We’ll take a short break and be right back.

Mr. Marianes: So we want to welcome you back to Stewardship Calling and our first Wednesday calling, where my upcoming special guest is Tracy Namee as we continue our discussion of living your stewardship calling after a diagnosis of a serious illness. Now, Tracy is a lifelong resident of Kansas. She’s the youngest of five siblings and was raised at St. Mary Antiochian Church in Wichita, where one of her grandfathers was a founder, and another one served as a parish priest for several years. Tracy and her husband, Eric, who’s been a guest on my program here several times, have been married for 42 years, and as I remind him, the statute of limitations has expired. But they literally grew up together at St. Mary and began dating when they were both working in youth ministry together. So, see, there’s some marriages [which] can happen through Church youth ministry.

Tracy has three sons and six grandchildren. She was a Realtor and also a stay-at-home mother and a massive volunteer at her kids’ schools and her church. Since retiring from her Realtor gig in 2012, she’s served on several boards and volunteered with non-profits and continued a very, very active work schedule with her church. Tracy was blessed to be a teen sponsor at St. Mary for many years, and volunteered for the Wichita Area Sexual Assault Center as a survivor advocate for over three years. She’s also served as a board member for ICT SOS, a local organization whose mission is really focused on stopping human trafficking. She’s also served on the board of directors of The Treehouse, a ministry of Orthodox churches in Wichita who serve mothers and babies who are in difficult financial situations; and currently serves as the director of Christ The Savior Orthodox Christian [Academy] and the St. Mary parish council.

Now, the first time I got to work with Tracy was when she was the leader of the strategic planning efforts at her home parish at St. Mary. She then stayed on to work on implementing that strategic plan. In proof that no good deed goes unpunished, Tracy did such an amazing job with that strategic plan implementation, that when I finished the strategic plan for the Orthodox Christian Prison Ministry, her husband Eric threw her under the bus again to help manage the implementation of that strategic plan.

Her health was always good until she was diagnosed with breast cancer eight years ago. She underwent a mastectomy and follow-up reconstructive surgery, but as if that was not enough, she suffered a heart attack five years ago while her mother was in the hospital dying. And she ended up having to have a stent implanted the very same day that her mother passed from this life. So never letting her cancer or her heart attack stop her, Tracy continues to remain a dedicated and engaged Orthodox Christian who trusts in the Lord but continues to live her stewardship calling by serving the Lord’s Church and his ministries wherever and whenever she can.

So, Tracy, it’s so great to speak with you again and welcome you to Stewardship Calling here on Ancient Faith Radio.

Ms. Tracy Namee: Thank you so much, Bill. It’s good to be here.

Mr. Marianes: Now, I just gave your bio, too, but, gosh, there’s so much more to you than that simple bio. So why don’t you share with us a little bit more about your upbringing and background.

Ms. Namee: Wow, I don’t know. You pretty much covered it there. [Laughter] The only thing I think maybe I could add to that is that being raised in the Orthodox Church in Wichita and having stayed here for my entire life with the exception of a few years that my husband and I went away while he was at law school, I’ve been very blessed to be surrounded by people that I have grown up with and shared the faith with, which is really— I’m not someone who has been able to just move around a lot. For me, that’s been a real blessing. I’m still friends with people that I grew up with in the Church.

I’m very close to my family. My parents had five kids, but we were very spread out. My sister, my oldest sister, is 15 years older than I am, but she’s like my best friend. You know, they just always instilled in us faith and family, faith and family. Those were the two things. Even though we’re all very old now, that hasn’t changed.

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] Oh, come on. You’re not that old.

Ms. Namee: Eh, we are. We are. But it hasn’t changed at all. We still cherish every time that we’re together and plan outings together. So that faith and family is really what has been the defining part of my life for 65 years.

Mr. Marianes: And, you know, it’s so powerful that that actually came from your parents, of course, but also from the community around you, because the one thing that I observed as a visitor to St. Mary in Wichita is that— and again, I know that there’s a lot of family members at the parish; I think that everybody’s related to somebody somehow! But regardless of that, even the people that were new there were immediately embraced as if they were part of the family, and of course were embraced into the faith. So I think that has permeated not only your biological family, but also your church community family.

Ms. Namee: Absolutely, it has. And in fact, what you said is kind of funny, that everybody is related to everybody. When I was growing up, that was the case, but not now. Honestly, I would say there’s only maybe about 25% of us who are related to one another. My husband would probably disagree, because he doesn’t like my statistics, but honestly we have been so blessed with an amazing group of people who have joined us in our family. And you’re right, it’s an incredible family, and that feeling that I have for my own biological family is how I feel about my church family. So I credit my parents for that, honestly.

Mr. Marianes: Well, they obviously did a great job, and I’ll tell you—I don’t think I ever told you this before, but I use y’all as an example in many stories that I tell in the communities. But one of the ones that gets the most laughs was I remember right when we were getting ready to have one of our multi-day strategic planning retreats, and you had several of the strategic planning team members who had just given birth or who had not too long ago given birth, and they brought their babies, their infants, to some of the sessions. And it was kind of like— It was amazing, because I’d look up from the board or whatever the case may be, and there was a different person holding the brand-new baby. [Laughter] It wasn’t like a football that was being passed around; it was just like people were fighting to be the one to just hold and love on that baby, and I think that’s a testament to the community that you’ve created there. So God bless you for that.

Ms. Namee: Aw, thank you.

Mr. Marianes: And also, I kind of wanted a very high-level, the incredible, tumultuous journey you’ve had through health issues. So why don’t you share with everybody a little bit more with what you’re comfortable saying about the serious health issues that you’ve experienced and you’re dealing with.

Ms. Namee: Sure. You know, any woman who’s listening who’s old enough to have had mammograms knows that you go in, you do the thing, and they come back out and say, “Good to go. Come back next year.” Occasionally, they say, “Yeah, we need to take another look,” and that’s happened to me several times. I just: Okay. After the first time and everything’s fine, you don’t worry too much about it.

But about eight years ago, they came out and said, “We need to take another look,” and I rolled my eyes and said, “Okay.”

Mr. Marianes: “Here we go,” yeah.

Ms. Namee: “Here we go.” Did it again, and they sent me home and called me the next day and said, “We need you to come back. We’re just not sure.”

Mr. Marianes: Uh-oh.

Ms. Namee: So went back in. Again, I really wasn’t worried.

Mr. Marianes: You weren’t? Okay.

