Widening My Christian Cultural Range: Getting Used to Not Being Irish in Heritage

Good evening, readers!   When we last left off, I was feeling quite adrift because I found out that, contrary to what I had heard growing up, I am not Irish in heritage.  My family tree traces back to England (a combination of Norman and Saxon blood!), Wales, Scotland, Germany and the Netherlands.  I had always thought that we were Irish, having grown up hearing stories of how we had to change our name from O'Hosey to Hosey when our family came to America.

Allow me to clarify for new readers: I am Joy-Noël Gabrielle Bronzich, née Hosey.  I go by my middle name, Gabrielle.  I married a man of Montenegrin heritage, David Thomas Bronzich.

My maiden name is Hosey.  It is a Norman name that has variations: Hosea, Hussey, Houssaye, and in Ireland there is an Irish version of it, Ó hEódhusa.  In my case, that would be Ní hEódhusa because "Ní" means "daughter of" instead of the "son of" connotation which is denoted by the "Ó."

Now, about this whole Irish thing! Even if my family lived in Ireland at one point, it does not change the fact that they would have come there either as Norman invaders (or settlers--most probably invaders, though!) during the twelfth or thirteenth centuries.  It also does not change the fact that one of the Scottish ancestors of my father settled in Dublin in 1689.  That was during one of the worst times in Irish history, a time of grave English oppression of Ireland, the time of the Penal Laws.

So, either way, I am descended, on the English and Scottish side of my family, from people who didn't belong in Ireland and should not have gone there to live.  On the other hand, I am also descended in a couple of lines from Welsh people, who were in their turn oppressed by the English many a time.  There's also the Scottish side, having dealt also with English oppression.

It's really strange to be from an ancestral mix of oppressors and oppressed like this.  It's also disturbing to have read so many stories of oppression and genocide of Irish people by the English, assuming that I was descended from those who were oppressed, only to find out that I am descended more from the opposite side.

Most people who have lately been keeping up with my spiritual journey on this blog know that I am an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and that as such, I am seeking to establish my own cultural heritage and framework for the practice of my faith, just as Greeks have their ways and Slavic people have their ways.  For many years, my alleged Irish heritage was something I clung to for spiritual enrichment as I practiced my faith in various churches: first the Methodist and other mainline Protestant churches in which I grew up, later in the Roman Catholic tradition which I adopted in the early 1990's, and finally in the Eastern Orthodox Church of which I have now been a baptised member for fourteen years, fifteen this coming December.

The Eastern Orthodox Church is a beautiful faith expression, and the right one for me.  I love the Eastern Orthodox tradition and prayers.  However, to fill in that Western gap in myself, I have successfully reclaimed prayers, traditions, the Mass, and paraliturgical devotions of the Orthodox Western Rite into my prayer life.  One can say that I live a balanced life, spiritually, between the Eastern ways of the Church and the Western ways.  I now want to integrate all of this into a cultural framework that fits my blood and heritage.

That's my quest, and it's not an easy one within Eastern Orthodoxy.  Part of this is because of prejudice against Western Rite ways on the part of certain Eastern clergy, hierarchs and those of Slavic and Greek ancestry.  The other part of it that is difficult is the fact that these Western ways must be in conformity with the teaching and ecclesiology of the Orthodox Church. One therefore has to use a sifter when looking at Western rites and prayers, in order to find and utilise what is correct in this respect, versus what is considered erroneous.

I haven't found it hard to find the ways that fit theologically, because I actually have an excellent working knowledge of the fathers of the Church and the seven Ecumenical Councils.  I also have the nose of a bloodhound for what is or isn't correct theologically according to the teaching of the Orthodox Church.

Nay, what I'm finding difficult is the cultural aspect, in terms of finding my own Christian cultural framework in which to practice my faith.  The Greeks have their Greek traditions in Orthodoxy! The Russians have their Russian Orthodox traditions!  I want my British/Celtic/Norman/Germanic Orthodox traditions!  The Orthodox Church is for people of all backgrounds, not just Slavic and Greek.

People who respond to this with, "Well, the Greek and Slavic customs used to be the customs of the whole Church all over the world during the early times!" are being ignorant and shortsighted regarding the diversity within the undivided Church, especially during the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries with the conversion of Britain, Gaul, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and many Germanic lands.  The doctrine and general structure of the liturgy were all one in the Church during those times, but the smaller liturgical traditions and flavours in local churches of Western Europe and Eastern Europe were much more varied.  This is proven by looking at various forms of the Liturgy, or Mass, during those times: the Ambrosian Liturgy, the Mozarabic Liturgy, the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the Liturgy of St. Basil, the Liturgy of St. James, the Liturgy of St. Mark, the Sarum Liturgy. . .the list goes on.  This is also proven by writings of Western saints such as Venerable Bede and Benedict of Nursia. So, no, I don't buy into the "Everything was Eastern at one time" idea.  It's just flat wrong.

I am doing research to find the original Christian culture, from the point of conversion from paganism onward, for Scotland, Saxon England, Briton England before the Saxon invasion, Wales, Brittany, and Normandy.  That is going to be a long historical, archaeological journey.  Irish Christian spirituality from the Irish missionaries to those lands also figures in closely with all of this, because saints such as Patrick, Colunba and Aidan of Lindisfarne had such a powerful influence on the approach to the practice of Christian faith in those lands.

From a later standpoint, I also have something else in my heritage: plain, Southern American Christian culture.  There is an entire hymnody from that tradition as well, much of which has made its way into the Western liturgical tradition.

With the Norman heritage, there is Norse blood in there to consider.  From the German and Dutch standpoint, there are those traditions and hymns as well.  So, basically, we have the Germanic aspect of my Northern European blood to consider in this journey as well.

Again, why does this matter?  Because God made us not only as spiritual beings, but as flesh in His image.  Our bodies are connected to our souls, and hence our DNA and blood background is connected to our souls.  I believe that this connection between our DNA and blood and our souls manifests itself in certain spiritual tendencies in our journeys.

For a long time, I felt I had a spiritual connection to Ireland.  From a purely DNA standpoint, considering that the Hapla groups for England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia are pretty much the same, I still have that spiritual connection to Ireland.  But God has stripped me of the emotional veneer that I put upon this connection to Ireland, which I mistook for genuine spiritual connection and experience.

Here is a very good example of how our emotions and romanticism born thereof can mislead us when it comes to true spiritual reality and experience!  And alas for me, that I could not see the difference before in this particular instance!

It was my husband, ever wise, who helped me to see today that I had created this emotional, sentimental veneer that was passing itself off as my "Celtic soul." When stripped of this veneer because of the discovery that my blood was not wholly Celtic, and when further stripped of the specifically "Irish" veneer that I had painted upon myself through the adaptation of Irish Gaelic music and cultural customs, I felt like a tree with no leaves.

"Mother of God!" I cried out before the icon of the Theotokos Hodegetria today, after Lauds.  "Pray to God for me, who am adrift and stripped of what I held dear all these years!  Tell Him I want Him to give me back what is lost.  I need Him to fix this!" *(See note on this at the bottom of the article).

I then turned to the Crucifix, addressed our heavenly Father and said, "God! Give me back my leaves."

Silence.  Not a thought.  Not an idea.  No feeling.  Not a stir within. That's because the answer to my cry was in the icon itself.  To what does the hand of the Theotokos, the Holy Virgin Mary, point in the icon?  To the Baby Jesus!  To Christ!

It reminds me of what my mother wrote to me all those years ago when I was college, and I asked her why an autumnal equinox observance I had made was not of lasting fulfillment spiritually.  Her answer was, "All rituals must have Christ in their center to be of lasting effect spiritually."

So, I can continue to go on this quest of finding a cultural framework for my faith.  However, what God is calling me to do is to make certain that He is at the center of my quest, not "Irishness" or "Celtic ways."

It's all basically Matthew 6:33: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness.  And all these things shall be added unto you."

That also means being open to real spiritual experience in the soul, not sentimental, emotional veneers posing as such.  My husband also pointed out that I still have my connection to Celtic music, especially by blood because of the whole Hapla group thing. So, my connection to those Celtic hymns is not lost.  I just covered it up with the sentimental trappings. Maybe the real thing will be allowed to come out now.

I just realised that the image of being like a tree without leaves is an interesting one, as we enter into the fullness of autumn and the harvest season.

