So I finally decided today to go to a church that I've meant for a long time to visit. It's the orthodox christian church in B-Lo. First things first, I get there right as the service is supposed to start and there are only four other cars there. The friend who I was supposed to meet there, one of the regular attenders, wasn't there yet. I stood outside for a few minutes and waited for him to show up. As I stood there, I kept seeing people walk out of this door on the side up the building, look in the window to the sanctuary, then walk around back and go up a set of stairs to and alternate entrance. Now, my assumption is that everything at this church is symbolic of something...every action, every word spoken, everything. If you don't do these things by the book, their God will strike you down with lightning. While I don't agree with religious traditions, I don't want to be disrespectful to what these folks do. So, I'm way confused at this point as so why these people are going through another entrance. I thought maybe only the priest and deacons or something were allowed to walk through the front doors...only people chosen by God. So finally, my friend shows up and says, "I gotta do this candle holding thing, I'll see you after the service." Now, not only do I not know what is going on, but my guide just ditched me. Fortunately his little brother walks around the corner and shows me in through the front doors.
Now I come to the conclusion that it's not only divine people who get to walk through the doors. When I got inside, I heard a very bland, monotone voice, half singing half speaking words that seemed to be english, but were so fast and echoey that you couldn't make them out. As soon as he got done with a sentence, a choir of people would recite some other thing. It turns out, all those people walking to that back door were in the choir...now, I'm a little more at ease. The first thing I do is try to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing, do I sit or stand? Do I pretend like I know what the choir is singing and try to hum along with them? Am I supposed to be praying? Some people are sitting, some are standing maybe the people standing have already done something like a traditional prayer to allow them to stand, but then again maybe the people sitting have done something to allow them to sit. I chose to sit because I figured if sitting was wrong, someone would correct me and I'd know what to do. I also chose not to pretend like I knew what in the world was going on. But I did pray really quick just for God to let me meet some people and learn something about this church that made me a little less skeptical. I had a funny feeling that these people might actually be human beings underneath all that religious bull shit so I wanted to give them a chance.
Finally my friends mom walks in and hands me a guide to the litergy. I haven't ever heard of a litergy before so I assumed it was just this written ceremony they do every service. I thumbed through it to figure out where we were and tried to follow along. They didn't go through the litergy page by page, they would skip around a little bit. Also, every now and then what the people were singing didn't come from the litergy booklet at all, it came from a second hymn book that I later found. It was hard to figure out where to look, because all the people who were there knew this service like the back of their hand so i couldn't just look at someone else's book to see what page they were on.*
Finally I stopped looking around and looked forward to see three men in fancy robes with their backs to the congregation huddling around a shrine of sorts. As I was reading the litergy, I noticed notes of what these men up front were doing. They were reciting little prayers and every few minuites, the one in the middle would hand something to the guys on the side and they would kiss his hand, kiss the thing, pick it up kiss it again and hand it off to someone else who as far as I knew, with all the kissing and what not, took it in the back room and fucked the shit out of it.
The little men up front started taking turns facing the congregation and singing something that would get a reply song. At one point as the congregation went into a hymn, the priest, Father Andrew came out began talking to all the paintings of saints on the walls. The look of pure boredom** on his face mixed with his noiseless talking made him look like one the the craziest guys I've ever seen. Words can't even describe how insane this guy looked...it was as if some demon was about to pop out of his mouth and swallow the whole church.
After a while I figured out that we were about to take communion. Three boys in white robes(one of which was holding a really tall cross) followed by the men in the fancy robes began to walk around the church. everybody walked to the edge of the pews as is they were getting ready to follow out behind them. I was stoked that we were going on a field trip. Then, I saw a lady bend down, touch Father Andrew's robe, kiss her hand and do the father, son, holy spirit cross on the chest*** thing. Then a small girl ran up and did the same thing. People kept doing this as if they were getting some holy healing power from his robe, like that bleeding lady in the bible. It seemed to me that these people thought the robe the priest was wearing was dipped in a holy sauce and kept in God's personal closet. Seems like a little to large a pedestal this priest guy is put on.
After the service, my friends mom walked me around the sanctuary and introduced me to the deacons and priests, they all offered to have a sit down question/answer time with me if I wanted to. Then we went into a room where there was good and drinks and lots of people standing around talking. I was the guest of the day, everyone wanted a chance to talk to me. The only person in that room who didn't talk to me was a man who stared at me when I first walked in and occasionally turned around and stared at me during the service, and each time he did this I made eye contact with him and held it until he looked away. I'm not sure why he was staring at me, but I didn't like it, so I figured I'd piss him off in a sort of passive agressive way by not backing down. I think he's an asshole. Eventually one of the priests came up to me and kept asking questions trying to figure out what I thought of their religion. Finally I started asking him questions like, where does the whole relationship with God and Jesus thing come into play? Who wrote the litergy and why do they think it's important to hold strictly to it since it came from hand of a man, not God? It felt like I was talking to one of those Jahovahs witness people who basically just recite some bullshit they memorized out of the pamphlet.
It seemed like everyone who talked to me was like this, except for one lady who was telling me about her daughter coming home from Young Life (and outreach organization I work with) asking questions comparing our protestant views versus her Orthodox views on God. She said that the girl was in San Diego at a protestant college then joked that they dissowned her only two weeks ago. She seemed to see right through me, it was like she knew exactly what I was thinking about here church...that they thought they were right about everything and didn't accept any other view. She made me feel a little bit better that there was some humanity to these people.
* When people recite things year after year, especially things of this length, there is no way they think about them anymore. That they think about the importance of what they are really saying. At least that's how it seems to me. Maybe that's just a cop out, maybe I'm just lazy and don't want to have to remember anything.
** As I looked around the church, I noticed a few things about the physical appearance of everybody. First of all, all of the age groups looked exactly the same...the old men were fat and wore glasses, the old women looked like dykes, all of the young adult types looked really pissed off and kind of creepy, all of the high school kids didn't give a rip, and all of the kids just wanted to be kids. Second, everyone looked bored out of their mind. Even the priests. It's like they were doing all of this in a zombie like state. Third, every person over the age of about 18 looked very tired, dark around the eyes, and that part just underneath the eyes is all puffy.
*** Everytime the words "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" were uttered, the whole congregation would do that cross thing on their chest. It seemed to happen every two minutes or so. Sometimes folks would do it for what seems to me some completley random reason. It's as if this is one of the ways they convince everyone that they are a good follower of Christ.
There's a lot I'm leaving out I'm sure, but I plan on attending a few more times so can add more later.
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