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.”