Today, I came across a raven in the road, a female raven eating carrion. In the Bible, the raven was the first bird to find land after the great flood.  In various Northern European mythological traditions, the raven symbolises letting go of old things to get ready for new things, old things dying to make way for new life, and general change.  In the Norse tradition, the raven was one of two companions of Odin, two ravens who were called Thought and Memory.  This means that in Scandinavian mythology, the raven symbolises a call to reflection on the past and the present.

Well, if I am drifting spiritually because of the removal of fake things I had built around myself, may the Lord grant that, like the raven after the flood, I find the land He has for me.  If I am being called to let go of old things, well, letting go of false ideas of ancestry and spiritual connection are certainly part and parcel of that.  If I am being called to reflect and remember, then that also fits into this time of learning who my ancestors were and actually thinking upon that and how it affects who I am.  It also fits with some memories of my parents that I needed to hear while I was visiting my family in Alabama this past week.

And so, I offer this prayer at this point in my journey, a prayer of the heart.

Lord God, heavenly Father: Thou art the Potter, I am the clay.  Thou art the Weaver, and I am the thread upon the loom.  Make me; form me; weave me as Thou wilt.

Lord God, Son of the Father, Word at the beginning of all creation: Thou art the Painter; I am Thine icon.  Draw me, paint me, give Thy colours unto me as Thou wilt.

Lord God, Holy Spirit, Comforter, Giver of Truth: All I have, Thou hast given me.  If I must fly, then give me wings.  If I must die, then help me live.  If I must change, then hover over the waters wherein I sail.

And may the end result be the words, "Let there be light!".  And may it be so.  And mayest Thou then say, "This is good."

In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord,
Amen.

*Eastern Orthodox Christians believe that Christ gave us His Mother (the Blessed Virgin Mary) and the saints to help us and pray for us, as Resurrected members of the Body of Christ.  So, we ask the Virgin Mary, the holy prophets and the saints who have gone before us to pray for us.  Christ is the Head of the Church, of which these Resurrected people are a part.  Asking the saints for intercession is not putting them above Christ, because He says in the Gospel, "Wherever two or three are gathered in My Name, there am I in the midst of them."  They cannot be above Him when He is in their midst!  He also makes references to the saints and angels being gathered in heaven, and rejoicing over one repentant sinner.  There are many Scriptural references regarding intercessory prayer of those who have gone before, in both the Old and New Testaments.  The other thing is that "Mother of God" does not mean that the Virgin Mary is mother of the Father.  It means that she is the Mother of Christ, Who is God because He is the Second Person of the Trinity.  See John: 1: 1.  Anyway, this is a bit of clarification for readers belonging to other churches who don't have intercessory prayer by saints and angels as part of their tradition.

Genealogical Discoveries from Actual Ancestral Records Shake My World!

Celtic cross from the isle of Iona, Scotland

Wow! I've been thrown a real curve ball in my search for my spiritual ancestral heritage, my Western cultural heritage with which I seek to frame my Orthodox Christian practice as Greeks, Russians, and Serbs can frame theirs. While I was in Alabama visiting my immediate family, I saw our family tree: actual records of our ancestors. Much to my surprise and, to a large extent, dismay, I have found that I am NOT Irish! I am only Irish insofar as the Hosey family name is the name of a Norman line, also called Hussey or de Houssaye, which settled in Ireland during the 1200's. I knew that I was Norman-Irish, if anything. But what I didn't know is that there appears to be no pure Irish blood in me whatsoever! So far, I haven't traced but one ancestor back to Ireland and he was Scottish; his father moved to Dublin in the late 1600's. Having actually done genealogical research and traced several ancestral lines back, this is what I have discovered: some Welsh blood, a lot of English blood with Anglo-Saxon roots and Norman roots, a bit of Scottish, a bit of Dutch, and a bit of German. Here's some information on my ancestral heritage according to residence of documented ancestors.

Welsh St. David's Cross, Pembrokeshire

THE NAME HOSEY: Here is a link all about the Hosey surname, both in Ireland and in England. The Hosey surname, also spelled Hussey, de Houssaye and Hosea, is a Norman name. Hoseys settled in County Meath, Ireland, during the 1100's and 1200's. Others in the family, however, stayed in Kent, England. They came to Kent from Normandy, of course, after 1066 A.D., the Norman conquest of England.

https://www.houseofnames.com/hosey-family-crest/Irish -- Irish settlement of Hoseys

https://www.houseofnames.com/Hosey-family-crest -- English settlement of Hoseys

The Irish version of our surname, Ó hEódhusa, is one that I've clung to all these years. But I can't find proof that I belong to the line that settled in Ireland because I can't trace my Hosey ancestors prior to 1675 in Norfolk, Virginia, colonial British America.

WELSH & A TINY BIT OF SCOTTISH ON MY FATHER'S SIDE

My father's line of Hosey, thus far, can only be traced back as far as a John Davidson Hosea who died in Norfolk, VA in 1675. There's a Welsh side of the Hosey family from my paternal grandmother's line, the Logans. Logan is originally a Norman name, de Logan, but my grandmother's line actually is traced back to Pennard, Wales in 1557 through an ancestor named Silas George. There's a matrilineal line in the George ancestry that has the name Powell and goes back to Lydbury North, Shropshire, England, in the year 1515. On the Logan side, there is also a John Logan (1689-1777), who was born in Dublin, Leinster, Ireland and died in Washington, Litchfield, Connecticut. His father, John Logan, Sr., was born in Scotland in 1647.

Dutch Delft tile of the Crucifixion from 18th-century Rotterdam

DUTCH AND BELGIAN ON MY FATHER'S SIDE:

The Dutch line of the Hosey family begins with Alida Lydia Pruyn from Albany, NY (1707-1788). She married Andrew Lendrick Logan (1705-1788) from Albany, NY. He is the great-great-great-great grandfather of my dad James Hosey on his grandmother's side, the Logans.

Alida Pruyn's family descends from Johannes Pruyn of Albany, 1667-1749. He was the son of Frans Janse Pruyn, born in Holland, Reusel-de-Mierden, Noordbrabant, Netherlands in 1638 and died in Albany, NY, British Colonial America, in 1712.

His father, Johannes Pruyn (1617-1712) was born in Gelderland, Netherlands and died in Albany, NY, Colonial America. HIS father was Johannes Pruyn from Antwerp, Belgium, born there in 1585, date and location of death unknown.

German Hezilo cross, before 1079 A.D.

GERMAN ON MY MOTHER'S SIDE FROM THE HEADLEY FAMILY: Mom's maiden name was Scott. Her mother's maiden name was Headley, Simmie Headley. Simmie's mother was Ada Ware Headley.

Ada Roselyn Ware married Albert Clayton Headley (1873-1940). She was my great-grandmother on my mom's side. The German side of Ada Ware's family can be traced from Ada's mother, Catherine Ophelia Click (1850-1940) all the way back to Peter Vankleek, who was born in Germany in 1678 and died in 1794, location of death unlisted. His son was Baltas Click (also listed Kleek). from Alsace-Lorraine, and Baltas died on the ship to Philadelphia on September 26, 1732.

More German ancestry comes through the Culp line from the Headley family, starting with James Thomas Headley (1846-1921), who married Elizabeth Tirsie Culp (1842-1894). James Thomas Headley's descendants were Albert Clayton Headley (1873-1940), married to Ada Roselyn Ware (born 1876, death date not listed). (Again, Albert and Ada were Simmie Headley Scott's parents).

So, through Simmie, there's a long German line going all the way back to Bayern, Germany in the 1500's. That Bavarian ancestor's name is Martin Heinrich Kolb (1560-1620). His grandfather was Hans Dieter Kolb (1522-1601), from Ludwigshafen, Rheinland-Pfatz. Germany.

Hans Dieter's grandfather was Heinz der Jung Kolb, 1460-1538, from Unterwaiz, Oberfranken, Bayern Lande, Deutschland. His grandfather was Hans Kolb, from the same place, living from 1382-1440. Hans Kolb's father was Fritz Kolb, from the same place, 1350-1404.

One of the Headley ancestors was a bishop of some sort, but it's not clear whether Protestant or Catholic. My guess would be Protestant. His name is listed on the familysearch.org website as "Reverand, Bishop Peter Schumacher Kolb." (Yes, that's how 'reverend' is spelled; it must be 18th-century English spelling). He was born in 1671, in Wolfsheim, Mainz-Bingen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany. He died in 1727 in Pennsylvania, on September 5. I wonder if he was Amish?

So, on the patrilineal side, the Headley German line goes back from Simmie's grandmother, Elizabeth Tirsie Culp (1842-1894) to Fritz Kolb in 14th-century Germany!

