This morning I attended St. George Antioch Orthodox Christian Church for the second time—and I was fortunate to meet up with the gentleman who remembered me from my first visit. Taking him up on his offer, I sat with Cherif (I think that’s how he spells it) and followed along with him in the liturgy as he explained various aspects about the order of worship and the sanctuary itself.

He took great care to make sure I didn’t feel lost amidst the shifting from page to page—pages 120 to 123 and back to 105 and 106, then over to 142 and back to 124. It was confusing, but apparently they’re putting together a new liturgical book that will flow better.

The service, by contrast to my last visit, seemed more meaningful than before. But it still left me with questions—questions like, “where is the life in all this tradition?” and “who decided that this was the right way to worship God?”

Well, following the service, Cherif bought a ticket for me for the falafel dinner the church was hosting, and answered my questions about the Orthodox church and gave me much more than I asked for by way of information, his personal history with the Church, and how his quest for finding the “missing pieces” led him to the Orthodox Church.

One thing was apparent: he knew what he was talking about—whether it was church history or the reasons things were done—within the Orthodox church and beyond into the Catholic and Protestant churches. He was quite well educated and seemed to be able to point me in the right direction.

But beyond being given good reasons for this or that and educated responses, I felt like the Holy Spirit must have been a part in our discussion. At one point, he switched topics and went onto an issue of leaving a church bitter about an individual [making a connection to the point of what happened in the Protestant reformation and the centuries to follow], and by way of illustrating his point, said if you left bitter towards so-and-so—but he didn’t say so-and-so. Ironically, he used the first name of a pastor that I’d served under—and left under less-than-desired conditions.

It was spooky. Coincidence, sure, maybe. But the illustration he used and the name connection was piercing to me. The answer isn’t just breaking off if you suddenly disagree with so-and-so, the answer is in going back to the source and (re)connecting. That involves humility, truth, love, and forgiveness; all to bring about reform and renewal.

But anyway, Cherif bought me a copy of Becoming Orthodox: A Journey to the Ancient Christian Faith, by Peter E. Gillquist. It’s a short book and a relatively easy read (especially for me), but resonates with a great deal of my past—between my birth into the Lutheran church, finding Christ and the Holy Spirit in the charismatic Lutheran church, defecting to the non-denominational churches to find freedom from the boring, ritualistic traditions of Lutheranism, and to a life of being disenfranchised and wandering through life without a church to call home.

I’m only a third of the way through the book, and I am beginning to discover that the Orthodox Church, whether I like it or not, is no small item to weigh into my spiritual quest to find communion with God. Rather, considering the Orthodox Church is nearly the same as considering the source of the church—before the split incited by the Catholics; before Luther called for reform (which just led to a branch of Christianity all its own); and before the tangle of denominations and church affiliations grew to massive, out-of-control proportions.

I still am not sure what to think about all of this stuff—many questions awaiting some answers as I dig deeper—but one thing’s for certain: I cannot ignore the fact that before the non-denominational church, before the Charismatic Lutheran Renewal, before Lutheranism, and before Catholicism, there was the Orthodox Church. Somewhere in there lies the answers to some of my questions. The rest, well, I’m sure I’ll discover along the way.

March 18, 2007, 8:38 pm

Filed under: Orthodoxy, Spirituality

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