As I write this, I’ve just finished looking for a solution to our incense problem. I was gifted an “Orthodox smoke machine,” in the words of (and by) my brother-in-law a few years ago and we’ve only just started to use it regularly because we have just started attending an Orthodox church. I didn’t know until Henry got involved that I’d been only using the charcoal thinking the incense was part of the charcoal brick somehow. It smelled sweet. So we bought some frankincense. It’s not going well – the burning of incense. We can’t get the charcoal to light up very quickly, nor the incense to burn steadily. It goes out when we shut the lid and it burns too fast when we open it. Today we propped it open a bit and it still burned out too quickly. Back to the drawing board. But it smells extra holy in our living room, and that’s all we need for now.

I found a link to a discussion on Reddit because I was sure others had had the same problem, and through that link I found yet another Orthodox website offering things that are sold out. They were completely sold out of all their home censors. All within the last week, I have tried to find an Orthodox service book for Divine Liturgy and Vespers: sold out everywhere I looked. I tried to find this book. Sold out everywhere. Those things, in and of themselves, might not mean much, but put it together with the fact that the church we’ve been attending has exploded with growth in the last two or three years. The priest told us our first week young men have been coming because they heard Jordan Peterson. It’s what I like to call the Peterson, Pageau, Podfathers Pipeline. He said new people are coming every week. My favorite podcast, The Lord Of Spirits, has listeners from every continent, often listening live at odd hours. My Aunt and Uncle’s parish which we’ve visited once a year for the last eight years has doubled in size in the last year. The Symbolic World began as a YouTube channel and now has a publishing company. Jordan Peterson recently appeared at a Symbolic World conference as a special guest. It feels, as I write this morning, like something big is happening. Like, I don’t know, a movement of God? It’s palpable and exciting. It feels like our being here was inevitable.

No doubt to any Orthodox I sound like the new convert I am and this is all very familiar. Wait a few years. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Let this feeling be a warning to you. If you start to feel like you’re exalted in some way, you are most certainly on the wrong track. The saints, I hear, are marked by their humility.

No doubt my dear Anglican friends will read this and feel a mix of feelings. We Anglicans, many of us, are Ortho-curious. It’s a rare Anglican priest who hasn’t at least had to wrestle with either Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy. I have many friends who have converted to one or the other from the Anglican church. And I understand why that feels confusing and hurtful to those who are left, especially to the priests and their wives who have toiled so hard for the church. Have I not been told for many years that we are one of the orthodox? The church was in Britain early. Very early. They’re not wrong. The Bible was translated into Old English before the King James version was translated. St. Patrck is on the walls of St. Mark’s. I’m working on another post about our long decision to start down this road, but it will take more prayer and thought. Hopefully, I’m not arrogant enough to assume I can allay your fears. All I can say is that I love you all very much. You have been our lifeline.

For now, I just wanted to give my impressions of jumping in right before Great Lent. We have been attending St. Mark’s for a little over a month now. Five Sundays. Today is Clean Tuesday, the second day of Great Lent, which will end the last week of April and then we’ll continue fasting and praying in Holy Week. We aren’t allowed to take communion or partake in any of the sacraments. I made that mistake with a question about confession at catechism class last week even though if I’d thought about it I would have realized I already knew the answer. I will have to be baptized or chrismated first. We can become Catecumens only when our whole family is ready. But we receive every blessing we can. I have been kissing so many things. I don’t know that much about Holy Week in the Orthodox Church other than a) it’s best ever and ever and unto ages of ages amen, and b) it starts just before midnight and that we feast until the wee hours, go home and sleep for a bit, and then feast again in the afternoon on Pascha. I’m cautiously looking forward to it. We speak of “bright sadness” during Lent. Is there a word for a sort of “bright dread?” I do have a toddler, after all.

Last night I attended the first of five nights of the Great Canon of St. Andrew. Henry will go tonight and I will stay home and do the kid things. It was a trying day. Since we have some experience with Lenten fasting, we’re going to keep the Orthodox fast, which is no meat, no dairy, no oil, no alcohol. And for this first week, which is supposed to be the most intense, we are trying to fast from any food for at least the first part of the day. I was intending to go until dinner time, but I decided to eat some food at 3pm. I have received several admonishments not to try to do too much at first. New converts are notoriously zealous.

I was looking forward to a nice, quiet, restful Lenten service. My body felt weak, my head a little achey, and my mind had been a spacey all day. Try as I might to replace my stupid phone-related vices with prayer, early afternoon found me with a podcast and a coloring book as that was all I felt I could manage with Cora. A long shot from prayer but at least not actively drooling over new dresses on Pinterest (There’s a joke I like to make about how Orthodox converts like to dress like they are 18th-century Russian peasants. Give me a gathered skirt, a babushka, and a sturdy pair of boots. I am here for it).