SCOTTISH ON MY MOTHER'S SIDE:

There's a line on the Scott side, my maternal grandfather's side, that can be traced back to 17th-century Scotland (i.e., the 1600's).

Anglo-Saxon reliquary cross, 11th century

THE POPWELLS ON MY FATHER'S SIDE: ANGLO-SAXONS!

First of all, Popwell is an Anglo-Saxon name, derived from "popel" which means "pebble" in Anglo-Saxon, and "weilas," which is Saxon for "well." Together, those two Saxon words are "popel-weilas," which means "Pebble-well."

So far, I've traced the Popwells back to England. According to Irish surname lists, however, both Popwells and Hoseys are listed as families that settled in Ireland at some point.

DNA: The DNA Hapla groups of all these European, Welsh, English and Scottish ancestors is the same, according to current scientific research, as that of the Irish. The exception is that there are some variances in some Irish DNA caused by the presence of Basque heritage.

CONCLUSION: I can only consider myself as belonging to Celtic heritage insofar as the Welsh and Scottish roots go, from what I've found thus far in actual genealogical records, and insofar as Irish monks travelled to many of the areas in question--Wales, Germany, England--to spread the word of God. But I can not really call myself Irish, in the pure sense of the word. And with the Norman side of Hosey and Logan, which cannot be substantiated completely unless I can trace those lines back to before the 16th century, I could have a teeny bit of Norse heritage. My eldest sister Carol Hosey Spencer had a teeny bit of Swedish in her DNA, but mostly English. My eldest brother Mike Hosey had almost all English DNA.

Anyway, what a blow! I've grown up keeping Irish traditions, singing songs in Irish, and pursuing a Celtic flavour of my Orthodox Christianity according to that supposed heritage. I feel pretty adrift now, and it's not a good feeling to have, after I've clung to things Irish all these years. But I will continue my quest, and I won't give things Celtic. It's just that I can't claim Irish Celtic roots by blood, though by DNA it apparently makes no difference because of the matching Hapla groups. Also, my Western heritage is open to all sorts of things now, with that Germanic/Anglo-Saxon side and that Dutch/Flemish strain. I guess I just have to describe myself now as Northern European.

It is interesting that in the past year, I've developed an interest in the Anglo-Saxon Sanctorale and saints, as well as an interest in learning Anglo-Saxon and Dutch. I wondered why I, who was supposed to be Irish, was interested in such things.

St. Patrick wasn't Irish. A lot of people say he was Welsh. Anyway, who am I? Not who I thought I was, at least not ancestrally.

Why does all this matter? Why not just cling to Christ and forget all this stuff about heritage? Well, in the end, Christ is all that matters. However, Christ also made us who we are in terms of blood and ancestry, and who we are as people is sacred because God made us that way. So, knowing who we are as we walk with Christ is important. He doesn't ask us to give up who we are to follow Him. He asks us to surrender who we are to be transformed and transfigured by His grace, but He doesn't ask us to completely obliterate all sense of self and our uniqueness as individuals.

Grimbald Gospel evangelist portrait, Anglo-Saxon

French or Flemish pendant from circa 1400

German medieval processional cross

Dutch altar crucifix, 19th century

Talking to My Husband About Recent Spiritual Developments On My Path

This morning, I spent some time talking to my husband about spiritual matters. He and I spiritually advise each other. We are what is referred to in the Irish patristic tradition as "soul-friends" or "anamgcarad," the plural of "anamcara" or "soul friend." "Anam" is the Irish word for "soul." "Cara" is the word for "friend." Soul friends mutually advise each other and listen to each other, as they share their Christian walk day to day and grow. There is a spiritual connection between their souls because they contribute to each other's life in the Faith, hence the term "soul friend." It's kind of like having a spiritual father, but unlike that tradition, it does not involve concepts of monastic obedience; the decision to take advice is the choice of each person. This is especially true when the anamcairdeas (soul friendship) is between two lay people, or in this case, between an Orthodox Subdeacon and his wife. David is a wise anamcara. Today, I told him I felt adrift because I no longer had the Benedictine Oblate label to cling to, and I was clinging to that label because I thought it would make me safer around people. The thing is that when one is a nonconformist like me, an artsy kind of a person who doesn't fit into a lot of other people's cogs, a square peg, we often don't feel safe due to past negative reactions of people to who we are. So, words like "Goth" and "Benedictine" are labels that allow people to categorize folks like me. Then, being able to put me into a category makes them feel more secure and hence makes me safer from their reactions to the fact that I'm a bit off the beaten path. That's the theory, anyway. But the truth is, my husband said, that a persona does not stave off the effects of rejection if people choose not to accept someone. A persona merely delays the inevitable, because people are either going to accept you or not. So, he posed the question,"Why the need for narrow-minded people to accept you anyway? Why do you need them?". He said that instead of feeling adrift, I can rejoice in my freedom to just be me, without some label to explain myself to others. He also said that this freedom of being ourselves and navigating our own prayer life is part and parcel of Orthodoxy. A lot of times, as a cradle Orthodox Christian, he has observed that converts come into the faith with a need to impose the rigours of their previous churches onto themselves and others; they think that being Orthodox means you have to express control over others by saying, "THIS and THIS ALONE is the way to be Orthodox." But in fact, to embrace the mindset of Orthodoxy, one needs to embrace the richness and variety that is in the faith. One doesn't need to give up the prayers of the West that work in conformity with the faith, like the Rule of St. Benedict or pre-Schism Western prayers. One can do like I do, and integrate these things with the Eastern Orthodox Horologion and traditions. One does not need a label or persona to do that; it's about what doing what works. "Rejoice in your freedom, and be yourself," David says. Wise man. So, I will still pray the Rule of St. Benedict in addition to the Horologion, like I've been doing, because that benefits me. I will still use the label of Goth, because to an extent it's true of me, though I'm not into the darker things associated with that movement. But there's no need to use labels for self-defense, according to David. I don't know if I entirely agree, because my experience has been that if you don't give people some label to categorize you, they'll put their own label on you like "witch" and come after you. Usually, this is not done physically in this day and age, but rather is done emotionally, socially and professionally. I know, because I have experienced that, even to the extent that I have lost a job or two in the past because of it. Professionalese for "She's a witch! Burn her!" is "You don't fit into our vision of this school/church/company" or "You have such unique gifts; you really belong somewhere else."  So, I still am not sure that being without labels is safe. But he thinks it's better to just be oneself without them. I'll have to ponder on that.

Reflection on Some Creepy Stalker-like Behaviour I Encountered Today on Facebook, and How It Has Affected a Spiritual Decision for Me

I am left saddened by an incident that happened with the Benedictine Oblates group on Facebook this afternoon, and as a result I left the group. I was deeply shaken by a guy from that group who behaved like a stalker on my personal Facebook page. I will summarize what happened by posting here what I posted on Facebook about the incident this afternoon. I have put this post in italics, so that anyone who has already read it may skip it and proceed to the next paragraph.

"Wow! I just got dropped and blocked by a guy who was acting like a total creep. He was someone that I befriended from the Benedictine Oblates page. There were several things he did that made me uncomfortable: (1) Just after befriending me two days ago, he instantly got on Private Messenger with me, sending me constant messages with personal information about himself and asking me rather personal things about myself, and sometimes he sent me messages after midnight. (2) He spoke against my husband because I'm trying to honour my husband's spiritual advice to me in my Christian walk (especially since my husband is my anamcara), and because I follow Biblical principles in marriage. He referred to my husband as controlling. (3) He just now asked for me to send him a photograph of the tops of my hands and the tops of my feet, because he supposedly has a scientific interest in my hands and feet as a practitioner of reflexology. What the devil?! I pointed out to him that his request was a highly irregular one for him, as a single man, to make of a married woman. When my husband objected, he accused my husband of controlling my life. I got onto this creep for not having more respect for my marriage. The end result? He said, via PM, "Have fun being a slave to a controlling dictator." What a jerk! I'm glad that he did drop and block me, because I don't want someone like that on my page. Whether he agrees with my model of marriage or not and my husband being my anamcara, he was being way too personal for a Facebook new acquaintance. A man should not ask a married lady to send him pictures of her feet, especially if he just met her online. As for my husband's instincts about the guy, I completely trust them because my husband is the son of a cop and he's always an impeccable judge of character. Good God, but I do attract some loonies sometimes."

