Moving Beyond Misconceptions

My name is Matt Gray and this is my first blog post. I am currently writing from a small farm in Lupeni. It is Saturday afternoon, and it is harvest.

I am not sure where to start in telling the story of what has happened here for me in Romania, but I can tell you that I am extremely thankful and happy to be here. It feels as though life is put on pause yet is also put on fast forward. I know that in only two short months I will be back in North America and will be faced with the many issues that I do not have to face now. While these issues are real and I do look forward to them there is a wonderful peace that accompanies the reality that I do not need to worry about them or deal with them now. Growing up my mum always teased at a saying that her father used to say: “All in the fullness of time.” In Romania I have accepted this once thought dull saying, and feel extremely free to pursue and embrace the life and circumstances that God has given me now, in the present.

(Top Right: Small Orthodox Church at the Straja mountain community)

(Bottom Right: The NWC group in our second week on top of Mt. Straja)

On now three occasions I have had the privilege of attending a Romanian Orthodox church service. Every time I enter an Orthodox service I feel as though I am entering something sacred, bigger than myself, mysterious and yet familiar. Growing up at a church in the West when I thought of Orthodox churches I thought of something old, where people call themselves Christians and yet live differently on Sundays than they do throughout the rest of the week. I thought that we may have it right and they may have it wrong.Now that I am here I know that neither the West nor the East have it right. This probably is because there is a West and East – there is a separation in the body.

I appreciate the mystical and sacred atmosphere and thought of the Orthodox church. God is known to all and yet is unknown and cannot fully be known. It seems that in Western thought we tend to want to understand everything about God, and conversations on the nature of God turn to arguments. The fact that God is supreme and is beyond our understanding seems to be added as a clause the end of our arguments.From what I have encountered in Orthodox thought, when talking of God, the mystical and unexplainable nature of God is stated first and is crucial to their understanding of faith, worship, church life, daily life, and theological arguments. God is not known and yet has revealed himself on earth through many different means.

I also value how when God is spoken of it is naturally assumed that “God” refers to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. At least in my experience I often forget of the three-fold nature of God.

We have only begun our Eastern Orthodoxy class and I am eager to learn more. In the readings for our second class we read about the life of the Orthodox Church in Russia during the 80 ish year militant atheist communist rule. I was amazed at how oppressed the church was – even more so than any persecution during the Roman Empire – and yet in that time the Russian church survived and thrived despite opposition within and outside of the church. Church properties and buildings were stolen, monks, nuns, priests, bishops and patriarchs were arrested, imprisoned and in many cases killed. The church had the right to meet occasionally, yet they could not publish any church writings, could not meet outside of Sunday morning, could not talk of God, and were constantly persecuted via mental terror. I read that in these 80 years of extreme persecution the West had almost no idea of what was going on in the East. When interviewed by western magazines Orthodox priests could not report of the Russian situation because of either a switch of allegiance from their faith to communism, or because they were told that the communists would grant more freedom if they kept quiet.

When Communism fell in Russia and there now was the much wanted religious freedom, the Russian Orthodox church was overwhelmed. There was an extreme shortage of clergy, every church property was in dire shape, and there was a huge shortage of money. To add further complications, now that the doorways to the east were opened western churches came to the East in full force with more money and a louder voice than the East. The West had little regard for the life and persecutions that the Orthodox Church underwent let alone their triumph of keeping a Christian foothold in a broken nation.

It seems that the West responds the same in similar situations in today’s world. We enter with our money and banners raised thinking that what we have is what everyone else needs. I have heard people that have come to the West from the East say that westerners are ignorant. I think that this ignorance could better be named as insensitivity. I hope that the root of “Western Expansion” or “Globalization” is that we want to help. In future times I think that we would be better to listen to the stories rather than to come in and change the story to how we see fit. By listening, seeking to understand, engaging and then partnering with the people we want to help the West could both do good and reveal the dignity of others. If the West were to do this to the East, many of the hurts and divisions in God’s one Catholic Church could be healed, and it could grow and flourish as originally intended.