Orthromance

Wow, I got interviewed!

2009-11-01T15:34:00.000-08:00

Hi dear readers,

Apparently I am now famous enough to be interviewed by a writer from Pravmir.com, a Web site that publishes articles about contempary issues and Orthodoxy. Here's a link to the article.

It was fun getting interviewed. And, guys, the writer, Emily Howard, is a single Orthodox girl, so you might look her up on Facebook!

Thomas

2009-04-10T16:53:00.000-07:00

These posts are reverse-dated so that they'll show up in logical order. The newest ones are at the bottom.

Introduction: Plight of the Single Person
Defining Your Struggle
Courting vs. dating vs. general naughtiness
Basic rules of being single
Where to Find Your Special Someone
Internet dating for the Orthodox
Joys and perils of dating PKs
Seminary - His Theological Clock is Ticking
Guide to Romantic Pilgrimages
The Dangers of Travel Lust - A Trip to Old Country
Waiting, Wondering and Whining -- Part I
Waiting -- Part II, Distractions
Match-making and other bad advice
Missionary Dating -- Convert Your Sweetie With a Kiss?
Monasticism -- Competing with St. Anthony the Great for love
Lent + Dating = Grapefruit + Milk
Early Babies and Other Hazards of Passion
Volunteering for Love: Romantification by Good Works
Suppose You Propose
Christian Dumping
E-mail Flirting: A Great Way to Talk to Yourself
Death by PBS special -- Intimacy
Modest ≠ frumpy!
The Day I Bought a Cell Phone NEW POST 7/27/09

I need stories of goofballs met on the Internet

2009-03-28T15:43:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,

As the unemployment rate climbs, I have had to accept the fact that I am going to remain a writer for a while a longer. I've been turning this blog into an actual book that I hope to publish. As I've been writing my chapter on Internet dating for Christians, I've been having a difficult time making it funny. I need some stories of goofballs whom you have met on-line, as well as stories from using on-line dating sites such as eHarmony, match.com, Christiancafe.com, or orthodoxchristiandating.com. I'm also interested in stories of meeting people on OrthodoxCircle, Facebook, myspace or other social networking sites.

You can submit them as a comment on this post or you can send them to my e-mail address at: erut...@yahoo.com

You have to click on the address to get a window to open to solve a spam-stopper thing.

I'm putting an emphasis on funny stories... no Confession material please. I can use a pseudonym for you if you like, but I can't pay anybody.

In Christ,
Thomas Eric Ruthford

The Plight of the Single Person

2008-03-27T16:08:00.000-07:00

Being Orthodox and being single makes you a decidedly odd person. Your chances of finding other young singles for any given trip to church is about the same as a trip to the library or Costco. If you want to meet people at church, you’ve either got to bring some toy cars for playing with the kids, or you’ve got to learn to talk about regularity problems with the Metamucil crowd.

Trying to hang with the non-Orthodox crowd doesn’t work so well, either, because your idea of a wild party is a fish-wine-and-oil day. Being a seasonal vegan who goes to church all the time makes you kind of interesting, but “interesting” here means “weird." You’ll never be really “cool.” It stinks. I can remember it. Sort of.

I’ve been married six months. I think it’s necessary to write about the plight of the single Orthodox person before I forget what it’s like. There’s a clock ticking above my head for how long I can give useful advice, so I might as well try now.

If you’re single, there is this chasm between you and your married friends across which they cannot see to your predicament. Their struggle is “how do I make this work?” whereas yours is “do I want to make this work?” or worse “How do I keep from going crazy when there’s nothing I can do?”

I’ve decided to write this article now while I still have some of the perspective of a single person. If this essay raises any questions that you have for me, you’d better send them to me soon before the marital bliss completely kills my ability to understand your issues. If I give you some lame answer like…

“You can be married to anyone just so long as you pray,” or

“I’m sure you could find someone at the youth conference,” or

“If you just try you can get married…”

…that means it’s been too darn long and I need to quit writing about how to get married and start writing about how to stay married. I’m still in the newlywed euphoria right now, and I can get my wife to forgive me anything if I run my fingers through her hair for 15 minutes and give her a piece of chocolate. I can, however, remember some of what frustrated bachelordom is like.

(As an aside, these articles are both for men and women, and in my writing I’ll be switching in between male and female pronouns freely often just because it’s going to sound pretty weird if I keep saying, “So you want to meet a nice human.”)

I’m writing this guide because the Orthodox Church has some excellent modern texts on making marriage work, and it has 2,000 years of texts on how to be a good monk or nun, but it doesn’t have much to say about the process of finding a spouse, or about how to keep your sanity during the long period of waiting and wondering while trying to find the right person.

I guess part of the reason that there isn’t much text devoted to being single is that the idea of “finding someone” is a recent concept. St. John Chrysostom’s wonderful homily, “How to Choose a Wife” is primarily addressed at parents of young men because they were the ones who did the choosing. Young people typically lived with their parents until they were married, and arranged marriages were very common. The idea of a young person living alone and “playing the field” would have been seen as an invitation to having a “love child” in your family whose legal rights are all questionable.

But, that’s not the challenge we’re faced with now. For better or for worse, we live alone, often for years, and we have the difficult and opportunity-filled tasks of looking, meeting, chatting, flirting and asking other single people in hopes we can share a life in Christ. And, we try not to flip out in the process.

Defining Your Struggle

2008-03-26T16:14:00.000-07:00

Trying to find that special one is a holy struggle. God had to wait at least 4,000 years to find the right woman to bear Christ. Pray that your struggle to find the right person will only be as long as one of the short Old Testament books, such as Ruth or Jonah as opposed to the Book of Kings.

Marriage is a sign of the Kingdom of Heaven. St. Paul calls it a “Mystery of the Church.” The theme of marriage runs all throughout the Old Testament, not just in the married saints in the lineage of Christ, but also in the relationship between God and Israel. Israel is the bride and God is the bridegroom in this imagery. Marriage in this context is a union between two things that ought to be together – husband and wife, heaven and earth, God and Man, the Church and Jesus Christ. And, in the language of the Old Testament, apostasy – tearing asunder two things that ought to be together, is adultery. Even though humanity committed adultery against God often, He wanted this union to become real and literal so much, that he was willing to give His Son to make it happen, and He endured death for it.

A Christian marriage lives out these ideals of union that God has demonstrated for us as true love. It’s not a light concept. If you actually read through the preceding paragraph without getting bored, it’s probably a sign that you’re looking to live these ideals with your spouse, which is not easy.

Marriage in America today is more about agreement and getting along than it is about a covenant of Grace. I know lots of secular couples who have great marriages because they really respect each other and get along well. I’m not going to say anything bad about that. But, I was looking for more. I loved going to church because it was a real union, a marriage between the worshipers and God, and the worshipers with each other. In fact, we have to understand that our worship as we prepare for Holy Communion during the Divine Liturgy is the model for marriage. According to Fr. John Meyendorff in his book, “Byzantine Theology,” the early Church did not have a specific rite for marriage, rather, the happy couple would go to church for the same Divine Liturgy that everyone else attended for worship, and the priest would bless their marriage just before they went to Holy Communion (p.197).

I’m not trying to write an essay about “The True Meaning of Marriage,” since every priest has a boilerplate sermon to that effect ready at a moment’s notice any way. But, what I am trying to say is that for those of us who really like going to church and believe in life itself as Holy Communion, we have a very specific reason we’re searching for someone. In America, we have the opportunity to find lots of “nice, tolerant” single people who could be married to us and let us go to church whenever we want, but we’re not looking just to have this life of worship in the church, but to share it.

This knowledge of what we want both focuses our task and makes it a whole lot more complicated.

Courting vs. dating vs. general naughtiness

2008-03-25T16:37:00.000-07:00

The kind of love that we’re looking for isn’t easy to find. So, let’s define it as best we can. If you wanted to be really pure and traditional about it, you’d be courting. This means that your family and the family of the person you’re interested in are both heavily involved. Hopefully, you actually like the girl you’re pursuing. It’s a more formal, more public kind of process of getting to know one another, and it shows a great deal of respect to the parents.

There is a Palestinian lady in my church who explained courting in her homeland. “If you like a girl, you tell your mother. Then, she goes to the girl’s mother, and they talk it over. The two mothers go crazy running back and forth across town to give gifts and set up a meeting. Then, the boy’s family comes to visit the girl’s family. If they get along, there are more visits, and then they can get engaged, which happens at the girl’s house, and the priest blesses it. Then, the girl and boy can go out on dates, but only with a chaperone from her family. That last part has changed since I was a girl – now once they’re engaged they can go to restaurants alone.”

That’s a pretty good explanation of courting. The idea is to let the young couple get to know each other in a controlled setting to protect their chastity. This same Palestinian lady said to my best friend, when he was single, “We find you nice Arab girl, but you no touch her before you are married or CHOP CHOP!”

Then there’s dating, where the boy and girl find one another and express interest in each other and go out on dates. Usually the boy does the asking. If they’re getting along well, they can decide to see each other exclusively, and some time later, if things are going really well, they can go to meet the parents. Dating can also carry connotations of young people skipping around in casual relationships, having fun and seeing one another. There’s some formality to it (you can say “we’re together for the next three hours”) but the business of dating and commitment develop independently of each other, and sometimes the latter never comes.

If you watch the delightful romantic comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Toula gets in trouble for dating when she and her future husband ought to be following courting rituals. Word gets around the Greek community she’s been smooching with her handsome boyfriend, and her father is offended (even though she’s 29!).

For us Orthodox Christians, it would be easy to extol the virtues of courting as it does provide more protection. But, we live in a culture that mostly dates. Also, if you’re a whitebread convert, how on earth are you going to convince your parents get involved in a formal matchmaking process that they’ve only read about in Jane Austen novels?

I followed the dating pattern, although after the first date, I was so interested in Miri that I didn’t bother calling other girls. They didn’t hear much from me until I sent them wedding invitations.

I think we Orthodox ought to be somewhere in between dating and courting. I don’t know if I’m right about that, but it’s what seems to be going on with young people who socialize at church. Anyway, it’s what I’m going to write about.

None of this is to say that what starts in church stays good and pure. Orthodox people – when they’re drunk, desperate, or both – do a lot of stupid stuff. Casual sexual encounters can start at a church event. Sometimes, the whole “forbidden, secret” aspect of fooling around when your belief system tells you not to can make the moment of “crossing the line” become a rush of passion like a dam breaking.

Basic rules of being single

2008-03-24T16:44:00.000-07:00

Your attitude is going to lead you to other people with the same attitude as you. If you’re interested in finding someone and willing to pursue this effort in a relaxed manner (and try to have fun at it) you’ll find someone who has the same set of priorities. If you’re desperate, you’ll be finding other desperate people; if you’re neurotic, you’ll find other neurotic people. The attitude a boy projects tells girls more about him than hours of conversation could.

This is not going to be a conscious process that you go through. You don’t say, “I am going to find an easygoing person.” It just happens. You can’t really control it that well. Sorry.

What you can do is try to change your general attitude about life, though that takes months of work and lots of prayer.

I am something of a worrier, and girls would see all that worry and think that they didn’t really want to have it in their lives.

Don’t try too hard. You have probably heard this one a hundred times over from your friends. But, it’s true. A good friend of mine was so desperate that he pursued the only girl he knew whom he hadn't freaked out -- the clerk at the library. And, they went out, and she taught him a bit more than the Dewey Decimal System. Everybody's clothes stayed on, but he ended up with some industrial-strength regret at the end of it.

Don’t talk about it too much. I had this awful habit of counting up the number of months that had gone by since I had last had a girlfriend. I couldn’t break myself of it. But, I finally was able to count up something else – the number of days I could go without complaining about single. I think I got up to 45. It was liberating.

Be patient. Being Orthodox makes the dating scene much more difficult, and it’s something you’ll have to suffer through cheerfully. There are several reasons for this:

We really haven’t figured out the concept of “the youth group” yet. The idea of the parish as a community center with social activities through the week is a distinctly American one. The Protestants, knowing that they could never count on the state to minister to their parishioners (or perhaps hoping that it wouldn’t) took this model of the church community as a means of survival. The Orthodox immigrant groups in the United States, with the exception of the Antiochian Archdiocese, have a memory of being the majority religion in the home country in the past 100 years and enjoying state support. It often seems like our church is waiting for the return of the king.
The Church in America has an absurdly schizophrenic administrative structure. We’ve got a dozen Orthodox jurisdictions in North America, and coordinating anything between them, much less fun youth activities, is a struggle. The tribal attitudes are waning, slowly, though.
We’re a small minority. Even when all the churches in an area organize to put on events, this still means that to get 30 young people in one place, about half of them have to drive an hour or so to get there.

Don’t get bummed over your lack of dates. It only happens once that you find the right person. If you’re the type of girl who gets asked out often, that’s great, but then what are you going to do with all these guys?

When you do get dates, don’t convince yourself that you ought to be having a good time. Just have it, or don’t. Before I met my wife, whenever I’d get a date with a girl, I’d think about all her qualities and try to make myself appreciate her. I was trying too hard to "give the girl a chance."

Check how well you’re sleeping. That was my best guide for whether I was getting along with a girl. If I spend all night tossing and turning about things she said, that's a bad sign. After a date with Miri, I could fall asleep in about 5 minutes, confident that life was unfolding as it should.

Your Conversion

If you came to the Orthodox church as an adult, you might still be in your crazy-convert stage. If so this is going to complicate your efforts to find someone. Are you a crazy convert? Well, try this question to find out…

The Didichae says that people being baptized (adults and children) ought not to be wearing anything for their baptism. It’s your spiritual rebirth, so the Apostles say you should be in your birthday suit.

Did the above statement make you annoyed with your priest for not stripping you nude for your adult baptism? Are you going to make him baptize you again? If you answered yes to either question, that means you’re suffering from New Convert Syndrome. Other signs of this Syndrome are that you’ve cut out a tiny headscarf and tried putting it on your cat (if it’s a girl cat). If you tried baptizing the cat, you need professional help (and a box of Band-Aids).

The crazy convert phase lasts three to five years for most people, and if you’re starting a relationship during it, it’s going to be more challenging. You haven’t learned moderation in your Christian practices. Given how everything is connected for Christians, you’re also going to have a difficult time with moderation in your relationship with your partner. More than a few couples have gotten together while one, or both was still in their crazy-convert phase. They were so excited to have someone share their faith that they never took the time to find out if they actually liked each other, which adds up to a difficult marriage. Take special care to pace yourself.

Where to Find Your Special Someone

2008-03-23T21:02:00.000-07:00

The Home Parish

Ideally, the best situation would be that there’s a young man or young lady in your parish whom you see every week and whom you get along with well. Over time, it just becomes natural to go out to a movie or something and then the time you spend with this person is really fulfilling.

Well, if that worked, you wouldn’t be wasting your time on a dumb blog like this one. If you’re going to a healthy-sized parish, chances are that there’s maybe two eligible people your age and they’re both kind of odd. If you grew up in this parish, you probably know both of these people like they’re your cousins, and dating someone who put a frog in your hair is kind of gross.

If you do find someone in the parish you like (and congratulations if you have!) I can offer two tips:

Men, if this lovely lady’s family goes to church at the home parish, consider mentioning to someone “older, wiser” in her family that you’re considering asking her out. This is an easy way to find out if she’s seeing someone, and it makes you seem less sneaky. I did this once, and her brother-in-law (who was in his mid-30s) told me it’d be all right if I asked. The girl herself told me that her schedule was too busy, but that she was very flattered by the invitation.

Flattered? Flattered? How could she use a word like flattered? Okay, I know I promised to make this blog enjoyable to read, and not include angry screeds, but I just need to take a moment to vent here. Flattered is a word that I would like to have removed from modern English. Maybe it meant something back in the 13^th Century when it first got into English, but now it serves one and one purpose only: for girls to tell dweeby boys to buzz off. Okay, rant over. But that does lead me to Tip No. 2:

Ladies, if the boy asking you out is absurdly shy and inarticulate when he does it, consider giving him a chance anyway. I know that women want their men to be strong, successful and confident, there are a lot of really great guys out there who have no clue how to start a conversation. I bet it’s your radiant beauty that makes him so nervous. If you blow him off, you’ll never find out.

The Church Youth Conference / Camp

Here you have two or three days (or maybe a week) in which you can attend seminars about church living, make friends, play games, play pranks and make a total idiot of yourself. It is an odd place to look for love.

The events that happen early on in a conference create a dynamic between people that is difficult to undo. Allow me to give two examples…

· At one ski retreat I attended, there was a handsome young fellow who spontaneously composed an Orthodox rap song for a girl and sang it for her. This had no particular effect on that girl, but it made every other girl at the retreat want him. (He had his heart set on the subject of the song, though.) With the girls all googly-eyed over the one boy they couldn’t have, none of the other guys had a chance.

· At a summer camp I attended before I was Orthodox, the counselors decided to have us play a card game in which we were not allowed to speak. The rules were given to us on slips of paper. Shortly after the game started, people were giving each other angry glares, fists were banging on tables and players were stomping out of the room. The trick was that each of us had been given a different set of rules. (I guess the point was to teach us the importance of agreeing on rules.) For the people who stomped out of the room, that became their identity for the rest of the camp – the temper-tantrum types. A few events had “typecast” them into a role that people expected of them. (Sort of like high school.)

So the moral of those two stories is…

Whatever happens, don’t take it too seriously. If you’re wound too tight, you’re going to react badly when something happens that you don’t like. If they want to go to restaurants and malls when you want to go to museums during the free time, that’s just too bad. If their church service isn’t the way it’s done in your traditional home church, just get over it. And, if you go to the conference with the attitude of “having the right” to play the field of eligible ladies / bachelors, you’re going to be disappointed.

A few other bits of advice:

· Be friendly with the clergy, but don’t identify with them too much. I was at the introduction social at a college conference once, and I was chatting with a pretty girl from Massachusetts. I was talking about my studies and my hobbies, and I almost had her convinced I was a normal guy when Fr. Thomas Hopko walked in, and exclaimed, “How’s the book coming?” (Fr. Hopko had reviewed an as-yet unpublished manuscript of mine about my Peace Corps service in Ukraine.) I told him about the progress of the manuscript, and I asked him about a few points I didn’t understand from one of his books. Soon we were talking happily about how to best define post-modernism in an Orthodox context.

This was a mistake, as I discovered that this made me weird. The normal college students at this event were all kind of afraid of Fr. Hopko as he possesses an intelligence and an oratory ability far beyond the average parish priest, and the ability to carry on a conversation with him makes you a “nerd.” Not only that, half of the people at the conference were priest’s kids, and the ability to get along well with the clergy makes you “establishment,” too. After that, the girls all treated me like I was one of their teachers. I didn’t get a single phone number.

· Don’t be shocked if other people at the conference don’t share all of your values. At this same conference in Washington, DC, a group of PK girls was trying to recruit others for a night on the town, going to clubs. I would have gone if I hadn’t been totally tired from traveling in to town that morning.

The next morning, I asked one of them how it had gone, and she said,

“At first we were really disappointed because it turns out that you can’t go into a strip club in the District of Columbia if you’re under 21. But it was okay because we found this other club where people just took their clothes off when they danced.”

I just sort of stared when she said that. I could understand the hormones that would make a boy want to go to a strip club, but it’s our job to resist that. But why a girl – any girl – would even be interested in doing that boggled my mind.

· Hang out with people of your own sex more. You have a better chance of actually making a friend this way, and hanging out with a group makes you look, you know, normal.

· Sometimes, you’re going to strike out no matter what:

At a conference in San Francisco, I met a tall, beautiful young woman from Canada. I told her a little about my Peace Corps service, and about how I lost weight in Ukraine because the diet is better.

“Now you’re slim,” she said.

“Not quite,” I said. “My ideal weight would be 230.” (I’m six feet nine inches tall.)

“What?” she said incredulously. “That’s how much I weigh. Are you calling me fat?”

That didn’t get any further.

Internet dating for the Orthodox

2008-03-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

Does that smiley :-) mean she loves me?

The Internet is an extreme place, and it has been since its beginning. It was designed for an extreme purpose – so the U.S. military could keep communicating during nuclear war. I got on the Internet in 1994, back before the graphics worked right, and I liked participating in political discussion groups, which were dominated by Communists. I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense, they really were Communists who opined about Paradise being lost when the evil fascist-capitalists toppled the Soviet Union.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t quality people on the Internet. What it does mean is that if someone is a nutjob with no sense of moderation or social skills, he or she will end up on the Internet. To compound that danger is the fact that the Orthodox community being so small, if this nutjob knows you, he or she will eventually find you, in person...

This happened to me, once. (Earlier, this section of the blog had a description of the Cyberzealot involved in this scary acquaintance. I changed significant details about her, but too many people have said that it was still obvious. Sigh. Our community is too darn small...)

Internet Dating Sites

Upon finding a dating Web site such as orthodoxchristiandating.com, or learning that the famous “scientifically proven” eharmony.com allows you to restrict matches by Orthodox Christianity can give you a real boost of enthusiasm, but you have to stay cautious just the same. One girl I met on eharmony told me that I was the best connection she made through the site – the only other guy who found her was a prisoner in Texas at a penitentiary that apparently allows Internet usage. (She’s now happily married to another guy.)