Ms. Namee: I just assumed— No, not yet. I went back in, and they said, “I think we’d better do a bit of a needle biopsy, just, you know, just to be sure.” And I can remember one of the things that really stuck with me. I knew it was going to be a few days before I found out, and I let my kids know. None of them lived in Wichita at the time, and my middle son said, “Okay, Mom. Call me. Call me the minute you hear.” I said, “No, I’m not worried about it. So if you hear from me, you’ll know that it’s not a good thing. But if you don’t hear from me, then there’s no problem.”

Mr. Marianes: Uh-oh, yeah, no news is good news kind of thing, right?

Ms. Namee: Exactly. I’m like: “Don’t worry about it. It’s going to be fine.” I called him when I found out, and his first thing was: “Mom. You’re calling me.” And that’s kind of when it hit me, because when my doctor called me, he said, “Where are you?” and I said, “I’m driving to the church. What do you need?” And he said, “Call me back when you’re not driving,” and I said, “Hey. I’m fine. I don’t fall apart easily. Just what is it?” And he said, “Well, this is a malignant cancer, and I need to get you—” Exactly what you said when you were introducing your first guest: “I have some bad news. And I need to get you in to see a specialist.”

Then I of course called my husband, and I did called my sons, and as I said, it wasn’t till my middle son said, “Mom, you’re calling me,” that I thought, “Oh. This isn’t a good thing, huh? This could be bad.” And at the time we had two parishioners, two women in our parish, who were going through or who had just gone through breast cancer, and their outcomes were very difficult. I knew it could be bad, but, to be really honest with you, Bill, I never really thought, “Okay, I’m going to fall apart.” I just: okay, my first question to him, my doctor: “What do we got to do?”

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, what’s next?

Ms. Namee: And that’s how I approached; it from the beginning, that’s how I approached it. When we did go in and I had to have a special MRI done and this whole thing, and they told me that it was large enough that I had to have a mastectomy and I was going to likely need radiation and chemotherapy, again, it was: Okay, let’s do this. Kind of putting on the armor and let’s go to battle.

Mr. Marianes: No doubts, no questions, no second—

Ms. Namee: No, I didn’t, to be honest with you. However, a very dear priest friend of ours found out about it and sent us some oil from the icon in Taylor, Pennsylvania.

Mr. Marianes: The weeping icon, yeah.

Ms. Namee: Right. I was anointed with that, and went into surgery expecting: this is going to be the beginning of a very long journey. When they went in, the tumor was— had shrunk enough that I was no longer going to have to have radiation and chemotherapy. It was on that cut-off when you… It’s just small enough. You still have to have a mastectomy, but it’s still small enough that… And that was a miracle to me. I mean, I knew I was going to have to have chemotherapy: this thing was big! And it wasn’t big any more; it was small enough that I was able to forego the chemotherapy. There was still a question about radiation; there’s a whole process you have to go through with genetic testing of your tumor and all these things. And I was just so blessed, because it all came back that I didn’t have to have any of that, and therein began my reconstructive process.

My brother is a plastic surgeon. He did not do my plastic surgery, but he was definitely the one who was there to guide me through what everything was going to entail. And honestly, I just never thought, “This is the end of the world.” I never thought, “It’s over.” It was really putting on the armor and: “Okay, let’s go to battle.” That’s how I felt.

Mr. Marianes: Again, maybe you can answer, maybe you can’t answer—I don’t know—why? Why did you think that way? I mean, this is not— You know the statistics. You’re highly educated, highly trained. You’ve lived and survived and watched people die of this; you’ve seen, you’ve read the stories. This isn’t like you were ignorant about all these things. You’re a very, very smart person. So what was it that caused you to have that “Okay, next step”?

Ms. Namee: Because, part of it— I talked to my mom who was in her late 80s at that time—well, actually she was in her 90s by that time. She had been through a lot of illnesses in her life, and Mom was a very, very faithful woman. It was really like talking to her a little bit and hearing that “Honey, you can only control what you can control.” Like you spoke earlier: this is out of your control, so if you want to stress and make it worse—I mean, we know stress has a terrible effect on the body—you can do that. Or you can realize that you’re in God’s hands. That may mean that you are healed; it may mean that you’re not. And that is a realization that I had to come to and a peace that I had to have about that and know that, no matter what, he loves me and I will be in his hands. Therefore, if I am going to get through this and be a survivor, then I’ve got a reason, and there’s got to be work that he’s got for me to do.

Mr. Marianes: Bingo.

Ms. Namee: And if I’m not, then he’s ready for me. And that was how I approached it, Bill.

Mr. Marianes: That is so powerful and that is so awesome. Was there any…? Did the medical experts have any explanation for how the tumor had decreased in size other than the anointing of the myrrh and the miracle?

Ms. Namee: No, I don’t think so. I mean, I was pretty out of it, and Eric was the one who was there getting all the information, but no. I had had that sonogram very shortly before the surgery, and then the anointing. And so there was no mistake between the sonogram and the MRI that this was the size it was. And then when the surgeon went in, there was no mistake that, well, this is the size it is now. No, there is—I don’t believe they had any explanation for him at all. You know, I just never asked because I just trusted that God… As I said, if I was going to continue on this planet, then I needed to get to work: roll up my sleeves.

I had just pretty much finished raising my children, and it was… I was trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing. I did lots of volunteer work at the church, and like you said I worked at the school or whatever, but there had to be something more than that. If I was going to be here, then I needed to ask him: What is it that you want me to do? And that’s the journey I’ve been on for eight years.

Mr. Marianes: But along this journey of yours, after a miracle— Look, I don’t need medical science to confirm this; I don’t need theologians to confirm this: I’m declaring it a miracle because there’s no other explanation in your story. As you are dealing with the difficulties that your blessed mother was going through, something else got shipped your way. Tell us a little bit about that.

Ms. Namee: Yeah, my mom was just such an amazing human being, and when she was starting to decline—at 95, I might add…

Mr. Marianes: Ah! You know, that bodes well for you. I mean, all things considered—I’m not a geneticist, but that’s good news.

Ms. Namee: Yeah, that’s good news. But she was still going to the gym; she still drove. This woman was a force of nature. She started to really decline just in the middle of that year, five years ago. She really wanted to go to Taylor, Pennsylvania. I knew traveling was going to be hard for her, but my sister and I decided that’s what we were going to do, and so for her birthday and Mother’s Day, which were in May, we said, “That’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to take you to Taylor.” So in June, we made a trek to Taylor, Pennsylvania, with my mom.

