We are not alone

One of the first things I noticed about Orthodoxy was the feeling of being surrounded and supported. This feeling has intensified since my chrismation so much so that I find myself pitying other Christians who don't have it, my past self included. The tragedy of sola fide and sola scriptura is the "sola" part. Sola means alone. It leads to this "just me and God" mentality. The idea that all one needs is Scripture or "asking Jesus into my heart" seems such a lonely proposition. From the Orthodox perspective healing and salvation occur in the context of the Church. And what is the Church but relationships! Relationships with each other and with God and with the faithful souls who have gone before us.

One of the things I learned through several years of therapy, is that it is in our relationships that we are revealed to ourselves. When I'm alone I tend to think I'm pretty great but when other people are added to the equation, I begin to see how selfish I am and how far I have to go. In healthy relationships where forgiveness and mercy exist, healing then occurs.

I saw a bumper sticker this evening that reminded me of this truth. It was in the shape of a band-aid with the words "God can fix it". In many Protestant evangelical circles, translated, this means God will fix my problem and all that is necessary is for me to believe and ask. No others need to be involved. As a result so many good Christians are alone and isolated and barely hanging onto their faith. God created us to be in relationship. At Adam's creation He said, "it is not good for man to be alone". Through Christ he gave us a relationship with Himself and from that a relationship with his Church. Now and ever and unto ages of ages.

Seal!

Yesterday I was received into Holy Orthodoxy by chrismation. My heart is full of such humble gratitude for this gift. I will write more later but I just wanted to say "thank you" to all of you who have helped me on this journey.

Chrismation Date

At last! The date of my chrismation will be Sept. 8 on the Feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos!

Chrismation!

Happy news! Father says that I will be chrismated sometime this fall!
How thankful I am for the gift of Orthodoxy. Last Sunday at Divine Liturgy, as I looked at the icons surrounding me and the people worshiping with me, I felt a peace that I barely have words to describe. It was like being wrapped in soft blanket. I was not alone, I was supported by a community that transcends time and place. Utterly safe. Completely loved. I know feelings are by nature, transitory. I know there have been times in my life when God felt very distant and that most likely I will have times like that again. But I also know in my heart of hearts that this is more "real" than any other reality I have ever experienced.

Liturgy and Lifestyle

When I called my Anglican priest to tell him I was leaving the church for Orthodoxy he asked me some pointed questions. I knew he would, being a good priest and anxious that I not be damaging my spiritual health by leaving for the wrong reasons. I was able to address most of his concerns however to the question “why”? I could only say “I need more”. I was not able to explain in any more detail than that and even though I tried to come up with a more lucid and better articulated explanation, all I could say is “I need more”. At the time I didn’t even know what “more” was.
Now I know.
In a previous post I mentioned how I had been drawn to the Catholic Church through reading the book Karen. I thought that it was the liturgical nature of the Church that drew me and in part that was true. I love the liturgy, the cycles of the church year. But what I realized recently is that what I have been seeking is not just liturgy but lifestyle. The amazing thing about the author’s family in Karen was not that they were Catholic but that their whole lives were lived in the context of their faith. It was deeply woven into every day, every decision. That is what I longed for. That is what I have found in Orthodoxy. A faith that is not content to stay neatly confined to Sunday morning but overflows its banks, sweeping away the debris of my soul and pouring through every crack, every corner of my life. Fasts and feasts, darkness and candlelight, the scent of incense, the taste of bread, all running together in a glorious flood that transforms the ordinary into a sacrifice of praise. That transforms me.

My Faith Journey....part deux

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to the story of my faith journey. Things have been crazy lately and this is the kind of post I wanted to spend some time thinking about before I write it. Let’s see, where was I? Oh yeah, I had just gotten divorced after a 20 year marriage, left the Southern Baptist church our family attended and returned to my Episcopal roots. I loved that little Episcopal Church. People were warm and accepting and obviously loved Christ. But the dissolution of my marriage had put me into a spiritual “depression” of sorts. I kept going to church, but inside I was questioning almost everything I had ever believed. Oh, I still believed in a loving God who sent His Son to rescue us. Other than that everything else was up for grabs. I had prayed for so long for God to heal my marriage, change my husband, make me more submissive. I read Scripture and claimed verses as promises from God that He would do a miracle. In the end, He not only didn’t do a miracle but left it to me to declare the marriage dead. And it was. Deader than the proverbial door nail. In the end, I came to understand that if I didn’t get out of this dead relationship, I would sacrifice myself, emotionally and spiritually, and that I had no right to deprive my children of their mother.