Once you get past the screwballs, you’re going to be astonished by how absurdly small the community of young Orthodox Christians looking specifically to marry another Orthodox is. I say this not because of the low number of matches I got, but because I already knew most of the girls that orthodoxchristiandating.com connected me to. That silly Web site matched me with my ex-girlfriend, a girl who had been at a wedding in Portland that I had also attended, and three childhood friends of a co-worker at the Orthodox agency where I was working. The moment that made me realize that it was time to stop embarrassing myself -- with a profile that anyone could tell was me -- was when it connected me with the eldest daughter of the priest who baptized me.

Another problem with Internet dating is that it’s kind of a reality-exempt place. You can make yourself sound a lot more interesting than you are, and you can set some absurd expectations for what you’re looking for in a partner. One man on orthodoxchristiandating.com wrote to a female friend of mine that he was looking for a woman who fit the description at the end of the Book of Proverbs:

“A good wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life. She seeks wool and flax, and works with willing hands. She is like the ships of the merchant, she brings her food from afar. She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and tasks for her maidens. She considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard. She girds her loins with strength and makes her arms strong…” (Proverbs 31:10-17).

It goes on to talk about how this ideal wife makes clothes of scarlet for the family.

This did not add up to a first date. It kind of freaked my friend out. I think this boy would have done well to remember that Proverbs was written poetically, and not only that, it’s more of a metaphor for God describing the type of bride He would like Israel to be than it is to describe a specific person.

A girl I got matched with on orthodoxchristiandating.com put a question to me: “I have some friends in the OCA who are kind of liberal. You’re in the OCA. Where do you stand?” I responded that I enjoyed reading the books of Schmemann, Meyendorff and Hopko, and that I agreed with them, mostly. I added that I had a policy of following the calendar of whatever parish I’m in, and letting the bishop figure out the whole New Calendar / Old Calendar thing.

She wrote back, “You’re tall, you’re witty, you’re handsome, but it just wouldn’t work out.” And I never heard from her again. Not that I’m sad about that or anything.

Joys and perils of dating PKs

2008-03-21T22:27:00.000-07:00

There is a huge, beautiful church in San Francisco, close to the Pacific Ocean. It has five gold domes, and it can be seen from the Golden Gate Bridge. The inside walls and ceilings are covered in frescoed icons. It appears to have been brought by helicopter from Kiev. Its name is the Cathedral of the Most Holy Theotokos “Joy of All Who Sorrow.”

This cathedral has services every day of the week. I especially liked taking the bus from downtown, where I worked, to the cathedral to listen to the vigil service. There weren’t many people at these services, which meant I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. Especially if I’d had a bad day at work, this was such a gift – a place to go and be an anonymous worshiper known to God, and forget the nonsense outside.

I had my own church on the other side of town – Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral. Both of these cathedrals were founded by Russians, and both cathedrals have a Bishop of San Francisco based there. But there was some “family stuff” that was getting resolved when I moved to San Francisco in 2005.

The history of the jurisdictions wouldn’t make for fun reading, and this is a blog; it’s supposed to be fun. So, let it suffice to say that for several decades leading up to the beginning of the 21^st Century, members of each cathedral regarded the other cathedral as “the church we’ve been warned about.” I didn’t have a strong opinion about the particular spat that began this division, but it meant that I was connected to the community at Holy Trinity. I was recognized and welcomed and people talked to me. I liked this.

Joy of All Who Sorrow was not my community. There, I was a visitor, allowed in, neither shunned nor embraced, simply there. They did not know my story. I could be quiet, anonymous. I liked that, too.

It’s not my quiet oasis anymore. I still love going there, but people actually talk to me now. A lot. The bishop talks to me. They ask me to serve in the altar. They put me on committees and ask me to volunteer and stuff.

I married one of the PKs. Your life will change if you do this. Just a warning.

If you start dating a PK (priest’s kid), some things are going to happen:

· One, if the PK’s parents approve of you, the matushka network is going to start broadcasting at a very high wattage, and the entire diocese is going to find out about it in about a week. In fact, they knew about our engagement a week before Miri did.

· Two, if you’re male, you’re going to be told about the wonderful benefits of going to seminary, and you’ll get more advice about the priesthood than you ever wanted to hear. Start to like black dresses. You may be wearing one soon. If you’re female, learn to sing.

· Three, your “special someone” is likely to be very familiar with the structure of the church services, having gone to church a lot growing up. As a couple, you’re going to become very popular among priests and choir directors. I told my father confessor I was seeing Miri, and he said that he would let me do that, but only if I could get her to help direct the choir at his church. Which she did until we moved.

· Four, you’re going to get nominated for the parish council. Just get over it.

· Five, you’re going to be a minor celebrity when you travel. As soon as you mention your father-in-law’s name, a burst of joy will come forth, and the local priest and matushka will become your new uncle and aunt.

· Six, expect to become acutely aware of church politics, especially, if your future father-in-law is a priest in a different jurisdiction than yours. I come from the Orthodox Church in America, which goes by the acronym OCA. When a choir director at my wife’s church noticed my lack of knowledge about how to sing right, she commented, “He’s from the OCA. We’ve got to de-ossify him.” (Not that I have a clue how to sing in my home church or anything.)

If your jurisdiction and your sweetie’s jurisdiction got in to some kind of schism or other serious spat in decades past, expect to encounter mutual harsh judgment between the two camps. Think of it with this comparison: Your grandfather, at the age of 30, gets into a fight with his best friend, and vows never to speak with him again. Then he and his friend have their own families, and they in turn have children. Each man imagines the other’s house as being bizarre and dysfunctional. The strict one believes the liberal’s house is a temple of flower worship, where the liberal one imagines the strict one’s house surrounded by barbed wire and machine gun nests.

Then you come along and fall in love with the granddaughter of your grandfather’s ex-friend. Both you and your girlfriend report back to your respective families that the other’s house is not that scary, pretty normal. Your rosy assessment annoys them.

Bear this with cheerfulness and don’t fall into the temptation of getting snippy. For example, don’t say what I did when a matushka in my wife’s church (not my mother-in-law) told me I had to switch to the Old Calendar because I was messing everyone else up. I said, “Maybe I should. That way, when Christ comes again, the Western sinners will get fried first, and then I’ll have an additional 13 days to repent.”

Seminary -- His Theological Clock is Ticking

2008-03-20T21:01:00.000-07:00

The sorriest, most desperate, worried Orthodox thing on earth is the bachelor seminarian in his final year of study. A joke I heard about this: “His theological clock is ticking.”

You probably already know this, but I’ll explain the predicament anyway: A married man can get ordained a deacon or priest in our church. An unmarried man also can, but then he’s stuck unmarried. A seminarian in his final year of studies has some options:

Get monastic tonsure and become a priest-monk
Delay ordination and find profitable employment with a Bachelor’s in Classics and a Master’s of Divinity until the right lady comes along.
Propose marriage to every bare-fingered creature in a skirt and headscarf

Mostly, they take option No. 3, although I know of a couple who found work as choir directors. The poor saps.

My best friend and I graduated from the same university. He was getting ready to enroll at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in New York. He thought the fact that he hadn’t found anyone to marry yet meant that the curtains were really going to pull – in a cloistered environment such as a seminary, he’d have no hope of meeting girls. Two months later, he met a girl who in the seminary’s library, and he married her.

Actually, one of the things that scared me most about enrolling in seminary (which I had considered) was hearing the bachelor seminarians moan and whine about the martyrdom they have to endure when girls wouldn’t go out with them. Being single myself, I figured I would drown in that ocean of self-pity. (As an aside, St. Vladimir’s does usually have around 10 single women enrolled who are studying music or education. But they learn to get picky really fast.)

A lot of really great marriages start at seminaries. But, there’s one danger that male seminarians may not realize that they have to worry about – cassock hunters. Yes, believe it or not, there are some women out there whose ambition in life is to become a matushka (or presvyteria). The best day for cassock hunters is the annual open house of a seminary. At St. Vladimir’s, the day is Orthodox Education Day on the first Saturday of October. On this day, they have 2,000 people at the seminary, and they set up a big tent on the lawn so that they can have space for all of the pilgrims at liturgy. The day I went there, Metropolitan Herman was there with four other bishops.

The cassock hunters are pretty easy to spot. They’re very well dressed, but they still are on the make, so they have to look memorable. They have bright, elegant headscarves, blouses and skirts. They wander the grounds, hoping to make eye contact with one of the over-worked seminarians, who are responsible for keeping this huge event going.

At St. Tikhon’s Seminary, I believe the big pilgrimage is Memorial Day weekend, where thousands of people come. I have talked to some graduates of St. Tikhon’s who have said the same kind of coupling goes on.

The one time I went to Orthodox Education Day at St. Vladimir’s, one of them actually found me. I wasn’t in a cassock, but I was in my nicest suit, which I guess was close enough for a girl in search of a church boy. She talked. A lot. She accidentally insulted the cooking of a friend of mine.

While we were chatting about the seminary, I said, “It’s amazing how many young families there are here.”

She said, “I guess there aren’t that many forms of entertainment for the seminarians.”

She sent e-mails to me for a couple of weeks after that, and I tried to keep the conversation innocent, although I guess I talked too much. I eventually got rid of her by telling her that I was thinking of becoming a monk (which was kind of lame). Then she got mad at me, and sent a sharp e-mail: “You should have known that if you write openly about your feelings that a girl will mistake it for intimacy!” I hadn’t even kissed her, but I still seem to have broken her heart.

It’s not just Orthodox Education Day for the cassock hunters – every Sunday, there are young women there who drive from as far as Connecticut and Rhode Island so they can “be with people their own age.” My best friend’s wife was trying to set me up with one of them, but I was thinking, “Can I really fly that far for a first date?”

Guide to Romantic Pilgrimages

2008-03-19T12:45:00.000-07:00

This next post originally started out as an article I wrote for The Onion Dome in February 2007. The Onion Dome is a satirical on-line magazine poking fun at Orthodox Christians who take themselves too seriously.

Well, buddy, you’ve struck out with the local talent, and you can’t tell whether your pen friend on orthodoxchristiandating.com actually exists, but you’ve still got matrimony on your mind. You pray there’s an Orthodox girl out there somewhere for you, but you’re getting a little desperate. If you’re thinking about taking a road trip and showing up for church some distance from home where a lovely handmaiden attends Liturgy, you’re not alone.

The Guide to Romantic Pilgrimages will give you tips on how to go with the right attitude. While we at St. Vladika’s Press have never known such a journey to succeed, we hope to make your heartbreak a growing experience for you. Here are some tips from the guide:

Pick a girl whom you already know, at least vaguely. While the grannies in your parish probably mean well when they tell you about Little Miss Delightful in the town 100 miles away, imagine walking up to her and saying, "Hi, you don’t know me, but the little old ladies in my parish say that you’re perfect for me." Another line that might not work: "Does the choir perform every Sunday? Wow, that’s amazing. So does our choir!"

Pick a girl whose sanity is in the "dull normal" range. For example, avoid the single mother who was drawn to Orthodoxy by the story of a martyr who endured a thousand spear stabbings, which really reminded her of her divorce settlement.

Let her know that you’re coming. When the girl you met at the youth conference writes a chatty e-mail ending with "I miss you," that doesn’t necessarily mean, "I want you to show up on my door unannounced with a bouquet of flowers."

Come up with a plausible alternate excuse for the trip. For most girls, the idea of a boy traveling 500 miles just to see her kind of freaks her out. Think of something else in the neighborhood worth seeing. During coffee hour after Liturgy at her church, people will ask, "What brings you out here?" Don’t say, "I’ve always wanted to venerate the tablecloth upon which St. Tikhon rested his elbow in 1911."

Go to Confession with your priest before leaving. If you’re visiting a parish at which Confession is required the day of going to Holy Communion, be sure to be extra good the week leading up to your trip. This is especially true if you’re pursuing a priest’s daughter. Unless you want the parish priest following you around during coffee hour with a pair of handcuffs, make sure the interesting stuff gets confessed before your trip.

If you do decide to go chasing the random girl who does not know you, think of a good opening line. Considering that we at St. Vladika’s Press are unaware of a successful romantic pilgrim, we haven’t got any good ones to recommend, but here are a few ones that flopped:

"May I borrow your prayer rope?"
"My priest told me I didn’t have a chance with his daughter, so he told me to broaden my horizons and travel."
"I’ve been thinking of becoming a monk; could you talk me out of it?"
You remind me of St. Mary of Egypt."

Even if you are a conflicted soul about whether to be a monk, leave your klobuk at home. Nothing drives a girl crazy more than competing with St. Anthony of the Caves for your heart.

Read the Book of Tobit. This is a lovely story in the Old Testament of a young man going on a similar journey and getting married. But: burnt cod liver is not a sexy fragrance.

Don’t hit the same parish twice. Unless you enjoy seeing a clump of headscarves hiding in the corner of the choir loft when you arrive, accept your defeat.

Research the local public transportation in the girl’s city. Being driven around by a girl who does not like you but still feels obligated because you came from three states away is no fun at all. It’s about as close to breaking up with a live-in girlfriend as an Orthodox boy is allowed to come.

Take a hint. If she’s recommending an assortment of abbots whom you should visit, she’s probably not seeing a knight in shining armor in front of her.

Consider bringing your mother. Lame as this sounds, it can help provide a believable cover for the real purpose of your trip. But, be careful not to tell Mom too much, otherwise she and your would-be mother-in-law might become great friends before you start speaking to the girl, which would be embarrassing. On the other hand, you might earn some serious bravery points for still having the nerve to speak to the girl after your mother has blabbed about all this.

Take a photo album. If you’ve been on an interesting pilgrimage recently, you can show her pictures of cathedrals and stuff in the Old Country. Or, if you’re the godfather of a friend’s baby, show her pictures from the baptism. But don’t say anything when she sees the picture. It’ll either stir up her maternal instincts or the thought of carrying your DNA will terrify her.

If you’re a third-year seminarian, don’t tell her that your theological clock is ticking. So maybe you do really need to get married before you get ordained, but mentioning this in the first thirty seconds of your acquaintance can really freak a girl out. If you do succeed in going out to dinner with her, don’t start calling her "matushka."

Don’t flip out if you get rejected. Roll with the punches, big fella. If, as you’re getting on the bus back home, you’re crying about being exiled to Babylon, that means you’re taking this too seriously. Also, accept the fact that the story of your trip is going to be the cause of great hilarity among her girlfriends. A reputation of "lonely, sweet and dumb" is a lot easier to shake than "lonely, crazy and desperate." Think of it this way: On only one day of your life are you going to meet the right girl for the first time. If the average lifespan of an American male is 74, on any given day, you have a .004 percent chance of that day being the one you meet her. Besides, the story of your goofy trip may reach the ears of a girl as desperate as you, and she might try finding you at a youth conference next year.

Next: The Ultimate in Romantic Pilgrimages – A Trip to the Old Country.

The Dangers of Travel Lust - A Trip to the Old Country

2008-03-18T13:11:00.000-07:00

More than a few American guys really wanting to get married have made a trip to one of the Orthodox Old Countries. If you go to a country with a developing or depressed economy, expect to find some gorgeous, flirty young Orthodox women who would love to go to America. Uh… there’s more to it than that, though.

Two things are likely to complicate your efforts: travel lust and the piety paradox.

Travel lust is the desire to get the heck out of your homeland and move someplace where there’s an actual economy. Some women are willing to get into less-than-ideal marriages for this purpose. I don’t dare guess what percentage of marriageable women in the Old Countries are after this kind of escape, but I will guarantee you this: If you are an American male “on the make” in a country with a depressed economy, several women with this set of priorities will find you.

The piety paradox is this: You go to the Old Country to find a pious woman, and there are many. However, a woman with a vibrant spiritual life is unlikely to want to leave her homeland, where she can go on pilgrimages to places such as Optina, Pochaev or the Holy Sepulchre. You might fall in love, but good luck in convincing her to come home with you!

I spent two years in the Peace Corps in Ukraine from 2001 to 2003. The Ukrainians were the warmest, most hospitable people I have ever known. The recovery of their society after the debilitating experience of the militant atheist Communists is real testament to their Christian roots that cannot be killed.

However, economic conditions kind of stunk there. Starting pay for a teacher was $40 a month, and you weren’t likely to get paid on time. (This has since gone up to $80 a month.) A lot of people wanted to leave Dneprordny, where I was living. Large numbers of men were absent as they were in Moscow, Germany and Italy working illegally and sending money home. A young woman wanting to get married and provide for her family had quite a challenge ahead of her. For the young women, travel lust is a huge temptation, especially as it is possible for them to see as much as they wanted about America on television and on the Internet, but it was impossible to have it.

I don’t want to ramble on too much about the women I met in Ukraine, (and also my wife and in-laws read this blog) but allow me to tell two stories that illustrate these two contrasting stories that show features of the experience an Americanets can have over there.

Ludmila

I met Ludmila her when I happened to wander in to the beautiful old Holy Dormition Cathedral in Zhytomyr, a city about 100 miles west of Kiev, one day. As I spoke with the candle stand lady, she heard my accent, and told the priest-monk in charge of the cathedral about me, and he was astonished to hear that there are Orthodox in America. He urged me to come back that afternoon to meet the choir.

I did, and the choir director, or “regent” as she was called, was a beautiful young woman named Ludmila. I told her and her choir members about Orthodox churches in America, and how the churches are similar, but not as old, and how we have a multitude of Orthodox ethnicities all coming together to make a church.

Then the priest-monk, Fr. Seraphim, decided that I absolutely had to see the Pochaev Monastery in Western Ukraine, a large monastery that the monks had managed to keep under their control during the entire Communist period. It is called the spiritual center of Ukraine, and there’s a Miracle-Working icon of the Theotokos there that is probably the most revered icon in Ukraine. The feast day for that icon usually brings 50,000 pilgrims to the monastery.

I was a little reluctant to go touring the country with these strangers, but eventually they talked me in to it. I made arrangements to come back to Zhytomyr, which was a day’s travel from Dneprorudny, where I was actually living, and I got back and then Fr. Seraphim told me that he was too busy, but Ludmila, the cute choir regent, would be happy to take me around.

Not only did Ludmila take me to Pochaev, first she took me to the Caves Monastery for St. Vladimir’s Day, which included a liturgy of 34 bishops, three choirs that sounded angelic, and the Metropolitan (whose name happened to be Vladimir). We visited the complete relics of at least two dozen saints who are resting in the caves of the monastery, and she took me to the Monastery of the Entry of Christ to the Temple, where there is the Miracle-Working icon “He had regarded the low estate of his handmaiden,” which caused the glass pane to take on its image. And, she took me to the Holy Protection Monastery, which has a fresco of the Protection of the Mother of God which I swear must be the size of a tennis court.

Then we left Kiev and went to the actual destination of the trip, Pochaev, 400 km to the west. We visited the cell of St. Job of Pochaev, beneath Holy Dormition Cathedral. Saint Job prayed and struggled as a recluse for years in this tiny natural cave. A chapel has been built around the cave, and his relics repose outside of the cell. Ludmila took me to the cave, which had a long line of people waiting to enter it, but she exclaimed, “This is an American Orthodox pilgrim! Let him go first!” All the other pilgrims nodded, and assented. A child called out, “What is your name?” in English. I looked at the opening to the cave, which is about the size of two toasters, and I immediately told Ludmila, “I won’t fit in there! I won’t go!”

“Pray to the Bogoroditsa and anything is possible,” called out a woman from among the lined-up pilgrims.

“Yes, but I am not small,” I protested.

“I will go first,” said Luda, who slid through the cave entrance with no problem.

“Easy for you to say,” I thought. Although I had lost some weight, I was still kind of thick around the middle. I was also 6’9” in height. She came back out and told me how wonderful it was to be able to venerate the icon of St. Job and stand there just like he had... go, we’ll help you...

I had visions of going down in Church history as the pilgrim who got stuck and required a fire crew to remove him, but Ludmila was still pushing me on — “the icon of your patron saint is around the corner, doubting Thomas. He didn’t think it was truly the Lord until he could touch His side. Now, you don’t have to doubt.”

I began to shimmy forward through the cave entrance, head first. I got my head all the way in to find a priest who took my hand and began pulling me in. “Pray to the Bogoroditsa!” he said cheerfully.

“Presviataia Bogoroditsa, spasi nas!” I exclaimed and made it another few centimeters.

“Why don’t you say it in English?” asked Olga, a 10-year-old girl who was also in the cave. I hadn’t known she was in there. Oh, dear, I thought. I’m going to get myself stuck, and these two are going to starve to death as a result!

“Most Holy Theotokos, save us!”

With a little more dragging, I did eventually get into the awkward cave, and I said to the priest, “St. Job wasn’t a tall man, was he?” I found the icon, and said a prayer to St. Job that I’m sure he’d heard many times before, “St. Job, intercede before God for me, and get me out of this cave in one piece!”

Well, I figured, if I don’t get out of the cave, I can stay here and fast for 40 days. School won’t start for a while...

With the priest and Olga pushing on me, and Ludmila and another woman I’d never met pulling on me, I did pop out of the cave, feeling reborn in a spiritual and literal sense, having re-enacted my own birth as an adult. A doubter no more!