Originally, she expected—she told us that her thought was: “I’m going to go and get healed of all of these ailments that I have.” She had several. And we were so… It was such a miraculous place to go, and I know Nikki’ll talk about that a little bit. When they anointed my mother—when the priest anointed her, he didn’t drop the oil into her hands from the icon. He actually dropped it on her head.

Mr. Marianes: Oh! Mm.

Ms. Namee: And she said afterwards… We were very of course all in awe of what we had experienced, and on the way home from New York—we had stopped in New York and seen my son… On the way home, she was really feeling physically poorly, and I said, “Mom, I know you didn’t get the healing that you were looking for,” and she said, “No, you’re right; I didn’t. Something else happened.”

Mr. Marianes: What!?

Ms. Namee: And after that time, she was the most peaceful and accepted her end-of-life illnesses with such grace and peace. She just continued throughout the summer to suffer, in and out of the hospital, and finally in September, after being in and out of the hospital, I don’t know, five or six times, the doctor said, “You can keep doing this to her, in and out, in and out”—she still was very cognizant—“or you can let her decide what she wants to do: if she wants to continue all these invasive measures.”

So they spoke to her, and she said, “Call my children in.” And basically said, “Kids, I’m done. I’m ready. So we’re not going to keep up all this medication.” And that she really credited—and my sister would agree—to Taylor, to what she experienced in her heart. More of a… Rather than a physical healing, it was more of a: “I know now that I’m ready and what God needs from me.”

Mr. Marianes: Yeah. Actually, she got what she needed—

Ms. Namee: She did.

Mr. Marianes: It was different from what she thought that she needed, but God said, “I’ve got this.”

Ms. Namee: That’s it exactly. That’s exactly what she said: “I was healed in a different manner, one that I can’t even explain to you.”

So we moved her up to hospice at the hospital. We were at the hospital. They thought they would have her there a couple of days and then move her home, once they got her off the cocktail of medications she had been on. And within the first couple of days, we knew we weren’t going to get home. She was in such pain, they were really having to give her too much pain-killer. My sisters and I spent the night with her in the hospice room. My brothers would come up and then go home. It was the night when we knew that she was near death, and she was no longer talking to us. We were all three asleep on these little cots and the bed on the floor. I was awakened at about one o’clock in the morning with just horrible, horrible—kind of what your first guest said.

Mr. Marianes: What Rip said? Yeah.

Ms. Namee: That. “What is—? I can’t— My chest feels like it’s going to explode.” I got up, and I tip-toed out of the room, and I’m walking around hospice. One of the nurse’s aides saw me and said, “Are you okay?” and I said, “I don’t know.” She went and got the nurse, and by the time the nurse got there, I was not okay. So she went back to the room and awakened my oldest sister and said, “I need you to come down to the ER with me, with your sister.” And my oldest sister looked at my sister sleeping next to her, my next sister, and then looked at my mom sleeping in the bed, and said, “No, it’s my mom.”

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] Right.

Ms. Namee: And the nurse was like: “No, honey, your sister.” And so down we went, and we had to go to the ER. Long story: they couldn’t figure out what happened, tried to tell me I had an anxiety attack: my mother’s dying. And I was like: “Well, that’s just not who I am. I don’t do that.”

Mr. Marianes: Yeah. “I’ve survived cancer, and I approached it straight-on, said, ‘What’s next? Let’s go.’ ” Yeah.

Ms. Namee: Exactly! This isn’t me! So basically they said, “We want to keep you,” and I said, “No. Heck no. My mom is dying upstairs. I’m right upstairs if I need to come back.” And went back up there about five o’clock in the morning, went to bed, and about seven-thirty, quarter to eight, we all woke up, and the nurse came in and said, “Your mom is very near,” and she passed within about five minutes.

I said to my sister, “Please, I don’t want to talk about this when my brothers get up here, because Mom just died and we don’t know whether that was an anxiety attack. Let’s just be quiet, okay.” She said, “I will be quiet on one condition, and that is that you go and get—”

Mr. Marianes: Okay, we’re negotiating.

Ms. Namee: Yeah. “You go get the test that the doctor wanted you to get that shows whether or not you had a heart attack.”

Mr. Marianes: Fair enough. That’s fair.

Ms. Namee: Fair enough. That’s fair; I can do that. On my way home, leaving the hospital, I am almost in my driveway, and I remember my sister’s words, and I thought, “Oh, man!” [Laughter] I called my doctor and he said, “Come on in. Let’s see what it is,” took my blood. I went back home. We went to the mortuary. I got a call in the middle of the process. My doctor: “How are you?” I’m like: “I’m fine except that I’m planning my mother’s funeral. What do you want?”

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, “I’m at a funeral parlor for my mom. What do you expect?”

Ms. Namee: And he’s like: “I need you to go to the hospital right now. You had a heart attack.”

Mr. Marianes: Uh-oh.

Ms. Namee: And I said, “Okay, but can I finish planning my mom’s funeral?” And: “No. You may not.”

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] Tracy! “You’re not negotiating! Sorry, no!”

Ms. Namee: I felt fine! But I went to the hospital. You know, it was just an odyssey from that point on. Had the stent put in, had a terrible reaction to the nitroglycerin, was in the hospital for two-and-a-half days, didn’t get to plan my mother’s funeral, and got out just in time to be at her funeral. And so it was a bit of a roller-coaster there, and it took me a long time to mourn my mother because of that. But, again, that wake-up that: “You’re still here; what are you going to do with it? What’s your plan, girlfriend? What’s your plan?” And my plan has been to dive into whatever he puts in front of me, and he’s put a lot.

Mr. Marianes: Oh! Yeah, so here’s the thing. I cut that deal with God a few years ago, too, where I basically said, “I’m going to say yes to whomever you put in front of me, so you’d better be careful whom you put in front of me, because it’s your fault!”

Ms. Namee: Exactly.

Mr. Marianes: So let’s use that as the segue over here, Tracy. You have dealt with both of the two biggies: heart and cancer. You’ve dealt with the death of your mother. You’ve dealt with untold other things, whatever. You received a miracle of anointment, and yet somehow you’ve kept your faith throughout all of it, you kept your stroke, one day at a time, one step at a time, one step forward.

So what is it? Do you have a sense yet of what you think the Lord is continuing calling you to do right now? What’s next, at least? What’s on the agenda?

Ms. Namee: Well, I think if you asked Eric he would say—

Mr. Marianes: Nah, I’m not asking him. I’m asking you! [Laughter] I don’t care what he thinks, because you’re the boss of you.

