In the Passenger Seat: An excerpt from “A Pilgrim’s Journey into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy”
He was an
Episcopal priest, but he was standing in an Orthodox church on this Saturday
night and thinking about Truth. At the altar a gold-robed priest strode back
and forth swinging incense, moving in and out the doors of the iconostasis
according to rubrics that were as yet unfamiliar. Golden bells chimed against
the censer, and the light was smoky and dim. Over to the left a small choir was
singing in haunting harmony, voices twining in a capella simplicity. The Truth
part was this: the ancient words of this Vesperal service had been chanted for
more than a millennium. Lex orandi, lex credendi; what people pray shapes what
they believe. This was a church that had never, could never, apostatize.
She was
his wife, and she was standing next to him thinking about her feet. They hurt.
She wondered why they had pews if you had to stand up all the time. The
struggling choir was weak and singing in an unintelligible language that may
have been English. The few other worshipers weren’t participating in the service
in any visible way. Why did they hide the altar behind a wall? It was annoying
how the priest kept popping in and out of the doors like a figure on a Swiss
clock. The service dragged on following no discernible pattern, and it was
interminable. Once the priest said, “Let us conclude our evening prayer to the
Lord.” She checked her watch again; that was ten minutes ago, and still no end
in sight.
It was a
long journey from that evening to my present life as an Orthodox priest’s wife.
For many, converting to Christianity, or changing denominational allegiance, is
the result of a solitary conviction. As I ponder my pilgrim’s progress to
Orthodoxy, however, I realize that I didn’t make the trip alone, but in a
two-seater. And I wasn’t the one driving.
This is
more relevant than may initially appear. Something about Orthodoxy has immense
appeal to men, and it’s something that their wives—especially those used to
worshiping in the softer evangelical style—are generally slower to get. The
appeal of joining this vast, ancient, rock-solid communion must be something
like the appeal of joining the marines. It’s going to demand a hell of a lot
out of you, and it’s not going to cater to your individual whims, but when it’s
through with you you’re going to be more than you ever knew you could be. It’s
going to demand, not death on the battlefield, but death to self in a million
painful ways, and God is going to be sovereign. It’s a guy thing. You wouldn’t
understand.
When I
asked members of our little mission, “Why did you become a member?”, two women
(both enthusiastic converts now) used the same words: “My husband dragged me
here kicking and screaming.” Several others echoed that it had been their
husband’s idea—he’d been swept off his feet and had brought them along willy-nilly.
Another woman told how she left Inquirer’s Class each week vowing never to go
again, only to have her husband wheedle her into giving it one more try; this
lasted right up to the day of her chrismation. I can imagine how her husband
looked, because that’s how my Gary looked: blissful, cautious, eager, and with
a certain cat-who-ate-the-canary, you’ll-find-out smile.
That
night at Vespers a few years ago I was one of those balky wives. Gary and I
stood side by side feeling radically different things, but the pattern could
have been predicted from the beginning. When we first met over twenty years
ago, he was a political animal who just didn’t think much about God; I was a
passionate agnostic, angry at God for not existing, eagerly attacking the faith
of Christian friends.
Gary’s
shell began to crack when a professor required his philosophy class to read a
Gospel. As he read the words of Jesus, he became convinced that here was one
who “speaks with authority.” Since Jesus said there was a God, Gary began to
doubt his doubting.
This
reasoning left me unconvinced. By the time of our wedding I was going through
my Hindu phase, but didn’t object to visiting cathedrals on our honeymoon
hitch-hiking through Europe. One day in Dublin I looked at a statue of Jesus
and was struck to my knees, hearing an interior voice say, “I am your life.” I
knew it was the One I had rejected and ridiculed, come at last to seize me
forever. It was a shattering experience from which I emerged blinking like a
newborn, and decades later I still feel overwhelming awe and gratitude for that
rescue, that vast and undeserved gift. It’s like the story of the farmer who
had to whap his donkey with a two-by-four to get its attention. I imagine that,
when God needs a two-by-four that big, He must be dealing with a pretty big
donkey.
As I
shifted my aching feet on the floor of that dim church I wondered whether
Gary’s new direction would ever make sense to me. What had pushed him in the
door of this church in the first place was growing unease with changes in the
Episcopal Church, changes both moral and theological.
For
example, in July of 1991 I was present for a vote of the Episcopal House of
Bishops, a resolution requiring ordained clergy to abstain from sex outside of
marriage. When the ballots were counted, the resolution had failed. I remember
thinking, “This isn’t a church anymore; it has no intention of following its
Lord.”