Ludmila took me on the most amazing trip of my life, showing me more cathedrals, icons, relics, shrines and other holy sites I could have ever found by myself. I thought this was the greatest first date ever.

We took a break to have ice cream on a street near one of the monasteries. I asked her, “Why not become a nun and have this kind of experience every day?”

She said, “Because I love little children.”

“Have you got a fiancé waiting?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“I love little children, too. I love to teach and see them improve, but I don’t know if I should become a monk or have a family, or...”

“As the Bogoroditsa wills it,” she said.

My euphoria eventually ended when she realized that she had to go back home to direct the choir, but she told me to stay at Pochaev for the upcoming feast day.

I told her that I was worried I wouldn’t get to see her again. She responded, “As the Bogoroditsa wills it. If you ask her to help you and have mercy on you, she will.”

I knew that, I thought, but to say, “I want to see you again, too,” wouldn’t exactly have been heresy. She got on the bus and I swallowed hard.

A few months after that, she married a fellow named Vasilii, and they had a daughter named Anastasia. I got to see them again three years after my Peace Corps service ended when I flew back to visit friends. They welcomed me into their home, and I showed them a picture of Miri, whom I had been seeing for a whole week before I took the trip.

(I had not planned to fly away a week after starting a new relationship, but it happened that way. But, let me offer a couple of quick tips if you do it this way: One, wedding crowns are much more reasonably priced over there. Two, if your future father-in-law is a priest, see if you can buy a hand-held wooden candle holder for him. They’re not very expensive, but difficult to find in the U.S.)

Elizaveta

Liza was a girl who lived in Dneprorudny, where I lived and worked during my service. She has this radiant magazine-cover kind of beauty about her. And, she was always really, really glad to see me whenever I walked past her ice-cream stand. She wanted to talk to me, a lot. She was also 15 years old.

Um, before this story goes any further, let me say that it never got any further than vanilla ice cream. But, this experience does illustrate an important concept about marriage over there:

Russian (and I don’t know about Greek or Arabic) has no word for “jailbait.” Nor, does it have an expression meaning “robbing the cradle.” I tried explaining these words to the Ukrainians. It took 5 minutes to explain the literal meaning of the word, and another 10 to explain the concept of an underage woman being considered untouchable. This idea made no sense, especially to the women – why would you want to keep a girl from enjoying her best years? As a 23-year-old male teacher, I did have more than a few female students aged 13 or 14 making googly eyes at me. I suppose that’s nothing too odd – lots of American girls get crushes on their algebra teachers, but this was different for two reasons – over there, girls that age really are supposed to be looking at men my age for husbands, and the school administration was encouraging it.

I’m not exaggerating. The vice principal of the school told a group of 11th grade girls studying journalism that they ought to ask me to help them practice their interviewing skills since I am a journalist. And, she said, “Mr. Ruthford is young, American, and has a college degree. He would make an excellent bridegroom.”

So, Liza the magazine-model-beautiful 15-year-old ice cream girl really wanted me to ask her out. One hot summer day, she came into the Internet club where I was typing an e-mail to my family. This Internet club was really cramped. Directly to my left was a fan blowing at me and into the room. Liza came in and wanted to talk to me. There really was only one place she could stand, directly to my right.

She was wearing a summer dress that accentuated her curves and was, um, very summery. (By which I mean fabric-minimal.) I turned to look at her, and she was so close that my eyes could not focus on her, um, well, the part of her that was directly to my right. I looked up at her face. The wind from the fan was causing her hair, which was hanging freely, to blow. Nearby, one of the kids on another computer was loudly playing a CD of some heavy electronic music.

I turned back to face my computer monitor, suppressed the urge to snort (here I was, in a real live music video) and thought, “That settles that. Now I know the devil has a sense of humor.”

In Russian, I said to Liza, “I’m writing my Mom. You want to say hi?”

(Three years later, I visited Dneprorudny again and ran into Liza at the main open market. She was happily pushing a stroller.)

Oh yeah, maybe you’re wondering how Liza got into a blog about Orthodox romance. Liza is Orthodox. Was baptized as a baby. My point in including her is that you might find a pretty Orthodox girl, but what does this mean, really?

The Russian language has two different words to describe your religious commitments: Pravoslavnie, which means “Orthodox,” and Verushii, which means “faithful” or “believing.” A person who is Pravoslavnie has been baptized Orthodox. However, whether this Orthodox person has been seen at church since the baptism is an open question. I don’t know if the Greek, Arabic or Georgian languages have similar words to express this division, but you need to know the principle.

Metropolitan Kyrill, the foreign minister of the Moscow Patriarchate, said in an interview recently that fewer than 10 percent of Russians are attending church weekly. I believe that’s a good estimate from my experience. The minimum to stay a Pravoslavnie is that you don’t join another religion, and that you come out to the church yard on Pascha night to get your food basket blessed. A Verushii is a person who goes to church and likes it well enough to keep going. They’re kind of hard to find. In the town of 20,000 where I lived, there was one church, and it got about 150 people each Sunday. I went to church most Sundays, and there were no women my age who attended church regularly.

The Ukrainians take it as a matter of pride that their girls are the prettiest in the world. A number of Ukrainians whom I knew also took it as an insult that I hadn’t found one to marry. I didn’t plan on marrying one and forcing her to go to church with me, so I went home a bachelor. I knew lots of Pravoslavnie, I wanted a Verushii.

Anyway, that’s my advice about a trip to the Old Country. Be careful. But, you never know, it might work. I am acquainted with one married couple who made it work. An American man went to Ukraine to meet a Russian woman he’d found on the Internet and then they moved to the United States. He converted to Orthodoxy, they have a good marriage, they go to church regularly and really enjoy it. But, they’re the only Russian-American couple I know who are happy, functional, etc.

My goodness, I have written a lot about this. I think I’ll close with three things you might say to your foreign sweetie to find out if it’s true love or travel lust:

· I love this country. My Mom and Dad are thinking of retiring here. Why don’t we all live here together?
· No dear, my “outstanding warrants” are not community service awards.
· Did I mention that I’m a writer and I have no steady income? But that’s okay. I’m sure that you’re employable.

Waiting, Wondering, Whining -- Part I

2008-03-17T17:25:00.000-07:00

Up until this point in the blog, I’ve been writing advice about ways and places to find someone. But alas, it often happens that you do everything right and you’re still stuck single, enjoying the fleeting pleasures of playing Trivial Pursuit with the neighbors.

The previous sentence has a fundamental flaw in it, I should admit, and it’s the “you do everything right” part. Fundamentally, this is not your problem to resolve. It’s the Holy Spirit’s problem, or one of the Holy Spirit’s many problems, as the primary goal of the Holy Spirit is that you can dwell in heaven for ever with God. And for that purpose, you’ll get what you need – a cross to bear and to wear, certainly, but the rest is variable depending on you and your situation – maybe a wedding ring, maybe a klobuk, or maybe what you need is a bunch of hyperactive kindergarteners to teach and take on field trips to symphonies and museums. Once you understand this, your struggle will begin to come into perspective, although I doubt it’ll get any easier.

If you’re like me, and you’re an over-worrier and an over-doer, you’re probably worrying far too much about what to do, and you’re doing far too much, too, revising the opening speech you’ll give if some handsome single man or pretty woman comes to church this week. You’re continuously looking for flaws in your profile on orthodoxchristiandating.com that you can take out in hopes of making yourself look like the ideal mate and you’re pondering churches in nearby towns that you can visit in hopes of overcoming the slim pickings in the local talent pool. Such a trip is called a romantic pilgrimage, and there’s another article about that available here. That article I wrote originally for The Onion Dome was inspired in part by a similar journey I took one June when a 13-year-old girl I knew tried to set me up with one of her friends 60 miles away.

“She’s tall, she’s Orthodox, she’s pretty, she sings really well, she’s close to your age! You have to meet her!” I actually fell for it, put on my tie and got on a 6 a.m. bus one Sunday. It was June, and the church where this girl attends services is surrounded by plants which I’m allergic to, all of which were in bloom, so the liturgy was just one long sneezing fit for me… Our Father, who are in Heaven, achoo be thy name…

The brief conversation I had with her was really, really awkward, basically to the effect of: “Wow, what a nice church you go to!”

“Yes, it is nice,” she said. I didn’t make any progress. The girl’s mother, on the other hand, liked me very much, as the absence of body piercings, tattoos or a leather jacket made me seem like a hot commodity. The would-be-mother-in-law’s interest was love for her daughter, but it was more like love seen through the back end of a telescope. The mother was looking at one specific thing – a man who knew the value of showing up on time for church or work in a tie. The girl, on the other hand, was hoping for a life of adventures and possibilities, and all she could see was one possibility, a nerd in a tie with no apparent reason for being there except to “talk” with her about “stuff.” As the girl tried to pry herself loose, the mother was saying she wished I’d come around again for church or for dinner.

Okay, that was a tangent. Where was I? Oh yeah, if you’re pondering a trip that stupid, you’re trying too hard. Way too hard. If you’re a worrier like me, you’re probably already doing enough.

This is not to encourage complacency. I am acquainted with one young man who is handsome, intelligent, has a good sense of humor and good interpersonal skills. He makes friends with a lot of women, but the only thing he’s lacking is the gumption to actually ask one out on a real date. His female friends succumb to his friendly charms, and end up carrying torches for him a long, long time…and he’s oblivious.

But, if you’re reading a silly blog such as this one, you probably don’t have that problem.

From a spiritual sense, you have exactly what you need right now for your salvation, so you’ll be happier the less you do to try to change your personal standing. So, in that spirit, the rest of this article is about not trying too hard to find someone.

There is plenty of other stuff to do while you wait:

Meditations and Spiritual Growth

When you don’t have enough to do, that’s a great time to pray! There’s an excellent prayer book published by the Monastery of St. John of San Francisco called The Prayers of St. Isaac the Syrian. Here’s a link to it on Amazon that’s half-broken. The Monastery of St. John’s Web site might have it, but their bookstore isn’t up right now. But maybe you can call them. Click here for their site.

The really wonderful thing about this little prayerbook is that it focuses on asking God how to pray, asking God to tell you what to ask for, and asking God to orient you on the right path. It’s very applicable to the situation of the wondering and wandering nature of the single person, as you’re continually asking, “What in the heck am I doing here?”

A trip to a monastery might also be worthwhile. Not to be a monk or nun, necessarily, but the monastery will teach you how to pray and how to think in a clearer manner.

See how long you can go without saying or doing anything about finding someone. It will be liberating for you to discover that your desperate thoughts about dating are not really you, just something your brain does when it’s bored. And, while you’re behaving like a sane, normal person, someone special might come along and be impressed with you.

Find something you’re really thankful for, and spend time with it. I moved to San Francisco in 2005 to work for Raphael House, a homeless shelter run by an Orthodox charity. I was glad to be at such an amazing agency, but I didn’t like living in San Francisco. It’s a town that really charges some people up. Bishop Benjamin, who often ate dinner at Raphael House, told us how much he loved San Francisco, and how the energy of the place really charges him up every time he drives across the Bay Bridge into the city.

Another Raphael House worker, Connie, then said, “Pigeons – eating barf!” I have to say that I agreed with her image of San Francisco. It’s hard to like your city when there are transvestite prostitutes working your block.

After a year of living there and wishing I could leave, I hopped on the bus and rode to Joy of All Who Sorrow Cathedral (the newer one) for the feast day of St. John of San Francisco and Shanghai. This liturgy was a big deal, with more than a 1,000 people coming out for it. The choir at this cathedral has a symphonic sound to it that I heard at feast days in Kiev when I was there in the Peace Corps. There wasn’t a word of English in the service although I knew enough Slavonic to figure out where we were in the service. It was a day when I forgot about the city and really knew that this kind of worship unifies people with Christ and with each other. As I went up for communion, I was thankful, for the first time, that I was in San Francisco, where I could casually hop on a bus and have this really magnificent service. I was thankful for where I was and for the people I knew. I was able to say, honestly, “I am all right with being a bachelor for now.”

I met three girls at the service. They were all really pretty, although I didn’t have my usual “what’s the right thing to say oh-no-I’m-going-to-have-a-heart-attack” reaction. I just talked with them and behaved like a normal person.

I was really thankful I could go to church services that beautiful. I kept going to Joy of All Who Sorrow Cathedral and its older sister cathedral which bears the same name.

Three weeks later, I met another girl at the Old Cathedral, who also didn’t like San Francisco that well. We got married and left town together.

Write a prayer applicable to your situation and put it in the back of your prayer book. Say it every night. Over time, you’ll revise the prayer. I started out with “find me a girl!” and then I moved to “Tell me whether it’s a girl or a klobuk for me.” The prayer that really helped was, “Bless my work today and prepare me for whatever path you have for me.”

Find some saints that really inspire you, write their tropars on an index card and carry it around in your pocket. The ones I found most helpful were:

St. Juliana the Virgin (July 6). Apparently she was very humble because no one knows much about her life. She was a princess in Kiev who died at the age of 16. Her grave was found 200 years later when workers were laying foundations for a new church. Her relics were incorrupt.

St. Moses the Virgin (July 26). He was a muscular, handsome fellow who wanted to be a monk at the Caves Monastery in Kiev. But, Kiev was invaded, and Moses was enslaved by the invading army, and he was sold to a rich young widow who tried to force him to marry. She held him captive for 10 years before giving up, and then he was able to become a monk.
St. Barlaam, Igumen of the Kiev Caves Monastery (Sept. 28). He was the son of a noble and had an illustrious life ahead of him. His father had a beautiful bride picked out for him. But, he wanted to be a monk under the instruction of Saints Anthony of the Caves. St. Barlaam’s father kidnapped him and dragged him home and stuck him in a room with his bride, who worked every temptation possible on him. This didn’t work, and eventually his father gave up. He became a monk, and eventually the abbot of the Caves Monastery.

I guess none of these saints had, “Waited a long time to meet the right guy/girl” in their story. But I think the Prologue could really use a saint or two such as that. That’s your job! Get to it! Be a saint! We need some more fish-wine-and-oil days!

I’ve written more than I thought I would about waiting and wondering, so I’m breaking this into two parts. Click here for the next part, distractions during the waiting process.

Or, you can go back to the Table of Contents.

Waiting -- Part II, Distractions

2008-03-16T17:36:00.000-07:00

If you think you might want to be a monk or nun, you probably should focus on the category of spiritual growth mentioned in the previous post since part of the idea of monasticism is to make every moment a focused, holy work. (And get a real abbot or abbess to direct you.) But, if you’re like most of us, you’re going to goof off in your wandering/wondering time. Some goofing off is helpful, and some isn’t. Let’s start with…

Bad Distractions

Going out with a slimeball. My wife tells me that this is a real temptation for women – thinking that you cannot find a man who hopes for the life that you want to share and you lower your standards. Another variation on this distraction is being in a so-so relationship and deciding to compromise your standards to make it work. To know whether your guy is a slimeball, you have to ask your conscience, but here are a few signs you’re dating the wrong guy:

He insists on calling your priest a mage, and is researching ways to block his powers.

Says he’s religious but the only part of the Bible he likes is the Song of Solomon.

He wishes you’d be more like a young St. Mary of Egypt.

Roasts marshmallows over the candle stand during Liturgy.

Makes hex symbols at your parents.

Thinks the virgin martyrs were an example of abstinence-only education gone too darn far.

Says his favorite Greek saint is Aphrodite.

You tell him it’s a wine-and-oil day and he buys massage oil.

Giving up on actual humans and looking at naughty Web sites. This is more of a temptation for men than it is for women. It’ll really mess up your brain. Letting a pornographic image into your brain is sort of like allowing a zebra mussel into a lake. It’s an invasive species that never, ever leaves, and it reproduces quickly, outcompeting all the native species. To get an idea of what porn will do to your brain, read this article from the best-of-Craigslist titled, “Dear Internet Porn,” It’s got some explicit words in it, but it accurately describes the effects. Here’s a sample:

“Your softcore erotic videos were a tasteful introduction to my budding sexuality. As I got older I started seeing girls on the side. I knew you were jealous, but you have always held a special place in my heart. You became naughtier and it affected my relationships. I started wanting all the things I had seen you do. I wanted to be just like you.”

One priest I know gave me some very sage advice: Remember that your eyes have been chrismated. The purpose of the priest putting oil around your eyes, ears, mouth, heart, hands and feet was so that everything you saw, heard and did could be sanctified. In the very act of looking, we are called to glorify Christ.

My own personal war right now with what to look at is with this year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. I’ve made a point of not picking it up, but it’s in grocery stores, convenience stores and airports, so the cover has been able to shout at me with its picture of what appears to be a girl wearing a chandelier.

With this temptation, we guys have it a bit worse than the ladies. The devil values us as potential weapons more than women. If he can turn one of us into a rake, he can do a lot more moral damage to the community than one floozy. This isn’t so much of a theological opinion I’m expressing here, but a mathematical one – a single rake has the ability to conceive an unlimited number of uncared-for children, however the floozy is limited in her ability to run around by pregnancy and children. And, there’s the additional problem that society tends to wink at badly behaved men, but it harshly judges badly behaved women, which allows guys to “get away with” more. From a Christian point of view, being able to “get away with” more means “more help in destroying yourself.”

How to fight: View celibacy as a daily project

A lot of decisions we make in our lives are things we decide once and stick with it for ten years, for example, what color to paint your house. Other decisions aren’t as easy to stick to, especially when there are thousands of little hormones swimming through your body to tell you to do the exact opposite. Celibacy falls into the latter category. It’s not something you stick to over the course of ten years, it’s something you commit to every day. Some days, especially when I was a teacher of Ukrainian teenagers, it was a decision that I had to re-make several times a day.

If you’re wavering in your resolve, you need to be careful whom you tell. I remember one very stressful month in the Peace Corps, I was hoping for some kindly support from a medical officer.

She told me that whatever my decision was about sex, I shouldn’t be miserable about it.

I said that it wasn’t that cut and dry; some days you are miserable trying to resist.

She told me I was making things more difficult than they should.

I said, “You have no idea what it’s like to be male and single in this country!”

She said, “If I were male and single, I’d have had sex with someone by now!”

(As an aside, mental stress is probably the number one reason Peace Corps volunteers go home early – they call these “Whack-Evacs,” and they put you on an airplane to Washington D.C., make you sit around and talk to counselors for a week to make sure you’re not a threat to yourself, and then discharge you.)

You’ll need support in your efforts to remain celibate. Going to a priest for Confession often is the best way. If the Internet is giving you problems, you might think about taking a break from it just to get an idea of what life is like without seeing people’s humanity getting twisted that way. It still will be possible to keep in contact with your friends. The Postal Service has these nifty prepaid postcards that allow you to jot down quick notes to people without having to search for an envelope or stamps. They’re cheap, too.

It’s not an easy struggle that you’re taking on. You need to be strict with yourself, but only for a little while. Then, start up with another little while of being strict. This is why they’re called daily prayers that we say each day.

Good Distractions

Find a quirky hobby and push it as far as you can go. Mine is bicycling. My longest day, after years of practice, was 143 miles and 10,000 feet of elevation gain. A month later, I got married and am now required to carry a cell phone and check in twice a day.

Eat garlic. Lots of it. You’re not going to be able to do that with just anyone, you know. My record for a day was two full bulbs, sautéed. I had an ironclad immune system, and breath that could take the rust off my bicycle. This is especially helpful if you’re trying to get rid of an eager man or woman in your community whom you don’t like. If garlic doesn’t suit your fancy, find some other stinky food, such as Limburger cheese.

Learn to cook a lot of recipes. If your future spouse is as picky an eater as mine is, only about a quarter of your recipes are going to pass muster. You’ll need some extra recipes to fall back upon.

Get a dog. Here you will find a true friend. And, probably your dog will be a good test of character for future boyfriends / girlfriends. Could you be married to someone who doesn’t like throwing a tennis ball 100 times a day? This way, you’ll find out!

Read the Best of Craigslist. Craigslist, as you probably know, is a graphics-minimal community board on which you can post an advertisement for anything you want to buy, sell, or do. The staff of craigslist doesn't edit the site much. If a high number of readers flag a posting as inappropriate, it’ll get taken off, or if there’s a posting that made people laugh, they can flag it for Best-of-Craigslist.

The Best-of-Craigslist postings, about half of which have to do with dating, give you an entertaining window into the swinging single scene of the cities while leaving you detached from its pain. The sorts of nightmare dates that get described here will make you glad that you’re too quirky to get a date with the “cool” people.

Donate a pint of blood every eight weeks. Nothing like a mild case of anemia to suck the passion out of you for a couple of days. And, you’re saving lives! Click here to find a blood donation center in your neighborhood.

Buy a studfinder. Carry it around at church and point it at boys. If it beeps, he might be worth something! But, be careful, it could also find you a blockhead.

Have a whine and oil day. This is when you get your friends of the same sex together and you complain about how difficult it is to be Orthodox and single. You wish that your priest would make an effort to bring frumpy/nerdy-free converts into the church. Guys devise some plans for getting girls, including sneaking over to stand next to them before the kiss of peace. Girls contrive to trip while standing up from a prostration and to fall into the arms of the handsome firefighter who comes to church once in a while. Work with your friends to come up with a few good pick-up lines, for example:

What’s your favorite tone?