It was not to be. Imagine my surprise when, as I finished hurriedly kissing Icons in the front (for the first time) and getting to my place (realizing I’d forgotten to venerate the Icon and beautiful gate in the middle and feeling stupid), everyone around me began to prostrate. Knees on the ground, butt in the air, forehead on the floor, and then stand up. Over and over. The choir had to do it while singing! I should have remembered this from Facing East, but I did not. Father had told us about it as well, but I’m finding Orthodoxy to be a rushing river I have to jump into and pray. You’re never going to be “ready.” So, I followed along. This was not the sitting-in-the-dark-with-tinkling-piano-trying-to-search-my-own-heart-hoping-no-one-will-ever-know-my-embarrassing-sins repentance of my youth. Nor is it the Imposition of Ashes and the injunction to remember that I am dust of my early adulthood. My sore knees, quads, and triceps can attest. I had to remove my sweater quickly between prostrations at some point (alas, I was wearing jeans) and still a little bead of sweat slowly slid down my spine before we were done. I was grateful not to be wearing a skirt to trip on or a head scarf to adjust and hold the heat in around my head. I was surprised when I left by how much I needed that service and how rested I felt, though I was hardly aware of any of my own thoughts, being too busy trying to listen through all the prostrations and stay focused on the Icon of Jesus and the Theotokos towering above the back of the altar. Perhaps that’s the point.

We will be prostrating ourselves many more times before Lent is over. The Great Canon is done in the fifth week of Lent in its entirety one day. We are going to beg for mercy thousands of times from a Lord who wants nothing other than to show mercy, but it will remind us that we are rebels and we are sick with sin and need healing, lest we forget and start to blame God for the bad things that happen. Father said last night we fast because we WANT our passions to well up. Not to take them out on other people, but to expose them. To see ourselves how we truly are and to make another attempt at repenting. Then we will fall again, receive grace again, and begin again.

We missed Forgiveness Vespers on Sunday night so we could spend time with friends we rarely get to see, but if you want an account of that service you should read Facing East. That was the moment I said, “you’ve got to be kidding me.” The whole church literally asks every other person there for forgiveness. Like, right in each others’ faces. You have to look them in the eye and all. When I read about it I thought: I want this. I need it. But I also want to run screaming. Isn’t there a way to be a Christian without all the prostration, the humbling, and the looking yourself and other people in the eye? Can’t I take this seriously but just, like, privately? Doesn’t His grace cover all of this anyway? How useful is guilt, really? Aren’t I really feeling, like, too much guilt over stuff I can’t help? Broken relationships that I’ve done my best with? Habits that are probably not great, but really not that bad in the grand scheme?

It’s just that…I wasn’t happy, you know? We were constantly talking over the same “problems” with each other. We’re not happy in Michigan, we don’t have enough spiritual community, we don’t make enough money, we can’t do different things we want to for our kids because of this, we have health problems, our marriage is occasionally difficult and how do we solve that, our church needs a building and can’t retain visitors, we’re overweight and can’t figure out how to lose it, we feel lonely and isolated, we’re afraid and on edge about things going on in the world all the time, we have bitter regrets and unsolved relational angst with people, AND we’re addicted to our screens, AND we sometimes drink too much, and, and, and…we’re on a hamster wheel trying to constantly solve problems; focused so much on trying to make our lives better and then vaguely rubbing it all with a spiritual veneer. But our lives don’t look any different from the people around us. I wasn’t praying. I sure as hell wasn’t prostrating myself. But, like, what else would you do in front of the God of the Universe? One thing that sticks out when you’re around the Bible your whole life is that people in there tend to know it when they are being faced with God or His angels. I never felt like I knew.

And before you get bent out of shape about whether I’m saying your life doesn’t look different from those around you: maybe it does. I admit my life hasn’t been great. It’s been pretty self-centered. You probably have more virtues than I do. I don’t know. Only God can judge because only He knows. I just know I haven’t been happy and I have blamed all of these other reasons for it. I have told myself I’ll be happy when…I lose weight, we make more money, we have more friends, we have more spiritual community, we move somewhere where our kids can run around, we find the perfect church/homeschool group combo or a great school we can afford…the list could literally go on forever. Nothing was working. I was never going to be finally triumphant. In fact, the more stuff I had the worse I felt. I knew it wasn’t the answer, but neither was having a nice family or nice friends. We have all of those things. And then tragedy or difficulty hits and we wonder where God is. I’ll be honest – I wondered that in everyday life. It all felt like a burden. I felt like I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop; for life to finally swallow me up.

What I am finding, and I can’t really pinpoint how this is happening, is that I am doing a slow reorientation. Like a flower that was wilting without water being fed and then uncurling and slowly pushing its face toward the sun. My body is literally opening up after so many years of being turned in on itself, like, physically. I’m learning how to stand (Orthodox stand for the entire service) and look up instead of slouching and looking down.

And please understand me: this is nothing but preamble. None of what I’ve just described makes me a good person, because I’m standing for a service and other people don’t, or they don’t even go to a service. The blend of ancient hymns and chant, the standing and singing, the venerating and bowing, the taming of the passions are all beautiful things. I’m increasingly convinced they are necessary. But it’s necessary because I’m desperate.

I’m less confused and less unhappy now, without anything else having changed. You might think it’s just novelty or the excitement of meeting new people and being in a new crowd. Maybe that’s true and time will tell. It’s actually been pretty emotional for me (what isn’t?). Lots of ups and downs. I feel awkward most of the time. But at some point in there when my forehead hit the floor for the 28th time and rested there for a moment, things slid further into place. Yes, this is painful and awkward in some ways and it’s likely to continue. It feels foreign. I don’t know what to do with all these Icons staring back at me. I don’t know if anything I’ve “known” before about the Holy Spirit is right. But I know that I needed to worship, and it needed to be like this: not here to look pretty. I needed to truly try to lose myself. And in that sense, I am home.