Meanwhile,
it became fashionable to doubt Jesus’ miracles, the Virgin Birth, even the
bodily Resurrection. Before his consecration as England’s fourth-highest
ranking cleric, David Jenkins claimed that miracles were in the eye of the
beholder. Of Jesus’ physical resurrection he sniffed, “I’m bothered about what
I call ‘God and conjuring tricks.’” He was consecrated Bishop of Durham in York
Minster Cathedral on July 6, 1984; two nights later, lightening struck from a
cloudless sky and burned down a wing of the building. Beholders thought they
might have seen a miracle.
Home in
Baltimore such shenanigans were wearing on my husband. He banded together with
five other “troublesome priests” and wrote a document asserting seven points of
theological orthodoxy; they called it the Baltimore Declaration. It prompted a
minor dust storm, but the national church lumbered on its way as undisturbed as
a water buffalo by a mosquito.
Gary at
last decided that he could no longer be under the authority of apostate
bishops; he had to be in the line of Truth. But where to go? He briefly considered
the “continuing” Anglican churches, but felt he couldn’t climb further out from
the branch to a twig; if anything, he had to return to the trunk. Also, he
began to believe that the compromising flaw lay at the very heart of
Anglicanism. The beloved doctrine of “comprehensiveness” suggested, “Let’s
share the same prayers, the same words about the faith, but they can mean
different things to you than to me.” Not a common faith, but common words about
the faith—mere flimsy words. A church at peace can survive this way; a church
attacked by wheedling heresies must tumble into accommodation reducing
orthodoxy to shreds.
Roman
Catholicism was the next obvious choice, and we looked into the Pastoral
Provision whereby married Episcopal priests can become married Catholic
priests. But, ironically, pro-Provision literature gave us serious doubts. One
book by a priest’s wife painted an unintentionally grim picture; would we have
to sell our furniture and live in a furnished apartment, never be allowed to
retire, be ordered to teach high school instead of pastor, and be fourth on a
huge staff, under supervision of people whose views were uncomfortably similar
to those of the Episcopal bishops he was fleeing? Despite that author’s cheery
“it was worth it all,” it sounded to me like jumping from the frying pan to the
fire.
Then
there was the matter of theology. We remained worried by traces of
salvation-by-works in Catholic practice, and a habitual tendency to frame human
relations with God more as business transaction than love affair. Catholic
theology seemed in general too overdone, compelled to parse every sentience and
split every infinitude. I call it “driving nails with your forehead.”
Gary was
invited to join a small group of Protestant clergy for an evening with Orthodox
evangelist Father Peter Gillquist, and he went carrying some hard questions;
Father Peter later said he thought Gary was the one present that night who
would never convert. But the questions were evidence of urgent wrestling. Gary
particularly needed assurance that the Orthodox cling to salvation given by
God’s loving grace, not earned by human effort. Father Peter directed Gary to
the fourth-century commentaries of St. John Chrysostom. In a sermon on 1
Timothy, for example, Chrysostom says that the best purpose of the law is to
reveal that it cannot save us; it then “remits us to Him who can do so.”
Then I
re-encountered a history lesson that had eluded me in seminary, but now took on
vital importance. For the first thousand years, the thread of Christian unity
was preserved world-wide through battering waves of heresies. The method was
collegial, not authoritarian; disputes were settled in church councils, whose
decisions were not valid unless “received” by the whole community. The Faith was
indeed common: what was believed by all people, in all times, in all places.
The degree of unity won this way was amazing. Though there was some local
liturgical variation, the Church was strikingly uniform in faith and practice
across vast distances, and at a time when communication was far from easy. This
unity was so consistent that I could attribute it to nothing but the Holy
Spirit.
Then a
developing split between East and West broke open. The Church had five centers:
Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Rome. The bishop of Rome
was accorded special honorary status, but no unilateral power to determine
doctrine or to command the other bishops. However, by the eleventh century the
concord between the four Eastern centers and Rome was disintegrating. The East
believed the papacy was seeking expanded power over the worldwide church, and
balked particularly at Rome’s insistence on adding the word filioque (“and the
Son”) to the Nicene Creed, a statement of faith which had been in common use
since 325 A.D. So serious a change as rewording a creed would have to be won by
consensus in church council, not imposed by command.
