From examiner.com:
There's a tendency for us Orthodox to stammer a bit when asked to describe what our worship services are like. "They're uh... I mean, it's... Well...like..." and that's about as far as we get, hands waving, eyes a bit vacant as we try to search for the right words. We do well to remember the emissaries of Prince Vladimir of Kiev, who returned from their visit to the Hagia Sophia in the late 10th century and reported, "We did not know if we were in heaven or on earth."
Orthodox worship is not articulated. It's experienced. It's something performed with the entire body, all your muscles and thoughts and heartbeats and sweat glands and...everything.
But perhaps Rev. Atkinson [from the Real Live Preacher blog] really did have some advance warning. In his raw, gritty autobiography of sorts, posted years ago on his blog, he writes, "Turns out Christianity is an Eastern religion. The earliest Christians were Hebrews. Semites. People of the East. They did not know how to separate mind from body. They were holistic before holistic was cool."
Wait. Did he just call me "cool?" That's cool!
How Many Orthodox Christians Are in America?
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A quick bit of self-promotion: In January, I’ll be teaching a live, 4-week
course on American Orthodox History for the Orthodox Studies Institute at
Sain...
1 day ago
1 comment:
I've read that quote from Prince Vladimir's peeps before ... I need to remember to use it because it's so apropos. The first part of that entry is me, for sure. Pretty funny.
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