A Visit to an Eastern Orthodox Church

Coming into the community of believers at worship should be disconcerting. It should leave the visitor with several impressions: whatever this is these people take it very seriously; I don't understand it; if I join I might have to change.

— Frederica Mathewes-Green in At the Corner of East and Now

Our first visit to St. Anne's Orthodox Church was the first Sunday of Advent, December 2, 2012. In my (Andrea's) previous posts I've explained why we walked in the doors in the first place. Here I will describe (as best as words can) what happened that first visit. For the sake of fluidity (and length) I will do as little explaining as I can in this post. As questions pop up ask in a comment below and those will be topics of future posts!

Why Randy's Going East - Part 3

In which I take an aside to briefly discuss my delay in writing, and where I finally explain how we came to attend St. Anne's. I must make the disclaimer that this is really long, and I've struggled to finish it for lack of memory on some of the details. I know I'm probably missing important details, expounding too much on trivial ones, and just generally not explaining myself very well. Please bear with me (or don't--you can stop reading at any time!).

Also, here are links to the previous articles:
| Part 1 | Part 2 |