Ms. Namee: —to help with all of his endeavors. But I think that… I’ve spent many of the last five years, I spent three of them working, as you said, at the sexual assault center, and it really opened my eyes to a lot of very sad things in our world, and because I feel like I’m a pretty strong person—

Mr. Marianes: You are!

Ms. Namee: —it’s allowed me to help people in those situations where they can’t be strong, where it’s just too horrific to be strong. And so that has been something that has been extremely meaningful to me and that I felt that was part of a calling to me.

Mr. Marianes: That’s awesome.

Ms. Namee: And then my youth ministry. I feel very connected to the youth that I work with and the impact that I hope just being that relationship person with them has for their long-term Orthodox faith… Ultimately, and I laugh about Eric, but I couldn’t probably have gone through all of this without his hand at my back, just that strength that he gives, to say, “You’ve got this; you’ve got this. And we’ve got this together.” So having someone— And that was part of the reason I wanted to do the volunteer work that I did at the assault center, was that a lot of people—well, 90% of the people that I had in the hospital—didn’t have anybody with them. They didn’t have somebody at their back going: You’ve got this; either because they were too ashamed to have anybody come with them, or because they didn’t have anyone. So I could be that person who could put the hand on their back and say, “We’ve got this. We’ve got it.”

And so that’s been part of it. I’m still searching, Bill. I don’t think he’s done with me.

Mr. Marianes: Good!

Ms. Namee: I think he has more that he has, expecting me to find that he wants me to do, and I pray for that every day, that he shows me what his will for my life is, because I am still here. By his grace, I’m still here.

Mr. Marianes: Well, the work you have done is extraordinary. The work you continue to do on a daily basis is exemplary. Your dedication and steadfast faith is just really also an example. I’m grateful that you were willing—I know I had to do a little arm-twisting, but I’m grateful that you were willing to serve witness, because I think, Tracy, just as you talked about providing that family environment in your wonderful parish and with your own family, and now creating that loving environment for those women who are dealing with things where they don’t have the rest of their family around them, I think that is a continuation of the values that were implanted by your parents and your grandparents and the faithful around you and that you’re continuing to do with your children and now your grandchildren. So God bless you for that!

Ms. Namee: Thank you.

Mr. Marianes: But I’m going to give you something that Eric probably never gives you, and that’s the final word. So are there any final words that you’d like to offer?

Ms. Namee: Ohh! Bill, that man may not give me the final word, but I take it, honey, all the time.

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] I love it!

Ms. Namee: No, my final word would be that every person that I encounter, I know that they are dealing with something. It may not be a physical health issue, it may not be a mental health issue or a spiritual health issue, but everyone is dealing with something. And even if the only thing I can do is be a presence, that is a positive presence, that is a loving presence, then I think that is my ultimate goal: is to look at every person and to see beyond what they’re just showing me. And to also try to see Christ in everyone, and to try to have everyone see Christ in me, because without that, I mean, really what else is there? There is nothing. So that would be my final word, that I’m grateful for this gift that he’s given me. I hope that I don’t ever waste it and that I am a good steward of the talents and the time, and that I continue to be open to whatever he puts in front of me.

Mr. Marianes: And that is ultimately the direction of a good steward, is to take the gifts and the opportunities that God gives you and to fulfill them for his greater glory, and, in your case, to be the actual personification of John 13:44: “By this they will know that you are my disciples, that you have love for one another.” So, Tracy, I can’t thank you enough again for everything you have done, for everything you are doing, and I’m sure now for everything you’re going to do. I thank you also for having the courage to come forward and share what are very personal and difficult stories. I thank you for the courage that you’ve demonstrated and for the faith that you’ve modeled and for everything else that you do. You get the rest of the evening off, okay, so have a cocktail.

Ms. Namee: I appreciate it. Oh! That sounds good.

Mr. Marianes: I’m going to take a short break right now, and when we return, my third and final guest, Nikki Bober, is going to be here to kind of wrap this all up together as we discuss how we go forward in living our stewardship calling after a diagnosis of a serious illness. Again, we would welcome any calls at 1-855-237-2347, 1-855-AF-RADIO. So let’s take a short break, and we’ll be right back.

Mr. Marianes: Welcome back to Stewardship Calling and our first Wednesday program, and the third and final segment, where my special guest, Nikki Bober, and I will be discussing how we live our stewardship callings after a diagnosis of a serious disease or illness.

Now, we’re going to complete our swing through the Midwest, from Kansas to Missouri and now to Ohio, because Nikki was actually born in Akron, Ohio, and baptized at the Annunciation Akron Greek Orthodox Church. But at the age of seven, her family left the Orthodox Church and became Protestant Evangelicals. It wasn’t until about 25 years later that her family returned to Orthodoxy. It was her mother who had heard a voice in a dream saying, “It’s time to go back and feed your people.” She didn’t say anything to Nikki’s father, but two days later her father told her mother that he had had a dream, and, lo and behold, it was the same one about going back and feeding the people. And so they returned.

Now, Nikki met and married her husband, Dr. John, in 1984, and they’ve been married for almost 38 years. They have two children who are also both active in ministries at Annunciation GOC. While living away from Akron, she was actually active in ministries in the GOA in Columbus, at an OCA church in Kansas City and Columbus, and an Antiochian Church in Wichita, Kansas—I wish this girl would make up her mind. No, but seriously, she’s been actively engaged in Church work everywhere she goes. The Bober family returned to Annunciation Akron in 2007.

Nikki is a very active and enthusiastic board member of the Orthodox Christian Women of Akron, which is a pan-Orthodox organization since 2008. She’s served as president twice, from 2013-15 and ‘19-21. She’s participated in book studies each year, and was also instrumental in bringing some of the great Lenten retreat speakers, such as my fellow Ancient Faith Radio colleagues, Fr. Barnabas Powell and Fr. Dr. Nicholas Louh. Nikki’s been a board member of the Philoptochos at Annunciation for more than ten years, and she’s chaired the very successful backpack program for the past ten years. She was instrumental in leading the drive to gather school supplies for the children also. She’s actively involved in the program to donate furniture to Harry Donovan, Jr., Valor Home, which is a home for homeless veterans. She’s also a member of the Daughters of Penelope, Annunciation GOC, for about ten years, and served as co-president for about two years.

And she worked out about three times a week. She’s a very, very healthy individual. She had a little bit of IBS, but, okay, that was clearly understandable given the issue her mother was facing in the hospital for an extended period of time before she passed away. But right after Thanksgiving, she started having a little lingering dry cough. With all the COVID restrictions, doctor visits were only by telehealth, and the primary doctor treated her for bronchitis. But nothing seemed to help, and nothing seemed to solve the lingering cough. So finally she got a chest X-ray that showed fluid in the lungs. After subsequent CT scans and bloodwork and an MRI, a lung tumor was discovered.

