"Don't let the smells and bells be the determining factor in your conversion to Orthodoxy."

Justin-H.S. said:

I’m sure the Holy Spirit is able to work through the smells and bells if He needed to.

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indeed He can, and that means it's not merely the smells and bells.

depends on how you take the term "smells and bells". Some seem to take it has something lacking the Holy Spirit, so maybe don't.

Justin-H.S. said:

Personally, this is a classic "reasonable Protestant" exhortation, but it's also true in that if you do convert to Orthodoxy due to a misplaced "grass is greener" idealized view of it, it may do irreparable harm in the long run. But, a lot of what Dr. Ortland says is wrong regarding the liturgy because he recommends an intellectual approach to Orthodoxy, when the Liturgy is not intellectual. To this I say: Why not both the mind and the heart? Why does it have to be one or the other?

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The grass isn't greener here. Orthodoxy is a rocky outcropping with cold winds and sad buffets. But it is all for our good.
I'll never forget the warning I received from Fr. Stephen Freeman. He said that Orthodoxy "would become boring" to me. He's right. We can pontificate all we want about the specialness of a 3 hour Holy Week service but your flesh screams at you. Your mind becomes a battlefield. You're hungry, thirsty, tired, perhaps grumpy, and your kids were on your nerves BEFORE you even left home... Yet... That is the point. Faithfulness doesn't have the false positives that a band, fog machine, and some sissy guy in skinny jeans bring. Heck, even the greatest "preachers'" in their suits and ties are entertainment based. When I was a pastor I was measured on the value of my sermon... not my holiness.

Those who join for smells and bells don't usually stick around. If they do it's just because their frequent reading of that online publication that shall not be named gives them reason to think Orthodoxy can become Protestant. It wont. A progressive Orthodox parish is no longer Orthodox. It has proclaimed its own anathemas.

"That's all I have to say about that."
-Forrest Gump

I think what initially & ultimately hit me when I experienced the Divine Liturgy was the sense of comprehension of prayer & worship in the Great Litany. A sense of continual worship exemplified by Solomon in 1 Kings 8 etc. & concluded by what the Lord says that God is Spirit to be worshipped in spirit & in truth ( John 4:24).

Lukaris said:

I think what initially & ultimately hit me when I experienced the Divine Liturgy was the sense of comprehension of prayer & worship in the Great Litany. A sense of continual worship exemplified by Solomon in 1 Kings 8 etc. & concluded by what the Lord says that God is Spirit to be worshipped in spirit & in truth ( John 4:24).

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yep, I remember my priest pointing out Orthodoxy's direct line to the Tabernacle.

.

I love the humility.

"Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen"

Protestants will ask, "why do we pray to the Saints when we can go directly to God?"
The answer, which they will likely not understand, is humility.

Dewi Sant said:

I experience a general demystyfying in living Orthodox.

'Oh, we do it that way, makes sense.'

I suppose it comes from my departure from a 'High' Anglican church which placed extreme value on bells and smells to create a spectacle to the Mass. Using Latin and fine vestments, obscure hymns, and peculiar rites and uses.
It all became a little one-up-manship.
"I say daily prayers"
"I use the divine office in the breviary"
"I use the Latin form of the breviary"
"I chant the Latin office to the Greogrian tones"
"I chant the Latin office according to the Sarum usage of 1556"

Lord Have Mercy
I should perhaps delete this post, but let it be testament to the rapidity in which my mind can be drawn to prideful things.

Simple holiness, stillness before the Lord.

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yep, that fits with my experience in high lutheranism. I found myself always trying to do "better" but not really out of piety, moreso out of pride. I still see that tendency in myself but I try to remember St Antony and the Cobbler when I catch myself.

We must love Christ above everything else. I will admit that the times when I have been at my coldest, it has been much easier to bury myself in Church history books, translations of bits of Coptic or Syriac arcana, etc. than to pray. It is as Abba Amun, the disciple of Abba Anthony, put it (paraphrasing because I sadly lost my little booklet of his writings in a move about a year and a half ago): when you see your heart in deep slumber, weighed down by many sins, arise and interrogate it so that it may become fiery again. No attachment to any aspect of Church, no matter how edifying to the intellect or the fleshly senses, will keep a person there if they do not have love and wise fear of Christ our God, and His good Father, and the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver. Lord have mercy.

As for me, I can't say anything better than the Kievan emissaries said as quoted earlier, or what Fr. Matt posted. I honestly couldn't have imagined I'd be where I am now if I was not convinced that God is among us in the Coptic Orthodox Church. I know that's at variance with the official EO view re: the schism, so please don't take that as promotion here. I'm just saying that before I went to my first Coptic Orthodox liturgy, I'd never met or even spoken to an Egyptian person. I had no ties culturally or ethnically to anything Egyptian-related (still don't), and really no business trying another 'Eastern' church and expecting it to be anything different than the ones I had already experienced in my effort to either maintain my flagging Catholicism or just find some place to be. But it was quite different. But that's also not what did it. Plenty of things are different without having the effect of convincing a person to dedicate their life and their death to them.

Luckily for me, when I showed up I didn't find recreations of the pyramids and the sphinx or whatever (after liturgy, there was some weird food and people yelling about stuff over it, but eh...you're gonna get that anywhere). Instead I found an entirely other world in this world, the real uniting of the heavens and the earth in the communion of the Body and the Blood of the One Who is Himself that union of perfect divinity and perfect humanity. It didn't just 'look nice' or 'sound exotic' or any of that stuff (in fact, a very real case could be made that it is significantly less pleasing to the ear than more familiar chant, less relatable to the eye than Byzantine icons, etc.), as though that in itself would be enough to stick around for when you start to notice how reedy the tones are, and the exotic becomes everyday with repeated exposure. It is the presence of God that permeates every gesture, every word, every prayer that reminds me why I am where I am. "The fullness of Him Who fills all in all."