My journey to Orthodoxy, Part 2

Hattiesburg, Mississippi, is a strange place.  It's a university town, defined by its relationship with the University of Southern Mississippi and to a lesser extent William Carey University.  It's the county seat of Forrest County, named for Nathan Bedford Forrest.  And it's been my home for the past ten years.

I knew when I moved to Hattiesburg that there were no Orthodox churches for at least an hour's drive.  In 2003, I still drove to Jackson about twice a month to attend Liturgy at Holy Trinity Church.  The hardest thing was the discipline to attend divine services.  Once I slacked off on divine services, I slacked off on prayer.  I was caught in a world of hedonism and despair.  This really qualifies as my wasted youth, even though I was 27 at the time.

I found a ROCOR mission in Semmes, Alabama, and I attended sporadically.  It was a difficult thing to drive from Hattiesburg to Semmes, passing along US Highway 98 eastbound through the most depressing slog of two-lane garbage I'd ever seen.  But the church community was warm and welcoming, and Fr. Alexander and Matushka fostered a great Christian spirit.  During this time, I recovered some of my youthful interest and involvement in the church, and most of all, my interest in something other than the world.

My Journey to Orthodoxy, part 1.

My journey to Orthodoxy is not normally considered a journey.  I was born into an Orthodox family, and I was baptized about 40 days after my birth, and I grew up as an altar server, and singing in the church choir, and in general receiving a first-class youth of instruction in practical Orthodoxy.  I learned how to be a reader, and I learned chanting in the Greek, Antiochian, and Russian styles.

But in college, as is often typical, I fell away from the Church.  I stopped going to Liturgy regularly, and I was only an occasional churchgoer.  I attended church regularly when I was at home with my parents, but I had never been someone who didn't have a job in church.  I had never known how to worship without something to do.

And so for a long time I was C and E (Christmas and Easter).  And when I moved to Jackson, Mississippi, after law school, I began attending Holy Trinity and St. John the Theologian Greek Orthodox Church.  In contrast to the stereotype of old Greek parishes, I found a welcoming community struggling through the change from being a city church with a city congregation to being a city church with a suburban congregation.   Eventually, the church had to move away from its historic location on West Capitol Street to its new home in Ridgeland, and I pray God that they are doing well there.

After I moved to Hattiesburg, I again lapsed.

Forgive me, but I will continue later.  It's time to listen to two sociopaths lie to the country again.

On serving in the altar, part 1

In the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), boys age five are permitted to serve in the altar.  Part of this is practical self-defense; five year old boys are fidgety monsters who tug on their parents' hands and say "What's that?" way too often in church.  Additionally, if you don't get boys into the altar young, they become averse to wearing golden, white, green, blue, purple, red, or black dresses as they hit age 7 or 8.

Shortly after my fifth birthday, I found myself serving in the altar of Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at its old location near downtown.  Fr. Vladimir was the priest assigned to the parish.  He was the priest that baptized me and my sister.  He was an enormous, elderly, stereotypically Russian priest; bluff, bearded, bellicose, bellowing, beloved.  My first day in vestments, I nearly tripped him while he was censing the altar table before the Gospel.

It's not as if the area behind the iconostasis was small.  It measured about 14 feet by 32 feet.  I just didn't know yet where the priest traveled while censing.  But I learned quickly.  My cousin Paul, who together with his family still attends Holy Trinity, was serving that day as well.

Needless to say, my training became a little more intentional following that incident.