Did Batushka buy some new incense or do you always smell that good?

You’re even prettier than your icon!

And then, the one that actually works (and was recommended by a priest):

Christ is Risen! (Because then you get a kiss.)

Back to the Table of Contents

Match-making and other bad advice

2008-03-15T21:34:00.000-07:00

Houses in Pittsburgh don't sell very fast. The population has declined by half since 1920, and even when the economy is booming, finding a buyer who will pay market rate for your house can take a year or more.

There is, however, this company that puts up billboards saying "We Buy Ugly Houses." They'll enthusiastically take your house, but they won't pay you what it's worth. If you're desperate, you can get your hands on some cash that way.

This is the basic principle behind match-making for the single Orthodox Christian. Like you, Pittsburgh houses are elegant, but there just aren't that many people who appreciate them. Having failed to attract someone with your own charms, you succumb to the offers of some helpful social know-it-all who says in a saccharine enthusiastic tone, "You'll be perfect for one another." Of course you have this nagging doubt that this means that there is someone out there more messed up than you and this match-maker intends to unload her on you. Chances are, this nagging doubt is actually true.

We Christians are all about doing things in community, however, match-making is one opportunity for allowing the community to drive you crazy that I think you should avoid.

Traditional match-making

Now, I don't mean to slam an important custom of traditional societies. Formalized match-making has worked for centuries as a means of creating marriages that form a bond not only between the husband and wife, but also between the families of a community.

Some people think that arranged marriages are more traditional, and we Orthodox Christians living in the 21st century still like traditional things such as inhaling sweet smoke and abstaining from cantaloupe on days when people get beheaded, so we ought to take the more traditional path.

In centuries gone by, match-making was an important process in which two families would come together and form the necessary social support structure for a new couple starting a family. I don't know what to say about the virtues of choosing a spouse vs. arranging a marriage, but I'm glad I got to find Miri on my own.

Father Thomas Hopko was once giving a talk called God and Gender when someone asked him which system was better. He said that arranged marriages caused a lot of grief when people couldn't intermarry between classes, but said that in a spiritual sense, it does not matter how you meet your spouse. His answer went on for a while, as do most things that Fr. Hopko talks about (the tape set is four hours long altogether) but here's a compressed version:

Virtually until our generation here in America, marriages were arranged. My maternal grandparents literally met each other when they signed the marriage license in Binghamton, New York. They literally had only the vaguest knowledge of each other's existence. And they were matched, and managed to live together for many years and have six children....

Whether or not there's arranged marriages or whether or not people fall in love and get married, sooner or later, the command to love, to bear each other's burden, to become sin, to become cursed for the other, to take each other's faults, to have endless forgiveness and compassion day in and day out, whether it's arranged or whether it's not, that's what's gonna happen if you're going to pull it off in a Christian manner and find the peace and the joy and the righteousness of the kingdom of God.

So that's the Serious Theology part of match-making. Now that I've got that out of the way, here's what I can say about your over-eager, talkative friends and family members who seem to be planning your life out for you.

An insecure attitude will attract the wrong kind of help

In the Basic Rules of Being Single section of this blog, I said that your attitude will determine the quality of other singles whom you meet. If you're desperate, you'll meet other desperate people; if you're relaxed, you'll meet other relaxed people, and you might make a few friends along the way.

The match-maker generally assumes you to be desperate, viewing you like some kind of a romantic refugee fleeing, looking for anywhere to settle down. What you need to do is convince the match-maker that you're a tourist, enjoying your visit, ready to move on when it's appropriate.

I am convinced that most matchmakers take the worst elements of your personality and confuse them with your actual identity. For example, I am a socially inept nerd. There's a lot more to me than that, but that's what a few matchmakers saw in me and set me up with socially inept frumps.

An important question that you can use on a match-maker is how much have you thought this through? The answer will give you an idea of how much trouble you're getting in to, and whether you're going on a wild goose chase, or whether you're going to be chased by a turkey. It will also reveal what kind of match-maker is giving you advice. I believe there are four types of matchmaker:

The hobbyist. This is the least dangerous of the match-makers. The hobbyist is an outgoing chatty person who likes putting on parties and introducing people to one another. He or she views other people's romance as a casual affair but knows how to use the right kind of exaggerated language to make you both encouraged and nervous upon meeting this perfect person they've picked out for you. The hobbyist match-maker sometimes has an addiction to control or to being the center of attention and uses the lure of romance to keep you in his or her orbit. If this match-maker intends only to introduce you to people at parties, it won't be so bad.

The hobbyist is often clueless. One hobbyist match-maker whom I knew in San Francisco kept encouraging me to ask out one of the choir members in our church who "just hadn't been able to find someone." So, I called this girl's house. Her sister picked up.

"She's out with her boyfriend," said her sister.

This leads to another important question you should ask the match-maker about your "perfect one": Have you actually talked to her? I remember when I was in high school, some friends were trying to set me up with a girl who was tall. They figured that since we had that in common, it would work out. To which I shouted back, "Yes, and we've both got a lot of carbon molecules! Of course you're right!"

The desperate-for-grandkids match-maker. If a parent has only one shy child who is single and getting on towards an age when you'd call him "confirmed bachelor," this Mom or Dad going to get a little worried. So, Mom will find some lovely young lady in the parish whose family doesn't attend church, adopt her and stuff her full of food in the hopes her oblivious son will see her impeccable table manners and instantly fall in love.

The philosopher match-maker has gotten an idea of The Way Things Ought To Be regarding marriage either because of a bad experience he doesn't think should be repeated, or through Careful Study of Church History.

For example, in a church I attended, there was a father whom I'll call Zaccheus who had three beautiful daughters. Daughter No. 1 made her parents very happy by marrying a boy from an Orthodox family that they knew well. Then a shy Orthodox boy built up lots of nerve and wrote a love note to Daughter No. 2. Zaccheus did not approve of the shy boy and let him know this in a manner that left him fearing for the safety of his kneecaps.

Daughter No. 2 wouldn't have liked a boring church boy like that anyway. Shortly after, she ran away with her boyfriend, came back two years later and gave birth. Her boyfriend wasn't interested in taking responsibility.

Then Zaccheus decided to set me up with daughter No. 3, who was 14. I was 24. In all fairness, she was a very nice 14-year-old, but, uh... 14. Zaccheus was annoyed as anything with daughter No. 2 and her boyfriend, but was delighted with his new grandson, and had decided that teenage pregnancy was a good thing. Married teenage pregnancy, that is. After all, the Theotokos was 13 or 14 when she gave birth to Jesus Christ, according to some sources.

Talking to this girl was a little awkward. "Your favorite subject is algebra? Wow, I like algebra, too."

The matushka/presvyteria match-maker. When matushki get together at a clergy conference, they have to find some fun topic they can talk about with one another, and setting up their children is usually at the top of the list. (The priests' version of this is to opine about wrong things that bishops in other jurisdictions have done recently.)

Before she met me, several matushki decided that Miri was just perfect for their sons. Miri says that all of these PKs would have driven her nuts.

The matushka match-maker suffers from an inherent flaw in her thinking, which is...

The Parental Approval Piety Paradox

If you're male and you go to church and you don't have any tattoos, and you show up for church regularly in clean clothes, you're going to interest a lot more parents of girls than actual girls. The same thing if you're female and wear pretty long skirts and scarves and sing in the choir. I had this happen to me a lot -- parents would look at me and think, "Mortgage payment!" Girls would look at me and think, "Nerd!"

Here, an obvious temptation would be to say, "I can be a wild guy" and you go buy a leather jacket or something. Then, you can make all the girls look at you and say "Fake nerd!" No, be yourself and eventually you will find someone who loves you for the nerd you are.

On the other hand, when a girl's parents know you too well, you can have additional problems. For example, my spiritual father has three beautiful daughters. As I was coming in to the church and getting through my "crazy convert" stage, I asked him for a lot of advice. After a while, his advice began taking on a common theme of advising me to get the advice of Fr. Jonah Paffhausen, a classmate of his at St. Vladimir's Seminary who was thinking about getting married but decided to become a priest-monk. He is the Igumen of the Monastery of St. John of San Francisco. (I did go the monastery several times and really liked it.)

I took several messages from my spiritual father's nudging me towards the monastery:

An experience with monasticism might benefit you.

You worry too much and have exhausted my library of pastoral advice.

You haven't got a chance with my daughters.

So that's match-making -- a way in which you can express your desperation, and a source of great amusement for your friends. Sorry this has been kind of a disjointed essay. (Trying to get it to flow has been the reason it's taken so long to write.) But, I want to end with a funny story, about how it is possible to get rid of an insistent match-maker. When I arrived in Ukraine to begin my Peace Corps service, I was placed with a host family. Galina, the 40-something mother, spoke English almost as badly as I spoke Russian, but one phrase she liked repeating to me was, "Ukraine girl, kiss kiss!" To which I'd respond, "Ukraine girl, nyet, nyet!" But she kept on with that until I finally said "Ukraine girl, da, da," and I kissed her. She responded with an unintelligible burst of Russian that I took to mean, "That's not what I meant, you goofball!" Anyway, that match-maker never tried again.

Missionary Dating -- Convert Your Sweetie With a Kiss?

2008-03-14T13:29:00.000-07:00

About the time I joined the Orthodox Church for theology, there was another tall fellow joining for marriage. He joined because the girl he was dating was Orthodox. His birth name, like mine, was Eric. He was an Army captain with rippling biceps. My guess is that he weighed 280 pounds, a solid 280, and he was 6 foot 3 inches tall. He is handsome, hardworking, and since his conversion, has really enjoyed going to church. Stop drooling, ladies.

He took the name of the Apostle James, and I took the name of the Apostle Thomas. (There was a St. Eric from Norway, but he was canonized half a century after the Great Schism. Sigh.) Because I was 6 foot 9, and he was 6 foot 3, people in my parish burdened him with the awful nickname "little Eric." I suppose this is partially my fault. When we say the pre-Communion prayer that includes, "...forgive my transgressions both voluntary and involuntary, of word and deed, committed in knowledge or in ignorance..." maybe it was this kind of "involuntary, ignorant" sin that St. John Chrysostom was getting at. Just by my being there, now Eric has a dreadful nickname.

This, I suppose, is Missionary Dating working well -- seeing someone who isn't Orthodox, and then your sweetie converts so he or she can marry you. How does this work? How did Natalie, James Eric's wife, manage to make this happen?

The truth is that she didn't do that much evangelizing of him. According to Natalie's version of the story, they had been casually seeing each other for a while, and Natalie told Eric that it probably they wouldn't be able to get serious because church was so important to her. She hadn't even thought of his becoming Orthodox, and she didn't want to take him to church for fear that he would frighten away the men that she was supposed to be thinking about marrying.

Then the Army transferred Eric to Tacoma, and he looked up our church and started attending services, and got to talking to our priest, and he called Natalie and said, "I think I could be Orthodox." And, some time later they did get married and had a son. James Eric is now a major who's been constantly deployed for the past five years, so pray for him.

In their case it worked out very well -- an Orthodox woman dated a non-Orthodox man, and he found out about the faith that way. But, I think it's a rare event that it works out that well.

My dear old Dad, who's never belonged to a church in his life, gave me some excellent advice about marriage as I got in to my 20s -- as you get closer and find out more about her, you have to accept her the way she is, and not try loving her for what you want her to be. A strategy in which future happiness requires someone else to change the way you want him or her to change is pretty risky. (This kind of thinking is also the foundation of our Iraq strategy.)

Mom and Dad are coming up on their 35th anniversary this year (yay!) and they're both pretty quirky, and neither has tried to change the other in a fundamental manner.

Being baptized into the Church is a fundamental change. It's dying with Christ to be reborn in Him, a voluntary acceptance of a lifelong struggle against the devil. It's being co-crucified with Him so that we can be co-resurrected with him, as St. Paul writes in the letter to the Romans. Making someone do that against his will is just a contradiction in terms. Making someone do that as a condition for married love is also a contradiction because when you're baptized, it's the love you express for Christ that then fills your whole life, including your marriage, with true love.

This love must be freely given, without condition. Bishop Benjamin of San Francisco uses an excellent metaphor for this: "If you think love can be compelled, try holding a cat that doesn't want to be held. You'll be wearing a box full of Band-Aids." I think that trying to convert someone who isn't interested is like trying to baptize a cat.

So Missionary Dating is kind of risky, kind of a recipe for heartbreak. If you do get serious with someone who doesn't share your beliefs, or with an Orthodox who is uninterested in the Life of the Church, it'll set up an odd division in your life. Part of your heart will be devoted to your boyfriend or girlfriend, and part of your heart will be your "religion shelf" in which you keep your beliefs about God. Most potential partners will respect your "religion shelf" and let you do what you want with it, but then you'll be loving God and your partner in different ways and different times -- you'll be managing two lives at once.

I have to say that I never actually tried Missionary Dating myself as I was too weird for any non-Orthodox girls to consider me. My idea of a "night out" was to go to bars in San Francisco and take a book by Fr. Alexander Schmemann to read. Every once in a while, a girl would try starting a conversation.

Girl: "What's that book about?"

Me: "It says that we are supposed to be doxological, eucharistic beings."

Girl: "Huh?"

This didn't get me any phone numbers. Later, I tried to be "cooler" and take a book about my other passion, bicycling. I'd take a copy of Miles From Nowhere by Barbara Savage.

Girl: "What's that book about?"

Me: "It's the true story of a woman who rode her bike around the world and all the cool people she met."

Girl: "Like a bike you pedal?"

Me: "Yeah!"

Girl: "Ow. Wouldn't your butt hurt after the first five miles?"

In short, this never became an issue for me. So I have to admit that I'm opining about something I don't really know that well myself. But I will give this basic piece of advice: If you do try to make a relationship work with someone who doesn't share your beliefs, you have to be willing to have two religions in the household. (And atheism or "I'm spiritual but not religious" are both religions in of themselves; it's just that those faiths get expressed at funny moments.)

Maybe you'll succeed, but...

Then again, you might successfully flirt to convert someone, but be careful with that, too. It might be kind of a topical conversion in which your girlfriend decides her favorite service is vespers because liturgy doesn't allow you to sleep in until noon after partying all night. Or, maybe when you ask her to be "more involved" in church, she'll start a fundraising campaign to install a video screen with the anaphora lyrics displayed and a little ball bouncing over the words so that you can sing along with the Greek.

One of my readers (I'm so amazed that I actually have readers!) told me of a couple of things that boys she brought to church said:

"So they're eating Jesus? Doesn't that make you guys cannibals?"

Another came in to church and asked how far the service had gone. A church lady let him have a service book that included vespers, matins and liturgy. And, the church lady opened it to the beginning of Liturgy, which was at the middle of the book. He exclaimed, "Great, we're halfway through!"

With Missionary Dating, there's another more extreme kind of conversion that has the possibility of driving you up the wall -- your boyfriend gets really excited about the faith and suddenly becomes an Orthodoxer-than-thou crazy convert. While you're trying to build an adult relationship with him, he's in spiritual infancy, stubbornly demanding everything be exactly the way it's supposed to be. Imagine going out to a romantic dinner on a Friday night, and he's interrogating the waiter about whether the shrimp primavera is cooked in olive oil or canola oil. He'll probably try writing you love notes in Slavonic. When you're doing your taxes the first year you're married, he'll try asserting his religious rights by doing his taxes on the Old Calendar. (Don't worry, I'm sure the IRS will understand.)

And then, Missionary Dating raises yet another question for you: So you succeed in getting this girl or boy to accept the faith, and then what? Maybe it turns out you don't really get along as well as you thought you did. I know one priest who, while a seminarian at St. Vladimir's, got his girlfriend to convert, and then broke up with her a few months later. I'm told that she's still Orthodox. I don't know if this seminarian was going for the title "Ladies' Apostle" or what, but Missionary Dumping is a pretty harsh means of evangelizing the unchurched.

One specific problem that Missionary Dating raises...

As I've been organizing this article, a few women have told me there's one very specific problem that Missionary Dating raises: sex. It's a pervasive myth that a "serious relationship" has to get sexual, and that having sex is what will make true love happen. It's easy to say no to that while sitting at your computer, but if you spend a year or two dating a guy who's continuously trying to convince you that it's true, you begin to wear down. You probably like the other qualities this guy has, he's just messed up when it comes to sex. It stinks.

I can suggest a few ways of dealing with this problem:

Make it clear that we Christians have to live our beliefs. Sex is a very defining act for us. It's when we say whether we are souls or whether we are hormones. We believe that Jesus Christ was perfect God and perfect Man, and that His person is a marriage, and that marriage is what sanctifies us, frees us from sin and allows us to go to heaven. This marriage of His person is the model for our marriages, and if we want to go to heaven, we have to bear witness to Christ in our own lives. Jesus did not fool around -- there was only one incarnation, one marriage, which was literal and physical. The connection between Jesus' person and our beliefs about marriage is also literal and physical. Fooling around sexually is an insult to person of Jesus.
Tell him that he's insulting your religion. Seriously, stupid as that sounds, it's true. My guess is that'll open up a new argument in which you find out that he really doesn't respect your religious beliefs. Most non-believers can put up with you until the teachings of your faith keep them from having something that they want.
Terrorize him with Scripture. Make him read Psalm 3, especially the part, "Thou hast broken the teeth of the wicked," and tell him that you'll whack him in the jaw with a frying pan if he tries anything. See, we Orthodox can be Scriptural literalists.
Flee. This is what St. Paul told the Corinthians about sexual immorality. He was really ticked off with the Corinthians, too. You're unlikely to win an argument with lust.
Use the above four tactics on naughty Orthodox boys, too. Yes, they exist... nothing about being Orthodox exempts you from hormones.

If you are currently in a Missionary Dating relationship...

I've been pretty negative about Missionary Dating, but I should stop to say that I don't mean to slam anyone who is trying to make such a relationship work. I think your chances are pretty limited in getting the relationship you want with someone who doesn't share your beliefs. But, as I hope the previous posts in this blog have shown, shared religious beliefs are not a free ticket to bliss, either.

If you do have someone in your life who looks promising but doesn't go to church, try to make it work. But when I say "try to make it work," don't talk her into sharing your beliefs, show her how much your faith means to you. Don't just go to Confession, be a better person, and treat her better after you've been to Confession. Hum your favorite church hymn often and wait for him to ask you why it makes you happy. Put an icon of your favorite saint on the wall, and put a copy of the saint's troparion underneath it.

Christ tells us in the Sermon on the Mount to let His light shine through us:

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:14-16).

One last story I can tell is one that a priest told my wife before she met me. Father Peter had known an interfaith couple in which the wife was Orthodox and the husband was not. The husband said to Fr. Peter that he didn't understand any of the religion, but he always noticed that his wife was more beautiful just after she had received Communion. My wife took that story to mean that at a very minimum, as a very start, you need to have someone who can see that there is something more going on than the ritual and rules.

Monasticism: Competing with St. Anthony the Great for love

2008-03-13T10:53:00.000-07:00

Monasticism as Romance

Some people get romantic about monasticism, believe it or not. This isn't to say that klobuks are the new sexy accessory this year, but many people who are thinking about monasticism are interested because they've had a rush of happy emotions that make them think this will be an amazing life for them.

This would be a good time to stop and define "getting romantic" here. In the most common sense, "I'm feeling romantic about you" means attraction. "Romantic" also means a tendency to have a torrent of emotions and to express them immediately and fully.

According to Wikipedia, the Romantic movement in the arts "stresses strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublimity in untamed nature and its qualities that are both new aesthetic categories."

The romantic notion of monasticism is that at the monastery, the life of prayer is going to unleash your soul from its earthly bonds, and you'll stop having feelings of self-doubt. You won't get distracted by anything because you'll have your prayer rope in hand at all times, which is a bulletproof vest against the devil. You'll get right on your path to theosis (the process by which humans become holy) and before your hair turns gray you'll be levitating and healing people just like St. Seraphim of Sarov.

This is the reason that most monasteries make you wait at least five years before they will tonsure you. You can be a novice and wear the black outfit and be treated like a monk or nun during the period of preparation (with the option of leaving at any time) but once you have been tonsured, you're stuck.

Monasticism as reality

If you're feeling attracted to monasticism, by all means, go and visit. You will benefit from the experience, I promise you that. You will learn discipline in both your prayer and in how you approach your daily life. You don't have to do an all-at-once dive into the life described in the pages of The Ladder of Divine Ascent by John Climacus.

As you talk with the abbot or abbess about what goes on at the monastery, you'll begin to understand that monasticism is about a complete turning of one's spirit over to Christ through prayer, fasting and work. There's only one way to find out if it's for you, which is to give it time. I visited the Monastery of St. John in Point Reyes, Calif., several times, and the abbot, Father Jonah, explained that the first six months will be very challenging as everything you've ever done, things that have been done to you, and assorted lies you've been telling to yourself will all bubble to the surface and you'll be forced to face it head on.

Father Jonah writes on the "Are you called?" section of the monastery's Web site:

No one can run away from his problems by going to a monastery. Rather, in the quiet and undistracted life of the monastery, all problems come into agonizing focus so that they can be dealt with. Every passion, every habit, and every sin will become absolutely apparent. We join a monastery to repent: not to somehow try to make up for our sins, but to turn to God knowing our weakness and embrace a whole new lifestyle. Monastic life is not a life lived without responsibility. Rather, it is an empowering to fully accept responsibility for our life, to face one's issues, and to be healed.