But I was deeply, deeply disappointed in God. To make a long story short, I spent the next several years wandering around in a wilderness not sure of what was really true or real. I felt like my faith and my church had let me down at best and lied to me at worst. During this time God gave me a very great (and undeserved) blessing….my husband Dennis. We were married in 2003.

Then last summer God shook me awake. My beloved Anglican Communion was in crisis and the Episcopal Church, the Communion’s US branch, was clearly apostate. For years I had gone back and forth on the various problems confronting the church, hearing both sides of the argument but not sure what was true. Finally this question came to me: “Do you want a God who glosses over your failings in the name of uncritical love or do you want a God who has the kind of love manifested in the desire and the power to change you?” I knew at that moment that the only kind of God I wanted to worship was the second kind. And let me hasten to add that this was clearly a work of the Holy Spirit. This question and its answer did not come from me but from God.

So I began to search for another church. I knew I needed a liturgical church so that narrowed the possibilities to two: the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodoxy. I started with the Catholic Church. Like a lot of people I thought Orthodoxy would be too ethnic and strange for this Anglophile. I read a lot of books about Catholicism, joined the RCIA class at my local Catholic parish and spent an inordinate amount of money at the Catholic bookstore. I learned a lot. I learned about sola scriptura (I had never heard of it before!) and why it didn’t work. I learned about apostolic succession and the early church fathers. The daughter of historians, I loved the connection to ancient believers. I got to know Mary and started praying the rosary. Suddenly, I had found my spiritual life again. But there were some problems, my divorce and remarriage being chief among them. I also had a hard time getting on board with papal infallibility. Although I came close at times, I never felt the go-ahead to become Catholic. I was at an impasse. I was clearly no longer Protestant in my beliefs, but neither was I Roman Catholic. Eventually, it dawned on me that I needed to consider Orthodoxy. I started my research with the Internet and Frederica Mathews-Green’s books. Then I decided I needed to bite the bullet and visit an Orthodox church. To my great surprise I found a friend from my last Episcopal church had just been chrismated there! She helped me through my first Divine Liturgy. I knew almost immediately I was home. So that’s where I am today. I can hardly wait for the day when I will join the great river of Orthodox faith that has its source in Christ, flowing down from the apostles in an unbroken stream that will continue until He returns.

A retraction....kind of

As an addendum to the first part of my faith story...my father (who reads my blog, thanks be to God) pointed out to me that a large part of the reason we stopped going to church was my tendency to refuse to go. While I can't remember any specific incident of this, I'm sure it is true. I do remember feeling like an outsider with the other kids. My sisters and I went to a different school than most of them. But at the same time I also remember mourning the loss of yet another familiar part of our family life, although I couldn't have articulated that at the time. All that being said, I would like to be perfectly clear....my parents did the very best they could. I always knew without a doubt that I was loved and I have long ago forgiven any failings, real or perceived. My prayer is that someday my children will do the same for me. And I feel so blessed that at age 50 I still have my dad here to have this conversation with. Love you, Daddy!

Catechumen

As of today I am an official catechumen in the Orthodox church! Yesterday at catechism class Father was answering someone's question and mentioned something about an "official" catechumen. Of course, my first question was "what makes it official?". I thought that if you just came to catechism class you were automatically a catechumen. He explained the process, which is really pretty simple, and then said I could do it whenever I was ready. I think he was surprised that I immediately said "I'm ready"!
So this morning at the end of Divine Liturgy, Father and I stood at the back of the church (the entrance) and he prayed a brief prayer from the service book. I couldn't repeat any of it now but it was so personal and so moving that I almost cried. I've spent the last year trying to figure out where I belonged. No, that's wrong....I've spent the last 50 years trying to figure out where I belong.
There is such wonderful peace in knowing that I am finally home!

My Faith Journey

Karen had asked me about my faith journey and suggested that I post about it. Its a long story with many twists and turns but here goes....