I know that a whole group, such as a large Benedictine Oblate group on Facebook, cannot be considered responsible for what happened with one nutcase. But what happened today brought back a memory that I had buried and thought that I had quite gotten over: the memory of being physically seized by a Benedictine monk at a Catholic Benedictine monastery on retreat, when I was a young woman during the early 1990's, during which the monk tried to force me to kiss him. I will speak of this now, on this blog, because I want other women who have experienced this type of thing to know that they are not alone. Like many young women who go through that sort of thing, I didn't report the monk at the time to the abbot or the police because I blamed myself for his actions. Besides, he had not actually tried to rape me, just to kiss me. I thought it was my fault for having talked to him too late at night on the terrace, which I did because I thought he was a lonely, sad person in need of my listening ear, hence his accosting me on my way to the dormitory. I further reflected, after the incident, that perhaps my trendy summer dress was too immodest for him, and that he had been tempted beyond his strength. So I left the incident unreported, with the result that he continued to follow me about the monastery and pass by my bedroom door every night as I stayed there for the retreat. There was another monk at that same monastery who pursued me in an inappropriate manner as well, though he did so through written communication instead of physically pursuing me. I once again blamed myself, because I had reached out to him when one of his monastic brothers said he was depressed. I had buried the memory of these past events, more or less, and tried not to think about them, especially since the monk who tried to kiss me is now long dead and the other one ran off from the monastery and was never heard from again. But today's incident with the creepy guy in the Oblates group made those past incidents all come back to me. Because I found myself shaken and brought back to those memories, I have decided that this is one reason out of two that I am NOT called to be a Benedictine Oblate in the Orthodox Western Rite. I will continue to pray the Rule of St. Benedict, but I will not seek Oblatehood because I cannot be certain that I will not run into more nutcases if I associate myself with a monastic congregation. I know that many Benedictine monasteries are filled with wonderful holy people who have a true vocation and can be an inspiration to Oblates. But, in my experience not only with that Benedictine house but with a couple of Greek monastic communities, monasteries also can have some people who have sought solace in the monastic vocation because they are not sound of mind. Three creepy guys--those two monks from the 1990's and today's creep from the Oblates group--are enough to turn a woman off from wanting to be associated with a monastic congregation in a lay "third order" capacity such as Oblatehood. There are two things that I don't need in my life: (1) I don't need to subject myself to the possibility of encountering crazy guys who might behave inappropriately towards me and insult my honour. (2) I don't need anyone exerting control over my spiritual life and prayer life in the name of spiritual direction. This incident and some wise words from my original Irish spiritual father this past week, words about ploughing my own furrow instead of letting other people dictate who they think I should be, have helped me come to my decision tonight. My husband was right to be concerned about my spiritual freedom and my safety. I will continue to pray the Rule of St. Benedict, but I will not seek any more to be an Oblate. I think that my husband as a soul-friend and Fr. Photius as father-confessor are sufficient for me. What makes me sad, however, is that I have lost yet again an opportunity to have some sort of spiritual community of people sharing my path and journey. I'm beginning to think that my calling is to be the woman living on the outskirts of the village, with the raven and the owl as my companions, who gets periodically consulted by people with particular questions. Every attempt I have ever made at having a spiritual community about me has failed, but maybe that's because God doesn't want that for me. Maybe I'm called to be solitary, like the aforementioned raven and owl. So, I'll just serve the Church through music, minister in that capacity as I'm called, love people when I see them, and continue friendships that I have forged. But otherwise, I will stay out in the woods where I belong.

How Things Have Changed for Me Since My Last Post: Church and Professional Experiences in the Past Few Years

     Today is Tuesday in the Octave of the Dormition. The Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God was on August 15.  A lot has happened between my last post and now, and I can't even begin to fill my readers in on all that has occurred.  There have been so many changes, and I myself have grown and changed.  I believe that my last post was sometime in 2015.  Well, there have been some new happenings since then! (One would hope so).

       For one thing, I look a lot better than I used to, because I changed my diet as well as my profession.  I also changed from the Russian Orthodox parish to which I belonged in 2015 to my former Orthodox parish before that, a parish of the Orthodox Church of America. Returning to my old parish has been enormously better for me spiritually, as well as for my husband. Here are a couple of current pictures of me. If you compare this to my initial photo on this blog, you will see the difference. The first photo is of me at the beginning of Lent this year. The second is my most recent photo, for the Feast of the Dormition this year.

     The result of getting out of teaching, a profession in which I really didn't belong socially or spiritually, is that I now do work that is right and fulfilling for me.  The result of leaving the ROCOR parish to which I belonged in 2015 is that I am now in a place that is more congruent with what I need spiritually.  

     Regarding my experiences of priests in the past fourteen years, allow me to elaborate on a subject that needs to be broached. Priests need to know that women can often be quite tender and sensitive in soul, and if priests decide to berate us spiritually during Confession or give us "tough love" or tell us "the truth" about ourselves--which they usually have patently wrong because they really can't see into our souls, such methods will more often hurt us than help us.  We will leave Confession feeling spiritually battered.  For example, suppose a priest tells a woman that she is filled with vanity just because she likes to wear her hair in a nice style or wear jewelry.  Well, in actual fact, most women do not wear their hair nicely or wear jewelry out of vanity.  We wear jewelry and do our hair prettily for one main reason: we're female!  It is in the female nature to appreciate, create and foster beauty.  Very few of us are really and truly vain.  In fact, most of us are self-conscious about our appearance, quite the opposite of being vain.  Anyway, the bit about vanity is just a small example of things a priest can say to a woman which are more hurtful than helpful. (And it was one of several unhelpful things said to me over the years in various confession experiences). In any case, I now do fairly well interacting with my current priest, though I have decided to avoid ever totally giving my trust to a priest again, after some things I have experienced over the past few years.  We shouldn't trust priests that much anyway.  Our trust should be in God: trust not in princes or in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation (Ps. 145/146: 3). 

     Having now returned to our old OCA parish back in February of 2016, I feel overall like I am getting what I really need at church.  At the previous parish, I got badly hurt; I often felt like my heart's blood was shed every time I opened the door and went in there.  I'm going to briefly tell the story here without any names being mentioned, either of the parish or the people referred to here.  Anyone from that parish reading this blog article should realise that I am telling this story from my own point of view, through the lens of having been spiritually and emotionally hurt there.  But I will try to be as gentle as possible in my rendition of the situation. 

     When we originally transferred from the OCA parish to the ROCOR one, that OCA parish (the one to which I've now returned) was undergoing serious problems that we couldn't handle, and our faith had been adversely affected by those problems.  (Those problems are gone and fully rectified now). We went to the ROCOR parish because we thought that perhaps an Old Calendar parish would be better for us, and it seemed like the best thing to do at the time.

     To be fair, the ROCOR parish was good for a while.  But by the fourth year, things were starting to get toxic for us with some key people there, and I was increasingly getting hurt there spiritually and emotionally.  It's really very simple: the parish was run mostly by the priest and his family members, and we ended up on the outs with him and a couple of them who were involved in the main ministries of the parish.  From that time forward, our experience there became a downhill journey.  I will not play the blame game.  It takes two to tango, and I'm sure that they felt like there were as many problems on our side as we felt there were on theirs.  There are things about our family that are actually not easy for everyone to deal with, mainly that we have two mentally disabled adults at home for whom we are caregivers, and those adults have ensuing health and social problems that can get overwhelming for anyone who is not accustomed to dealing with such things.   There were some genuine acts of kindness done to our family by the priest and his family.  All I can say is that we fell out with him and some of them at the end, and we are still in the process of healing.  The situation was exacerbated by a terrible personal tragedy that the priest and his family went through, just after we left their parish. That is about the sum of what happened, and not much more can be said.  

      At our OCA parish now, my husband no longer serves behind the altar as a Subdeacon.  He did not get laicized, in case anyone who reads this post has heard otherwise.  He just retired, which he is allowed to do in the OCA.  The main reason he retired was his gout, not being able to stand through the services.  But he also retired because he got too spiritually and emotionally frustrated behind the altar, at both parishes where he served.

    I will sum up my husband's experiences as a Subdeacon in the Orthodox parishes where he served, because this is something that needs to be said. Speaking generally of both those parishes, my husband felt that he was being constantly criticized and blamed behind the altar for one thing or another, and that he was not listened to or respected when he tried to explain the situation from his point of view.  What I observed, generally, was that both priests at both parishes decided to dislike my husband and find fault with him.  They turned their faces against him.  