While the
filioque controversy sounds at first picayune, it had theological
reverberations that are significant, as disputants at the time realized. In an
effort to elevate the second person of the Trinity, it dilutes the singular
authority of the Father, and changes the Trinity from—visually speaking—a
triangle with God the Father at the top, to one tipped over, both Father and
Son above the Spirit. Orthodoxy is indeed “patri-archal,” that is, the Father
(the pater) is the arche, the source and font of all.
In
Orthodoxy the all-male priesthood is not based on the idea that women can’t
represent Jesus; if replication of the specifics of the Incarnation is the
goal, only a first-century Jew could come near that. In Orthodoxy, it’s not
Jesus, but the Father whom those serving at the altar represent, and whatever
else a woman can be (and, in Orthodoxy, she can be anything else: choir
director, lector, teacher, head of the parish council) she cannot be a Father.
She can be a Mother, of course, and so there is a recognized and honored role
for the priest’s wife, with a title: Khouria (Arabic), Matushka (Russian), or
Presbytera (Greek).
The
filioque controversy, then, had implications that reach further than initially
appear. The bishops of Antioch, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Jerusalem
objected that the Holy Spirit would not have waited a thousand years to clarify
the role of the bishop of Rome, and that a church council would be necessary to
amend the Creed. The conflict grew worse, and the legate of the pope
excommunicated the patriarch of Constantinople on Christmas Day of 1054 AD. The
patriarch returned the favor, and the split was on.
When West
severed from East in this four-to-one split, the Orthodox churches continued
united, as they have to the present day (Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, and
so forth being just national expressions of the same worldwide church). Unlike
the Western church, the church of the East went through Christianity’s second
millennium without being shattered into fragments by theological disputes. This
is despite horrific persecution and martyrdom: twenty million Russian Orthodox
are estimated to have been martyred in this century alone.
Once
unchained from the need for consensus with other bishops the Western Church
continued freely developing Christian doctrine, while the East had laid the
task to rest with the end of the seventh Ecumenical (“world-wide”) Council in
the eighth century. As Western Christian theology grew more elaborately
defined, it offered more fodder for protest, and eventually for Protestantism.
Five hundred years after the East-West split the Reformation emerged, spurred
by a desire to whittle back to the simpler original. But though some Reformers
read the Church Fathers and made an effort to learn from Orthodox leaders,
barriers of geography, culture, and language made cross-fertilization
difficult. For the most part the Reformers relied on the Bible as their only
guide, and it’s a book that sincere people can interpret in wildly different
ways, as shown by the existence of nearly twenty-five thousand different
Protestant “Bible-based” denominations. Subsequent generations continued the
split from ancient practice. Like untrained gardeners going into an overgrown
garden, successors to the Reformers hacked about with machetes, slashing
unknowingly through material that had been affirmed for the first thousand
years: the sacraments, the honoring of Mary, the eucharistic Real Presence.
Protestants were trying to rediscover the ancient Church, but instead they
created a dancing array of sorcerer’s apprentice brooms, all trying to sweep
one another clean.
The
constant experience of doctrinal disagreements contributed to a Western
tendency to make the Christian experience more about ideas than about
heart-driven living faith, more what you think than what you do; more assensus
than fiducia, more ideas about God than surrender to him. The Orthodox Church,
escaping this sort of discord, could admire a butterfly without having to pin
its head to a board. Orthodoxy has had many failings and controversies, but
they are most often about use and abuse of earthly power; they are not about theology.
It’s not yet perfection on earth, but there is to a refugee Westerner a certain
bliss in bypassing theological arm wrestling about things too big for our puny
understanding. For example, rather than over-defining Jesus’ presence in the
Eucharist, or tossing out the concept entirely, Orthodox are content to say
that the bread and wine become his body and blood simply because they “change.”
In Orthodox theology there is a humility, a willingness to let mystery remain
beyond comprehension.
The
stance of an Orthodox believer is similarly humble and childlike: we are
sinners, receiving the overwhelming love of God, and we stand before him in
gratitude. This is, I think, one of the reasons we kiss so much: we kiss icons,
the Gospel book, the cross, and each other. Most Sundays we use the Divine
Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and we thank God for sending his Son “into the
world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” Grateful repentance is such a
constant in Orthodox worship that mystic surfers, looking for smells, bells,
and thrills, rather than submission to Jesus as Lord, find they can’t take more
than a couple of weeks—not without conversion.
