Two Lents

Tonight marked the beginning of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church, which means that tomorrow will be the first day this year that Chris and I have been observing Lent together. Meals have changed, of course, but it hasn't felt like Lent to me and I've felt disconnected from the fact that his Easter is right around the corner. Next Sunday I will attend a Palm Sunday service at 9am and then drive to my church at 10am, where it will be the first Sunday of Lent. That will be weird. Weirder still will be the ham feast when I'm just starting to get into the swing of things, and then Chris will feel disconnected from my Lent for the next 6 weeks.

I don't have any solutions for this Eastertime problem. I just hope we're able to love and support each other through the odd and probably difficult times this calendar difference will bring.

Planning a Wedding

Wedding planning is coming along nicely. We're both fortunate that our liturgical traditions free us from having to worry about the ceremony itself, leaving us more energy to plan the party aspects of the weekend. The wedding will be on a Sunday afternoon in May and so far all sorts of people have volunteered to help. I guess this is one result of having fairly public relationship struggles -- now that we have overcome them everyone wants to help us celebrate. It's also a huge relief for our budget. We're paying for this whole thing ourselves, so every bit of help frees up funds to apply elsewhere. It's going to be great.

We met with someone at the Catholic church last week about requirements for getting married. They want us to attend an all day workshop where we will take the FOCCUS survey. At first I was highly skeptical (now just mildly so), and not just because they charge $100+ for it. But after reading more about the tool itself and talking to people about it, it seems like the kind of thing that would probably be a good idea to do before getting married. People say that it brought up discussion topics that they never would have thought to talk about before. I only wish I knew at the time of the meeting that my priest is authorized to give the survey, because getting permission to do it with him would save us some cash. I'll have to ask them about that.

We did it!

Chris proposed on Monday and I accepted, bringing to an end a long period of debate and serious thoughtful struggle about how to marry our two faith traditions. Now we know we can do it. We have been attending both churches every Sunday morning for almost a year now, and we're both comfortable with what things we can live with and which are more of a long-term but endurable problem. The question of which tradition to raise children in is still out there, but with commitment to each other comes a willingness to compromise and creatively solve problems.


The Catholic priest has recommended that we get married in the Orthodox Church, which is a relief for me. Chris will miss the chance to have a traditional Catholic wedding and finds the Orthodox service kind of weird, but it solves the problem of me being excommunicated if I marry outside of my church and prevents us from having to have two weddings. We both agree that the being married part is what is most important, so we will get through this wedding planning thing as sanely as we can and get on to the real work of building a life together.

Yay!

On Families and Church

It has been a while since I last updated, but that doesn't mean that nothing has been happening. It turns out that the gradual process of imagining forming a family with someone isn't very conducive to blogging. Chris and I are still working through our issues, most notably the question of just how much the church one attends on Sunday informs the ongoing spiritual life of a child. I tend to think that it is our daily home practice and our individual piety that will be the most informative to our children, but Chris puts a lot of emphasis on the actual conscious teaching that he expects we'll be doing. I understand his concern that he won't know how to teach a child to be Orthodox, but I'm not sure I really know how to teach a child to be Orthodox, either. I was never an Orthodox child. However, my church is full of Orthodox children being raised by converts, and I have to believe that being in that environment will do a lot of the teaching for me or at least help me when I have questions.

I hope that we're close to making a decision, because I feel more and more that our dating relationship has reached the end of its usefulness. We're starting to make more plans for the future together, and doing that without even being engaged is odd. Also, our separate routines would really benefit by being joined under one roof, which we won't do until we're married (regardless of how many people urge us to move in together to save money). The dual church service thing on Sunday mornings works much better now that we've agreed not to talk during the 15 minute drive from mass to liturgy. This lessens our stress on Sundays dramatically. We both have a number of church-related activities we do without the other during the week and that feels good and healthy. No one is (I hope) feeling too deprived of spiritual experience.

That said, I just read another blog post by someone who wants to convert to the Orthodox Church without his/her spouse and kids. I know that the urge to jump right in can be great, but I wish I could tell every single one of these people to just slow down.

Two podcasts and a blog

When I'm ruminating on a problem it seems like the whole world has something to contribute. For example, my daily routine includes listening to several podcasts and reading several blogs. Today there were two podcasts and a blog post that seemed to contain lessons, though I'm not sure they made things very clear.

Podcast #1: The Tragedy of Dogma by Dr. Clark Carlton
In this short lecture, Dr. Carlton explains that dogma, or rational thinking about God, is an obstacle to prayer. Because of where I am on my own spiritual journey I find that I tend to defend the dogmas of Orthodoxy, particularly when confronted with the dogmas of other traditions like Roman Catholicism. It is easy to line up teachings side by side, compare and contrast them, and throw out the ones I don't like. What's harder is putting those dogmas aside and getting to the heart of the matter -- the person of Christ. How do you discuss Christ? I think you don't.