     Some of this was actually my fault, because I told those priests personal things that I should not have told them, things that were too personal about some difficulties in our family at the time.  My excess of personal information caused those priests and their wives to judge my husband, and this is how I learned a very hard but valuable lesson: NEVER talk to your pastor about your marriage's normal ups and downs or anything else so personal, and NEVER talk to your pastor about your family's financial situation.  Do not talk about these things with your fellow parishioners either. Ask people to pray for you by all means, but don't tell them what the prayers are for; rather, keep all family and financial information strictly private at church, as much as possible.  That's my advice.  Being able to rely on church members for support in difficult times is a nice ideal, but in my experience, it's only that-- an ideal.  Ideals and reality are two different things.  Human beings are in too fallen and sinful a state to avoid passing unjust judgment on each other, especially when too many personal matters are revealed at church.  Very few Christians are really strong enough to bear each other's burdens. You may think me cynical for saying this.  I'm only speaking from experience.

     There was also another thing that I am going to mention because it needs to be said, as a cautionary tale to priests:  at one particular parish I attended, there was so much exactitude going on then, so much obsession with absolute liturgical correctness, that I was routinely corrected publicly whenever I made any mistake with  directing the choir for the Saturday night vigil. Every time I made a mistake in the very long, complicated Vigil service, like maybe singing the wrong sessional hymn or Theotokion, I was corrected in front of the choir and the congregation.  I don't care what the justification was for that behaviour! It was wrong. First of all, it was demoralizing and embarrassing for me.  Secondly, it undercut my authority as a choir director and led the younger members of the choir to think that they could get away with behaving disruptively while I was directing.  Thirdly, I didn't make mistakes massive enough to warrant such public correction.  I just read a wrong troparion in the canon every now and then, which was natural since I was usually sight-reading the music most of the time and had the materials for the service given to me only a short time before Vigil.  Fourthly, correcting me in front of other people like that was UNPROFESSIONAL. I reject as utter garbage the idea of such things teaching me humility! Humility is one thing, humiliation another. Priests, if you treat your choir directors in that way, you will lose them, and deservedly so.  Corrections need to be made outside of service and privately, not in tones of thinly-veiled irritation, in front of the congregation.  This treatment by the priest and deacon of that parish played a big role in my decision to leave it.

     Now, the ensuing result of all this, changing parishes and getting our present jobs, is that my husband and I are healthier, happier and more at peace than we ever have been before. Our return to our former OCA parish was unquestionably the right move for us. It's also closer to our home and our jobs.  

     I work as the Organist-Choirmaster and Director of Music at a traditionalist Rite One Episcopal parish. Overall, my job is enormously less stressful and more fulfilling for me than teaching was. I'm not sick all the time the way I was before.  The hours of my job are more flexible to accommodate certain health issues I have with my respiratory system and immune responses.  Best of all, I'm doing the work I feel God has truly called me to do.  I should have been doing it all along, the work of church music ministry instead of school teaching.  

     Allow me to disgress a moment about why I stopped being a school music teacher, and wouldn't go back into teaching if I were offered five million dollars a year to do so--not unless it were maybe a college professorship. While I had some good moments in teaching and some great students in various schools, the truth is that going into teaching was a mistake for me.  I should never have done it, because in the end I turned out to be emotionally, physically, and spiritually unfit for that type of work.  In an eighteen-year teaching career that grew progressively more difficult every year with almost every school in which I worked, I experienced far too often the following things: (1) unsupportive administrations, (2) administrations that didn't understand teaching elementary music and choir and what it entailed, (3) a progressive increase of administrative paperwork (like curriculum mapping, etc). that took so much time out of my regular classroom duties that my workdays became 10 hours long just trying to keep up with stuff like lesson plans, (4) unsupportive fellow teachers who routinely hurt my feelings, talked about me behind my back, or complained about me behind my back, and (5) increasingly disobedient and disrespectful students in the classroom whose behaviour I was supposed to somehow overlook or whitewash, with increasingly namby-pamby language being used by administrators and workshop leaders to explain why traditional methods of discipline could not be used anymore in today's schools.  Granted, there were some supportive fellow teachers and good people I met. I am still friends with those people today.  But overall, the teaching experience got worse and worse every year.  Then, my immune system collapsed because I was teaching at multiple schools in the end, and I was thus being exposed to multiple respiratory diseases.  At that point, I could not have continued teaching even had I wanted to do so.  

     I begged the most holy Mother of God to pray to the Lord Jesus for me in a special way, and I prayed to Christ that He might please direct me towards the kind of work that was right for me.  I also added, crying out to Christ Jesus, that all I had ever wanted to do was serve Him in musically in a church!  Well, exactly two months later, a new position opened for me in a field I never dreamed I would re-enter: full-time church music ministry for a salary, rather than just a stipend or as a volunteer.  This was the field I had started out in originally, but I had supplemented it with teaching because of low pay in my church work (a different story having to do with gender discrimination which I'll tell some other time).  I supplemented the church music ministry work with teaching music in Catholic schools, but eventually turned away from Church music as a profession because I didn't think I could still do that kind of work as a member of the Orthodox Church.  I actually found out, when this new position in church music ministry opened so smoothly and quickly for me at the end of my teaching career, that I could indeed work in that type of position and still be Orthodox as long as I had two things: (1) an understanding Orthodox pastor and parish; (2) an understanding employer who accepted that I can only take Communion in the Orthodox Church, and who accepted that having time to attend Orthodox services was vital to remaining in good standing within my faith community. I found both of those things, thanks be to God.

     However, when I changed professions from teaching to full-time professional church music ministry in May of 2016, I got a lot of negative feedback from some fellow Orthodox Christians who thought I was abandoning the Orthodox Church by doing church music ministry work in a church of a different confession.  But I have not left the Orthodox Church at all, as most of my readers know. I still receive Communion regularly in the Orthodox Church, and I am a member at my parish (the aforementioned OCA parish) in good standing.  My husband is also a member in good standing, and he also receives Communion at our OCA parish.  He works as the business administrator of that same Episcopal church where I work.  

     Here's the thing: these are our jobs.  They are not some kind of attempt to leave the Orthodox Church or betray it, unlike what some overly zealous fellow Orthodox Christians have suggested.  I also must mention that if the Orthodox Church on the whole would pay its choir directors a living wage, and this were made a professional standard in all Orthodox dioceses, then those of us who make our living by directing church music would not be compelled to seek employment at other churches.   The proper payment of staff and lay ministers is something that needs to be addressed some day by Orthodox bishops in a synod.

     I also feel very strongly that the talents God gave me, along with the Bachelor's and Master's Degrees He provided through His providence, are better used at my current job than they were in my previous music positions, especially in the schools.  Teaching music in the schools was not a true or full usage of what God had given me, for two reasons: (1) The constant respiratory and throat diseases I caught from the students almost ruined my singing voice completely.  (2) Sometimes, I also hurt my feet and hands dealing with work in the classroom, and there were several times when I was not physically safe in classrooms because the students were being allowed to act like hooligans with little intervention or support from the administration. Suffice it to say that by the end of my teaching career, my musical talents in the schools were used being far less than skills in babysitting and crowd control.  Suffice it to say that I ceased to feel safe as an employee in any school system, private or public.

    So, at the Episcopal church where I now work, I play the organ, direct the choir, teach the choir liturgical music in their Anglican tradition, help support the parishioners through prayer and music, and I administrate the music program.  I run the music program by planning the music for all services, scheduling all rehearsals and musical events, managing repairs to instruments, building up the music budget, typing and graphically designing the service leaflet, and writing blog articles on music and organ playing for the church's website.  I also have a weekly newletter with spiritual reflections on the hymns of the week, which I send out to the choir and other people who follow the music program at the church. As for my husband's job, he answers the phone, helps parishioners with information they need for church services and events, keeps the books, handles accounts, does administrative desk work for the parish under the pastor's supervision, and acts as a sort of security person regarding the alarm system and other safety issues.  

    We believe that God placed us in these jobs through the prayers of the Theotokos, and we are not working in any capacity which conflicts with our practice of our Eastern Orthodox faith.  This is especially true in my case, since the form of the Mass used at this Episcopal church is almost identical to the Western Rite Orthodox Mass of St. Tikhon. I can use my little Western Rite Orthodox prayer book, the St. Ambrose Prayer Book, and follow right along every Sunday with hardly a glitch, except that the Prayers of the People in the Episcopal Mass are before the Offertory instead of during it. As for the problems that the Episcopal Church has overall, some serious issues which are at odds with the teachings of the Orthodox Church, the parish where we work--and the Episcopal diocese in which we work, overall--does not support the new innovations of recent Episcopal conventions.  The parish where we work shares the beliefs of the Orthodox Church regarding the nature of marriage according to the Bible, and other issues regarding family life.  The priests and parishioners where we work have a very sound Scriptural approach to the Christian faith, with a healthy knowledge of commentary by the Church fathers and writers such as C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton.  All of these things make this little Episcopal church a great place to be for earning our daily bread!  It's very hard these days to find a place of employment that upholds the same values as oneself and one's family.

