I’ve attended only a few churches in my life. My father’s father’s church, that was Anglican. My mother’s father’s church, that was Roman Catholic. I visited some sort of protestant church with my cousin when I was younger. I attended another Roman Catholic mass when I was in college, and yet another with Jack just as he was getting into the whole thing. Yet another with Jack most recently, when my search began in earnest. And of course the handful of Quaker meetings I attended because they were convenient and close enough. Then we attended Saint Jacob’s and that was that. 

Since then I’ve gone to New Skete twice, for many services and only two communions. New Skete is OCA, like my church, and they do their own music that they wrote in the 1970s, I don’t care for it nearly as much as the translations of John Chrysostom. This was brought into sharp focus by the liturgy I witnessed this morning at a Greek Orthodox church in Newburyport. 

The priest was Armenian, and he did the liturgy in Greek, English, and a dash of Armenian here and there. It felt a lot more familiar than the New Skete liturgy because the music was essentially the same, apart from the Massachusettes accent and a few bits in Greek. And the piano, which I did not like and do not approve of, for whatever that’s worth.

He didn’t question me on the way to communion, apart to ask for my name and to congratulate me on my name day, which was nice. The bread was delicious, the icons were stunning, and the space itself was lovely.

Clearly a church past or between primes, it was far larger than it needed to be given the handful of elderly parishoners. By contrast Saint Jacob’s feels positively vibrant. Combine that with out coffee hours which are more like incredibly pot lucks every Sunday, and we have a pretty gorgeous little community going. This is a fact that I knew, but it was nice to have it confirmed. Not that I felt this Greek church was wanting, no, I’d be honored to call it home, but I’m glad Saint Jacob’s is where I reside.