Hello! :wave
Lately, my heart has been tugging at me to return to the Church.
Well, "return" may not be the right phrase, since I was never baptized, but had a rather long catechumenate in which I left and never returned. I was relatively young going in, 21 actually, and I had caught a rather heavy case of the convertitis and allowed Orthodoxy to penetrate my mind and my eyes, but never truly my heart -- not fully. You know the signs... wanting to pick the old Romanian couple in the Church as my godparents, filling my mind up with the theology of it all and getting prideful, sort of arrogant about things, and essentially being enamored by the aesthetics of it all, all the while taking the true heart of Orthodoxy for granted.
These last couple weeks, God has been pulling at my heart to return home to the Church in some subtle, some not-so-subtle ways. My wife and I were cleaning out the closet and I found a shoe box with some old icons, and some Christmas cards I swapped with friends from an old Orthodox forum. We talked for awhile about it, and man, the nostalgia really set in. Not much later I was going to a car audio shop to schedule my speakers to be replaced, and the guy told me he could get me in on Monday the 23rd, as he looked down at his calendar and jokingly remarked, "Orthodox Lent begins. Whatever the hell that means..."
Beyond these things, though, is the emotional draw I feel. I miss my priest. I have a strong desire to receive the sacraments, and, even if it seems childish or silly, I miss the aesthetics of it all. The incense, the icons, the beeswax candles, and the oil lamps. The chant. The parish. Everything. Even the smell of coffee brewing in the hall...
It is going to be hard for me, though. The church I am involved with now, they absolutely adore me. My family attends there on my father's side, and I have lunch with them after church every Sunday. A couple of missionary friends want me to come along to El Salvador and the Honduras in June. I'm connected with a lot of other similar churches in the area, we're involved in one another's spiritual lives.
None of these friends, family members or associates will understand at all. At best, they will fear I've fallen into some sort of works-based religion, and at worst, they will think I've lost my salvation and have taken up idolatry. They are not bad people, just your typical American Protestants who grossly misunderstand anything seemingly "Roman."
May I ask your prayers and your advice?
Lately, my heart has been tugging at me to return to the Church.
Well, "return" may not be the right phrase, since I was never baptized, but had a rather long catechumenate in which I left and never returned. I was relatively young going in, 21 actually, and I had caught a rather heavy case of the convertitis and allowed Orthodoxy to penetrate my mind and my eyes, but never truly my heart -- not fully. You know the signs... wanting to pick the old Romanian couple in the Church as my godparents, filling my mind up with the theology of it all and getting prideful, sort of arrogant about things, and essentially being enamored by the aesthetics of it all, all the while taking the true heart of Orthodoxy for granted.
These last couple weeks, God has been pulling at my heart to return home to the Church in some subtle, some not-so-subtle ways. My wife and I were cleaning out the closet and I found a shoe box with some old icons, and some Christmas cards I swapped with friends from an old Orthodox forum. We talked for awhile about it, and man, the nostalgia really set in. Not much later I was going to a car audio shop to schedule my speakers to be replaced, and the guy told me he could get me in on Monday the 23rd, as he looked down at his calendar and jokingly remarked, "Orthodox Lent begins. Whatever the hell that means..."
Beyond these things, though, is the emotional draw I feel. I miss my priest. I have a strong desire to receive the sacraments, and, even if it seems childish or silly, I miss the aesthetics of it all. The incense, the icons, the beeswax candles, and the oil lamps. The chant. The parish. Everything. Even the smell of coffee brewing in the hall...
It is going to be hard for me, though. The church I am involved with now, they absolutely adore me. My family attends there on my father's side, and I have lunch with them after church every Sunday. A couple of missionary friends want me to come along to El Salvador and the Honduras in June. I'm connected with a lot of other similar churches in the area, we're involved in one another's spiritual lives.
None of these friends, family members or associates will understand at all. At best, they will fear I've fallen into some sort of works-based religion, and at worst, they will think I've lost my salvation and have taken up idolatry. They are not bad people, just your typical American Protestants who grossly misunderstand anything seemingly "Roman."
May I ask your prayers and your advice?