    The fruits of our labours are the most telling about the rightness of our choices.  We have been healthy physically, overall, much more so than we used to be.  We have been solid financially. We have experienced love and understanding at our work place that we have never had before with any other employer.

     Regarding our participation in the Orthodox Church, we have been able to grow spiritually at our OCA parish, even though we can't always be there for services except during the weekdays.  There has been cross-pollination between our work at our jobs and our spiritual growth, especially for me since I have become a Western Rite Orthodox Benedictine oblate in my prayer rule.  Though I remain in the Eastern jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church, being Serbian Orthodox in culture and New Calendar OCA in practice, I have the blessing of my priest to combine the Rule of St. Benedict with my prayers from the Eastern Horologion.  As a result of having my own Western spiritual heritage restored to me, I am flourishing spiritually, because I don't feel like half of me has been forcibly ripped out. Once, I had an overzealous priest who made me give up everything Western when I was newly baptized.  That really wasn't good for me spiritually.  By the way, the restoration of my Western heritage began at the ROCOR parish where I was from 2011 to 2016, something for which I will always be grateful to them.  From that point, the restoration of my Irish and Norman spiritual heritage has really taken off and blossomed in the past three years.  

      Also, I feel like I have more spiritual freedom now, whereas before in my previous parish, I felt like I was being pressured to do things that I couldn't physically handle, like having to attend a three-hour vigil in order to receive Communion or attend an evening Vespers every time I wanted to receive from the Chalice.  I found that practice to be too much for me in the ROCOR approach to Orthodoxy, which is why I will not go to another ROCOR parish, even though there is great beauty in the Russian tradition.  I can't handle those longer services. It makes me ill because of my health issues, and spiritually, I feel like I'm burning a rope at two ends.  Some people can handle that kind of rigour.  I cannot.  I need to get proper rest and do my Communion preparation and praying of Vespers at home. Besides, there is also the aforementioned fact that my husband and I are caregivers to two disabled family members who live with us, and we really can't be away from home at night.

     So, this concludes what is essentially both a fill-in on the past years' events, and also what is honestly a cathartic rant.  I have said things that I felt needed to be said.  I hope that if anyone entering the Orthodox priesthood reads this, or any new priests, you will profit by some of the experiences I've shared.  There is a lot of hurt expressed here. But I also hope that you will take away from this post the fact that I am now pretty much happy and at peace.

     One last point: I talked a lot about what I can and can't handle.  Being able to understand our spiritual limitations and levels of endurance is essential to maintaining a healthy prayer life.  If fasting, long services, standing for long periods or anything else is making one burned out, physically sick or dysfunctional spiritually, then such practices need to be revisited with one's father-confessor and probably jettisoned.  These things are supposed to be a means to an end, not the end itself.  All Christians need to be cautious about taking on spiritual disciplines that might be too much for them. 

      That's all for tonight.  God bless! 

Female Head Covering in the Orthodox Church & the Role of Women in the Christian East: My Personal Perspective

    Greetings in our Risen Lord!  Christ is Risen!  It is the almost the end of the Paschal season in the year 2015, and I have not written an article for my blog in a long time.  The past year has been very busy, and the pace did not slacken with the coming of 2015.  I have been very busy.
     As Pascha draws to a close, however, I have been reflecting on the prayers and pious customs of my faith.  I thought that I would share one particular custom that is often misunderstood in our day and age: the practice of a Christian woman covering her head in the Orthodox Christian tradition.  The Orthodox Christian approach to the practice of women covering their heads is quite different from that of other traditions, such as Amish and Mennonite.  Many people in today's modern world think of covering the head as a sign of female subjugation, but in the Orthodox Church it is the opposite: the head covering is a sign of female authority and honour.  First, I will briefly explain the Orthodox reasons for female head-coverings in church.  Then, I will share with you my own journey on how I became a woman who not only covers her head in church, but all the time.  I will also share my own perspective about how I cover my head, and why I don't cover all of my hair like some full-time head-coverers do.  I will present the facts in a question and answer format.

     Question 1:  Why do Orthodox Christian women cover their heads in church? 

     First, I will tell you what our head-covering custom is not.  It is NOT a sign of submission to men, or a symbol of submission to our husbands.  From what I've read about Amish and Mennonite traditions, I understand that submission to the husband is very much a part of their head-covering tradition.  I cannot emphasize enough that this is not the case in Orthodox Christianity, and I find myself getting piqued when people outside of the Church make assumptions that because I cover my head, I am an oppressed  victim of sexism with no rights and second-class status.  No, no, and again, no!

    Woman in the Orthodox Church has an exalted status, because it was through a woman that Christ chose to become incarnate of the Father.  Jesus could have come into the world any way He wanted.  He could have appeared in a flash of lightning.  He could have descended in bodily form from heaven to earth.  He could have simply appeared in a ball of light and fire right in the middle of Jerusalem, on a white horse with rich robes and apparel to show Himself as King and Messiah.  However, He did not choose that way at all.  Instead, He chose to be born of a woman, and to endure all the challenges, pains, and other great difficulties of the human experience.  He chose to be born incarnate as God and man simultaneously, so that He could raise up our human nature to the Divine.  To this end, He chose a Jewish maiden, the Most Holy Virgin Mary, to be the one who bore Him in her womb.  She bore the Creator of all, the Word, the Logos from the beginning of time, in her humble human womb.  A lot of people in various Christian confessions do not fully consider just how immense it is that the Lord our God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, was incarnate in the womb of a human woman.

     She also chose of her own free will to do this.  With the severe penalties that were imposed upon young women who bore children outside of wedlock in the ancient Jewish Middle East, she could have become afraid and refused when the Archangel Gabriel announced to her that she would bear the Messiah.  Then, the Gospel passage of the Annunciation would have been about a woman who didn't have enough faith in God to do as He commanded, and we would have a story similar to that of the prophet Jonah, only it would be about a young maiden instead.

     Yet, even though she could have been stoned to death, her answer to the Archangel Gabriel was "yes."  She said in response to his message, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word."   This "yes" on her part was huge, because in saying "yes," she showed supreme obedience to God and a model of faith in Him.   She showed us what we all are capable of if we trust God, and she presented an example of the path of faith for all Christian women in ages to come.

      So, because God came into the world incarnate of a woman, a woman therefore wears "a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels"   (I Corinthians 11:10).  There is a lot of discussion about what is meant by the phrase "because of the angels."   There is also a lot of hymnography in the Orthodox Church about how amazed the angels were at the Incarnation of Christ.   I do not know the reason that the angels like for a woman to have a head-covering on, and I won't know until the point when I pass into the next world and maybe get to actually ask an angel about it.  However, the fact that the Scripture affirms the angels' preference for head-coverings is enough for me.  Also, when I cover my head, I am honouring the Most Holy Theotokos, the Virgin Mary who bore Christ our God in her womb, for her obedience to the Father, her faith and her courage.  I am not only honouring her, but also imitating her, for she wore a head covering all the days of her life.  I consider such imitation to be a good idea spiritually.  The authority referred to in the phrase "symbol of authority on her head" is the authority inherent in belonging to the gender through which Christ came into the world incarnate, and hence to special spiritual authority I have as a Christian woman.

     The Christian man has authority also, but his authority manifests itself in a different function from mine.  My authority is not lesser than his, but it is different because God made us in His image, male and female.  If our ways of being in authority were meant to be exactly the same, God would not have created the difference in gender at all.  Remember that God can do anything He wants.  He could have easily created Adam to reproduce via some sort of mitosis, or He could have created Adam as an androgynous being.  But He didn't!  He divided humanity by gender, and made it so that the two must become one in order to make things complete.  "Different" does not mean "subject" or "inferior."   Orthodox female head-covering is a celebration of the difference between the female and male, and the fact that God has made us all distinct in His wisdom and love.  In terms of submission, the only submission it symbolizes is submission to God and the direction He gives us through Holy Scripture.   

     Question 2: What is the nature of the woman's authority in the Orthodox Church? 