I love that idea of monasticism as context. Before I met my wife, the orderly, prayerful life of monasteries provided a context in which I could take my assorted problems from my life and offer them quietly to Christ. Without the distractions of living a secular life, I was able to take each of my problems and ask whether my approach to them really served Christ. I was a worrier, and usually what I needed to do was just let go of what was happening in my job and neighborhood. At the monastery, I realized that none of the eight choices I'd come up with for solving problems was really helpful, and I needed to simply be patient.

When I lived in San Francisco, I traveled by bicycle up to Point Reyes (a journey of 40 miles) seven or eight times and really benefited from the services and the monks. Then, the monks moved to Manton, darn it, and I had nowhere to run for quiet except the Old Cathedral in San Francisco, where Fr. Jonah's godson, Fr. James (also a monk) is the priest. It provided some of the same experience, although with a lot more adjectives in the sermons. (Brevity is not Fr. James' first quality.)

This church has low attendance, and no eligible ladies, which made it easier to concentrate. And then one came and sang in the choir. And I married her.

So I can't tell you much more about what monasticism really is about. You need to visit a monastery and get chatting with the abbot or abbess. But, I can offer a few other tidbits of advice I picked up from monastics.

Back when I was still considering monasticism, I had a very helpful conversation with a nun named Mother Magdalena at Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Ellwood City, Pa. She told me that she gets "pretty hot under the collar" whenever anyone talks about what the "typical" nun ought to be. The stereotype of the future nun is a meek, shy girl who is not very pretty but likes going to church a lot.

"We're supposed to be brides of Christ. Is there anything wrong with being a pretty bride?" she said. "You're supposed to give your spirit to Christ. What's wrong with giving Him a strong spirit?"

She also said, "For every 25 women we get here interested in monasticism, 24 of them get married."

Father Jonah told me that the best way to prepare for monastic life is to live a godly life in the world. I remember I told him I was a conflicted soul over the fact that I was thinking about monasticism, and yet I still asked girls out on dates sometimes. He said, "That's OK. I did that, too."

That's one preparation path you can take. Or, you might really know that monasticism is right for you. His godson, Fr. James, told me that when he knew he wanted to be Orthodox, he wanted to be a monk, and getting married wasn't a question for him.

Either way, if you're getting all anxious about which path to take, you're probably overthinking things and just need to relax.

Monasticism as Escape

If the above comic is too small/fuzzy to read, click on it to be taken to a better image.

I think we've all been truly revolted by some experience at one time or another that makes us say "No, never, under no circumstances is this EVER happening again!" One example I can give of revulsion is when my father had a cold with a post-nasal drip. It lasted about two weeks, and every time he needed to cough something up, he had to search for a Kleenex. It was especially difficult to grab one while driving, so he kept a cup in the cupholder on the dashboard. He thought it was one of those little hygienic barbarities that one keeps secret, and it was his business. That is, until a week passed and Mom found the cup. YEEEECCCHHH!!! WHAT ON EARTH IS THIS DOING HERE?!?! was her reaction and no amount of explanation could get Dad out of trouble.

That story is about finding something gooey and gross at an unexpected moment, but sometimes we have an experience so frustrating, so revolting in our relations with other people that we want to run and run fast. For example, when I was a teacher, the class clown's mother tried to put The Moves on me once. Another such experience is when I told my ex-girlfriend that we shouldn't spend time in one another's apartment very long for fear Something Might Happen. "Don't worry about that," she said, "I just came back from the doctor and she said that I'm infertile." (This girl later got married to someone else and had a couple of kids.)

These kinds of visceral emotions, I think, are what led to the invention of the word "Yuck." There's nothing wrong with having them, but if we go through major life changes because of them, we're in for trouble. If we think that by running away to a monastery, we'll never have to deal with that kind of event again, we're probably stuck in a romantic fantasy about monasticism.

Sometimes it's not just one experience, but a series of them that push your "Yuck factor" up to the point where you want to run away. When I lived in Pittsburgh, there was only one grocery store chain in town, Giant Eagle, and every checkout stand was full of trashy magazines. Glamour and Cosmopolitan seemed to be in a competition as to which could use the most absurd adjectives with "orgasm." The accumulation of all the references to cheap sex made me think, "If this is what sex is about these days, there's no point to it." And, I wanted to run off to the monastery.

Instead, I ended up spending the rest of the year buying kosher food because the kosher grocery in our neighborhood had no magazines.

Be careful with how strongly you say "the world is evil, I need to get out of it." If you start saying that flesh is evil, or that the material world as a whole is bad and we need to separate from it, then you're dabbling in Gnosticism, which is going to give you far worse problems than feeling awkward around girls.

Monasticism as Excuse

There is one last temptation I should mention with monasticism, and it's a really lame thing to do. That is to use it as a line to get rid of people of the opposite sex. If a weird boy or girl is attracted to you, just say, "I am not interested in having a relationship with you."

I say this from experience because there was this girl whom I didn't have the nerve to come right out and say, "I do not want to date you."

So, I said, "There are some things I've got to work through in my life, and it may be that monasticism is my true calling." And then I started rambling on about all of the monasteries I'd visited in Ukraine and what great awakening experiences they were for me, and how it was a holy calling, blah, blah, blah, but I really like talking to you and want to stay friends, blah, blah, blah... and I closed with a cheesy smile.

The truth was, at that point in my life, my interest in monasticism was pretty topical. That was before I had actually met any English-speaking monks, and the monks I knew in Ukraine kept trying to convince me of the dangers worldwide Jewish-Masonic conspiracy, which was centered in the U.S. Evidence of the conspiracy could be found in the fact that it is impossible to order a non-kosher meal in New York City. But, they were sure that God would bring justice as there was a prophecy that America was going to be completely flooded over. Zealots such as these gave me some pretty harsh reservations about becoming a monk as I did not believe in such bizarre conspiracies.

Uh... I'm getting off-topic. So, when I told this girl I felt called to be a monk, it was kind of a sideways slam. What I meant was "If we lived in a medieval village and my choices were to enter into a forced arranged marriage with you or join the monastery, I'd join the monastery."

Lame, lame, lame. Don't do this. One, it's mean, two, you're going to get repaid for this, as it says in Psalm 7:15-16:

He made a pit and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made. His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate.

I dug my own pit.

A couple of months after I used the aforementioned lame line on the "nice girl" whom I could never love, I met a beautiful tall young lady at a church event. As the event wound down and we prepared to go our separate ways, she looked at me right in the eye and told me how much she liked talking with me. I got her e-mail address. She lived 200 miles from me.

We wrote to each other regularly for the next couple of months. She let me know that her favorite book was Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. I went to the library and checked it out. Then she invited me to visit her and meet her parents. So, I got on the Greyhound bus and in my euphoria, was actually able to read half of this dreadful piece of chick lit. I got up to the point where the women are wondering why Willoughby doesn't visit again.

I got to her town. The parents seemed to like me, as did her friends, but the girl told me that she's really called to be a nun.

"Wow," I said with the same cheesy smile, "That's an amazing calling. I know that I've thought about that, too..." (While thinking: No I haven't really, but why did you have to bring me all this way to tell me that?)

I got back on the bus home, wrote a thank-you letter to the girl's parents for letting me stay in the upstairs room, sent it, went to the library in the middle of the night and chucked Sense and Sensibility into the return slot with great force. As far as I know, Mrs. Dashwood ended her life a widow with spinster daughters in that little house. Maybe they all became nuns.

Annoyed as I was, I have to admit that it did cure me of a couple of romantic notions about girls that I'd been carrying with me. One was that I thought that if I knew about books and topics that interest a girl, talking about them with her would charm the socks right off of her. No, it doesn't. It makes you look like a nerd. And, if you're reading chick lit, it makes you look gay. Another romantic notion was that by invoking the name of Christ and the monasteries that follow Him, you can reject someone who loves you without it hurting. No, that's awful, regardless of whether you're being rejected or doing the rejection.

Monasticism is responsibility -- taking responsibility for who you are, and responsibility for praying for the whole world. That's not small task, but you have to be willing to try. Whether you get married and take on responsibility for your spouse or you are tonsured, you have to give it all your heart, without condition or reservation. How many icons does your church have of Saint Bob the Indecisive?

Lent + Dating = Grapefruit +Milk

2008-03-12T11:04:00.000-07:00

This article about the trials of dating during Lent was actually one of the first that I wrote... and then I got the idea to do the Orthromance blog. Now that we have a fast lasting a whole six days (19 if you're on the Old Calendar) coming up I thought it would be time to actually include it in the Orthromance blog.

It's Lent 2006, and I'm sitting in my bedroom, looking at a little paper sign. It says "The Old Cathedral would be a great place to get married, but it doesn’t #$*!ing matter." The stars and symbols are really there because I didn't want to put something that rude on the wall. Above that despairing phrase is the title, "Forbidden Thoughts 2006."

I put that thought up there because I'd been having it entirely too much. The idea is that if I recognize that this kind of thinking will get me nowhere, I will stop hurting myself with it. (I think a shrink would call this "cognitive therapy.") It's like a gardener breaking up the soil with a pick. If he finds a rock that's too big to be moved, he can keep whacking at it all day under the principle that he has the right to plant tomatoes wherever he wants, or he can leave a stake in the ground to mark the rock, and just go around it. My little paper sign is there to remind me to leave this rock in my head alone.

Why, you might ask, have I got a rock in my head? Well, I'm a bachelor, and I’m 26. I'm not too happy about it, and thinking about how you’d like to get married when you have no girlfriend is going to get you nowhere. The reason that the cathedral is in my head is that I just discovered this wonderful old church in San Francisco, the Old Cathedral of the Holy Virgin. This church was built in the 1880s by Anglicans. It's a wooden church with Gothic architecture. The priest there tells me that it was built like a sailing ship, with no nails in it.

In the 1920s, large numbers of Russian refugees of the Bolshevik Revolution came across the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco. They bought this Anglican church and turned it into their own cathedral, filling it with beautiful icons. They named it after an icon of the Mother of God entitled "Joy Of All Who Sorrow." (The short way of dealing with this is to call it "Holy Virgin Cathedral.") In the 1960s, they built another cathedral in San Francisco, an even bigger one, with five gold onion domes that can be seen from the Golden Gate Bridge. That cathedral looks like it was brought by helicopter from Kiev. It’s also named after the "Joy of All Who Sorrow" icon, so there are two cathedrals with the same name in San Francisco (I don’t get this) but one is the Old Cathedral and the other is the New Cathedral.

The New Cathedral is famous enough to get into tourist guidebooks for San Francisco. Most people who walk into the place for the first time are a little overwhelmed by its towering ceilings, walls covered with frescoes, and not a word of English on any of the icons. There's also the relics of St. John of San Francisco resting in a glass coffin in the cathedral. Yes, a dead person with his dark green hands and feet visible.

The New Cathedral is a popular place for Orthodox to get married, but if you're going to invite a large number of friends who haven't been to an Orthodox church, the grandiose, foreign design of the cathedral, and the dead body in the corner can kind of freak them out.

After having lived in San Francisco for a year, I’ve found the Old Cathedral. It's a church with a few dozen members led by a priest, who, like me, did not grow up in the Orthodox Church. The services are half-and-half in English and Old Church Slavonic (a liturgical language which hasn't been commonly spoken in 1,200 years). The cathedral looks more American and familiar, the services are long and contemplative, and the parishioners are a friendly multi-ethnic bunch of Russians, Ukrainians, Eritreans and converts. The cathedral is a large building that could hold 300-400 people easily, but we only get 40 or so people now (most of the founding families are going to the New Cathedral). The children of the cathedral take advantage of this fact because they can hide and play in the narthex of the church without disturbing the service going on up at the altar.

Up the street is Alamo Square Park, with its famous row of Victorian Houses, the second-most photographed structure in San Francisco after the Golden Gate Bridge.

So that's the explanation for the little paper sign on my wall. The Old Cathedral would be a wonderful place to get married, but it doesn’t matter. Getting married is an abstract topic since I'm not seeing anyone, and it's Lent. Yes, Lent.

Lent is a funny time for romance. Lent and romance are each appropriate in their own way, but together they’re like grapefruit and milk. You can have them together if you really want them, but it usually turns out weird.

Great Lent is the time in which the Church – meaning we humans – enter in to the spiritual condition of the Old Testament, in the words of theologian Alexander Schmemann. We are outside Paradise, outside of the gates of heaven, and no effort of our own will get us back in. But, the Old Testament tells of the coming of Christ, who can transcend that barrier. Our worship in Lent is a re-enactment of the Old Testament – thank God it's only six weeks long rather than centuries of preparation! The services of Holy Week, which follow, put us in the shoes of the Apostles, who are seeing the most amazing and frightening events of their lives, who are then delighted in the Resurrection of their Master and God.

Father Schmemann calls the mood of Great Lent "Bright Sadness." We are sad because of our sins but we are happy because we know what’s coming.

Great Lent is a time of prayer and fasting, of giving up non-essential activities such as television and going to concerts or bars, not because these activities are bad (they can be very helpful) but because you’re focusing your soul on the crucified and risen Christ. It's the spiritual equivalent of boot camp. It takes a lot of focus, and we don’t try a lot of new things. Having a new girlfriend or boyfriend during Lent is like a professional baseball player painting an oil mural during spring training. It can be done, but do you really want to?

I became Orthodox in 2001, and my first Lent was in 2002. It was also my first year of serving in the Peace Corps in Ukraine. It was a wonderful time of spiritual discovery, with each service bringing me a little closer to the Resurrection. Also, I had discovered how Ukrainian dark bread is really good even without margarine. I ate it all through Lent and lost 40 pounds. It was great. When Pascha came around, it was like graduating from high school again or something – we made it!

Lent 2003 was a little harder to take because the Iraq War started in the second week of Lent, and it seemed like every Ukrainian I knew wanted to tell me what an idiot president that we had.

Lent 2004 is when things started getting complicated. I had just gotten back to the United States, and I was suffering badly from culture shock. (The culture shock of coming home is worse than going there.) And, there was this American Orthodox girl who wanted to spend time with me. She’d studied Slavonic language in university. She was beautiful, brilliant and tall, but she’d been a pretty shy person through high school and college and as a result had learned about men through reading Jane Austen novels.

We started seeing each other a couple of weeks before Lent. I enjoyed talking to her, but I wasn’t too sure about it becoming "a thing" with her. And, I wasn’t too sure about starting a new relationship during Lent in principle. She, on the other hand, was very enthusiastic. Sitting next to her, I thought I could hear the violins playing in her head, a crescendo moving to a climax of energy that could be let loose if we had our first kiss.

I thought we could just talk during Lent and maybe get romantic after Pascha. (And, stupidly, I thought that if I didn't kiss her, we'd stay friends.) Anyway, it all fell apart a few weeks into Lent and I rarely hear from her now.

During Lent 2005, I met a tall girl at a church conference, and we got to talking about favorite books. She said she was reading Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen. After the conference, we kept writing each other, and she invited me to travel to her town 200 miles away to meet her parents. I was really excited, and I went to the library and checked out Sense and Sensibility to read on the bus. I got through half of this piece of chick lit (the main character was wondering why her suitor had left unexpectedly and was mad that he hadn’t written or called). I met the parents, who really seemed to like me, and then the girl told me her true ambition was to be a nun.

When I got back home, I walked directly from the Greyhound bus station to the library and hurled Sense and Sensibility through the return slot with finality.

Now we come to 2006. It's Lent again, and, smarting from the embarrassments of the past two years, I swore off talking to eligible women. And, I started attending Old Cathedral, a beautiful place to get married, which brings me back to my original scene of this essay – sitting in my bedroom, I’m looking at that paper sign which bans the use of that dreadfully negative thought.

Let me let the clock run forward some from Lent 2006 now, and I'm going to tell you how my resolutions turn out.

I almost succeed in my efforts not to talk to women during Lent, until I’m at another San Francisco Orthodox church. It's the evening of Holy Thursday, and I’m in line to go up and kiss the large crucifix that we put in the middle of the church in remembrance of the death of Christ. There, I meet a tall, beautiful young woman with long brown hair who has just moved to San Francisco. We become friends, and I spend most of the next several days with her. She's very stylish. She says that she likes San Francisco because you can find more unique cocktail dresses in the boutiques and you rarely have to endure the frustration of finding another girl at a party who is wearing the same dress as you.

We go to the Paschal night service together, and then at the feast afterwards, I'm so entranced with the girl that I forget to eat.

That story doesn't get much further than that, though. Pretty soon, I discover why. I met her on Holy Thursday, but on Holy Wednesday, she went to a dance club called Ruby Skye and met a young man passing through San Francisco. A few months later, she moves to Canada to be with him.

I keep going to church at the Old Cathedral, which, unlike the other church I attend sometimes in San Francisco, has no girls. (I wouldn't have any problem identifying the other church if it didn’t lead to the identity of the girl I'm talking about.) This is at once a relief and a frustration. It's a relief not to have to think of the right thing to say.

I go to an Orthodox conference for young adults. There I meet a tall, beautiful young woman from Canada. I tell her a little about my Peace Corps service, and about how I lost weight in Ukraine because the diet is better.

"Now you're slim," she said.

"Not quite," I said. "My ideal weight would be 230." (I’m six feet nine inches tall.)

"What?" she said incredulously. "That’s how much I weigh. Are you calling me fat?"

That didn’t get any further.

I keep going to the Old Cathedral. One Saturday in July, I'm attending a vigil service, which is an evening preparation service before the next day’s liturgy. During vigil, we have two services combined into one. There's Vespers, which contains an assortment of readings, mostly from the Old Testament. Then, we move into Matins, which contains the Canon, an assortment of readings about the New Testaments saints that are commemorated that day. It also contains a Gospel reading about the Resurrection. Like Lent, it's a movement from the Old to the New, from darkness to light.

This particular Saturday, we have some visitors helping out with the service. Rather than the usual one reader to do the responses to the priest's prayers, we've got a real choir director visiting from Boise with her daughter. And, the choir director's husband is a priest, serving, so we've got two priests working together at the service. I hear the lovely singing and reading emanating from the choir’s corner at the front of the church.

The vigil service takes about two and a half hours. At the end, I walk over to the choir’s corner to say hi to the visiting choir director and her daughter. They're both quite happy to see me. Later on, I ask the daughter out on a date, and rather than the usual "prove you’re worth it" routine that a girl will give you, she says yes.

And, the Old Cathedral turns out to be a great place to get married, and it does matter.

Early babies and other hazards of passion

2008-03-11T19:39:00.000-07:00

Passion is a good thing, but maybe you don’t want a little friend coming along six months after the wedding.

So maybe you've navigated through all of the misadventures this blog has mentioned about the journey of the single Orthodox, and you've found someone wonderful. You and your steady sweetie are getting along very well. You have this shared faith, you love spending time together, and you’re very hopeful about this life you can share with one another. You’d think that the fact you met in church and that you belong to a strict religion ought to mean that you can behave well, but, if you’re like a lot of couples, you’re finding it even more difficult to keep your right to wear white. (Well, guys, a white shirt under your tux jacket.)

Why is this? I don’t really know, except to talk about enthusiasm. You know what kind of life you want to share with your future husband or wife, and when you see the possibility of its being fulfilled, you get really, really enthusiastic.

When I met Miri, she had this dog, Jisa (who is now our dog). When Miri came home at the end of her work day, Jisa was so happy to see her that she would start levitating. I’m not making this up. This dog can jump about five feet in the air.

If that’s how you feel about your steady sweetie, that’s a very good thing. Now go take a cold shower so you don’t have to shop for a maternity-size wedding gown.

I suppose at this point in my wandering advice, someone might point out that there is such a thing as birth control. Indeed, there is, and here are several methods that Orthodox unmarried people can use:

Say evening prayers at the beginning of your “quality time” after dinner.
Read "On Chastity" from The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John Climacus. (Avoid the life of St. Mary of Egypt)
Donate money you would have spent on slinky lingerie to Mary & Martha House.
Read about the Sympto-Thermal Method of family planning. (Really, guys, the fluids you have to learn about are pretty gross.)
Take walk with aforementioned energetic dog. Stay out until dog is tired.
Sing your sweetie’s favorite Orthodox hymn, off key (this one still works even now that I’m married)
Read some Psalms together, but avoid the Song of Solomon at all costs.

And then, there’s the one that really does work…

Go to Confession.

All kidding aside, you really do need to take this one seriously. A pair of good secular parents would probably want their children to wait until marriage to have sex just because they don’t want their grandchildren born into a potentially unstable home. Or, they might counsel you against it because sex will confuse the getting-to-know-you process of a quality engagement. (Am I really in love, or is the sex just that good?) Both of these are good reasons to wait, but for us Orthodox, there’s more to it than just the obvious practical benefits.