It wasn’t until February 18, 2021, that Nikki Bober’s life changed dramatically, as her oncologist informed her that she had Stage IV metastatic lung cancer. The main tumor was in the lung, and there was a lesion in the L5 vertebrae, which caused horrific pain. Now, obviously, to say this was a shock was an understatement, but kind of the logical question that you would raise to an oncologist is: “How did I go from being totally fit and having never smoked to having Stage IV lung cancer?” But as it turned out, Nikki was told that 20% of the people who have lung cancer never smoked. And, soberly, my guest tonight was told that the median survival period for this disease was only about eight months with no treatment, or three years with treatment.

Lung cancer can typically go to the brain if it’s left to itself, but in Nikki’s case, the biopsy and the MRI of the brain and the spine showed that she had not yet experienced any spread of that cancer. So in march she underwent ten radiation treatments that proved to be only one of 15 to 20% of the people who actually qualified to take chemo orally—but don’t think that that’s a great privilege, because she took about 20 pills daily, including a lot of pain medication, and is now currently taking chemo pill and taking infusions as a method which strengthens the bones.

But in amazing good news, in June of 2021, one of her first CT scans showed that the lesion on the L5 was gone, and the main tumor in the lung had shrunk by 50%. Subsequent CT scans, I believe, have shown that there hasn’t been continued growth, as we continue to pray for a miracle. So, without further ado, it’s my great privilege to invite and welcome to Stewardship Calling and Ancient Faith Radio another good friend of mine, Nikki Bober. Nikki, are you still with us?

Ms. Nikki Bober: I’m still here, Bill.

Mr. Marianes: All right. I know it’s a long night for you and stuff like that.

Ms. Bober: Oh, no, it’s fine.

Mr. Marianes: Just like I did with the other two, I gave your bio, but I want to give you a right of refusal here to offer up anything else about your journey or your CV or something about your upbringing and your background.

Ms. Bober: Well, you know, you pretty much covered a lot of it. Like you say, I was out of the Church. I did the boomerang thing. Unlike Rip and unlike Tracy, cradle Orthodox: stayed with it. Yes, my family left the Church when I was seven years old. They became “born-again Christians.” We went the Evangelical route. But yet at the same token, Bill, my family, too, though… My parents, before we left the Church, they were Sunday school teachers; they taught the teens. They were also very involved. At one point we were even involved in a prison ministry. I think I was twelve years old. At the time, we here in Akron… My mom and I would go into… They let you go into the jail, into see the— into the cells actually at that time. I remember as a kid that my mom and I went to see the women, and then my dad was over on the other side of the jail and went to visit the men. We did that for a number of years, and then my dad, he eventually continued the prison ministry.

Mr. Marianes: Ah, that’s wonderful!

Ms. Bober: He used to travel… What, this is back in the ‘70s, I believe. Yeah, this was back in the mid-‘70s. And in Cleveland, there was a former football player, Bill Glass, and he played for the Browns. He did like Chuck Colson and had the prison ministry thing. So my dad was part of the Bill Glass ministries, actually, and he used to travel around, and he’d go into the prisons and did with the ministry, and all at his own expense. Then eventually when his health limited him and he couldn’t travel any more, he began to— he would correspond with inmates.

Mr. Marianes: Wonderful.

Ms. Bober: At one point, he was corresponding with over 100 inmates at one point. Ministry has I guess been in my DNA, you know, with my parents: a sense that we were doing something. I’ve always felt blessed and wanted to give back, and it was just sort of second nature for me.

But I have to tell you, though, too, that when we did come back to the Church, after 25 years, and we didn’t speak Greek at home, so I didn’t really understand. I could understand some of the Greek, some of the language, but not fluently. So coming from an Evangelical and then back into the Orthodox Church, it was quite an adjustment, I have to tell you. But we knew that that’s where God wanted us, and we knew… It was actually like a regrowth for me, because I basically was starting out almost like a convert, even though I was a cradle Orthodox.

Mr. Marianes: Well, it had been so long, sure!

Ms. Bober: Oh, absolutely. And then like you say, after we came back to the Church, it was a year later that I met my husband, and he’s a convert. Actually, I would… I really learned more through him, and once we were married… And actually when we were first married, we lived in Kansas City for about 15 months. He was still doing his residency there. He was attending—we attended an OCA parish there, and that was the first time, Bill, that I actually heard the Liturgy all in English.

Mr. Marianes: Yes.

Ms. Bober: I have to tell you, it was like: “Oh! Is this what they’ve been saying all this time?” [Laughter] It really… It was like God was speaking to me or something. It just really resonated with me, and I felt like I was home.

Mr. Marianes: Wow!

Ms. Bober: From then on, yes, I did, in whatever parish we were in, work in different various ministries or volunteered. Then once I had the kids, I’d volunteer at their school. I was blessed to be a stay-at-home mom. Again, giving back, it was second nature to me, whether it was at the kids’ school or in a church or in whatever committee I was on. It just felt good to give back. That was just something that was just instilled in me from a young age. So that’s what I did. It’s been a blessing. It’s wonderful to do and to help others, but I’ve got to tell you, it’s so rewarding… I just feel more blessed and more rewarded to be able to do that.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah. It’s funny you say that, because that is true of anybody who really understands service and gives of themselves. There’s almost sometimes a little bit of a guilt feeling. “Gosh, I feel so good that I’m able to help somebody. Should I be feeling this good?” and stuff like that.

Ms. Bober: Right!

Mr. Marianes: But you’ve been through a lot on the health spectrum in a very short period of time. What do you want to share about that journey that might be helpful and enlightening to individuals?

Ms. Bober: I’m still going through the journey, but…

Mr. Marianes: You are, yeah.

Ms. Bober: But like I said, it started out with this dry cough. It was Thanksgiving of 2020, and it continued… I was treated, like you said, for the bronchitis. Nothing helped. We did a second round of antibiotics. At that time, with COVID, it was telehealth; you couldn’t go into the office. The doctors did the best they could as far as, you know: “Here’s what we think you have. We’ll diagnose it. We’ll treat you for this.”

