Oasis
Oh God you are my God, earnestly I seek you...as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. (Psalm 63:1 ESV)
In 2019 our church hired a new pastor. By January 2020, as if the approaching pandemic weren’t enough, things were also taking a strange turn at church, and it made us very uncomfortable. By June of 2020 along with a sizable number of families we made our exit from the parish that had been the only church home our children had known. The timing could not have been worse. The pandemic was in full swing, churches were either completely shut down or barely operating, and we were suddenly “homeless.” Even so, we who left had each other, and the most obvious solution was a weekly gathering outside in peoples’ yards as long as the weather permitted. We brought camp chairs, guitars and Bibles, and decided to study the book of Acts and revisit how the very first Christians became “church.” We read Francis Chan’s book, Letters to the Church, which is a passionate appeal to modern Evangelicals to get back to basics and count the cost of what it means to follow Christ even if that means suffering. We decided we were open to anything, even if that meant forming a new church, though we never made that the goal. Primarily, our stated aims were to get through that season of incredible hurt, confusion, and disillusionment somehow, with God’s help. When I think back on the first half of 2020, it ranks as one of the most difficult and painful seasons in our marriage and family. Church was supposed to be a safe place, but suddenly it felt fractured and cruel. Our decision to leave was heartbreaking, but we know it was correct, given the circumstances.
As a group, we made a commitment that we would not meet in a spirit of bitterness or anger. We did not allow our gatherings to be gripe sessions, though it was understood that we were all working through a sense of grief, loss, and betrayal. We prayed together for the healing of our wounds and to forgive those who had offended us. This was the intention of our gathering.
In the late spring of 2021, after one year of such gatherings, I was beginning to feel a loss of the more formal liturgy that previously had been central to our worship. As a group we were keeping to the Nicene Creed, the Our Father, and held an informal and shortened version of the liturgy each week, but I began to feel the loss deeply. It had been the one thing that grounded and centered me, and I realized that I didn’t want it diminished in any way. We began questioning what the future would hold for our family as far as church attendance, because in the spring of 2021, we were beginning to look a lot like one of the pandemic statistics, and it wasn’t just because of the virus.
In the midst of my desert there was an oasis that I was about to discover. For several years I have followed a literary podcast called Close Reads (allow me to place a shameless plug for such a fine production!) Last year it came to my attention that they were to hold a five day retreat, and I could not imagine a more amazing way to spend a week than in the mountains discussing books, so I signed up and went away from my family by myself for the first time ever. I have always appreciated the Close Reads hosts’ perspective on literature and their ability to fulfill their stated commitment to find the virtue, beauty, and truth in the works they discussed. I had heard it mentioned a time or two that Orthodoxy is a framework through which things were being interpreted, but didn’t give it a lot of thought, because I figured they were just “Christian” though the podcast is not a religious podcast. During the week of the retreat, however, in both the large group discussions and in personal interactions, I started asking questions.
The main question I asked in a personal conversation, as I related in a previous post, had to do with the Orthodox view of the afterlife, because since my mother’s death 7 years prior, I had lost touch with my hope of eternity. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe anymore, I just felt hollow, like I could not access hope anymore. I feared that it was perhaps gone forever, and I would walk for the rest of my life in dry obedience to a faith that was formed out of pure duty and not at all from desire for what is to come.
My new friend’s answer to my question was about the journey of the soul that is believed to occur after one departs their fleshly body. It was so foreign to anything I had ever heard, I felt that if it were true, I needed to learn more, because in Protestantism, we had nothing like that. I had only ever heard of a binary state—saved or unsaved, redeemed or damned, heaven or burning hell, and death brought on the immediate transfer of the soul to its eternal state. It had always been a rather tortuous concept to me. But quite suddenly, death seemed far more mysterious and yet more hopeful than anything I had ever heard before.
Another new friend at that retreat, was also Orthodox, and seemed ever willing to answer my questions. Her answers were always so measured and thoughtful, and her attitude toward her faith was the epitome of winsome. I was deeply intrigued and so very thirsty for spiritual refreshment. It seemed I had come upon a well in my desert whose depths could not be fully known or measured. Yet, like a horse that snorts and shuffles and tosses her head at something unfamiliar, I was nervous.
Upon returning home, two significant interactions happened.
First, I told my husband about my encounter with Orthodoxy. He listened, sort of, and then said he wasn’t interested. I could look into it if I wanted, but he wasn’t going to another church. He had become fully convinced that church was a human institution where he had to try hard to feel like he was worshipping God, and yet was always falling short. He was finished with church. He had become a statistic like the ones you read about in Christianity Today. But then, so had I. I was in full agreement with him, but unlike him, I longed for connection and fellowship with other Christians. I didn’t know exactly how to achieve that anymore, because institutional Christianity was something I had been flogged with too many times to want to go back. The “corporate church” meant something that looked more like a business than the body of Christ, and it repelled me. Small groups and house churches seemed unmoored, and not likely to last for the long term. I did not see it as a permanent solution to our problem.
Second, I visited with my friend of 16 years who had also left our old church. She was also a Close Reads listener and I wanted to tell her all about the retreat. Unlike us, she and her family had not become deeply involved in the weekly fellowship we had formed, but she maintained her friendship with us and many others of the group. I knew that she had a brother who was a Catholic convert, and I fully expected her to follow suit. I asked her, “Did you know that the Close Reads hosts are Orthodox?” She informed me that she did know that and followed by saying that she and her family had been attending an Orthodox church for over a month. She hadn’t wanted to tell me because she was worried that I would think she’d gone “over the edge.” If she had mentioned it a week earlier her concern for my response would have been well-founded, but at that moment, I was completely unfazed by the revelation and was even happy for her. “Do you want to come?” She asked. My flat and immediate reply was “No.” I needed to do some research first.
At home from the retreat I started reading everything on Orthodoxy that I could find, because everything in life can be answered in books. (Spoiler alert—I don’t actually believe that.) I quickly acquired a stack of books recommended by my Orthodox and inquiring friends, and spent time every morning reading, underlining, contemplating. When I wasn’t reading I was listening to podcasts, and one in particular entitled Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy by Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick, who also has a book by the same title. I was able to convince my husband to listen also, and it struck a chord with him, as well. Each podcast was broken down beginning with the origins of the Church, the Great Schism, Rome, and every possible iteration of Protestantism. He would explain what dominant beliefs were part of each variety of heterodox Christianity, and how it deviated from Orthodoxy. It was all explained very matter-of-factly and without judgement, and having seen so many of the various options out there first-hand, I was not unfamiliar with what he was explaining in most cases. What impressed me were the clear differences between Protestantism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and coupled with his claim that the teachings of Orthodoxy had remained constant since the founding of the church at Pentecost, I began to question everything I had ever been taught theologically. Suddenly, the book of Acts looked very different to me than it had just one year earlier when I had prayed as I read, “Lord, show me Your Church.”
One day I was in my car listening to the podcast, and I found myself agreeing with nearly everything this priest was saying as he explained the ideas the Orthodox hold in contrast to Protestantism. Though at that point I had not yet set foot in an Orthodox church, the crazy thought came to me, “Oh Wow. I think I’m Orthodox!” and I felt an inexpressible thrill run through me. I am not sure why I found this to be thrilling. One would think that after all I had been through in my relationships with the church I would feel afraid or even a little numb when faced with yet another path to travel, but those were not the emotions. What I was finding in Orthodoxy made so much perfect sense to my soul. I finally had a direction to travel, and though I didn’t know it in that moment, I had found the path home.
