Forgive me, but I’m getting tired of this. :(

~Anastasia~ said:

I’m tired of this year.

Fr. S returned home slightly ill, so Church tomorrow is cancelled. I quickly texted the other local parish. They are full tomorrow - not room for an extra body.

I’ve stayed home the past two weeks with minor cold symptoms myself. Three weeks without Church is bad enough. It’s going to be at least 4.

This after already missing almost 5 months earlier due to my own being REALLY sick then Church being closed.

I think I might be able to count on one hand the number of times I’ve been in Church this YEAR. This from someone who would often go that many times in a week.

I’m not sure how much longer I can stand this.



I’m fighting not to feel like the Church is letting us down. And I’m fighting to continue to be willing to stay home to protect others. (Though when I picture the actual people I know and love, that’s not so hard - it would devastate me if I made them ill. But I haven’t seen or talked to most of them in many months now.)

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~Anastasia~ said:

I’m tired of this year.

Fr. S returned home slightly ill, so Church tomorrow is cancelled. I quickly texted the other local parish. They are full tomorrow - not room for an extra body.

I’ve stayed home the past two weeks with minor cold symptoms myself. Three weeks without Church is bad enough. It’s going to be at least 4.

This after already missing almost 5 months earlier due to my own being REALLY sick then Church being closed.

I think I might be able to count on one hand the number of times I’ve been in Church this YEAR. This from someone who would often go that many times in a week.

I’m not sure how much longer I can stand this.



I’m fighting not to feel like the Church is letting us down. And I’m fighting to continue to be willing to stay home to protect others. (Though when I picture the actual people I know and love, that’s not so hard - it would devastate me if I made them ill. But I haven’t seen or talked to most of them in many months now.)

Click to expand...

~Anastasia~ said:

I’m tired of this year.

Fr. S returned home slightly ill, so Church tomorrow is cancelled. I quickly texted the other local parish. They are full tomorrow - not room for an extra body.

I’ve stayed home the past two weeks with minor cold symptoms myself. Three weeks without Church is bad enough. It’s going to be at least 4.

This after already missing almost 5 months earlier due to my own being REALLY sick then Church being closed.

I think I might be able to count on one hand the number of times I’ve been in Church this YEAR. This from someone who would often go that many times in a week.

I’m not sure how much longer I can stand this.



I’m fighting not to feel like the Church is letting us down. And I’m fighting to continue to be willing to stay home to protect others. (Though when I picture the actual people I know and love, that’s not so hard - it would devastate me if I made them ill. But I haven’t seen or talked to most of them in many months now.)

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~Anastasia~ said:

I tried to pm you btw - it won’t let me.

I added my pm to the end of another you sent me last year, but I’m not sure if it got to you.

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gurneyhalleck1 said:

I as my mail box full? I just emptied the snot out of it and punished that sucker!

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~Anastasia~ said:

I’m tired of this year.

Fr. S returned home slightly ill, so Church tomorrow is cancelled. I quickly texted the other local parish. They are full tomorrow - not room for an extra body.

I’ve stayed home the past two weeks with minor cold symptoms myself. Three weeks without Church is bad enough. It’s going to be at least 4.

This after already missing almost 5 months earlier due to my own being REALLY sick then Church being closed.

I think I might be able to count on one hand the number of times I’ve been in Church this YEAR. This from someone who would often go that many times in a week.

I’m not sure how much longer I can stand this.



I’m fighting not to feel like the Church is letting us down. And I’m fighting to continue to be willing to stay home to protect others. (Though when I picture the actual people I know and love, that’s not so hard - it would devastate me if I made them ill. But I haven’t seen or talked to most of them in many months now.)

Click to expand...

nutroll said:

The frustration that you are having points to what I believe is the biggest error that many of our churches made. When this started getting serious in March of this year, people were quick to say "what's a few weeks in order to make people safe?" That few weeks has lasted months. I'm no clairvoyant, but I knew this would happen. I'm willing to believe that everyone acted with good intentions, I wish that we had put our efforts into trying to work out a way to keep churches open and people attending rather than putting our efforts into setting up live-streams and coming up with soothing things to say. My bishop allowed for services except where it was forbidden by local authorities, and insisted that the sacramental life of the church be available no matter what. It made life more difficult for priests at times, but it was what was right for our parishioners.