Podcast #2: The Mystery of God by Fr. John Oliver
This podcast approached a similar topic through a story about Vacation Bible School. Fr. John's observations of the difference between the children's experience of Church and his own is that the children are less bound by rigidity and give God room to be God. They're less dogmatic and more experiential. Same lesson: less dogma, more Christ; fewer human definitions, more still small voice. On the one hand I know that I tend to rest in dogmas when everything else seems uncertain, and on the other hand I blame the Roman Catholic church for putting too many definitions on God and not giving Him freedom to be Himself. Is that contradictory, or is my retreat into dogma a natural reaction to being confronted with it? Strangely, Chris seems to be mostly free of his church's dogmatic leanings, so I don't know where my reactions come from.

Blog post: Christ Crucified by Fr. Stephen Freeman
Here is where everything comes together: "To believe that Christ was crucified and risen from the dead and not to empty ourselves and take on the form of a servant is not to be a Christian at all." Again we see the dichotomy between believing and doing, so that point is firmly hammered home. But the question I have about my own life is here, in St Paul's letter to the Philippians: "Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others."

It seems that all of these arguments could make a case for me agreeing to raise my children in the Roman Catholic church. The decision would involve sacrifice, a step away from dogma, and action in the interests of another. It would also clear a huge barricade between us and marriage. But I still have so many reservations about the Roman Catholic church that I'm not clear on how that decision would bring me (or my children) to Christ. I'm sure if I were mature in my faith I would be more able to step away from the Church and continue to find God where I am, but I don't think I can do it. I feel like I am single-handedly miring us in this holding pattern, and I'm not always sure I'm making the right decision by holding fast.

Discussion on Orthodox-Catholic Relations

If you have half an hour you might listen to this interview with Fr. Ted Pulcini at The Illumined Heart. Fr Ted is a former Roman Catholic priest, now an Orthodox priest in Pennsylvania. It is an interesting and balanced discussion on what the recent article released by the Vatican means for Catholic-Orthodox relations.

A Meeting of East and West

Chris and I had the pleasure of attending St Gregory's Orthodox Church in Washington, DC last Sunday, as well as the luxury of having a good amount of time to spend meeting people afterward before heading to the Roman Catholic mass. St Gregory's is a small, intimate Western Rite parish a mere two blocks from the friend who normally hosts us while we're in town. It was our first experience at a Western Rite Orthodox parish.

The idea of visiting a Western Rite Orthodox church had been lingering since just after our previous visit to DC. There are very few WR parishes in the US and even fewer near Raleigh. Lynchburg, VA is the closest at 3 hours away, but I'm told they primarily celebrate the more Anglican-based liturgy of St Tikhon. St Gregory's, the next closest at 4 hours away, celebrates the liturgy of St Gregory which is similar to the Tridentine mass.

We both enjoyed our experience for different reasons. Chris enjoyed seeing the Tridentine mass as it used to be celebrated in the West. I was mostly lost, but I enjoyed being in a Western rite environment without needing to worry about the orthodoxy of the priest. Many of the things that bother me about the Roman Catholic tradition were absent, though elements of the mass were present that I still don't understand. Afterward we both had a great time meeting the parishioners and discovering the many intricate connections between St Gregory's and my home parish of All Saints. One girl had even been to my house before while on a mission trip to NC! We left with new things to think about, many warm wishes from our hosts, and a mug that Chris uses every chance he gets.

Chris tends to think that people in the West should identify more strongly with a Western style of worship, and that those of us who embraced a more Eastern style did so out of rebellion against our heritage. I don't think that's the case. While it's true that even parts of the Orthodox Western Rite had elements in it that I associate with Protestantism (and thus could bolster his argument), I did truly miss some of the absent elements found the Eastern liturgy. The "otherness" of the Eastern tradition may initially draw disaffected Westerners in, but there is an enduring quality to the Eastern liturgy that keeps us there and slowly transforms our lives.

I believe that the Orthodox story in America is still just beginning to be written. Orthodoxy has not yet defined its legacy here. We see many examples of Orthodox Christians from long-established traditions complaining about the innovations brought to the faith by American converts. I hope that what is really happening is that these American converts are doing the job of translating Orthodoxy into a language that Americans can understand. Our history books record the development of translations and even new languages so the faith could be brought to new lands. What they don't record are the many ways in which that new land was transformed in unwritten ways to receive the Truth. Little-t traditions will change, but the Tradition of Orthodoxy will not change or it will cease to be Orthodox. I hope our mentors in the faith can be patient with us a while longer while we continue our great work.