Life Updates end of 2024
It’s been a long time since I kept up with this. I do write a lot, but it’s diaries and e-mails, not anything for public reading. Due to personal issues dominating my thoughts, and the fact that I threw so much of myself into my last novel, I’m not feeling inspired to write any fiction right now.
But now there is something to post about: our priest leaving. This is a sad event; he really turned our parish around, a young and charismatic priest with a young and growing family. He avoided politics and rarely mentioned culture wars, and when people started talking politics in Bible Study, he would move the conversation to the topic instead. I got the impression he was moderating the convertitis of our new inquirers.
Because we have been getting a bunch of them, too! We were never a parish for collecting converts except by marriage, but in the last few years, they’ve been showing up off the street. From what I overhear, they’re coming in from the Internet, getting ideas there about what Orthodoxy is supposed to be (especially since it’s become a favorite of right-wing online influencers), and every now and then my eyebrows raise at what I’m hearing from them. You do realize this is a Greek parish and not one of those fundamentalist ones, right? That we have feminists here, that our archbishop recently baptized the child of a gay couple, that our metropolitan is encouraging us to have altar girls, that our church hierarchy believes in science (ie, COVID protocols and vaccines)? That Orthodoxy does NOT equal MAGA?
In any case, I keep seeing our priest trying to moderate them and steer them toward spirituality instead of politics and “hyperdoxy.” He tells us non-abortifacent birth control is allowed and that women haven’t been required to wear headscarves or sit on opposite sides from men for 100 years.
Our last priest, I cringed whenever it was time for a sermon, because he’d go on rants about culture wars, praising people like Kyle Rittenhouse and telling us not to put our kids in public schools (because the woke teachers will try to make them trans). But our priest now, talks about spiritual things and living the Christian life. And he keeps scolding us for not doing things right (such as the sign of the cross or how we enter the iconostasis), which is funny after people booted the last priest for not doing things right. The parish president, born into Orthodoxy, says the priest keeps teaching the parish things that we didn’t know about. And weekly liturgies, which used to be attended by mere handfuls of people, keep growing, and getting noisier with all the kids running around. It’s amazing.
…AND he’s leaving in a few weeks. He’s going back to his home country (NOT Greece, but I won’t specify here). We’re all upset; we joke about chaining him up so he can’t leave the church. (At least, I THINK they’re jokes….) The bishop’s upset with him. Not only are priests getting harder to find, but our visiting priests have been kind of a mixed bag, occasionally drifting into politics, and often so old they’ve been pulled out of retirement.
Our parish president told the priest that we had hoped to see his kids grow up. And this was something that I had written to the president. It was touching to hear my words being used.
My church responsibilities have also grown–website, Facebook–so that, to my surprise, I was even called upon to make a report at the latest General Assembly. Seems that the board is actually interested in the nerdy little details I give them about site usage and page insights. I help out with things like cleanup and making a favorite dish for fundraisers. I also have the “privilege” of seeing more of the church dramas, lol. Our poor priest, who keeps having to deal with the petty little squabbles and complaints brought to him!
Oh, in other news, also excited to see Nosferatu soon. I’ve been looking forward to this ever since a certain church friend told me it was coming out. And it’s finally coming to town. 🙂
And a little word to Richard, since he and/or Tracy come in here every month or so….I have completely replaced you. I never thought I could, but over time, I did. God has blessed me with multiple friends, both on and offline, and two of them in particular IRL have taken your place in my heart. I barely think about either of you except once in a while, when I see you in my stats or hear about crazy Libertarians. It’s been FOURTEEN and a half YEARS now. I don’t know what you’re still looking for.