One of our highest duties as human beings is to pass down a better human nature to our children than the one we got. In Genesis, it says that Adam bore the image and likeness of God, but Seth bore the image and likeness of Adam, meaning that Seth still contained the image and likeness of God, but it was distorted by Adam’s sin. In Exodus, God tells Moses:

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6-7)

Fr. Thomas Hopko talks a lot about this in his taped lectures God & Gender, especially as it relates to sex. He makes it clear that God is not saying “I am going to squash you because your great-grandfather sinned,” rather, this means that if you commit a serious sin, for example, fooling around sexually, your children and grandchildren are going to suffer from very strong temptations to do the same kind of fooling around. If you wound your human nature with sin, you’re going to pass on a wounded human nature to your descendants. If your descendants fight against the sin, it is possible to clean this sin up, but it will take four generations to do it. In short, you don't want original sin to be the cause of your original kin.

This is why the Old Testament is so long. Every time Israel fell away, God would bring His people back to be purified, but it would take generations for the sins of the fathers to be cleaned up. Eventually, this process of repentance successfully culminated in the birth of the Virgin Mary, which made the New Testament possible.

What this means to you, now, young person whose ears get hot when you’re with your sweetie: Keep your human nature safe so that your children won’t have to pay for your fooling around. If you don’t, here’s my guess of what will happen:

You will have several very gorgeous daughters, all with excellent social skills and fashion sense. Boys will flock around them, and their ability to say “no” isn’t going to be very strong. Parenthood for you is going to be following your daughters around with a loaded shotgun, and even so, you’ll end up raising your children and grandchildren simultaneously.

I am predicting that this will happen even if you use condoms now and don’t conceive until after you’re married. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

One other benefit of waiting: Having been married for ten months, I can say that the whole process of having someone new living in your house and giving up control about “how things are done” is difficult. And, my stepdog, Jisa, licks me on the face when I won’t get up to play in the morning, and during the day, she has a habit of coming up to me several hundred times a day with a slobber-covered toy and asking me to throw it for her. It’s really tempting to yell at my wife’s beloved dog, but it’s a lot easier to get over the small annoyances such as these when you’re crazy-in-love with your wife. I know that this passion is not going to last forever. But, my hope is that by the time the initial fervor of being married wears off, we’ll have a “working system” of being in the house together, and marriage will still be fun, occasionally passionate. I really think that couples who start having sex before they’re married cheat themselves out of this “honeymoon year” in which they figure out the little things such as which way the toilet roll goes on the spool.

And, besides, guys, wouldn't you like to have a few months of your life when bringing home a box of chocolates gets you whatever you want? Treasure it while you've got it.

Volunteering for Love: Romantification by Good Works

2008-03-10T21:27:00.000-07:00

Volunteering is one of those great tasks that fulfills your human role on so many levels: It's American, it's spiritual, and it feels good. You can support and improve your community, and you can meet people, too.

There's nothing wrong with volunteering with an ulterior motive. Alexis de Tocqueville, writing about American democracy, said that the thing that makes it work is "enlightened self-interest," meaning that you serve your country and yourself at the same time. Many people make friends with the other volunteers while they're working on a project, and many non-profits specifically design volunteering events that provide a good amount of socializing.

A single person might be inclined to go work for a homeless shelter or a hospital or a political cause in hopes of serving others and maybe meeting a special someone who will think that civic virtue is really sexy. I call this venture "Romantification by Good Works." Okay, cheesy pun, but nobody's paying me to do this so I get to release groaners whenever I want.

I highly recommend volunteering, but, like everything else a single Christian might do for love, it is possible to overdo it. I did, spending two years in the Peace Corps and then getting an assortment of jobs for non-profits.

By overdoing it, I ran in to a fundamental rule of meeting people: The more you do things your way, the more you'll run in to people as screwed up as you. As time goes on, the more your interests narrow, the more your opportunities narrow, too.

Allow me to give an example: In college, I was a single guy and a history / journalism major who liked talking about international affairs. I couldn't find many people like me. I joined the Peace Corps and found myself in a group with 50 overeducated do-gooders who could talk your ear off about Uzbek politics and the evils of agricultural subsidies. And then I got out of the Peace Corps and couldn't find a job and I enrolled in graduate school, only to find 40 returned Peace Corps volunteers in the same program. At parties we competed to see who could brag about the most interesting disease contracted while in Uncle Sam's Service.

After getting out of graduate school I got a job working for a non-profit. There was an intern there, a 21-year-old woman who had traveled to Russia, who was very erudite and well-read. She could talk about literature and history very well, and had rather poor social skills. The whole office thought we were a perfect match. The girl and I talked a lot, and I never could tell whether she actually liked me. She alternated between trying to control me and telling me to buzz off. It was like the bickering of being married 20 years without any of the intervening warmth. She got annoyed when she saw me talking with other women and was impossible to work with for several days if I did. There was no actual affection in this relationship unless you count one brief outburst of stated interest (I'm not going to say who did it) that was followed by three months of stony, awkward silence which ended only when her internship ended and she left the state.

Those three months gave me plenty of time to reflect on how I had gotten into this world of dysfunction with her. A couple of things had caused it: One was my inability to get out and meet normal people and have an actual social life. I was too intent on staying within the community of workers and volunteers of the agency, so they (and the girl) assumed I was desperate, and I allowed myself to be put in the soap opera. The other was my idealism -- yes, too much community service -- which kind of messed with my head. I was one of those kids who bought the "Believe in yourself and help others and you can do anything" stuff they teach in the public schools, so I was intent on being a saint and working for agencies that help the poor.

When I was in middle school, our teachers organized this big theme called "Heal the world" based on the Michael Jackson song that goes "Heal the world / make it a better place / for you and for me and the entire human race." A couple of days before the huge school-wide sing-a-long, a boy our age sued Jackson for doing some very unidealistic things. We pretended not to notice.

Whenever the teachers would try to inspire us with some kind of world-changing theme, they'd have essay contests, and I'd go all out for them and write stuff that would put my classmates to sleep but please my teachers with all the four-syllable words I was using. So I kind of got it in my head to go out for service projects and stuff.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to serve poor people, but one of the reasons I was so intent on serving was that I thought all this do-gooding would help me forget about my difficulties making friends... and I found someone just like me, and we pecked at each other like chickens.

Please forgive me if I'm being too negative about volunteering. You would probably enjoy community service if you, unlike me, kept it down to a few hours a week. After the previously mentioned nagging anti-romance, I worked for Raphael House of San Francisco, an excellent Orthodox charity, and I did meet a lot of really nice people there. One member of our volunteer board of directors met a staff member at Raphael House, and they got married and now have a nine-month-old baby.

I also remember an extroverted, talkative young lady who made it clear to everyone that her intent was to get married soon and have at least 10 children. Beautiful and large-chested, she was meticulous in her make-up every morning, and this strategy did not take long to work. She was engaged in a few months and then disappeared and has not been heard from since. At evangelical universities, it's often joked that women go there for their MRS degree, and that the universities secretly advertise guarantees of, "Ring by spring or your tuition back" to get them to enroll. Raphael House wasn't a university, but this young lady came in with that intent, and it worked.

Some recommendations for romantic altruism

Find an activity that you actually enjoy. If you're a hermit-crab introvert, don't sign up to be the chairperson of the fund-raising gala. If you're easily frightened, neighborhood watch in the ghetto might not be for you. If you're good with customer service, just about every agency has a front desk that needs to be operated, and you'll meet lots of people that way. If you're hoping to meet guys (straight guys, I mean) don't volunteer for a benefit fashion show.
Find something that appeals to other people your own age. Volunteer poll workers are very important to making our democracy work... but for dating it's not such a great idea unless you're scouting guys for your widowed grandmother.
Listen to the people you're serving. They know you better than you think. For example, when my mother was single and was teaching, she had a guy named Rob out to help put together a science experiment demonstration. A few months later, she brought a guy named Charles to be her assistant to help with hydrogen balloons. He was more cheerful and engaged than Rob had been. The next day, Mom's seventh-grade girls said, "Miss Fussell, that guy you brought yesterday was so dreamy..." She married Charles (my Dad).
Try not to get too attached to the folks you're serving. When I told the kids at Raphael House that I was engaged to be married, one first-grade girl said, "Ew. We don't need to know about that."
Don't assume that the other volunteers share your religious beliefs. Some people think that volunteering is a good substitute for religion since volunteers don't get all schismatic and judgmental of each other like religious people do. (This is, tragically, a somewhat accurate criticism.)
If an Orthodox group organizes a volunteer effort, GO! You may not get another chance. A big challenge for the Orthodox volunteer is that the Orthodox Church isn't that good at community service. This is a problem that goes back to the very founding of America -- when the assorted Protestant groups got to the United States, they realized (or perhaps hoped) that the state would not provide social services to their members, and so the Protestant churches became major centers of community service. The very concept of American civil society and charity work is a Protestant invention, and the Orthodox Church, having only been here for 100 years, hasn't quite made the transition from being the King's Church in the Old Country to being a minority church here.

An idea: "The Volunteer Date"

This is when you and your sweetie (or someone who's just interesting) make it a personal event to volunteer for something together. Writer Bob Strauss offers some reasons why you might be inclined to do this:

If you're weary of spending your evenings making small talk or smiling as you think "I wonder if that spot on his face is a pimple or a mole," you may want to consider another option—the volunteer date, by which I mean doling out food at a soup kitchen or renovating a house in a run-down neighborhood rather than catching Son of the Waterboy at the local multiplex. Full article available here

It is a more relaxing setting, and the task at hand will make you seem more like a normal person. If you were one of the dozens of people who saw the romantic comedy movie Sidney White, (it has one funny joke and it's two words long) Sidney and her prince charming had their first date working at a soup kitchen in a church and staying after to talk.

I did something similar to this, too, for a first date. I invited Miri to visit Raphael House for dinner (I was living there at the time). We ate dinner with a mother and daughter who were there while they were trying to get housing, and then I gave her a tour of the shelter and then we went to the Asian Art Museum where there was this Pakistani band playing music. Then we went to Union Square where we sat and talked and looked at the Macy's sign and talked and talked and... uh, my in-laws read this blog. I guess a gentleman has to stop there.

But, one of the advantages of that kind of first date is that it didn't have to become a date, necessarily. That's one of the things Miri told her friends before she went: "I can't quite tell if this is going to be a date or not." I wasn't sure whether it was a date either until we were sitting, listening to the Pakistani band, and I had been looking at her hand for about 45 minutes, giving myself a heart attack trying to build up the nerve to take it and finally (cue major-key violin crescendo loud enough to drown out the Pakistani band) I reached over and took her hand and she let me know she liked having her hand held.

Suppose You Propose

2008-03-09T21:00:00.000-07:00

The moment of proposing marriage and presenting the ring is one of the few times left when a man can be theatrical and poetic about love without massive amounts of feminine eye-rolling ensuing. It's also a moment when mild amounts of sneakiness are encouraged, and now that I'm coming up on my first anniversary, I'm a little sad that I can't do it again. We live in a tragically practical society that doesn't value symbolism acted out.

With my wife, I can tell her that she's really pretty and special and give her chocolate, and she likes that, but more involved attempts at romance, such as telling her hair flows like my favorite violin concerto makes her gag and then she says "silly boy." Such lovely similes, squashed!

But, when I proposed marriage, I got away with a little bit of theater, and I think she liked it. (We are married after all.)

So, men, what can you do to have a little fun with this special moment? And, how can you do it in a manner that reflects your faith and our tradition? I can offer some advice here as one guy who did it...

First, make sure that the answer is probably going to be yes before you go ring shopping. This Youtube video is a pretty good example of the consequences of hoping that a shaky relationship will suddenly be made solid when you wow her by whipping out a ring:

It's going to hurt, walking away with a fuzzy basketball team mascot as your only friend to comfort you.

For starters, talk to the girl about it! Choosing one moment to break forth with your declaration that you've been carrying a torch for your best friend ever since you met in Sunday school at the age of 7 and she tackled you on the playground and now you want to spent the rest of your life together is likely to freak her out.

Surprise is a good thing, but don't shock her. Use surprise in moderation. Surprise at proposing should be like taking her for a walk in the woods and you come around a corner and there's a hidden gorgeous waterfall. Catapulting a ring at her, totally unexpected, is the equivalent of throwing her in the waterfall.

After you get a good sense of her interest in marriage, find out if there are any important family traditions to be respected. I've heard that in Serbian families, the man should propose at the end of a big formal dinner with the bride's family... which the hopeful young man has to convince the bride's family to put on. And, trying to convince your sweetie's mother to spend hours laboring in the kitchen is not something that sneakiness is going to help. In such a formal setting, talking to the parents about the proposal would probably help.

In my case, I tried to ask for Miri's father's blessing the first time she took me home to Boise, but Miri wouldn't let me, as she thought it was too soon. Two weeks later, her father came to visit her San Francisco, and the first thing he said to me was, "What's this I hear about my daughter telling you that you can't ask for a blessing? Who wears the pants in this relationship?" The result of this conversation was that I'd need a blessing to do anything other than marry Miri.

If there aren't any major barriers to picking your moment, then you can embark upon some romantic subterfuge, a term I just invented for sneakily getting the perfect moment prepared.

In the early months of my relationship with Miri, I had told her a good 30 or 40 times that I'd like to marry her, and she said, "When you ask me for real, you have to surprise me." I needed something more surprising than a ring.

Here, the principle of positive distraction is helpful. Positive distraction means she's engaged in doing something she really likes and she's not paying attention to her boyfriend reaching for the square object in his pocket.

Here's another video that illustrates the basic concept:

Getting a trained dolphin to carry the ring is probably a bit more work than you're interested in doing, but I hope it makes the basic point clear. This girl isn't expecting a ring, she's playing with dolphins, which is a really out-of-the-ordinary experience that takes our minds off of the future. This ceremony gets started suddenly at a moment that's already pretty interesting.

The way we celebrate significant events, such as engagements, tells the story, in ceremony form, of who we are. We as Orthodox Christians should be able to understand this better than anyone, as every word of the Divine Liturgy connects our humanity to Christ's humanity and deifies our humanity through prayer and sacrament. A proposal doesn't need to be that cosmic, but it should tell a story. The girl in the dolphin proposal video is probably a dolphin lover. I'm guessing the guy in the basketball proposal really liked the Houston Rockets. If your sweetie is a choir singer, you could get the choir director to make the choir practice "Behold the bridegroom comes at midnight" during which you can sneak in and drop to one knee.

Connecting this moment with your faith

It's natural that we want an event such as an engagement to not only express our love for the girl, but also our love for God. Christians would naturally look to the Bible for a good example of courtship. We're supposed to bear witness to Christ in our lives, and since He was one of us, we join our life to His, our suffering to His, our death to His, our resurrection to His, our suffering to His, and our courtship to... uh... here's where it gets a little difficult. Jesus didn't really get romantic, and imagining that he did borders on Gnosticism.

The Bible doesn't really have courtship stories of men and women getting acquainted and "clicking" the way we do. There's the story of Jacob laboring for seven years to marry Rachel, but the years seems as but a few days because of his love for her, which is pretty romantic, but then accidentally marrying the girl who you thought was your future sister-in-law isn't so romantic.

The Old Testament prophecies are full of the imagery of marriage as God describes Israel as His bride, whom he pursues and entices as a bridegroom pursuing her. But, this metaphor, when it appears, is usually accompanied by accusations of adultery (idolatry) and God explaining his chastisement for that (barbarian invasions, hot rocks falling from the skies, etc.) which isn't so romantic.

This isn't to say that the Bible can't provide guidance here, but there isn't a good parable that fits this occasion, really. Romance as we know it, didn't figure in much to the cultures in which the Bible was written.

But, we still want this to be a Christian moment. There are plenty of good ways to do that. Here's my story. The setup for my romantic subterfuge took a couple of months.

It started in Kiev, Ukraine, when I went to a shop selling churches books and supplies at the Caves Monastery. On a shelf behind the counter, I saw two silver wedding crowns. I thought, "I'd really like to have those for Miri." Now, I have to stop to explain that I'd been seeing Miri for about a week and a half at that point. Taking off on a trip to Ukraine, where they pride themselves on having the world's prettiest girls, right after starting a relationship, might not have been the best idea (I was good, I promise), but I reserved the tickets at the beginning of September, and Miri and I had our first date on the 21st of September. So, I abandoned my lady just after meeting her, which made me really, really miss her. I thought, "These crowns would be a perfect wedding gift." So I bought them.

A brief note about wedding crowns for those who aren't Orthodox: When we get married, we have crowns on our heads as way of saying that marriage is a symbol of the Kingdom of Heaven and also to refer to the martyrdom of marriage. (Martyrs wear crowns.) Don't laugh, this is a reference to how St. Paul commands husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the Church, meaning, be willing to give up your life for her. In the Greek Orthodox Church, the crowns are made of branches and flowers, in the Russian Orthodox Church, they are metal and are held above the head of the bride and groom (an odd and uncomfortable tradition, especially for the best man and groomsmen when the groom is 6 feet 9 inches tall). This picture will give an idea:

In the month after I got back to San Francisco, I told Miri about 40 times that I thought we ought to get married. Once, when we were sitting in my apartment, she said, "When you ask me for real, you have to surprise me."

To which I responded, "Oh, you want a surprise? Close your eyes."

"What are you going to do?" she asked suspiciously.

"Just close your eyes." She did, and I pulled out one of the crowns and stuck it on her head. Then I said, "I want you to open your eyes for just a second." And then I took a picture of her.

"Now close your eyes again." And I took the crown and hid it.

"What did you put on my head?" she demanded.

"No, no, you wanted a surprise," I said, and gave her some chocolate.

So that was that step of the plan. A month later, after both parental meetings had gone well, I called up her mother and I said:

"I'd like to e-mail you a photo, but you have to promise to pretend you haven't seen it."

"Okay..." And I sent it. She opened the e-mail and said, "What did you do to her?"

"I bought it for her, only she's never seen it. She doesn't know what was on her head."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"I'm going to make an 8 x 10 print of the photo, and put it in a frame. Then, I want to mail it to you, and then, I want you to mail to her for her birthday present. When she opens it, I'll whip out the crown and stick it on her head and get down on one knee."

My future mother-in-law said she could do that, and she did. I should take a moment here to give a little thought to conspirators in your subterfuge. To create a good positive distraction, you're probably going to need help to make it look real. Her family members and friends make great candidates for conspirators, especially as they'll be able to advise you on sneakiness that will actually work. You'll also need to pick conspirators who can keep a secret. Momtushka did a good job of keeping it from Miri, but, considering that she is a priest's wife, the ROCOR matushka network found out about the engagement a week before Miri did.

Miri's birthday came around a few weeks later. The package arrived at Miri's duplex with a note on it saying "Open this with Thomas." We went out to dinner with two of my friends, and then we went to her house... I'll let a quotation from Miri's letter to her friends explain what happened next:

When we got home, Thomas asked me what I wanted to do, so of course I wanted to open my birthday presents! :) I was required to open his first - a nice warm pair of long underwear - which is actually something I wanted so...cool. My next present was from Mom and Dad and I was told it was actually for both of us and we had to open it together. It was a picture. Of me. In a wedding crown. WHAT THE??? Where did this picture come from??? I was sitting there trying to figure it out, when Thomas reached behind me and put something on my head. Lo, and behold it was the very same wedding crown. And not only that, he had a lovely ring in his hand and asked me to marry him! To put all your minds at ease, I will tell you now that I said yes. :)

So it worked pretty well, the birthday presents providing the positive distraction, the weird picture of herself shocking her, and the magically appearing crown letting her know what this was all about. Miri had actually forgotten about the picture I had taken of her with the odd object on her head, so she was thinking that her parents had created the picture in Photoshop or something.

I'm not claiming exclusive rights to this idea, guys, so you can give it a try, but good luck finding crowns in the United States that won't put you in the poorhouse. And no, you can't borrow mine.

Other (untested) ideas for coming up with a good positive distraction:

Give her a plate of prosphora to cut up into antidiron, and put the ring box in the center with a sign on it that says, "Will you marry me?" Be there to drop to one knee (and grab the ring).
Ask her priest to call her and ask her to come to church to help with something, and then you can be there with the ring when she comes.
Tell her that you've been put in charge of flowers at church and that you need her to help you redo the floral arrangements just before a big feast day. Hide the ring in the bouquet you give her to rearrange.

These are just ideas. This list from The Knot wedding Web site will give you another 50 ideas. Some are pretty cheesy, and some require you to be living together first to make it work, so they wouldn't be appropriate, but there are a few that have merit. Pay particular attention to the difference in attitude between the public and private proposal. If your lady is a shy one, the public proposals probably wouldn't be such a good idea.

Finally, I'd like to close with one more Youtube video of a girl hyperventilating when her boyfriend proposes to her during her favorite TV show:

This proposal happened in 2007, about the same time I proposed to Miri. Rand's original intent was to get the ad to air during the Super Bowl, and he had a sponsor lined up to pay for it, but the sponsor backed out at the last minute. So, he paid for a spot on Tacoma's channel 11 during Veronica Mars, his girlfriend's favorite show, as reported in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. (It must be true; I used to work there.)

Apparently, the proposal worked, as Rand's blog indicates that they're getting married in two weeks, on Sept. 14, 2008, in Ashland, Ore.

To me, it seems that Rand went a little overboard, but the charming sneakiness of his proposal, plus the total freakout she went through really made me happy.