When I was young, my family belonged to a Disciples of Christ church ( you know, First Christian etc.). I'm so thankful my parents made church part of our lives. I have many good childhood memories of that church. It was there that I was baptized when I was 11 or 12. I also remember my mom talking to us about God and reading us books about Jesus. And we always had bedtime prayers. Unfortunately, when some family problems arose during my early adolescence, we stopped going to church. But I never stopped wanting to have a spiritual life and decided that when I got my driver's license and/or went away to college I would find a church of my own. About this same time, I read a book that had a huge impact on me. The book was Karen by Marie Killilea. The true story of a family whose daughter had cerebral palsy, this book showed a family with a vibrant Catholic faith. The descriptions of the liturgical life of this family greatly appealed to me. I knew immediately that I wanted to find a liturgical church in which to worship. Eventually I ended up in an Episcopal church a block from my college campus. I loved being Episcopalian. I loved the liturgy. I loved the church seasons. I loved the kneeling and the reverence. I loved the music. Then I met my future husband (now ex-husband). He was raised Southern Baptist and while he led me to believe that he was open to the Episcopal church, I found out after the wedding that in reality he was stubbornly opposed to any church but Southern Baptist. For about the first year of our marriage we had a lot of conflict about this. Then I got pregnant with our first child. In the interest of family unity I agreed to become Baptist. I was Baptist for 20 years until my first marriage ended. I won't go into the reasons for the divorce here, but suffice to say I was almost as hurt by the reactions of our church to the divorce as I was by my ex-husband. I RAN, not walked, back to the Episcopal church. I found a loving, Spirit-filled parish and was very happy there. To be continued.....

First Catechism Class

Saturday I attended my first catechism class. It was a small class....an older man (a former Roman Catholic) who was chrismated at Easter this year, a woman who came with her 13 year old daughter and me. It was a very relaxed class with plenty of room for questions. The big revelation for me this time had to do with the nature of Christ's sacrifice. I had always been taught that Christ's death was necessary as a "payment" to a just God for humanity's sins. That even if God wasn't angry with us (which most of the time it was implied that He was), His "justice" demanded that someone be punished. Suprisingly, that is not how Orthodoxy sees it. They see Christ's death as the means by which He conquered death. Before the Fall, death didn't exist. Death came into the world as a consequence of man's arrogance and decision to depart from God's way. All sin has its roots in the fear of death. Christ's willing sacrifice of himself to death, enabled Him to conquer death for all of us. So for the Orthodox, the Cross and Resurrection is seen more as a joyous victory than a payment of a debt to an angry God. Christ as victor not victim. This is probably a vast over-simplification and I know I have much to learn but there is such freedom in this knowledge! Its going to take awhile to get my head around that! It basically upturns everything I've ever been taught. Orthodoxy is a continual surprise.

Attacks, some self-inflicted

Stressful weekend. Had to work Saturday. Yuck. Even though I get Friday off, it never seems to come out even. You’d think after almost thirteen years at this job I’d be used to working every third weekend. Nope.

Then there was the “church” thing. I finally called my Anglican priest to resign from the vestry and tell him I was moving toward Orthodoxy. He asked me some hard questions most of which I have been asking myself for months. He did have a good question though…. “when you think about the Orthodox church do you feel peace?”. I could honestly answer yes. By contrast, even the times when I felt the most eager about becoming Roman Catholic there was always some measure of doubt or confusion be it small or great. I did not have the complete peace I have about Orthodoxy. And I was getting NO peace in the Anglican Church which is really strange for me because I have loved Anglicanism for all of my adult life. But every Sunday lately, I’d go to church and have this feeling that I wasn’t supposed to be there. Yes, I know the enemy of our souls could be the cuprit there but it didn't feel like it. Actually, all the endless, tortured questioning of myself over my motives for converting to Orthodoxy....that felt like him.

Of course all this discernment has taken a tremendous amount of time since I have to second-guess every thought I have and change my mind at least three times. Hey, it’s what I do.

Okay, so I make the phone call to my priest and immediately after hanging up start having a major anxiety attack. This too is what I do. Welcome to my world.

