A Missing Generation in Orthodox Christian America - Unarmed in the World

I'm really struggling with this post and I'm not quite sure how to proceed except to just say what I know to be true and what I experienced.  

I entered college as a naive child and unarmed to face the American college experience.  While I "identified"as an Orthodox Christian, I had very little knowledge as to what that even meant.  Other than a comical encounter with a well-meaning member of Campus Crusade for Christ, and one trip to a local Orthodox Church for Pascha my sophomore year (I showed up late and was there for maybe 15 minutes), that was pretty much it for God in college.    

Without going into the details of my four years, it should suffice to say that I left college deeply wounded.  I made the same choices as many other college kids but for some reason, I seemed to have come up much much worse for the wear than everyone else.  My relationship with my parents was dysfunctional at that point.  My father was trying to make a go of a new business venture and there were so many stressors involved with that.  My mother had her own struggles that interfered with us having a close relationship for many years, so there was no trusting relationship that so many of my other friends seemed to have with their mothers. Nor did I have any older siblings or family members or trusted adults that could help.  I really had not a single person in whom to turn.  My close friends did not understand and their advice was "you shouldn't feel that way." I know they were only trying to be helpful and we all existed on the same plane of maturity, but that common phrase didn't help at all .  Sadly, the end result of all of this was extreme anxiety and feelings of abandonment and isolation.  

I kept trucking along though.  I moved to the big city and got myself busy.  And when I wasn't busy, I depended on music and TV to drown out those incessant thoughts that told me how unworthy of a human being I was. I could not bear silence because those painful memories would rush back to attack. And although I still remained nonreligious, I was in a panicked state that God was now looking for the opportunity to throw me into hell.  Paranoia at its finest.  Thankfully, I was never suicidal although I fully understand how many people could end up in that place. The paralyzing fear of divine judgement from a vengeful and unforgiving deity was so deeply ingrained in me that it wouldn't allow for such thoughts. I did NOT want to die. 

In this distressing spiritual and psychological state, I continued to push onward.  I married and had a child who was brought into the Church because that's what you are supposed to do. I worked full-time until we moved to a place that would allow me to stay at home to raise a family. However, after the initial busyness of the move was over, the thoughts returned and churned over and over and over.  Fear continued to rule my life.  A few months after moving into our new home, I had a difficult and scary miscarriage, and then almost four months later, 9/11. September 11, 2001...the day that forced every human to confront their mortality.  The very thing I had been avoiding for the past ten years.

 

      

    

A Missing Generation in Orthodox Christian America - The "When In Rome" Ideology - Part One

Before I start the post, here's something really cool I found about the origin of the saying "When in Rome" from a website called The Italian Notebook:

Ever heard the expression, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”?

Of course you have.

Do you know the expression’s origin? St. Ambrose, way back in 387 A.D.

As the story goes, when St. Augustine arrived in Milan to assume his role as Professor of Rhetoric for the Imperial Court, he observed that the Church did not fast on Saturdays as it did in Rome.

Confused, Agostino consulted with the wiser and older Ambrogio (Ambrose), then the Bishop of Milan, who replied: “When I am at Rome, I fast on Saturday; when I am at Milan I do not. Follow the custom of the Church where you are.”

In 1621, British author Robert Burton, in his classic writing Anatomy of Melancholy, edited St. Ambrose’s remark to read: “When they are at Rome, they do there as they see done.”

Down through the years, Burton’s turn of the St. Ambrose quote was further edited, anonymously, into what is widely repeated today on a daily basis by some traveler, somewhere, trying to adjust to his/her new or temporary surroundings.

So there you go.  My post is based (unknowingly) from an expression from a 4th century Orthodox Christian saint.  Thank you St. Ambrose.

As mentioned in the previous post, ethnicity played a large role in the lack of acceptance into American society. Unlike Irish and Italians who also arrived from Europe at about the same time, we did not have the "numbers" to warrant our own mini societies within American society.  Some parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio may have been an exception to this, but generally speaking, we didn't have the support in numbers.  In my New Jersey hometown, most people were Italian or Irish.  On Thursdays, the day of CCD, (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Roman Catholic catechism) our public school had designated buses to take the kids directly to their church.  If I had to guess, I'd say RC kids were 75-80% of our student population.  

Anyhow, my point being here that we did not have the support of a "like" religious community on a daily basis.  It was (and still is to a certain extent) isolating to be an Orthodox Christian in America.  And the only way to end the isolation was to assimilate into American culture and values.  And I don't mean the "advertised" culture of Judeo-Christian values and the American dream of having everything if you just work hard enough.  No, American culture revolves around one thing at its core and that is money.  

A Missing Generation in Orthodox Christian America - Ethnicity Issues

Before I begin, I want to state that these posts will most likely come across as apologetics. Upon my own return to the Church 17 years ago I encountered some push back from converts who were appalled at my basic lack of Christian knowledge.  Their observations weren't incorrect as I fumbled on how to explain myself.  It is my hope that I will at least shed some light into what some cradle Orthodox Christians faced in the US.