Christian Dumping

2008-03-08T17:18:00.000-08:00

The Bible does not contain any version of the "Let's just be friends" speech. There really isn't a section in there for how to have an amicable breakup. In the Bible, both Old Testament and New, two things that ought to be together, stay together. So, as this blog is winding down, I wanted to give some advice as to how to give someone the boot in the most Christian manner, and uh… I'm not sure that there is one.

Breaking off a relationship can seem like a cruel act, and can seem like an unchristian one at that, when one remembers St. Paul's description of love as being patient, enduring all things.

Christians are supposed to be faithful in all things, bearing all tasks given to them. But, there's a line between bearing your cross that's been given to you and building your own cross to squash you. Continuing to date or marrying the wrong person falls into the latter category.

Once you're married, you've got a whole new set of commitments, and the nature of your struggle changes. You can't leave your marriage because you fall out of love or you get bored with your partner. Jesus made his view about divorce pretty clear in Matthew 19: "What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder" (Verse 7). And, from here, keeping a marriage together isn't just obeying God's commandments, but accepting the help that God gives to those who are held together in the covenant of marriage. That help comes in the form of the sacraments.

Before marriage, though, you have a very important choice to make, and you can back out of it at any time. A few days before our wedding, our priest said to us that we could back out of it right then if we wanted. (We didn't.)

Marriage imagery in the Bible

The Bible is full of imagery of marriage and coming together, but it doesn't contain any stories of broken engagements because bride and groom weren't getting along so well. Still, the sections including the marriage imagery can be instructive to us. There are cheery marriage sections, and the not-so-cheery. First, the cheery, in the Song of Solomon:

"You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace. How sweet is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your oils than any spice! Your lips distil nectar, my bride; honey and milk are under your tongue; the scent of your garments is like the scent of Lebanon." (Song 4:9-11)

This is a lovely poetic description of a man's love for his wife, and can be loosely understood as a metaphor for how God loves Israel. And then, there's tough love in the prophecy of Ezekiel:

"Yet you were not like a harlot, because you scorned hire. Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband! Men give gifts to all harlots; but you gave gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from every side for your harlotries. So you were different from other women in your harlotries: none solicited you to play the harlot; and you gave hire; while no hire was given to you; therefore you were different" (Ez 16:31-34).

The Lord's indictment of His bride's (Israel's) adultery gets worse from there.

Anyone who's been married a long time will tell you that marriage has its challenges, and that it's not all Song of Solomon, and you've got to be ready to endure disappointments. Even so, if you see your relationship heading in an Ezekielish kind of direction, it'd probably be a good idea to break it off before you get stuck in this very bad marriage being described here. It's true that the Old Testament prophecies are explanations of God's enduring love through all offenses committed against Him, but He's got a lot more time to endure it, being eternal, than we do.

If your boyfriend or girlfriend is doing things requiring a divine patience that you haven't got, it's probably a sign you should accept your human limitations and break it off. Otherwise, if you marry this impossible pain in the neck, you're going to be wishing your husband or wife would meet some Old Testament end – barbarian invasion, sores and boils, swarms of frogs, hot rocks from the skies, etc.

The cost of a broken engagement is far less than a bad marriage.

What economics class can teach you about dating

A lot people can't imagine breaking up because of all the time they've spent with their partner. With that understandable feeling in mind, let's consider the following three economics problems:

1. You've got football tickets, and you spent $300 on them. Your seats are at the 50-yard line, which was the maximum you could have spent while still being able to pay the rent. You're really enthusiastic about going. The day before the game, the weather forecast predicts freezing rain, which you know will make you miserable, and probably sick. There isn't enough time to sell your tickets, and you can't afford more tickets later on in the season. Should you go?

2. A movie company has spent $100 million on a making a movie, and now that the editing process is complete, both the director and the actors agree that it's a dud. The company knows that if it's released, it'll be reviewed poorly, and the company's financial analyst estimates is that it would make only $10 million just from the people who are diehard fans of the actors. Advertising the film would cost $8 million. Should the company do it?

3. A young man has been dating a young woman from another state for two years. Now they're engaged, and she quit her job and moved across the country to be near him. They've set a date and told their friends about it, and made a non-refundable deposit on a reception hall. As the date moves closer, the young man is feeling angry and depressed and is less sure about it. Every time he thinks about telling his fiancée what he's thinking, he feels really guilty about all the sacrifices she's made. Obviously, she loves him. What should this young man do?

All three of these quandaries have something in common – a lot of irrelevant information. The only thing that should matter in these decision is the potential for future benefit.

With the football tickets, you should not go to the game. Throw out your tickets and watch it on TV from your warm apartment. You'll never get your money back, so the only question is whether you'll enjoy yourself, and you know freezing rain will make you miserable.

With the movie company, they should run the film. The $100 million spent will never be recovered, so the question becomes whether their future profit (receipts) will be greater than their future expense (advertising). Yes, they'll make $2 million.

For the young man with the girl having moved across the country, he should postpone the wedding until he's more sure of himself, or cancel it outright. True, this young lady is likely to get very angry with him for making her waste all kinds of time, but there's no way to get any of that back. The only important question is why he's so angry and depressed. He has to look forward – will the marriage be successful?

Your business teacher would call this "ignoring sunk costs." You absolutely must. If you've been seeing a so-so guy for five years, don't say that it's just natural to take it to the next step when you've been together that long. If it's not working, dump him!

Or, if you're seeing a guy from church who got thrown out of Sunday school at the age of 8 for streaking (and your mother was the Sunday school director who gave him the boot) don't hold that against him now that he's 22. The enmity between your mother and his parents is a sunk cost, too.

An extreme example of this concept comes from a co-worker of mine who randomly blurted out one day that marriages ought to be more expensive than divorces. I gave her a confused stare, and she explained: It costs $100 to get a marriage certificate in our county, but $500 for the fees involved with a divorce. She'd gotten married because her family was pressuring her to do it because she was pregnant. This marriage lasted less than a year because this woman was not interested in raising two children – the baby and the baby's father – at once. She says she's happier as a single mother, and wishes she hadn't listened to her family.

Don't expect your friends to understand

A good portion of your friends are going to consider what you're doing to be treason – dumping someone they think is nice, and they're going to expect you to give a good reason. I suppose at this point, it would be convenient to say "He's an al-Qaeda terrorist," but really you don't need a good reason. "We're not getting along that well," is a good enough reason.

Back when I was a bachelor, I had this married friend of mine who kept telling me about how marriage was about compromise and sacrifice. When I'd tell him that I wasn't getting along with a girl, he'd lecture me about how I needed to get over whatever my problem was because marriage is hard work. His advice was good for a married person, but not so good for a single person. His struggle was to preserve the bond that God had made, mine was whether to ask for it.

He would argue with his wife and then later apologize, I would argue with girls and then quit calling them. I was allowed to do that, and he wasn't – but he couldn't see that. I broke up with two very nice girls because I was bored, and this friend of mine who knew their resumes (regular church-goers, hard workers, intelligent, etc.) thought this was scandalous and we had to stop talking for a while.

One girl I was dating was disturbed by the fact I stayed single for a year after we broke up – she took it as an additional insult that I preferred being alone to being with her.

Another couple I knew in college broke up after two years together because the guy went all philosophical, becoming a vegan and rejecting all organized authority to the point of chewing out his friends when they called the cops to report a man in the street who was waving a knife around. "Don't call the Establishment," my friend shouted, "the People need to resolve this!" The girl was tolerant of his philosophical searching, but the relationship eventually fell apart when she quit listening to him go on about the evils of petroleum. In our dorm, the other girls thought this was horrible – a good relationship ruined by too much philosophy! I said it was the natural thing to do – she was sick of hearing him talk (and I was, too) and the guy was actively resisting adulthood. Their hearts just weren't in it anymore, which was reason enough to stop.

So you don't need an excuse. Don't fly away to enroll in graduate school to justify breaking up. Don't run away to a monastery. This would be worse – using the "I'm called to be a monastic" excuse is just being flighty with God.

The speech

There is no nice way to deliver this speech. You cannot sugar-coat a knife. Whatever you say to your sweetie in rejecting him or her is going to cut through mercilessly. I remember getting turned down for a date, and the girl said she'd been flattered by my offer. The very fact that she would use the word "flattered" hurt me because it's a word that exists in English only for telling boys to buzz off.

It wasn't that cruel of a thing to say, but it sure felt that way.

There are some truly cruel things you could say, such as:

"I'd rather be a virgin martyr than marry you."
"Our relationship has me so depressed I'm inhaling incense."
"Go to the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth!"
"You're a lot prettier with your headscarf on."
"You'd be cute in a klobuk."

Most people are not trying to be cruel at the moment of a breakup, and the classic line is to say, "Let's just be friends," or, "I think we'd be better together as good friends," which shows that you're not trying to be mean, but you're trying to get rid of them, which isn't really that friendly.

Here's a more direct way that I think is better: "We're not getting along that well, and I don't want to go further. We can't be together any more, and it'll be a while before I call you again." If you're reading this article, thinking of what to say at The Moment of Cataclysmic Heartbreak, that last part probably sounded a little cruel. But, it's the truth. The "just friends" talk implies friendship (meaning interaction), and neither of you is going to figure out how to deal with the loss of the other if you're talking all the time.

There is one meaningful act you can offer your estranged sweetie: intercession. Say, "I'll pray for you," and mean it. The Communion we have in Christ is not weakened by a lack of romantic affection.

The recovery

The time after a break-up is a fragile one, but a opportunity for great learning. When you're in a bad relationship, you're discovering what you don't want in a partner. But, when you're in a bad relationship, you're probably trying to fix the problems. After the break-up, you have the ability to look back and see things you tried to ignore – things your family and friends may have warned you about.

Here, you have learned what marriage is not, or what I like to call the apophatic method of dating.

The apophatic method of theology is when you describe God by what God is not – God is not like us, God is not prone to our mood swings, etc. (The opposite is cataphatic, and that's when you describe God by what He is.)

The apophatic method of dating teaches you whether you can tolerate being married to someone who doesn't want to be religious. A previous boyfriend of my wife was dissatisfied with the religion he grew up with, and she thought he'd find what he was looking for in Orthodoxy. But the boy persistently refused to come to church, and she learned what an acceptable husband is not – she needed someone who would come to church.

When I was in Ukraine, I thought the women were beautiful and mysterious, and I even found one who went to church regularly. We saw each other for a little while, but she spoke no English. I'd been speaking Russian for eight months at that point, and my language abilities were pretty basic. She was very kind, but I realized what I couldn't deal with – I needed to be able to communicate fluently with my wife. I left Ukraine single, which some folks in my town viewed as a national insult.

My failed relationships hurt a lot when they fell apart, and they still hurt a lot when I look back. Last I heard, the Ukrainian girl I mentioned earlier was working in a sausage factory with bad wages.

But, I'm glad I went through those heartbreaks, and that my wife endured them, too. I really know what a gift I have now.

Winding down

This post, I think, is the end of the Orthromance blog unless someone can give me an idea for what to write next. Miri and I celebrated our first anniversary this month, and the marital bliss has overshadowed the memory of the pain of being single, and, alas, I am running out of ideas. I think now I'll try turning the preceding posts into a book because, as it turns out, there isn't much Christian humor out there on the topic of romance.

I am going to be updating my personal blog more often, and those posts will be general updates about what my wife and I and our dog have been up to recently.

I might post something about romance on this blog every now and again, but I would still love to hear from you and to read your comments!

E-mail flirting: A great way to talk to yourself

2008-03-07T12:37:00.000-08:00

If you're like most Orthodox singles who would rather have someone special, you've probably got a few penpals of the opposite sex whom you keep up with on e-mail. There aren't that many Orthodox young people near you. You meet these great people at youth conferences, but they're far away, so you write letters. Keeping in touch with friends is great, but this kind of e-mailing offers an opportunity for your desperation to come out in text form: e-flirting.

E-flirting is especially dangerous for you to engage in because as you do it, you're not getting signals back from your intended love's face as to whether this is working (nods, smiles and winks) boring (dull, flat reaction) or annoying (eye-rolling).

A lot of people whom you'd be flirting with would see no problem letting you keep writing in an amorous manner because there's really no negative consequences to it for them. There are no friends or roommates who ask, "Why are you spending so much time with this guy (or girl)?" If you were sitting on a park bench with someone lovely and getting flirty, you could slowly scoot down the bench while making good eye contact, talking about cheerful things and winking. You're invading the personal space of your intended love. If this is unwelcome, you'll get a pretty immediate reaction from most people. You'll either get whacked in the face, or left behind on the bench.

Trying to charm someone with adjectives over e-mail won't have the same reaction. From my experience, most girls find this amusing, sort of like watching a dog chase its tail – kind of funny, but there's no reason to join in.

Thus, e-flirting becomes a sub-reality in which your unrequited love seems to be getting returned (he or she writes you back). The encouragement that you get develops into an entire fantasy world that you start telling your friends about (big mistake) and the anticipation inside of you develops into a massive crescendo of passion that will come to a peak when you next get to see your friend and he or she wants to turn all those adjectives into action.

This never happens. Really, your friend is tolerant of your overly enthusiastic silliness and hopes that you're not serious about it because he or she is going to have to give you the "just friends" speech.

My own experience

Some years back, I was visiting a women's monastery (this should've been a big clue) when I met a tall, slender young woman who went to college across the state from me. I'll call her Katharine. "Katharine" gave me good eye contact when she talked to me and she appeared to actually be listening to me when I talked. One of the nuns there gave us a lesson on the importance of trusting in God, and Katharine asked a question about whether you can trust yourself to say the right prayers. Mother Magdalena gave a good answer, and then I decided to show off by saying, "The Bible has prayers for those who don't know how to pray, for example, 'O Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!' (Mark 9:24)" While I said that, I was thinking, "Help me believe this girl is as interested in me as I am in her!"

Later on, Katharine said she thought my answer was really good. My ears got hot and I asked her for her e-mail address. We started writing back and forth each day, and my hope grew and grew that she would be "the one!"

I wrote unusually long and involved e-mails to her, trying to sound like a sensitive, sophisticated kind of guy that a girl could talk to about anything. And, I wanted to sound smart but not nerdy, interested but not needy, and I was always trying to leave room for her to write something affectionate back to me.

I am putting excerpts from the e-mails that I sent to her into this chapter. The plain text is what I wrote to her; the colored text is what I was thinking as I wrote them. You could say the plain text was written in "impress-a-girl," and the colored text is "actual-boy-thought." These e-mails don't actually include anything that she wrote me because Katharine is a real person (who may actually read this blog) and I'm not trying to poke fun at her.

I'll explain how this actually turned out below.

--------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 09:25:30 -0800 (PST)
From: Eric Ruthford
To: Katharine Anderson
Subject: RE: Hi monastery friend!

Hi Katharine,

Great to hear from you!

I was baptized into the Orthodox Church at the age of 22. I didn't belong to any church before that. My family is pretty secular. Eventually what converted me was an Orthodox friend who was attending PLU. Recently he was ordained to the diaconate.

See, I have a story not unlike yours.

My home is Maple Valley, Wash., in the suburbs of Seattle, and that's where most of my family is. I have a sister in Juneau who works for the National Weather Service.

Juneau's really scenic. And, there's a 110-year-old Orthodox church there. Wouldn't you like to go there with me?

I have known the nuns at the monastery since September of last year when I went up there for a talk by Father Thomas Hopko.

Fr. Tom's talks involve a lot of shouting, but for some reason, they're a great place to meet women.

It's a wonderful place, so peaceful. At times I've thought about monasticism myself, having spent some time in the Svatogorska monastery in Eastern Ukraine. One interesting thing that Mother Magdalena said to me, though, was that one of the reasons people find monasteries so peaceful is that they're on retreat when they visit. When you take up tonsure, it becomes the front line, and can be much more difficult.

Actually, what I'd really rather do is marry a beautiful tall girl like you. But, I do enjoy visiting monasteries, and I can talk endlessly about monasticism with you… so long as I get to keep talking to you.

I think you do really have to trust yourself to be able to pray when difficult situations arise, and you can't really worry about them too much in advance. That is, provided that you do actually pray when they happen. And prayer doesn't have to be eloquent, nor does it have to make any sense. Sometimes, you'll ask God for unreasonable things... but as my father confessor in Ukraine said to me, God is like a father of a little child. The child can beg to be allowed to play with matches, but the father won't allow it. And God is patient with you, too.

See, I can be spiritual. That's what girls like, right?

In Christ,
Thomas

p.s. What's your major?

Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 17:07:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: Eric Ruthford
To: Katharine Anderson
Subject: RE: Hi monastery friend!

Dear Katharine,

History and German studies sound very interesting... my own undergraduate degrees were journalism and European history. I don't know if you've read any of Chris Browning's books, but he's this famous Holocaust historian. He taught at Pacific Lutheran University when I was a student there, and I got to take his Modern Germany course.

You're a history major? I like history, too! And we can go to history museums together, holding hands. Do you live near any nice museums?

So are you liking "Sense and Sensibility"? Is it a book that you think boys can read? Someone once recommended "Pride and Prejudice," also by Jane Austen to me after I got out of the Peace Corps, but the first sentence frightened me so much that I put the book right back on the shelf and ran away:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

Having spent two years trying to dodge Ukrainians who viewed this as being the case regarding their daughters and this far-flung funny American, I simply could not find that the slightest bit humorous. Sort of like some of the Greeks I know who didn't find "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" to be the slightest bit funny because it was too accurate. But some people seem to find "Pride and Prejudice" funny.

Actually, this kind of chick lit makes me gag. But, maybe there will be some romantic allegory in the book I can use to charm you with after I read it. And, telling you about the cute Ukrainian girls who tried to nab me shows that I have standards and that you have to compete. Or, telling you all this crap makes me sound gay. Either way, it's better to keep you talking, so I'll just keep blathering.

A poet from the same period in England whom I really like is Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Have you read any of his work? I especially like the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." It's a journey into sin, and back out again, and how dreadfully difficult it is to come out of it when you're feeling stuck there. It's like you have an albatross stuck around your neck, and your throat is too dry to pray.

Now wouldn't that be really romantic, a girl reading my favorite poem to have something to talk about with me? Please, please, please, fulfill my lyrical fantasy!

The Debussy CD you got sounds nice. Just before Christmas, a professor recommended Brahms "A German Requiem" and it's just amazing. It's contemplative, uplifting, Biblical, and, oddly enough, written about death!

See, I like music, too, which girls like. We'll get to the fact that I'm tone-deaf later.

DC was nice. I got to go to the Smithsonian and see all kinds of neat stuff there... the American History Musuem, the Air and Space Museum, and the National Gallery. The dogwoods are in bloom there. I especially recommend the History of Science section of the Smithsonian. It's neat and nerdy.

Wouldn't you like to go to the Smithsonian with me? I can take lots of pictures of you on The Mall.

Well, I'm about to fall asleep at the keyboard from all the traveling and the hour that got eaten by the time shift. But please write back. And, tell me, what are you doing during the summer? Do you come to Pittsburgh often? It sure would be nice to talk with you again in person.

In Christ,
Thomas

Yes, in person! Let's go somewhere that I can turn this flowery prose into action. Whoo hoo!

Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 10:03:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: Eric Ruthford
To: Katharine Anderson
Subject: RE: Hi monastery friend!

Hi Katharine,

Will you have some free time on the weekend of Palm Sunday? I am trying to twist Nick's arm into taking me to State University. I want to see this church everybody talks about, Holy Trinity. And, I want to see you, also.

Isn't that romantic? Or does it sound needy?

If you can come out on Friday afternoon, May 7, I could take you out to dinner at one of Pittsburgh's finer eating establishments (it'll be a FAST-FREE FRIDAY! WHEE!) and then you could stay with Laura or someone else from the Orthodox crowd around here and take the GRE the next day, well-fed.

I get a little excited on fast-free Fridays… do you?

As for your thoughts about literature... this is the sort of thing better contemplated in a nice quiet room with some Brahms, Bach or Tchaikovsky playing on the stereo and a nice cup of Rose Hibiscus tea on the nightstand. So I have printed out your letter and I will write a reply there.

Yes… come into my study where we can sip tea and be nice and quiet together.

One last question – which St. Katharine are you named after?

I'm going to look up your saint's icon just so I can say, "You're even prettier than your icon!"

Well, write back when you have the chance.

In Christ,
Thomas

Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 10:31:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: Eric Ruthford
To: Katharine Anderson
Subject: RE: Hi monastery friend!

Hi Katharine,

I think we will have some time to meet! Nick wants to see a lecture by an old professor of his, so we would have to be there in time for that, which I think starts at noon. Then, I could go to the concert. What do you play? Or do you sing? I have sent Nathan an e-mail to twist his arm. And, if that doesn't work, I can take God's gift to the carless -- Greyhound!

That's how desperate I am… willing to spend five hours on a bus riding with freaks who can't be trusted with cars.

May the Mother of God protect you,
Thomas

Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 11:09:56 -0700 (PDT)
From: Eric Ruthford
To: Katharine Anderson
Subject: Be checking your mail...

Dear Katharine,

Glory to Jesus Christ!

I just wanted to let you know that I sent a snail-mail letter today to the address that you gave me. So be looking for that.

The fact that I've just sent you a letter is worthy of an e-mail in of itself.