So finally my husband, who is a physician, he said, “You know”—this was in January of ‘21—“Honey, if you’re not better…” I mean, I would go have these coughing jags. He’s like: “If you’re not better by the end of the month, we’re going to call the doctor back, and we’re going to push for this chest X-ray.” I was like: “Okay. That’s fine, whatever.” And so that’s what we did. I wasn’t any better, and it was like that first week in February—I believe it was the fifth—that we went to the doctor. She was—again, we’ve been patients of hers for many years, since we moved back to Akron. She went along with it. We went next door, did the chest X-ray. This was the thing: it was on a Friday, and you know how they put all the results in your patient portal?

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, that whole portal thing. Yeah.

Ms. Bober: Well, you know, it’s good news and bad news, too, there as well. So, Saturday morning, I’m looking, and I get the email that: Oh, I have a message in my portal. So I looked it up and everything, and all I saw—it didn’t say— What it said was, basically, “Fluid in the lung.” They called it a pleural effusion, and it was the right lung. I thought, “What the heck is pleural effusion?”

Mr. Marianes: Yeah. “English, please!”

Ms. Bober: Yeah, exactly! I knew it didn’t sound good. I went— My husband was doing some work in his office here at home. I went in; I’m like: “Can you come in here? I got the results. Can you translate this for me? What is this? It doesn’t sound good, but I’m not sure how not-good this is?” So he looked and he said, “Well, you know, it’s basically the fluid in the lung.” It was a few days later, then on that Tuesday the doctor actually—my primary doctor calls us. She’s like: okay—at this point she was going to refer me to a pulmonologist. Looking back on this, even this was kind of a blessing, because at the time, again, due to COVID, the pulmonologist—you couldn’t get into them! They were just— And that’s exactly what happened. I called the one doctor, ended up leaving a message. They really didn’t call back. Again, looking back on it, it was a blessing, because then it would have probably prolonged me finding out and the diagnosis, exactly.

So, yeah, subsequent tests and things like that, I had gone to another doctor, because I was also starting to have the pain in my hip and leg. So she— I went to her, and she’s the one who started with: “You know what? This doesn’t sound so good.” By this time I had also had bloodwork, so the bloodwork was a little off. We had now the chest X-ray, and then what I was saying about the pain. She goes: “You know, I think we’d better do an MRI. So hold on. I’m going to have my staff book an MRI for you.” I was like: “Okay.” So I went—it was that same day, we did the MRI.

Mr. Marianes: Oh, good. At least you got in!

Ms. Bober: Oh, yes!

Mr. Marianes: And how soon before they got you the results? Because I know things were crazy during those periods of time. Was it a long delay?

Ms. Bober: No! It was right away.

Mr. Marianes: Oh, okay.

Ms. Bober: It was really amazing, looking back on this now. It’s almost like God’s hand was even in that, because I went for the MRI, and then actually she called later and she— It was either that night or the next day, but it was pretty much right away, and she was like: “Okay, here’s what it’s showing, but what I want you to do is I think you’d better go to the emergency room and get yourself admitted and have some more tests, because it’s showing something there.” So my husband— Actually, we came home, and I thought, “Okay, so I’ll pack a little bag and we’ll go to the emergency.” My husband in the meantime thought, “You know, I’d better call my primary doctor, Dr. Keith, and just sort of keep her up to… abreast of what’s happening, just as a courtesy.” So he did that, and, Bill, honestly, she called back within 15 minutes on her cell phone, and she said, “Oh, no, no, no. You’re not going to the emergency room.” Again, with COVID and everything else: “You’re not going there.” She wanted me— There’s another place, like a clinic, a subsidiary for the hospital, where she says, “I’m going to have you set up for two more CAT scans.” It’s less crowded there; it’s a mile or two from my home. She said, “You go there. I already have you booked for six o’clock for two CAT scans.” So we go—

Mr. Marianes: And so they did it all right there…

Ms. Bober: All right there!

Mr. Marianes: Right there, quickly. And then how soon after that did they give you the final conclusion?

Ms. Bober: Oh my gosh, a couple hours later. This was also incredible.

Mr. Marianes: Okay, right away.

Ms. Bober: Yeah, we were there until eight-thirty.

Mr. Marianes: So now, all of a sudden, because this is really hard, but all of a sudden you get what is really not good news all the way down the road.

Ms. Bober: Oh, no way.

Mr. Marianes: Do you remember what your reaction was at that point in time?

Ms. Bober: I was in shock. I didn’t know what to think. I was really— It was almost like being numb, like I was just going through the motions like a little robot: Okay, this is what they want me to do, and I’m going to take my CAT scans, and I’m going to do this. And then she—my primary care doctor—ended up calling us. So I had the scans at six; we were there until eight-thirty at night. At nine o’clock at night, she calls us back; she calls my husband on his cell phone, and she said, “Okay. Here’s what’s going on.” And she did say at that point what it showed: the tumors. She goes: “Okay”—this was on a Thursday. She says, “I’ll call you in the morning, but I’m going to call an oncologist friend of mine, colleague, and I’m going to get you in to see him tomorrow,” which was like—

Mr. Marianes: Another miracle, yeah.

Ms. Bober: Exactly! If I would have been done that myself, it probably would have been weeks. She got me in immediately. You know, it just so happened, too—well, not “just so happened,” but… She called us at seven-thirty that morning and said, “Okay, your appointment is at two o’clock.” This was February 18 by this point. And that morning my husband and I—you mentioned that I chair the backpack program, and I’ve done it for ten years—I had to go to church to finish putting some— Again, because of COVID, I didn’t have my usual crew. It was just John and I. So we had to finish that, and then go do that in the morning and go to my appointment. But when I got to church, at this point, we saw Fr. Jerry before we went and did this, finished my project, and was telling him everything. And he goes: “You know what, Nikki? Even though it’s metastasized, or if it’s metastasized, there’s so much out there. We’re just going to do… Don’t worry about it right now” kind of thing. He goes: “Do you want to go into church? I said, “Absolutely.”

At this point, I was a little teary, yet I didn’t really break down actually. But I was a little teary, and I guess afraid of— beyond numb. What’s going to happen? What’s the doctor going to say? All that.

Mr. Marianes: Sure, that’s a normal response at that point, yeah.

Ms. Bober: But you know, Bill, looking back… When Fr. Jerry took us into church—and he did a small paraklesis service with me—

Mr. Marianes: Beautiful.

Ms. Bober: And I had— It was like I had that, and I have to tell you. I felt—I actually felt peace. So when… This was ten, eleven o’clock in the morning, and my appointment with the oncologist was at two, and I really was—I was peaceful about it. It really kind of sounds strange, I guess, but it was like: “Well, it is what it is, and let’s just go find out and deal with it.”