DISCLAIMER: I don't speak for everyone but I am willing to bet that many cradle Orthodox Gen X'ers have some of these things in common with me.  I'm not looking for pity or an excuse for what happened.  Just sorta laying out how things were/are.  

So, here we go.

It is very hard to have an ethnic name in WASP America.  My beautiful maiden name had 10 letters. I could always tell when a substitute teacher calling attendance arrived at my name because she would take a deep breath and then slowwwwly sound out my last name.  Phonetically it wasn't that hard and honestly I felt even worse for the Polish kid who came after me with 13 letters. I only had a "v" that threw people off.  That poor kid had 2 letter "c's", a "y" and a "z".  He just said "here!" before the sub even attempted.  

Anyhow when your name is so distinct and ethnic sounding, you just don't fit in with the Miller's, Johnson's and Brown's of the world. I can remember times throughout high school, when the US was still involved in the Cold War, some people would raise their eyebrows over my last name. I had a boy in college tell me that he really liked me but could never take me home to meet his parents because of my name.  At first I was confused because I honestly thought he was referring to my first name which isn't terribly ethnic.  When I asked what was wrong with my first name, he laughed and said that he had meant my last name. 

Oh.  I see. 

That feeling of being different, of being excluded, of not belonging wasn't easy to bear, especially for a shy girl. I did spend fantastic summers with other "ethnic" kids at an Orthodox Christian summer camp. But in the end, we all returned to our homes and all those feelings returned.  I just didn't fit in.    

So while I really couldn't do anything about my last name, the only other option was to assimilate through behavior.  If I acted like the other kids then maybe I would no longer be on the periphery of American society.  

A rational sounding plan, no? A sort of "When in Rome..." idea.  Unfortunately, it was largely disastrous and had deep and destructive consequences.  That will be the topic of my next post. 

A Missing Generation in Orthodox Christian America - An Introduction

As I look around the nave of my church it is clear as day that there are not many people in my age demographic.  There are plenty of people 10+ years older than me and, Glory to God, an abundance of younger adults, most who are converts to Orthodox Christianity.

My age demographic is Generation X, those born 1965-1980.  I know there are Gen X Orthodox Christians out there. I went to summer camp with a whole bunch of them and there were quite a few in my parish growing up.  I can count on one hand how many have remained active in the Church.

To be clear, these posts are not meant to guilt or demand explanations from anyone.  I know what happened.  I was there and I am not in least bit surprised in the situation in which the Church finds herself.  It is my intent with this series of writings is to explore why so many are missing and what it is that keeps them away.

My vantage point:

I am of  Russian/Slavic ethnicity born in the United States, as were both of my parents and two of my grandparents. We have been in the U.S. for 110+ years and I only speak English (and whatever French I can recall from high school and college).  However if you looked at my 10-letter maiden name and looked at my face, I definitely fit the bill as someone from Eastern Europe.  And that's where the first post will start.  Ethnicity and acceptance in American society.

Committing American Cultural Blasphemy - Turning Off The TV



Can be purchased here at Amazon.


A scandalous thought for the last post of the month.  Turning off the TV forever. 

I have just finished Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander which presents this radical idea, and I gotta tell you, it's one of the greatest books I have read in a long time. I have long believed that television is one of the key culprits in the demise of humanity and this book confirmed these beliefs and then some.  Television distorts reality, screws around with your brain and can quite easily become a means of thought control.  Scary stuff.

Here's a brief but very interesting synopsis of the conclusions found here.  The link will take you to the Orthodox Christian Information Center, but the book itself is non-religious and written by a man born into the Jewish faith.

In my own personal musings I often wondered if people's unhappiness and general discontent with their daily lives was based on their comparisons on what television would have them believe a "happy" life really is.  Real life is mundane, television life is not.  It cannot be or you wouldn't watch.  The sole job of advertisers is to sell you products, to make you believe that what you don't possess is the real reason you are unhappy. And, for whatever reason, we believe it.  We have created a nightmare of a society based on consumerism and the constant arousal of a flickering television that jumps from one scene to the next creating what Mander calls "Artificial Unusualness".  It's madness!  Sheer absurdity!   It is impossible to emulate the life advertisers and television programmers present to us as reality.  I personally know of marriages that have fallen apart because either one or both spouses lived in this fantasy world and held insane expectations of what their lives "should be" which was never based on reality.  Like I said, life is mundane, it does not move at the speed of television.  We go through long periods of routine, something that television will not portray.  I believe that routine is not bad, but actually ideal.  If I am not focusing on material acquisitions or whether or not "my needs" are being met at every waking moment I can focus on other people, which surprise, surprise, is one of the primary messages of the Gospel of Christ.  Sounds like television may be a type of Antichrist.  Food for thought for sure.    

So, as we are rapidly approaching Great Lent in the Orthodox Christian Church (one week from today to be exact!), maybe a 7 week kibosh on television watching is in order. Do you think you could do it?  Or at least cut back?  I know I will.  I think I may have mentioned it before in another post, but I would rather live in reality than delusion. It should be obvious that television is a source of delusion that implants false ideas that we passively accept whether we realize it or not.

Read the book. Do it for yourself, your children, for the sake of the human race. 

Wow, that was one hell of a rant...see you in March!