I've gotten through a pretty stressful week, and I've got two meetings with profs today. My main priority today is to clean my room and go to bed early.

Stressful, yes, but talking with you is like a nice backrub. Wouldn't you like one of those?

May the Mother of God protect you!

In Christ,
Thomas

Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 09:31:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: Eric Ruthford
To: Katharine Anderson
Subject: RE: Hi monastery friend!

Hi Katharine,

Wonderful to hear from you!

No worries about what kind of stationary to write on... the paper I used was from this art store in our student-union building at CMU. The paper just leapt out at me.

Yes, I spent 70 cents a sheet on handmade paper that has little flowers embossed in it in the hopes that this will charm the socks off you. Does that make me sound romantic or gay? Pretty soon, I'm going to ask you what your favorite flowers are so that I can plant them in the front yard.

Something else that I have heard recently: On Friday, May 6 at 6 p.m., we are going to get a new bishop. You could come out that day and see your new bishop. It'll be something of a big deal.

You want to go on a date to an enthronement?

I'll be eagerly checking my mailbox over the next several days! And, I'm really looking forward to seeing you at State University, and to seeing your performance!

She invited me to see a performance of Mahler's Fifth Symphony, and she'll perform in the choir near the end of it. I think the choir sings for a whole five minutes. I guess this gives an actual pretext for the visit.

With love in Christ,
Thomas

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 20:32:55 -0700 (PDT)
From: Eric Ruthford
To: Katharine Anderson
Subject: RE: Hi monastery friend!

You know, the running subject line of these e-mails is beginning to make me wonder if I'm not thinking about this the way she is. But I'll ignore this doubt. I've got love on my mind!

Hi Katharine,

I'm glad to hear that your shift went so well. And it's nice that you're able to stay in contact with your old friend and your sister.

I went over to the apartment of Yevgen and Zhanna, a young couple who have come over from Ukraine so that Yevgen can study at Carnegie Mellon. They are Orthodox, and we are preparing the buffet together. I also got to play with Yulia, their little daughter.

Babies are really nice. How would you like to have a few?

Um... one other thing... if Nathan can't drive me and help me in finding lodging... do you know some boys who have an open floor that they can spare?

Chasing girls on the other side of the state kind of stinks when you haven't got a car.

I, too, love Cheerios. I've been eating them since I was 3. Tell me, do you like scrambled eggs? If so, what are acceptable toppings on them? What are inacceptable toppings? :-) This is just curiosity, so don't worry, there's no answer that's going to cause me to go all judgmental or anything on you....

We both like the same breakfast cereal. It's true love. YESSS!!

Does your sister have a family?

Yeah, and would you like one?

Well, I'll look forward to your paper letter on Monday.

In Christ,
Thomas

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 22:26:32 -0700 (PDT)
From: Eric Ruthford
To: Katharine Anderson
Subject: Re: this weekend

Dear Katharine,

Oh, I think we can talk about breakfast foods, but since it is Lent, we shouldn't be pushing anyone towards temptation. So, I'll write the names of the non-Lenten foods in code, and then you can decode them after Pascha.

My thoughts are that ketchup is a wonderful topping on delbmarcs sgge. In fact, I am a fan of ketchup in general, especially Heinz Ketchup, because I am attending the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management right now, so Heinz Ketchup money is subsidizing my education.

Yes, I actually thought it was cute to write "scrambled eggs" backwards and make jokes about Heinz Ketchup. And, the idea that names of food are unspeakable during Lent is a joke so lame that the Onion Dome would reject it out of hand. But I have to keep the conversation going somehow.

I don't particularly approve of ketchup on pasta or ketchup on potatoes... I have one Italian friend who tells me that ketchup on spaghetti is sacrilege.

And this particular Italian girl kept a mildly romantic e-mail correspondence with me for a year before dumping me. But let's not go into that. And please, please, don't get tired of reading this stuff and dump me!

I made French Toast for my Mom, and cooked it one slice at a time, verrrrry slowly, with the door to her room open. After a half hour, she was still asleep, so I cooked another slice, but halfway through, took the pan off the stove and took it up to her room and began fanning it at her... she did get up about 15 minutes after that... passive wake-up methods...:-)

Wouldn't you like to meet my family? I'm sure they'd like you.

My sister is 29 years old and lives in Juneau, Alaska, and seems to be single. Last I asked her, she said that the heavily male demographics of Alaska weren't all they were cracked up to be. "The odds are good, but the goods are odd," she said.

Funny joke, isn't it? Laugh. Please laugh!

I've been to three or four Orthodox wedding services, two in Slavonic, two in English. The first English wedding I went to, I was the best man! That was kind of scary. I was supposed to look all supportive and dapper and have a straight tie for two or three hours during the service, which was a major task in of itself, especially when I wanted to cry at the beginning when they sang "The Angel Cried" (they got married during Pascha).

See, I'm not afraid to get emotional. And, is this wedding talk having any effect on you?

What made this even more difficult is the fact that there was no maid of honor. Under Serbian tradition, the best man and the maid of honor (well, matron of honor) have to be married to each other. They are the kum and the kuma, and then they become the godparents of the couple's children. But, as they pointed out, I had forgotten the kuma, and so I was there all by myself, standing behind them, holding this candle and trying to keep the crown from falling off of Barnabas' head.

Hint, hint, hint… you could be the godmother of some lovely children. You just have to marry their godfather.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 22:46:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: Eric Ruthford
To: Katharine Anderson
Subject: One question answered...

Hi Katharine,

So, I just heard from Nick, and he's not driving. So, it's the big red, white and blue limousine for me. I have the choice of arriving in State University on a bus that gets there at 2:15 p.m., or one that gets there at 4:30 p.m. I can do either. Are there issues of time conflict that would make one preferable to the other for you?

This was supposed to be my pretext for the trip, a "guys' road trip." Now I don't have one… everyone will be able to see this is a lame attempt at wooing a girl. Maybe I should just come right out and say what's on my mind. But wouldn't it be so much more romantic if we "clicked" in person?

I'm really looking forward to it!

I think I'm going to die if you don't feel the same way about me.

In Christ,
Thomas

p.s. I drew a little rectangle in my mailbox today labeled "Katharine's letter goes here" so that the postal workers would know where to put your letter. I'll look again tomorrow. I guess tax season has things slowed down a bit.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:23:48 -0700 (PDT)
From: Eric Ruthford
To: Katharine Anderson
Subject: Your letter!

Hi Katharine,

Your letter finally came! I was getting a little antsy waiting for it, but I guess I have to accept that all those tax returns that slowed it down are what keep the roads paved and such... :-)

She sent me this letter on April 15, tax day, and it took 5 days for the @*&% thing to go 150 miles. I opened my mailbox every day expecting it to be there and getting close to bridge-jumping each time it wasn’t. And Pittsburgh has a lot of bridges to choose from.

I'm delighted by your improvised stationary! And the poetry is nice, too. I could go on for pages about how wonderful your thoughts are, but I think I will wait until I have the opportunity to talk them over with the wonderful girl who thought them up!

She wrote a poem! It had nothing to do with love, but all poetry is romantic!

With love in Christ,
Thomas

------------------------------------------------------------

What actually happened

This turned into a romantic pilgrimage of the silliest kind. A romantic pilgrimage is a trip to visit a church far away where you know someone lovely attends church. The romantic pilgrimage has no other purpose than to try charming this special someone, which means your chances of getting disappointed are really, really high. If you want to read more about romantic pilgrimages, click here.

It was a week before finals started in my graduate school program, which wasn't the best time to go running across the state, but I didn't see any other convenient time to meet her. And, I figured, I was going to leave Pennsylvania to go work in California in August, so I had only four months to get to know her before our relationship became "super long-distance."

And, with that, I had come up with a phony reason to rush things. This, I should add, is another sign that you're in an unrequited-love fantasy land.

I got on a bus in Pittsburgh and we started across the state, going through coal mining country and seeing lots of steep but not very tall hills. Behind me sat a guy who was a professional sandblaster who could earn $58 an hour blasting surfaces off of bridges. His favorite thing to do with his money was fly to Amsterdam. He'd lost his license for too many DWIs. There was also a 17-year-old girl sitting nearby who was getting acquainted with the guy by discussing their favorite kinds of hard liquors. Whenever they came upon one they both liked, she'd exclaim "F--- yeah!"

I had my copy of Sense and Sensibility, which I had checked out from the library. I read it stealthily, hiding the cover from Mr. Sandblaster whenever he looked over. My intent was that I'd have something to talk about with Katharine. I had hope that this trip would have a happy Jane Austen ending (but without all the intervening conflict). I read about Mrs. John Dashwood, a widow, and her three spinster daughters trying to get married. When Marianne slips and sprains her ankle, a handsome, dashing young man named Willoughby comes to her rescue and carries her home. For several more weeks, Mr. Willoughby calls regularly, causing Marianne to be positively entranced, until he runs away on business to London unexpectedly, and does not come back, leaving Marianne to spend at least sixty pages bitterly disappointed.

I got up to page 130 or so by the time we got to the town where Katharine both lived and studied. Her father came and got me at the bus stop and took me to their house. I put my stuff in the extra bedroom, and her Dad gave me directions to the restaurant where she was working and would soon get off shift. It was between lunch and dinner, so the restaurant was empty. She came out and gave me a big hug and told me how glad she was to have me there and that she'd missed me. My ears got hot again.

That evening was the performance of Mahler's Fifth Symphony, a work which was inspired, in part, by Mahler's having survived a near-death experience of an intestinal hemorrhage. I sat next to her father listening to this 80-minute swirl of extreme emotions of life and death and love, thinking that the tension of whether I was going to get this girl was going to kill me, too. Mr. Girl's Father sat next to me, not showing much emotion. He struck me as very German, by which I mean that he was a welcoming fellow, but his face didn't give away... anything. He seemed to like me, though.

The next day, Katharine took me on a tour of her university, showing me the museum and the galleries. We went out to lunch together and she made me feel genuinely welcomed, and I kept asking her what her long-term plans were, and she said she wanted to get a Fulbright scholarship.

"What about you?" she asked.

Here was my opportunity to steer the conversation from all this chatty stuff to real love. "Restart my heart," I thought but did not say.

I made a gurgling noise instead and sipped some water, finally blurting out, "I love all these adventures I've been having like the Peace Corps, but I'm really looking for more... uh... stability and I'd... uh.... like to get married... uh..." (her face dropped) "... someday. And I think you're... uh... wonderful and uh..."

She said, "I'm really focusing my life on monasticism. I've been visiting monasteries all over the country for the past year. The one I think I like best is in North Carolina."

I said, "Oh," and I spent about five minutes staring at my thumbnails.

She took me back to her parents' house, and told me how honored she was that I was willing to be open with her. The next day, I got back on the bus to Pittsburgh, pulled "Sense and Sensibility" out of my bag, whacked myself in the head with it several times and muttered to myself about why a good little nun would be reading such romantic dreck like this. I got off the bus and went directly to the library, chucked the unfinished novel in the return slot of the library (I assume that Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters all died single) wrote a bread-and-butter letter to her parents thanking them for putting me up for two nights and I said, "This stupid trip is OVER!"

Finals week started, which also happened to be Holy Week. Putting the two together did have a special way of putting one's mind on the Crucifixion. My priest asked me how the trip had gone. I gave him a pained look and said, "She thought it would be better to tell me in person that she wanted to be a nun."

Three weeks later, Katharine and her father drove to Pittsburgh for the enthronement of the new bishop. They found me and took me out to dinner afterwards. Her father took the opportunity to ask me all kinds of questions about my family, my studies, my conversion to Orthodoxy, and left me with the impression that I had just gotten the "future son-in-law" interview. He seemed to really like me. So did Katharine, about as well as a good nun was supposed to like a boy.

I wasn't sure, but I walked away with the impression that Dad wasn't entirely on board with the whole "future nun" trajectory for his daughter, and I provided a convenient reason to hope for grandchildren. I think I was there to temporarily keep her father happy.

She later moved to Washington, DC, and sometimes went to events of the Orthodox Christian Fellowship there, and there were lots of young people there. But, she said, she was getting tired of going, because, "They're such meat markets. All the guys there just want wives."

Katharine kept in touch from time to time, and I still met girls from time to time at conferences and seminaries. But, I swore I would never again read too much in to what a girl was saying to me. I had been talking to myself for a month in all those chatty e-mails.

A year later, the direct approach finally worked. I called up a girl on the phone and said, "Would you like to come to the Asian Art Musuem with me on Tuesday?"

She said, "Yes."

During the date, I held her hand and said, "I think you're wonderful. Let's go out again tomorrow night."

She said, "I think this is a date that's gone very well. Let's do that!"

Death by PBS special -- intimacy

2008-03-06T12:35:00.000-08:00

Back when our family had only one television, my mother and sister took it over because our local public TV station, KCTS-9 in Seattle, had decided to play Anne of Green Gables. This was the Canadian TV version, all four hours of it. I was 8 years old and considered this slow death. It was winter, it was dark, there was nothing else to do, and they would not relinquish control of the TV set, so I couldn't play on the old-school Nintendo. After an hour of this, I started looking forward to the pledge breaks. Actually, now that I think about it, the pledge breaks made this Anne of Green Gables marathon take about five and a half hours. This is how channel 9 does things -- they play several hours of the same show all at once, so if you want to find out how the story is going to turn out, you have to stay right there and watch it (you can't come back next week for chapter 2). Also, you have to endure the pledge breaks, which are the broadcasting equivalent of waterboarding, until you finally crack and call in and promise to pay $100. But even then, you still have to watch the pledge breaks.

What made this especially torturous for an 8-year-old boy is that the plot of this movie was about girls loving each other. Ewwww!

Now that I'm 29 and I have a wife to explain such things to me, I know that this kind of love was very important because back then, the only person who could really understand you and your struggles was another woman. With restrictions on how men and women could visit with each other, the idea of finding a "soul mate" through dating was pretty far fetched. Also, the main character was an orphan and she was having a difficult time adjusting to her new family, and having surrogate sisters who loved her meant a great deal to her.

I think what's so appealing about Anne of Green Gables is that it's about intimacy, which is something that we all need. It's about being understood and appreciated for who we are. In the case of this drawn-out TV special, it's about intimacy between women, which sounds a little gross but it's not.

Anne of Green Gables took place 125 years ago. Now, it would be impossible to write such a novel about love because everybody would think this love was about sex, and that Anne Shirley was a closeted lesbian.

Being 8 years old and male, I didn't get any of this. My sister and mother, being female and 12 and 39, ate it up like emotional ice cream. If one were to talk about intimacy and 8-year-old boys, I suppose it would go something like, "Let me be Luke Skywalker the way I want to be Luke Skywalker. He doesn't just get into lightsabre fights. He solves problems, too!"

Fast-forward a century from Anne of Green Gables to The Bridges of Madison County, another famous work of chick-lit that got turned in to a movie. It's about a middle-aged farmer's wife who has a functional but boring marriage. She meets a National Geographic photographer and has a passionate affair with him. Eventually her kids find out about this, but aren't angry. They think that it was great that Mom got to have this passionate experience once, that she got to really live. (Personally, I don't understand how the news photographer was the sexy man who provided for her needs. From my experience as a news writer, photographers are dyslexic and weird.)

This story, too, is about intimacy, but for this lonely woman it had to be adulterous.

If we fast-forward again to the current year, on Grey's Anatomy, it appears that the main character, Izzie, has been having an affair with someone who is not actually in the room. Most of the characters in Grey's Anatomy wouldn't know intimacy if hit them like a truck, but it appears that this self-centered affair is about as close as Izzie can get.

Spiritual intimacy is something that we all need, but unfortunately, it's become inextricably connected to sex in our culture. I think most people are in a genuine search for intimacy, but they think that it's going come through sexual satisfaction, so they have to have sexual affairs with multiple partners to develop their understanding of their own intimate needs, and then have some more affairs as they date in order to find someone who can fulfill those needs.

As Orthodox Christians, we certainly believe in spiritual intimacy -- our Lives of Saints are filled with friendships that helped monks and nuns to understand their potential and to put their struggles in context. And, our sacrament of Confession is not just about a recitation of everything wrong we've done, but building a relationship with our spiritual father, who can understand how he needs to consider our strengths and weaknesses in giving us advice.

Trying to find spiritual intimacy through dating is a relatively recent development in the lives of Orthodox Christians, and we don't really know how to deal with it. Contrasting our rich, ancient liturgical and musical traditions with the efforts of young hormonal people to flirt is pretty silly, and it provides most of the humor for this blog. For example: The bass singer harbored his feelings for the soprano for months, until one day he finally built up the nerve to go ask her after choir practice, "What's your favorite tone?"

There really isn't much in Scripture forbidding young people of the opposite sex from going to restaurants and movies together. Courting practices tend to be determined culturally, and with most Orthodox in North America being a few generations removed from the original immigrants who brought the faith, or converts whose families have been here for centuries, most of us think that dating is normal.

I think that we should be seeking spiritual intimacy, but I need to immediately add that it's all right if it's with someone we cannot date -- it can be with someone who is the same sex as us, someone older or younger than us, or maybe even a monastic. My main regret from the time before I met my wife is that I didn't spend more time with the guys. All my trying to think of the right thing to say while chatting up girls came to nothing.

We can also try to find it in a friend who's eligible dating material, but that's fraught with some perils. I was acquainted with a young man, a recent convert to Orthodoxy, whom I'll call friend-boy, who was looking for a good friend, and he thought he found it with a young lady in the church, who, in her words, immediately developed Tragic Secret Love for him (she referred to this as TSL in conversation). TSL-girl continually dropped hints for about six months, and he didn't pick up on it. Friend-boy wanted a friend. Then, they did try dating for a little while, and TSL-girl was wonderfully satisfied until they visited a men's monastery together and friend-boy "found himself" there and broke up with her. Afterwards, friend-boy wanted to stay friends and still spend a lot of time with TSL girl, but their friendship was over.

I felt kind of bad for the boy when it was over because he really was looking for a friend. The spiritual intimacy was there for a good friendship, but the TSL was just too much to keep it going.

We have the opportunity to make the best of both our freedom of choice and our faith. The young ladies of the Anne of Green Gables novels found an important love with each other, an intimacy that they were unlikely to get from boys as there really wasn't a dating scene at that time. Now, we live in an overly sexual age, when women loving each other would be interpreted as lesbian, and two people of the opposite sex having intimacy would be expected to be sexual.

We have the freedom now to choose whom we marry, which presents the great spiritual opportunity to find someone with whom we can be really intimate -- who listens to us and accepts us for who we are. That was one of the things that most attracted me to Miri -- I could just be myself and she would understand what I meant.

But, we have a challenge, too, to keep this intimacy from getting too sexual. We live in a oversexed reality, where sex is used to sell everything, and we have to actively work to turn the sexuality dial down several notches in our lives. Men ought to be able to talk openly about their feelings without being called gay or insecure, and we all ought to seek friends of the opposite sex who don't break our hearts or cling to us until we break their hearts.

This being an advice blog that's meant to be humorous, maybe I can close with a few do's and don'ts of the care and feeding of your friends:

DO let them know how precious they are to you. Tell them how happy you are spending time with them. Remember birthdays and celebrations. One friend-girl of mine writes me when she goes on trips and lets me know all of the churches and cathedrals in which she's lit candles for me.
DON'T whine too much about dating. For people your own sex, this gets boring after a while. For single people of the opposite sex, it's too darn tempting to shout back, "Why don't you give up on these idiots and go out with someone who really cares about you, like me?"
OBEY the one-body-per-piece-of-furniture rule if your friend is of the opposite sex. Platonic cuddling doesn't work unless one of you is a dog or cat.
SPOUSES OF FRIENDS make for good spiritual intimacy. Adulterous as that sounds, it is true -- after my best friend got married, his wife was a great help in telling me why girls were so weird.
DO check up on them regularly. One bishop who shall remain nameless is best friends with a matushka on the other side of the country. She's his connection to reality, and they call each other daily to exchange fat jokes about each other. (It makes sense to them.)
AVOID overly clingy or whiny people for spiritual intimacy. You can open the heart of your souls, but the toe-fungus of your souls probably needs to stay under wraps.
DEAL WITH TORCH-CARRYING immediately. If a difference in interest between you and your friend becomes evident, you need to have a talk, fast. The best way to deal with it is say, "I don't want that," and then hide for a week or two so your friend-boy or friend-girl is able to adjust to life without constant contact with you.
BE CAUTIOUS of trying to have this connection with friends who aren't Orthodox. A couple of years before I had any interest in becoming Orthodox, my best friend, who was Orthodox, was telling me about a mistake he made that week while serving in the altar. "I almost went through the royal doors, but then the deacon hissed my name." To which I sympathetically responded, "Huh?"
PICK GENDER-APPROPRIATE ACTIVITIES for you and your friend. Men: don't take it as a personal affront if you friend-girl doesn't want to spend all day at the airplane museum. Ladies: Don't make your friend-boy watch Anne of Green Gables.

For a more satirical look at platonic friends, check out this classic blog by a guy who goes by the name "Joe Logon." It's from the "old days" of blogging, when you had to write all your own html code.

Thanks for reading, folks. I'm sorry I don't have more frequent posts, but I kind of wrote myself out of ideas. If you can think of any, please share!