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 |
Wowza. Over a month since I last made a post in this series, and it is one I really need to complete. I'd say that I've been too busy, but really it's because I struggle to know what to write. The words don't flow as easily as I'd like them to, I think for two reasons: (1) This journey into Orthodoxy isn't entirely rational, and (2) I'm still in some ways struggling to understand so much of it myself. On the first point: I don't mean that it's irrational; rather, I mean that it can't all be explained by rational thinking. As Phillip said to Nathanael: "Come and see." (John 1:46) The Orthodox faith is an experiential faith that goes beyond mental, "rational" explanations. Even as I write that, I imagine many Modernists putting up their guard--"Oh, so it's all about your experience and how you feel, and what you believe or how explain it doesn't really matter. That sounds Post-modern, which of course we all know is that new evil relativistic way of thinking that has become so dangerously popular in the last twenty-some-odd years." No. that's not what I'm saying. In fact, I've heard many excellent apologists for the Orthodox faith and I believe that there are solid answers for questions people have about Orthodoxy. But rational explanation is limited. It is sterile. I don't think it can always convey the fullness of truth. Orthodoxy is not strictly Modern (everything can be put in a box of rational explanations), nor is it strictly Post-Modern (whatever you believe is OK because it's just about what you experience). It is neither. Or maybe it is both. It is both rational and experiential. It is relational. Can you rationally explain friendship? Of course you can! But will your rational explanation of friendship fully describe the bond that exists between close friends? I don't think so.
I want to keep writing about that, because it is so much at the heart of why we are where we are, but I probably shouldn't leave the chronological history of the last two posts dangling. I'll wrap that up and try to get back to this.
OK, so when we last left our hero, he (and his wife) were at a bit of a loss in deciding where to go to church. Evangelical? Lutheran? Presbyterian? Presbyluthegelicalism? For a reference point, it was about November of 2012 when we decided to leave our EFCA church. Well, in October, we had decided to go to this "Greek Fest" at nearby Orthodox church; I think it was to celebrate Andrea's sister's birthday. They had really good food! I think I only know spanakopita, baklava, and Greek (Turkish) coffee by name, but regardless, it was all so good! After we ate, we had an opportunity to receive a tour of the church building, which is a historic grange hall. The first floor is used for fellowship meals, and is also rented out as a small event space. The second floor, however serves as the narthex, nave, and sanctuary of the church.
- A view from the back of the nave, looking at the iconostasis (behind which is the sanctuary).
- A view from the front-right corner of the nave looking toward the "narthex" (which is just a little landing at the top of the stairs--you make do with what you have!)
I don't know if I can fully describe my first impressions (partly because my memory is weak), but I think it was something along the lines of noticing how ornate everything was, and how foreign it felt. We had a chance to have a Q&A with Father Stephen. I don't recall having any particularly interesting questions to ask, but I do remember hearing some good questions and liking Fr. Stephen's answers. I was intrigued, at least. Still, though, I didn't consider myself to have any interest in becoming Orthodox. I guess I mostly just had an "academic" interest in learning about Orthodoxy.
So returning to November:
Andrea and I had decided to begin once again in the "church search" by visiting a Lutheran church in Salem. This particular church was in one of those in-between denominations, where they were more conservative than one brand of Lutheranism, but less conservative than another, so they created their own, new, denomination. They were "conservative enough" for my standards at the time, so that looked good. The church was at the outer limits of our reasonable-time-to-drive-to-church threshold, so we hadn't gotten out to visit it when we were first looking for churches in the fall of 2011. I thought we should give it a shot.
Well, we visited the church, and had a fine time in their "family" service, in which the music was led by a praise band. Not really the Lutheran experience Andrea was looking for, but the "traditional" service was at 8:00 am, and there was no way we would be getting our family somewhere 30 minutes away at 8am on a Sunday morning on a regular basis. That's just how we roll. We decided that we'd leave it (that church) open as an option, but that we definitely wanted to look elsewhere. Unfortunately (well fortunately, really) there weren't a ton of other options that "fit the bill". Since our visit to St. Anne's for Greek Fest we had been wanting to see what a service was like there. Again, I didn't really expect it to be my cup of tea, but since we weren't going anywhere else it seemed as good a time as any to visit.
Before I describe our first visit, I would be remiss to not bring up another very important reason why we decided to visit St. Anne's. Over the past summer we had started a small group with some acquaintances from Andrea's parents' church (Lutherans!). We had many good discussions about faith and church practices (such as the Eucharist) as we read through the book of Romans. Since Andrea and I were wrestling with the question of where to attend church, it was timely that we had an opportunity to talk about the Sacraments in this context. One the the members of the group was a convert to Lutheranism. I asked him how he was able to accept the Lutheran understanding of Christ being truly present in the Eucharist. He admitted that he had struggled with this, but eventually had to accept that if the Church Fathers believed in the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, who was he to argue? He also pointed out that as far as he could tell, the Orthodox church was the closest to keeping to the practices of the early Christian church. He quipped, "If I wasn't Lutheran I'd probably be Orthodox."
This really surprised me. I thought, "The what church? Oh yeah, something about the Great Schism way long ago. I guess they're still around, huh? Well I guess the wedding in My Big Fat Greek Wedding was in an Orthodox church, wasn't it? And what's this about the "Church Fathers"? Do you mean that we actually have writings besides the Bible from back when the church first started?" these, and many more thoughts ran through my head. I decided at the very least that I would be much more open to accepting Lutheran practices, if they were ones that the Church had practiced ever since Pentecost. But I still didn't think much of this Orthodox thing. Maybe worth checking out for cultural education, but nothing more....
In my last post of the series, I'll share our experiences of our first few services, and what kept us coming back for more.
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