In a nutshell

“the ‘thinness’ of Protestant thought and practice do not contain enough of heaven to serve as a sufficient antidote in our modern world.” - Dostoevsky

Vespers

Ok, I went to my first Orthodox service this evening, a Vespers service. There were only a handful of people there. I arrived just before the service and when the priest saw me he came over and said hello. He was very kind, friendly and relaxed. He put me at ease at once and handed me a prayerbook open to the vespers service. Yes, the surroundings were strange, beautiful but strange. I expected that. I had no idea where we were in the liturgy most of the time. I expected that too. Oh, and in that handful of people there was a couple in the choir that I knew from my old church in Tulsa. I hadn't seen them in years but just a few days ago, at my favorite yarn store I was chatting with the daughter of a friend who worked there and discovered that she knew this family. Mind you, this was BEFORE I visited the church and saw them! Cool,huh? Also, the priest told me when we were chatting before the service that a woman I know from my current church had just joined! I knew she had left our church but I had no idea where she had gone. So even though I was lost in the liturgy, I came away from the service feeling....."embraced" is the best word I can think of. I will definitely go back soon.

Bottom Line

One of the things that changed after my "wake-up call" last summer was how I saw God's nature. For years I had gone back and forth on the whole homosexuality issue. I have friends who are gay and are also wonderful, loving people. Would God turn His back on them because they were gay? That made no sense to me. I believed (and still do) in a loving God who wants all of His children with Him. But what I saw in my denomination and in our culture at large was this entrenched idea that if we have certain tendencies, God must want us to be that way and so not only would it be impossible to change but God wouldn't even ASK us to change. So the issue of homosexuality is the part of the iceberg that is above water. The larger problem is sin and repentance. That's the part that lurks under the dark, cold ocean of our world. How many people have wrecked lives because our culture and, God help us, our CHURCHES refuse to acknowledge it?
So last summer, by a work of God's grace, I arrived at my bottom line: The only kind of God that I wanted to worship was a God who has both the desire and the power to change me. Me. Not my husband, not my children, not my gay friends, me. I had to leave all those other people in God's loving and capable hands and trust Him enough to take care of them. My job was to put myself in a community that reflected this desire of God to change me and supported me in those efforts.
Because if God can't change me, why bother? A church that believes that is nothing more than a bunch of guys in dresses, playing with candles and pretty words. Its worse than wrong because it keeps people apart from the Truth and the Healer that can transform.

One of the things I am beginning to suspect about Orthodoxy is that they are people who believe in transformation. Not in a legalistic, punitive way but with a humility and awareness that even the best of us are as nothing compared to our Lord. I am going to my first Orthodox service this evening and I am SO hoping to find this is true.

Wake up call

Last summer God shook me awake. That's the best way I can describe it. Following my divorce in 1998 I went into a spiritual tailspin. I continued attending church but began a period of questioning everything I knew or thought I knew about God. I got to a point where I wasn't sure what was true anymore so I just stopped asking. I still wanted to know God but was just plain "stuck". Thankfully, last summer God "un-stuck" me.
If you've been following the Current Unpleasantness in the Episcopal Church you will know that it has been embroiled in controversy for the last few years over the ordination of an openly gay bishop. Last summer things came to a head when the General Convention elected a presiding bishop, a woman, who espouses no discernable Christian doctrine. It was in the days following convention that I finally had to choose. What will I believe in....a God who loves every person no matter what but requires no departure from sin OR a God who has the desire AND the power to change me. I chose the latter. That has opened a floodgate. To my knowledge at the time, the Episcopal parish that I was attending had no plans to confront this situation (they have since left ECUSA) so I was going to have to find another place to be. I knew I needed a liturgical church. That left me with 3 choices, Anglicanism (apart from the US version), Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy. Anglicanism would be the easiest of the three but I have serious doubts about the long-term viability of a denomination that has the ability to vote in heresy. So I took a long look at the Roman church. I'm still looking at it. But I have to twist my theology into some uncomfortable positions to go there and I'm not sure "contortionist" is a spiritual gift. That leaves Orthodoxy. My first thought was "that is just too ethnic and strange". But lately the more I read about it, the more I am impressed. Orthodoxy has a humility and an respect for mystery that I find very compelling. We'll see.