Friday, February 05, 2010

Orthograph #36 - The Bar is Open

10 comments:

ryan said...

Though I am not yet Orthodox, I have de-converted from a tee-totaling denom/culture. Microbrews were major players, though I find that you folks in the western US have a far better selection than us eastern US guys.

Quick questions: I just made a real-life Orthodox friend (versus my many in cyber-life). My family and 2 other families that we spend time with were considering dropping by an Orthodox sevice, thanks, in no small part to your cartooning (okay, maybe more than just the cartoons).

WhaddoIgottado when I get there? Must I know all the motions or is there a reserved section of seating for clueless Goyim? My beard is only about 2 inches long. Should I wait? (Wife has no facial hair, which I've always viewed positively.) I am a bit nervous about this, even though I've been in religious organizations that stopped just short of passing rattlesnakes through the pews. Perhaps I need a first Orthodox service primer drawing or graph. Help.

Loren said...

This has been my experience. I was raised in a strict teetotaler sect. By the time I started drinking an occasional beer, I was old enough and prosperous enough that I skipped the Heidelberg and Keystone stage of development. I started with Rogue Ales, McMenamins and other brew pub beers. I still gravitate toward the microbrews and craft brews.
Cheers

margaret said...

Converts from Anglo-Catholicism remain pickled, we just change our medium from "gin, darling" to "red, please, Father".

margaret said...

Ryan, unless you are really unlucky there won't be a babushka at the door to measure your beard. If there is you have to promise to come back and tell us all about it. Beardless ladies are also very much favoured in Orthodoxy so your wife will do well. As for clueless goyim, well, there's a lot of variety in how Orthodox themselves behave so stand at the back, observe and copy. No-one will care if you get it wrong and anyone who does doesn't have enough to do :) so you don't need to take them seriously.

Mark Eugene said...

you got me on this one...

Steve Robinson said...

Ryan, Margaret is basically correct, just go, stand in the back and I'd say I wouldn't even try to imitate anyone... I didn't do anything my first few visits because it was THEIR stuff, not mine and it just seemed kind of a lack of integrity to mimic movements without any piety in order to assuage my discomfort and ego desire to not stand out. But know that if there are converts there, they will probably notice it and ask if you are visiting for the first time. Don't try to "go native" when you're just passing through. At the end of the service, if you want to you can go up last and venerate the cross (kiss it) or not, if you do it is a good opportunity to introduce yourself to the priest as a first time visitor. Depending on the priest he will or won't try to engage you or try to arm wrestle you to an inquirer's class. Email me privately if you need any more than this. Keep us posted.

Steve Robinson said...

Loren, I remember when I was a minister in the churches of Christ and inbibed. I would order a glass of red wine in a coffee cup at restaurants because to the casual observer it would look like a cup of coffee. I shopped for my beer at a liquor store rather than a grocery store and would cruise the aisles before checking out. If I saw someone from Church I figured I'd just go up to them and say, "I THOUGHT that was you I saw come in here... so what's up?" I had it down. Image was everything... until I got busted and it was another nail in my coffin that got me eventually fired. But that's another blog post some day.

Anonymous said...

The coffee cup trick doesn't work as well with cheese. Or so I've heard.

Maxim said...

It worked just the opposite with me; I was raised in a strict teetotaler household (Evangelical Friends), but liberated myself from that mentality in early adulthood, mainly because I thought that was a silly way to tell who the "True Christians" were. By the time I became Orthodox I had already worked my way through the major micro-breweries. One of the things I initially found appealing in the Orthodox (Convert) parish I started attending was their relaxed attitude toward alcohol, but that was before a great wave of PC flowed through, transforming it into the First Church of the Prohibition, Champion of world-wide Teetotalitarianism.

deb said...

Maxim: Huh. That's weird. A whole Orthodox parish went teetotaler? En masse? I wonder, how did that happen? (And how is that "P.C."?)

Strange.