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.