Mr. Marianes: So one of the keys here that comes from your testimony that’s been echoing the testimony from Tracy and Rip is the importance of using the opportunities of the challenges that you have to find the peace of prayer and to find that opportunity to reconnect in a faithful way.

Ms. Bober: Oh, absolutely.

Mr. Marianes: Now, you also have an anointing story, too, don’t you? I don’t want to disrupt the sequence, but I think that’s really important to get in there at this point.

Ms. Bober: Yeah. Oh, no, absolutely. So Tracy is my best friend, is like a sister to me, because also— And we got back— We lived in Wichita for 15 years, and that’s when Tracy and I became really close, did a lot with the Church together. But in fact Tracy was my very first phone call. The diagnosis and everything was on a Friday. On Saturday morning… And actually, before I even made the call, I said to my husband, “You know what? I can’t control this. I don’t know where this is going to lead, but I just have to put all this in God’s hands. I don’t know what else to do.”

Mr. Marianes: Good for you. Yeah, that’s right.

Ms. Bober: And so we started to make the phone calls, and even before I called some of the other family members—of course, my kids knew, but my very first phone call was to Tracy. I have to tell you, there were two things— Well, she said many things, but the two things she did say was… She goes: “I’m going to email my friend, Fr. John Kowalczyk, in Pennsylvania, and have him send you some holy oil, so you can get anointed.” I’m like: “Oh, that would be great.” Then she says to me: “Okay, I know what you’re going through, going to go through. I know the path you’re going to be taking.” And then she said, “You know, Satan is going to want to take you down, and you can’t let him take you. He’s going to want to take you to the dark places, and you can’t let him do that.” And you know what? That has stuck with me.

Mr. Marianes: Right. Good for you.

Ms. Bober: I still hear that. So the whole thing now— Like you said, in March, I had the TENS treatments, of radiation. And the doctor wanted to the radiation before I did the chemo. So I was actually supposed to start chemo that first week in April, but the kids and I and my husband, the four of us, we had planned a trip to Taylor, Pennsylvania, like Tracy took her mom. We, with my kids’ work schedules and everything, we were going to go that weekend; I think it was like the ninth, tenth, eleventh, that weekend in April. So we had it all planned, and I called… I thought, “You know, the doctor had told me about the chemo pill that he was going to put me on, but he also said about all the side-effects from the chemo, one of which was GI issues.”

Mr. Marianes: Right, of course.

Ms. Bober: And I thought, “Okay, I have enough problems; I don’t need anything else. And I know I have to get to Taylor, Pennsylvania.” So I called the oncologist’s office and I talked to the nurse, and I said, “Can you talk to Dr. Clifford? I’d like to… I have a thing this weekend that I’m going to. I really need to make this pilgrimage. Can you ask him if I can start the chemo on Monday after we get back? But please tell him the importance that it’s not like I want to delay chemo because I’m going on vacation. I have to do… I feel like I have to do this pilgrimage, and I just want to delay the chemo.” So she calls me back in a couple hours and she said, “Oh, that’s no problem; you can start it on Monday.” I’m like: “Oh, thank you, Lord! Okay!”

Mr. Marianes: So you made it there, and when you were there, tell us about that experience real quickly. I know we’re running out of time, but I want to make sure to get this in.

Ms. Bober: Oh my gosh, Bill, just like Tracy said, and with her mom… It was amazing. We went there. The aroma… The scent of myrrh… It was like roses. It smelled like roses, the aroma. I was a little afraid. After church, after Liturgy… So we’re there at Liturgy, and I wasn’t sure of the procedure. Do we stay? When do I get anointed? My husband did email the priest there to let him know what we were doing and we’d like to be anointed, but still we didn’t know what should we do after Liturgy was over. So when we went up after Liturgy and for the antidoron, I said something to one of the deacons, I think, and said, “Okay, this is who we are and we’d like to be anointed.” And he said, “Oh, well, just stay here to the side, and when everybody else is done, we’ll anoint you.” And that’s what they— And it was just amazing to see up close. You could see the tears streaming, or where the tears had streamed.

Mr. Marianes: Right, from the icon. Did you remember what it felt like when you were anointed? Do you remember feeling anything in particular or just even that stillness?

Ms. Bober: Yes, the stillness and the peace. I felt—I just felt a blessing. It wasn’t like I felt like: “Oh, I’m going to be healed” or whatever. I just felt this enormous peace that… It was almost like: “Well, everything’s going to be okay” kind of thing. However it worked out, it was going to be—I felt okay. Yeah, so I mean from the get-go I told the oncologist: I said, “You know, I’ll do what I have to do, but I’m going to tell you right now: I’m going to be a patient of yours for a long time.” [Laughter]

Mr. Marianes: There you go! And indeed your prediction has proven to be true, because as I said… Any new news? Are things continuing to be well and controlled under the circumstances?

Ms. Bober: Things are under control. I go for my CAT scans every three months. Actually, my next one is scheduled for next week, for May 13, and then I go back—

Mr. Marianes: And you’re going to let me know how that comes out.

Ms. Bober: Oh, absolutely. But you know what, Bill? There’s been, like you said, the lesion on the L side is gone.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, what a miracle.

Ms. Bober: The main tumor has shrunk by 50%.

Mr. Marianes: What a miracle. That’s a miracle.

Ms. Bober: And it’s dormant. It’s not growing, and it hasn’t shrunk any more, but… And I feel great! I really do. I feel normal. I feel healthy. And in fact I told my husband and a few other close friends that if I didn’t know any better… I mean, there’s times that I feel so good that I forget that I have cancer.

Mr. Marianes: Oh, thank God. Thank God. One thing: did I read accurately that you shot a hole-in-one this past week? Is that true?

Ms. Bober: Oh, yeah! We went into a— Well, miniature golfing, Bill, not regular golf.

Mr. Marianes: Hey, listen. You don’t have to get into all those details, okay? I mean, we’re going to give you a hole-in-one on the golf course. That’s all good; it’s all good.

Ms. Bober: Well, actually, the one time we went, I had one hole-in-one, and then the second time we went to a different course, I had two holes-in-one!

Mr. Marianes: There you go! We’re going to start you on a golfing career.

Ms. Bober: Oh, there you go!

Mr. Marianes: All right, Nikki, before I let you go, I just want— Is there anything that you can share in the form of inspiration to people who are struggling or who may be going through something like this that you would like to share before we let you go with our deep appreciation?