     What spiritual authority do I have as a woman?  There is a lot of discussion in the Orthodox Church about the role of women.   But the best statement I ever heard was by a friend of mine, a Matushka (priest's wife), who was giving a presentation about the charisms of women in the Church:  the role of woman is like that of the Theotokos.  Just as the Theotokos gave birth to Christ in the flesh, so we as women are called upon to give birth to Christ in the hearts of others.  Thus, our authority in the Church is that of teaching, modeling the faith for others, and helping others grow in their Christian faith in whatever way we might be called to do so, whether it's teaching Sunday School, writing articles for blogs and newspapers, opening and running Orthodox schools, or directing the choir.

     There are many people today who think that the fact that Orthodox women aren't in the priesthood means that we are in a subjugated status.   But this is really a non-issue for most of us as Orthodox women, because you see, the Eastern view of the priesthood is not the same as that in the West.  In the West, as the papacy gained more and more power and the ecclesiology of the Church in the West became more monarchical and less conciliar, the priesthood became almost a type of small monarchy in and of itself.  The priesthood became more and more connected with the idea of earthly power instead of the simple act of service and apostleship it had been in the early Church.   As a result, the priesthood became equated with having a position of authority and power in the Church.

     However, the Orthodox Church has always held that the liturgical functions in the Church are not to be seen as roles of power in the Church.  Rather, being a priest is being a servant, as Christ instructs us all to be.  In Matthew 23: 11-15, Jesus instructs us: "¹¹ But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.
¹² And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.
¹³ But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
¹⁴ Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
¹⁵ Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves." 
     
    Why do I include Christ's condemnation of the Pharisees in this article?  I do so because what the Pharisees were doing was exactly the kind of spiritual authority Christ did not want the Apostles to imitate.  The Pharisees and Saducees were all about power and being publicly exalted and honoured.  Because they were so caught up in their earthly authority and honour, they were no longer acting as servants of God, performing spiritual and corporal works of mercy.  In fact, they were marginalizing the poor and wretched, and giving the Jewish faithful impossible spiritual standards to follow.  They became arbiters of rules and regulations instead of loving servants of God.

     Christ's further instructions to the Apostles about spiritual authority in the Church are as follows, in Luke 22: 25-27:
²⁵ "And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors.
²⁶ But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.
²⁷ For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth."

     It is very clear that the priesthood should not be, and in the West should never have been, a king-like position of authority and power.  But it became that.  For that reason, the egalitarian and synergetic relationship between the male and female roles, which existed in the early Church, became lost to the Western Church by the advent of the Medieval period.  The anti-female way of thinking, the "all women are bad because of Eve" idea, became prevalent in the West and even started to infect the East as well at the beginning of the early Middle Ages.  The famous hymnographer St. Kassiani actually corrected the Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire on the point that woman was not solely responsible for the fall of man, and that it was through woman--the Theotokos--that salvation came into the world, because she willingly bore Christ.  Overall, however, the original synergistic relationship between male and female roles preserved in the Early Church stayed intact in the Eastern Orthodox Church.  It is still there to this day.  If you don't believe me, go attend a few services in the Orthodox Church and hang around for coffee hour afterwards.

     The liturgical function of the male priest in the Church goes back to Judaism and service in the Temple.  The men serve in the Orthodox Temple as priests, deacons and subdeacons.  I also serve in the Temple, as a singer.  Male readers are considered to be tonsured.  However, so is the position of singer and choir director, both for males and females. Our roles as women--choir directors, chanters, teachers, mothers, matushki, diakonissas--are no less important or unequal to the men's liturgical roles.  In fact, we are the female side of that, if you will.  

     I will use a visual analogy to explain.  Think of it like a Celtic Cross.  Imagine that the Celtic Cross represents a cruciform shape of a church.  The Cross bar on the Celtic Cross represents the iconostasis, behind which the liturgical functions of the Church are performed by the men.  But guess what, folks: there's a circle in the middle of the Celtic cross, going around from below that cross bar to around the top of it.  That circle represents the synergistic work of man and woman in the Church:  we form one circle, and that circle is the work of the Resurrection and the Holy Spirit.   There are men in the part of the circle that goes behind the inconostas, and then women are in the other part of the circle that's in front of the iconostas.  Our roles are of equal value, authority and dignity.  This is what the West cannot seem to grasp.  Different doesn't mean lesser.  Notice also that I didn't use the word "separate," so don't start thinking that I'm trying to peddle the "separate but equal" nonsense.  "Separate but equal" doesn't apply in the Orthodox Church either, because men and women are not separate.  We work together in harmony and synergy, just as do the three Persons of the Holy Trinity.  We are distinct as male and female persons, but one in human essence.  The Holy Trinity is three distinct Persons, and yet one in Divine essence.  Through Jesus Christ, we can participate in the love and salvific Grace of the Trinity and become partakers of the Divine nature (2 Peter: 1-4).

    So, why aren't women ordained as priests? Well, we don't need to be.  We already have our own valuable and important functions in the Church.  But, some people may persist to ask, doesn't that still make us less powerful and in a place of subjugation?  Aren't our roles still less than those of men?  Aren't the priests in power, and we're not?  No, because the priesthood is not about power in the Orthodox Church.  Orthodox priests aren't even materially well off. Many priests can't live on their church salaries, and often they hold other jobs during the week.  Often, the priest's wife works a job outside the home.  At Orthodox Church councils, the word of laypeople, both men and women, is both listened to and considered.  Laypeople can overturn the decision of a Church council, if that council makes a decision contrary to the teachings of the Church.  This happened in 1439 in Constantinople, when the laypeople of the Church heard the decisions from the Council of Florence that had been made by the Emperor and the bishops. The decision was contrary to the theology and ecclesiology of the Orthodox Church, and the people of Constantinople would have none of it.  

     My point?  Priests aren't all-powerful, not even bishops.  Are they respected for being representatives of Christ?  Yes.  Are they regarded as leaders who can help and influence their flock?  Yes.  But women are equally respected, and women are, for the most part, treated with great respect by Orthodox clergy. In fact, priests and deacons generally have always treated me as their equal.  Those that don't are generally suffering from issues of pride or egotism, or they have a personality problem that affects everyone around them. Eventually, they get corrected by their bishop, they retire, or in worst case scenarios, they get booted out.

     The work of man and woman in the Church is not represented as a vertical line segment, with men on the top point and women on the bottom point.  Rather, it is represented by a circle, like the circle of the Celtic Cross that I mentioned earlier.  Circles have no beginning or end, and in a circle, all is equal.  It also happens to be eternal.  Ponder that.

     Question 3:  When and how does a woman cover her head?  My personal perspective

     I should take this moment to point out that wearing a head covering is not compulsory in the Orthodox Church.  It's a choice.  It's a spiritual custom, a tradition from the Apostolic period.  There are actually Orthodox women who don't choose to cover their heads, and the Church is okay with that.  However, wearing a head covering is encouraged for the reasons I discussed earlier, the reasons laid out in Scripture about the symbol of authority on our heads because of the angels, and the celebration of the Theotokos and our special place as women in the Church.

       St. Paul points out that the head-covering should be worn when a woman prays.  At the same time, we are instructed in Holy Scripture to pray without ceasing.  So, if I cover my head when I pray, and then I pray without ceasing, logically I would wear the head-covering without ceasing.  However, this doesn't work for all women, and most Orthodox women only wear the head-covering during church. How the woman covers her head in the Orthodox Church varies according to the individual, and what she may feel spiritually called to do or not do.

      I'm going to share with you my perspective: what I do with the head covering and why.

      When I was growing up in the Protestant denominations, I actually longed for sacramental and liturgical services.  I had that type of soul.  I also longed for concrete ways to express my faith.  I always wanted to wear something special to outwardly express the inward practice of my faith.  I've always been a person who likes to show on the outside the important things about myself that are inside.  I like to share that with other people, perhaps because I'm an artist (composer, poet, writer).  Along that same vein, I've also always been artsy and dramatic in my dress.  That's just me.  So, when I entered the Orthodox Church and found out about wearing head-coverings, I was elated.

     I always liked things on my head as a little girl:  hats, ribbons, Juliet caps, flower garlands, hennins, and crowns.  It's part of that whole Princess thing that little girls do.  And now, because I was Orthodox Christian, I would get to wear something pretty on my head at church--like a Princess!  My inner little girl was thrilled.  Best of all, it could be any colour or pattern I wanted!  It could be lacy, silky, red, blue, pink, white, gold, flowered, or multi-coloured!   I could match it with my clothes and earrings.  I could fulfill my natural female inclination to be a weaver and fashioner of beauty, and all in the name of devotion to Christ and ceaseless prayer.  I mean, like, wow!  As a major part of my Christian practice and devotion, I would have the undisputed opportunity to be. . .a girl!

