Wow, I got interviewed!

Hi dear readers,

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

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

Thomas

Table of Contents

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

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

I need stories of goofballs met on the Internet

Dear Readers,

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

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

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

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

In Christ,
Thomas Eric Ruthford

The Plight of the Single Person

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“If you just try you can get married…”

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

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

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

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

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

Defining Your Struggle

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

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

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

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

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

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

Courting vs. dating vs. general naughtiness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Basic rules of being single

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Conversion

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

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

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

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

Where to Find Your Special Someone

The Home Parish

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Church Youth Conference / Camp

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

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

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

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

So the moral of those two stories is…

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

A few other bits of advice:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Now you’re slim,” she said.

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

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

That didn’t get any further.

Internet dating for the Orthodox

Does that smiley :-) mean she loves me?

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

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

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

Internet Dating Sites

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joys and perils of dating PKs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seminary -- His Theological Clock is Ticking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guide to Romantic Pilgrimages

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ludmila

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Most Holy Theotokos, save us!”

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

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

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

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

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

She said, “Because I love little children.”

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

“No,” she said.

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

“As the Bogoroditsa wills it,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

Elizaveta

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Waiting, Wondering, Whining -- Part I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meditations and Spiritual Growth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• St. Juliana the Virgin (July 6). Apparently she was very humble because no one knows much about her life. She was a princess in Kiev who died at the age of 16. Her grave was found 200 years later when workers were laying foundations for a new church. Her relics were incorrupt.
  
• St. Moses the Virgin (July 26). He was a muscular, handsome fellow who wanted to be a monk at the Caves Monastery in Kiev. But, Kiev was invaded, and Moses was enslaved by the invading army, and he was sold to a rich young widow who tried to force him to marry. She held him captive for 10 years before giving up, and then he was able to become a monk.
  
• St. Barlaam, Igumen of the Kiev Caves Monastery (Sept. 28). He was the son of a noble and had an illustrious life ahead of him. His father had a beautiful bride picked out for him. But, he wanted to be a monk under the instruction of Saints Anthony of the Caves. St. Barlaam’s father kidnapped him and dragged him home and stuck him in a room with his bride, who worked every temptation possible on him. This didn’t work, and eventually his father gave up. He became a monk, and eventually the abbot of the Caves Monastery.

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

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

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

Waiting -- Part II, Distractions

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

Bad Distractions

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

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


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


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


• Roasts marshmallows over the candle stand during Liturgy.


• Makes hex symbols at your parents.


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


• Says his favorite Greek saint is Aphrodite.


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

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

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

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

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

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

How to fight: View celibacy as a daily project

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Distractions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• What’s your favorite tone?


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


• You’re even prettier than your icon!
  

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

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

Back to the Table of Contents