Some might think that I am advocating for recklessness, but I'm not. We should have been encouraging people to wear masks all along, we should have set up teams to clean and sterilize things regularly, we should have figured out how to distance within our temples. There are a lot of steps that we could have taken in order to keep things safe, and while a lockdown in a state or county, or even countrywide might force us to live-stream services rather than allow people in the Church, we should still move heaven and earth to give people confession, communion, unction, etc. What if we lived in such a way that we cut ties with the rest of the world but not with the Church? What if our Churches ordered large amounts of food so that our parishioners didn't need to go to grocery stores? What if we gave of our blessings to the Church so that our parishioners were not so dependent on a job that endangered their health? What if we chose church over recreation? What if we had simply agreed to quarantine ourselves for two weeks after Pascha so that we could celebrate the Lord's Passion and Resurrection as fully as possible?

I see so much pain expressed by so many people. While there are saints who lived years of their lives without the holy mysteries of the Church, they also had a blessing to do so, and lived in the kind of union and communion with God that kept them from feeling lost or bereft of grace. I hope that we've reached a turning point in our churches where we know that we can't just shut down churches and deprive people of the grace of the sacraments but that we must be creative and prayerful in how we achieve the goals of the life of the Church without needlessly endangering people. I worry that this virus will not really go away, or that other plagues will come our way and if we have not learned from this, we will continue in years to come to give way to the fears and lack of imagination of secular society rather than the hope and protection of the Church.

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nutroll said:

The frustration that you are having points to what I believe is the biggest error that many of our churches made. When this started getting serious in March of this year, people were quick to say "what's a few weeks in order to make people safe?" That few weeks has lasted months. I'm no clairvoyant, but I knew this would happen. I'm willing to believe that everyone acted with good intentions, I wish that we had put our efforts into trying to work out a way to keep churches open and people attending rather than putting our efforts into setting up live-streams and coming up with soothing things to say. My bishop allowed for services except where it was forbidden by local authorities, and insisted that the sacramental life of the church be available no matter what. It made life more difficult for priests at times, but it was what was right for our parishioners.

Some might think that I am advocating for recklessness, but I'm not. We should have been encouraging people to wear masks all along, we should have set up teams to clean and sterilize things regularly, we should have figured out how to distance within our temples. There are a lot of steps that we could have taken in order to keep things safe, and while a lockdown in a state or county, or even countrywide might force us to live-stream services rather than allow people in the Church, we should still move heaven and earth to give people confession, communion, unction, etc. What if we lived in such a way that we cut ties with the rest of the world but not with the Church? What if our Churches ordered large amounts of food so that our parishioners didn't need to go to grocery stores? What if we gave of our blessings to the Church so that our parishioners were not so dependent on a job that endangered their health? What if we chose church over recreation? What if we had simply agreed to quarantine ourselves for two weeks after Pascha so that we could celebrate the Lord's Passion and Resurrection as fully as possible?

I see so much pain expressed by so many people. While there are saints who lived years of their lives without the holy mysteries of the Church, they also had a blessing to do so, and lived in the kind of union and communion with God that kept them from feeling lost or bereft of grace. I hope that we've reached a turning point in our churches where we know that we can't just shut down churches and deprive people of the grace of the sacraments but that we must be creative and prayerful in how we achieve the goals of the life of the Church without needlessly endangering people. I worry that this virus will not really go away, or that other plagues will come our way and if we have not learned from this, we will continue in years to come to give way to the fears and lack of imagination of secular society rather than the hope and protection of the Church.

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Justin-H.S. said:

If they (Caesar) forbids Churches again, and the Bishops capitulate, perhaps we will go underground? We just have to keep it secret from without and especially from the snitches within.

At this point if the bishops are fallen, the priests with courage to go on will go on, in secret.

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DraculKain said:

Without a bishop, there is no priest.

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Justin-H.S. said:

I guess when the bishops go wrong, it’s time to hang it up. This has never happened in our history. /s

Notice though, that I qualified “bishops” with the adjective Fallen.

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gurneyhalleck1 said:

The Orthodox Church is built on Christ. He assures us the gates of hell will not prevail over it. There will always be some god bishops and patriarchs and clergy even in darkness. Look at the Arian darkness and Athanasius....

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DraculKain said:

Without a bishop, there is no priest.

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