     So, I was happy to celebrate my gender difference by covering my head.  I was also happy to honour the Theotokos through imitating her in wearing a head covering, because even from my Protestant youth I had always loved her.  When I got home from Methodist church every Sunday, as a twelve-year-old girl, I would sing the Ave Maria because I felt that leaving it out of the church service just somehow wasn't right.  Then, later in the Orthodox Church, I would enjoy the fact that every Sunday, a hymn to the Theotokos is sung at a major point in the service.

     However, I did have some struggles about how to cover my head at first, because there were women in the congregation of my early Orthodox experience who believed that they should cover their heads entirely, covering up all hair, even their bangs.  Being older women, they decided that what they did was also what I needed to do.  Trying to satisfy them was not a wise thing for me to do, nor was it salvific.  For one thing, covering up my bangs or trying to tuck them into the scarf was terribly uncomfortable.  The bangs were too thick, I'd start sweating on my forehead (totally forbidden for a Southern belle to do in public!), and the bobby pins holding back my bangs would get all tangled in them.  I would spend more time fiddling with the darn bobby pins than praying with attention in the service.  So, regardless of the strong opinions of some Slavic women around me, I opted not to cover my entire hair.  Then, my sweet Subdeacon of a husband rightly pointed out that only nuns cover all their hair, and married women are not called upon to do that.  He also said that covering up my hair entirely was not pleasing to him aesthetically, and as he considered me to be his very beautiful wife of whom he was proud, oughtn't he to have some say in this?  So, he showed me a way to wear a kerchief that allowed me to still show my hair, and also I didn't have to tie the kerchief under my chin, which I can't do because I have a strong gag reflex.  I can't have anything against my throat without gagging, which is also why I don't wear turtleneck sweaters.  So, I started wearing my kerchiefs always tied in the back instead of the front.

     As my head covering practice evolved, I eventually added in other ways of doing it, like wearing veils and mantillas.  I had always wanted to wear mantillas, so this worked out for me just fine.  So now, I have cut and styled my hair so that the kerchief or mantilla can blend with my hairstyle in a way that frames my face.  I wear different types of head-coverings according to liturgical season and mood.  I wear kerchiefs, long scarves, and lace mantillas.  During Pascha, I wear white ones. On Pentecost, I wear a green one.  At Christmas, I wear white or red head coverings.  On feasts of the Theotokos, I always wear a blue one.  I unite what I do in head covering with the liturgical mind of the Church.

     As I started covering my head in church when I prayed, I started to feel naked without it when I would pray at home.  Then, I started trying to pray all the time, offering up my very acts of daily labour as acts of prayer.  It started to make more sense to me if I covered my head all the time, since I prayed all the time, and Holy Scripture did specify that I should cover my head when I pray.  Also, my husband is of Montenegrin heritage.  In that culture, wearing a head covering all the time shows that I'm married.  It also shows that I'm the wife of an Orthodox clergyman.  In some Balkan and Slavic cultures, only wives of deacons or priests cover their heads all the time.  In the Montenegrin and Serbian tradition, subdeacons' wives do it too.  Last but not least, I discovered that the women of Ireland, in the place where my ancestors came from (County Fermanagh), had long been in the habit of wearing kerchiefs on their heads when out and about in town.  They always wore a kerchief or a hat.  It seemed to me that I had not only a spiritual reason to cover my head all the time, but also a cultural precedent.

      In Orthodoxy, whenever one of the faithful takes on a type of asceticism, he/she asks the blessing of his/her father confessor.  I asked the blessing of my father confessor to be a woman who covered my head at all times, and he gave me that blessing.

      What did covering my head all the time do for me spiritually?   A lot!  For one thing, I stopped being so vain and picky about my hair during church.  If I had a kerchief or mantilla on instead of hair barrettes, I wouldn't be fiddling with the barrette all the time or worrying that the hair I had in those barettes had gotten out of place.  The other big thing that happened was that I actually started praying more, and the times when I didn't pray--like times when I was watching my favourite TV show--also slowly became times when I invited God's presence.  However, I must tell you that if you start inviting God's presence when you're watching TV, you're very liable to find out that He doesn't like what you're watching, and there will be times when He makes it clear in your heart that He wants you to turn the thing off!

     Covering my head also helped me fight against and overcome some really bad habits I had picked up before becoming an Orthodox Christian:  using bad language, gossiping, complaining and having road rage.  For many years, as a musician, I worked playing gigs.  During that time, I encountered lots of people in the music business who made four-letter words such a regular part of their vocabulary that they didn't even think about it during casual conversation.  Being around those people regularly caused me to fall into the habit of talking like them.  By the time I was chrismated in the Orthodox Church, I had gotten a lot better about my language, but I still hadn't kicked the habit totally,  especially when I lost my temper.  But when I started wearing the head covering, I got way better, because having the scarf on my head acted like a WWJD bracelet.  Soon, those curse words ceased to be a feature of my regular vocabulary.  I didn't want to talk that way in front of God, and the head covering made me more conscious of being ever in His presence even though I couldn't see Him.

     Gossiping was a habit I picked up when I was first in the Church, because of the unfavourable influence of some people around me at the time.  From my youth up until my late thirties, I was fairly easily influenced by older women. (Now I'm forty-five years old, and formidable). In my mid-thirties, I went through a period where I found myself increasingly influenced by some negative talk by older women at church events and trapeza.  Wearing the head covering all the time was like having a string around my finger, reminding me not to behave that way.  I eventually gained the wisdom to stop hanging out with negative, gossipy people of any age, old or young.  But even now, if I catch myself getting into a complaining cycle when talking with my brothers and sisters in Christ at trapeza, the head covering reminds me that I need to shut up and get on the right path before speaking again.

     The road rage was connected with my aforementioned temper.  I still struggle with it.  However, wearing the head covering helps me remember Whom I serve as well as Who I'm imitating.  Can I imitate Christ if I'm screaming at the person who cut me off in traffic?  Of course not.  Would the most holy Theotokos slam her brakes on, cut in front of the pokey person in front of her out of impatience, zoom forward, and risk other people's lives on the road?  I don't think so.  Having the head covering on helps me remember to pray for the people driving around me, and strive to regard them as sons and daughters precious to the Lord, instead of annoying people who are in my way.

                                                                Some Closing Thoughts
 
     In conclusion, I cannot tell any Orthodox Christian woman what she should do, whether or not she should cover her head, or how she should do it.   I can only say that it certainly has worked well for me.  I must also add that the decision whether or not to cover all the time is one that needs to be carefully weighed and considered.   Covering one's head all the time is an act that entails considerable sacrifice, because when you do it, you will no longer fit into the mold.  You will be different, and people will sometimes stare at you in public.  Some people will be quite gauche, and may ask you what the heck you're doing and why.  You will be treated differently at work, and it may be hard for you to find an employer who will let you wear your head-covering.  In a professional situation, you want to be sure that your covering is solid-coloured and very conservative in shape and type of cloth.  I advise that you never wear a bandana for a head covering at work, and that when you wear a head-covering, don't cover up all your hair because that isn't acceptable in American culture by and large.  Wear tailored clothes when you have your head-covering on at work, and avoid combining your head covering with artsy skirts or blouses.  In short, cover your head as non-conspiciously as possible.  If people notice your head covering, but at the same time it's not too obtrusive, then they will start seeing it as being no more extraordinary than a pair of glasses.

     When people ask you about it, you want to answer honestly but succinctly.  You don't want to go into a lot of detail. The truth is that most people who don't know you really don't want details from you.  They just want assurance that you're not some sort of weirdo, or that you're a possibility for social affiliation.   "Why do you wear that scarf on your head?" is usually a translation for, "You are okay, aren't you?  You're not in a cult, I hope?".  Sometimes people are genuinely interested in what you're doing, but most of the time it's about establishing their own boundaries and preserving their comfort zones.

     I hope that this article has been helpful for Orthodox women who like to cover their heads, food for thought for those women who are staunchly opposed to head-coverings, and useful information for anyone who has ever walked into an Orthodox church and thought, "What's with the scarves?".

      I personally dedicate this article to all the kids I've taught in school over the years who have asked me,  "Mrs. Bronzich, what's that thing on your head?"

      Christ is Risen!  Signing off now.

                                                                                 ---Gabrielle Bronzich