I paint
here in hindsight a rushing tide of conviction about the truth of Orthodoxy
which swept my husband away. At the time, I was having none of it. Orthodoxy
was too foreign, too old, too fancy. I didn’t care what they said, I just
couldn’t believe that this was what the worship of the early church looked
like—all the cluttered doodads of gold, incense, and fancy vestments.
My vague
assumption was that early Christians just sat around on the floor, probably in
their blue jeans, talking about what a great guy Jesus was. It was embarrassing
to review Scripture and realize that from Exodus to Revelation worship is
clothed in gold, silver, precious stones, embroidery, robes of gorgeous fabric,
bells and candles; I don’t know of an instance of scriptural worship that
doesn’t include incense. God ordered beauty, even extravagant beauty, in
worship even while his people were still wandering the desert in tents. Beauty
must mean something that no-nonsense, head-driven Christians fail to grasp.
Gary was
rarin’ to go, but I put on the brakes. Oddly, I wasn’t concerned about
finances, even though becoming Orthodox meant throwing away a fifteen-year
career when our three kids were entering their teens. Nor did I feel loyal
affection for the Episcopal Church, either nationally or in our little parish
(where, as a cultural conservative, I often felt like the odd man out). But I
was afraid we would be leaving for the wrong reason: because we weren’t happy.
Too many people break up marriages, shirk obligations, and betray commitments
because they feel insufficiently fulfilled. Besides, even if the Episcopal
Church was lost to apostasy, didn’t God need chaplains on the Titanic? Hadn’t
we better stay where he planted us?
Gary
finally won me over by saying, “You know what God needed on the Titanic?
Life-boats. We know where there’s a ship that doesn’t sink. Let’s try to get as
many people to safety as possible.” So on January 30, 1993, I found myself
standing before Bishop Antoun as he anointed me with holy oil, calling out “The
seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit!” “Seal!” the congregation shouted. Five
other families came with us from our Episcopal parish that day, and two weeks
later we celebrated our first liturgy, at a homemade altar, in a borrowed
space, with borrowed appointments. Three years later, Holy Cross Mission
numbers forty families—nearly every one a convert.
A
continent away someone I’ve met only by mail is writing me a letter. She’s a
multi-generation evangelical, descended from missionaries and professors at
Christian colleges. Now her husband has begun looking into Orthodoxy and shows
the signs, so familiar to me, of beginning that plummeting dive. Her words,
too, are familiar:
“This is
a church whose disciplines and life, I feel, appeal initially more to men. To
me it all seems so…hard. In my spiritual walk up to this point my heart has led
my head. I might go to church mad and unrepentant, but with a worship chorus in
a lilting tune, or a heartfelt spontaneous prayer, my heart would begin to
soften. I’d come out ready to live the obedient life.
“Orthodoxy
makes sense in my head, but I yearn for something to grab my gut and help me
over the hump labeled ‘self.’ All the ‘soft’ music, etc., that used to draw me
is missing and I’m left in this massive struggle with my will. Does that make
sense? Doesn’t a spoonful of sugar help the medicine go down, and all that?
“And how
do women eventually come to terms with this somewhat austere church?”
How did
I? Now I can’t imagine ever not being Orthodox. Here is my home, my joy, my
fulfillment; I tasted and saw and nothing can compare. But how did I get past
the bare truth part, the aching feet part, to discover the rich, mystical
beauty of Orthodoxy?
A
kaleidoscope of images flashes through my mind. The textures, the scents, the
music of the liturgy, a continuous song of worship that lifts me every week.
The Great Fast of Lent, a discipline far more demanding than I’d ever faced in
my Christian walk. Kneeling on Holy and Great Thursday and listening to the
hammer blows resound as my husband nailed the icon of Jesus’ corpus to the
cross; seeing my daughter’s shoulders shake with sobbing. Easter morning
giddiness and champagne at sunrise. Hearing my son say that, after a year of
the Divine Liturgy, he didn’t like the sentimental hymns of the last 300 years
any more: “They make me feel further from God.” Seeing icons change from
looking grim and forbidding to looking challenging, strong and true. True.
Truth
turns into Beauty in unexpected ways. What was strange and perplexing has
become my sweetest home. As I look over my shoulder, I can see this friend not
far behind me on the road, on the cloverleaf of conversion, and it’s by now a
familiar sight. Her husband is driving, and she’s in the passenger seat.
An excerpt from “Facing East: A Pilgrim’s Journey into the
Mysteries of Orthodoxy”
Source: http://frederica.com/facing-east-excerpt-1/