Ms. Bober: Oh, yes, definitely. You know, from the beginning, besides these phone calls to friends, I went ahead and I emailed our presvytera. We have a prayer chain within the church. I emailed Presvytera Helene and said, “Okay, here’s the scoop. Can you share this with the prayer warriors? I need prayer.”

Mr. Marianes: That’s good. Again, just like Rip said, having this army of people praying for you is a wonderful thing. So those of you who are listening and may be suffering or may be experiencing something like this, learn from the lesson of these three wonderful people, that asking for prayer is a beautiful, wonderful way you can do it. There will be all too many people willing to do that. So that’s a beautiful thing. What else did— What other suggestions would you have for people that they would consider doing in a circumstance like this?

Ms. Bober: Just don’t go through it alone. Have your army, whether it’s your church family, whether it’s— Just don’t be afraid to share, and to just let people in and let them help you, whether it’s prayer— Because I have to tell you for me, I am on so many different prayer lists from different churches or what have you, of friends, that we’ve lived at, but, Bill, I have felt all along—I have felt that strength. I know I have gotten strength from feeling the prayers of all those warriors.

Mr. Marianes: Wonderful.

Ms. Bober: Honestly, I really feel that that has helped me get through this every day, and to keep getting through this. I hear Tracy saying that. I also hear Fr. Nick Louh telling me, “You know, Nikki, I feel that through this God has a new ministry for you.” So if this is a path that God is leading me on, I mean, I never thought in a million years I’d be on a cancer journey, let alone doing your program or telling my story, but if it can help somebody, then I’m here. I can be a prayer warrior for somebody else, because prayer works and God is so good. I’ve had little miracles along the way: the cancer has not spread and didn’t go to my brain. That would be my main point. Have a family of prayer warriors and people that’ll help you with that struggle.

Mr. Marianes: Well, listen. I’m so grateful to God for the fact that you were willing to come on and share your very personal story and the incredible journey that you’ve been on, and also the hope that comes from having faith and having a faith-based community, for having a loving family both within and outside the church to do it. So thank you very much, God bless you, and I hope you continue to keep shooting those [holes-in-one], and let me know how it goes next week when you have your exam, okay?

Ms. Bober: I will! We will give you an update.

Mr. Marianes: We will all be praying for you.

Ms. Bober: Thank you.

Mr. Marianes: Again, I really want a special thanks to all of my three guests, whom I am now pleased to share with all of you—Rip Kastaris, Tracy Namee, Nikki Bober—some of the most wonderful people, some of the most faithful people who’ve been through unbelievable things, none of which they would ever have imagined, and remain committed on a faithful journey to understand and to live their stewardship calling.

I always want to give a big shout-out of thanks to my amazing and courageous Matushka Trudi Richter, who is the show producer of this program in Chesterton, Indiana, and the assistant station manager at Ancient Faith Radio, who makes this all possible. And indeed—and here is an announcement!—Matushka Trudi is going to my next guest on a very special May 29 fifth Sunday Stewardship Calling program right here on Ancient Faith Radio.

Regular listeners know Matushka Trudi tragically lost her husband, Fr. Stacey Richter, just a short while ago. Yet in her pain and her great loss, she’s stayed focused on not only her loving children and her family and her church community, but her calling and her service. In the fullness of time, she returned to producing these Stewardship Calling and other Ancient Faith Radio programs. As we worked together, I asked her how she was proceeding forward in life after the unbelievably, way-too-early, and tragic loss of her husband and the father of her children.

As I listened to her, a strength and resilience that was rooted in kind of a true Orthodox Christian understanding of life and death became more and more clear. So, being the shy guy I am, I asked her if she would be willing to share that perspective with others. So on the fifth Sunday in May, [May] 29, right here at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, we’re going to broadcast what will be a pre-recorded interview with Matushka Trudi, because she’s going to provide us the story of her journey and tools and some of the loving support to face death of our loved ones.

But after we had agreed to do this and I twisted her arm, the Holy Spirit was not done with this program. As regular listeners to Stewardship Calling know, last year at the end of May, we released an incredible three-part interview series with Fr. George Livanos, his Presvytera Dianthe. Fr. George had received the bad news from his doctor that he had a terminal diagnosis. Rather than turning internally, he and Presvytera used that chapter of their lives to continue his ministry, but in another pulpit, if you will, and provide us all a roadmap on how to live, and how to die: with faith and dignity and grace and purpose.

As it turns out, after speaking with Presvytera Dianthe and listening to her incredible way that she’s found to live her life after Fr. George’s untimely passing not long after we aired the interview, it became clear to me that the Holy Spirit wanted Presvytera Dianthe’s voice to join Matushka Trudi’s voice and to allow us, for them to share the inspirational wisdom on how to move forward on living our lives and calling after the tragedy of the death of our loved ones. So I hope you’ll tune in on the May 29 Stewardship Calling pre-recorded program here on Ancient Faith Radio.

And then again, we’re going to come back right on June 1, where I’m going to have the privilege of interviewing my dear friend, Dr. George Koulianos, and principal researcher George Stavros, and Presvtyera Nicole Keares, who’s the president of the National Sisterhood of Presvyteres, and in that program we’re actually going to explore the amazing and new empirical research that’s been concluded on specific issues that are being dealt with by the wives of clergy. How incredible the timing is on all of this.

Of course, all of you are invited to check out the always-free content on StewardshipCalling.com that covers a whole gamut of services. If you find these Stewardship Calling first Wednesday and fifth Sunday programs to be helpful or informative, please tell your friends and tune in live, or you can listen to the archived podcast version. This program and all the others can all be found either by going to my website, StewardshipCalling.com, and go to the internet radio tab on Ancient Faith Radio, and then just scroll down to the date of the program—today’s date is May 4, 2022. Or you can go to the Ancient Faith Radio live programming pages, and go to the Stewardship Calling archive pages, and again scroll down to today’s date.

If you have any questions or you want to follow up on anything or you need anything I can do for you, please email me at bill at stewardshipcalling.com. And I hope and pray, as I always do at the end of every program, that you remember that two of the most important days of your life are, first, the day you were born, and, second, the day you figure out why. If you’re not already living your stewardship calling, I hope the inspiration of Rip and Tracy and Nikki and Matushka Trudi and Presvtyera Dianthe will inspire you to prayerfully discern your why and your stewardship calling and start the most extraordinary second part of your life. Thanks for listening, God bless you, and, as always, I pray that you S-O-T-P-A-E-T-J, which stands for: Stay On The Path—capital-T, capital-P—And Enjoy The Journey. God bless and good night!