You know you’re Orthodox if …

  • Some­one from church sent me this. It might have already made the rounds some­where, but I hadn’t seen it before. And I’m going to num­ber it just so I can own up to which ones I’m the most guilty of.

    You know you’re Ortho­dox if …

    1. On Wednes­days and Fri­days you eat Japan­ese food.
    2. You are more com­fort­able stand­ing in church than sitting.
    3. You can suck/vacuum up the crumbs of bread out of your hand with­out coughing.
    4. You can sing an ison to any song (and you know what an ison is… LOL).
    5. Lent to you means peanut but­ter, tofu, soy, lots and lots of pita bread and hum­mus, and ser­vices at least five times a week.
    6. You’re used to skip­ping break­fast on Sundays.
    7. On your first encounter with long words, you pro­nounce them stress­ing the ‘next to the next to last’ syllable.
    8. You won­der why the Pope crosses him­self back­wards when you see him on TV.
    9. You wear com­fort­able shoes to church, because you know you’ll be stand­ing a long, long time.
    10. To you, a ‘top­less’ gal is one with­out a headscarf.
    11. You get great deals on Easter candy.
    12. You spend time fig­ur­ing out the best way to remove smoke stains from your ceil­ing and wax from your walls.
    13. Before you pray, you say a prayer.
    14. You don’t flinch when some­one throws water at you.
    15. When you first tell peo­ple who ask what reli­gion you are, at first they think you’re Jew­ish. Oy!
    16. The ser­vice rou­tinely starts at least 15 min­utes late and lasts 2 ½ hours — and nobody around you complains.
    17. You con­sider any ser­vice two hours or under short/regular.
    18. You know that when the priest says, “Let us com­plete our prayer to the Lord”, there’s still half an hour to go.
    19. At the end of Holy Week, you have rug burns on your forehead.
    20. Your Easter isn’t Easter with­out an all-night party (fea­tur­ing 10 dishes of sausage with cheese).
    21. Your priest is married.
    22. You have seen all mem­bers of clergy in pur­ple robes.
    23. You can dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the eight dif­fer­ent chant­ing tones.
    24. You typ­i­cally cel­e­brate a feast day by observ­ing strict fasting.
    25. You cel­e­brate feast days the night before.
    26. You address the City as Con­stan­tino­ple instead of Istanbul.
    27. You can say “Lord have mercy” 40 times with­out mak­ing a mistake.
    28. You can say “Christ Is Risen”/”Indeed He Is Risen” in a mil­lion languages.
    29. You have tour­na­ments of red-egg-cracking on Pascha… And you usu­ally know who’s being a wise-guy with the wooden one.
    30. You have mul­ti­ple priests’ num­bers in your cell phone.
    31. You actu­ally read the Bible in your spare time.
    32. You’ve slept overnight in your church for a retreat.
    33. You’ve grown accus­tomed to the taste of wine because you’ve had it since you were a baby.
    34. Even if you don’t speak the lan­guage flu­ently (i.e. Alban­ian, Greek, Russ­ian, etc.) you could still carry on a decent con­ver­sa­tion about food in it.
    35. You’ve been or plan on going to Alaska.
    36. You could write a book on the sym­bol­ism in an Ortho­dox wed­ding… dur­ing the wed­ding… because they are just that long.

    All right, so the ones that I really had to admit to were: 2, 6, 8, 9, 13, 17, 21, 23 (work­ing on it, any­way), 25, 31 and 35.

    I would even include one of my own:

    37. You would like to think up three more of these just so that the list would come out to a good Ortho­dox num­ber like 40.


    Related posts:

    1. Bright Week do’s & don’ts
    2. The Ortho­dox prob­lem in Jerusalem
    3. Cra­dle and con­vert Orthodox
    4. The Ortho­dox con­vert list
    5. Becom­ing Ortho­dox by Peter E. Gillquist

    November 8th, 2006 | Grace | 14 Comments |

14 Responses and Counting...

  • BJohnD 11.08.2006

    2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 26, 27, 30, 31, 35.

    Another I’ve seen before: You’ve learned to stretch your legs dur­ing church with­out draw­ing atten­tion to yourself.

    My own: You’ve run out of excuses for skip­ping your office’s Fri­day Happy Hours and mid-December “Hol­i­day” Lunches.

  • Stacy

    Here’s another: Some­one notices your lunch choices and asks you if you’re vegan. You say, “sort of.”

  • Deb

    I don’t know what a ison is??

    Here’s my contribution:

    You buy your teenage daugh­ter a head­scarf for Christmas/birthday and she actu­ally likes it.

  • Grace

    Ooo, I like it. With these three we brought the num­ber up to 40. Exxxcellent.

    Deb, if you’ve heard much Byzantine-style chant­ing, you’ve likely heard some­body hold­ing one low note through­out the whole chant. It’s the only thing remotely like har­mony that can work with Byzan­tine chant. That’s the ison (pro­nounced EE-sawn).

    Or I should say, you’ve prob­a­bly heard some­body *try­ing* to hold one note, and that it *should* work like har­mony. There’s actu­ally a bit of a gift to get­ting the ison right. It doesn’t always work, and peo­ple don’t always do it well … but that’s an item for another post.

  • Deb

    Ah, thanks for the clar­i­fi­ca­tion. Not sure I’ve heard it before –at least not dur­ing the entire chant. I’ll have to lis­ten more care­fully next time.

    Deb

  • Very Rev. Fr. Gregor

    These are absolutely great. Now would you be able to come up with alist for how to tell if you are a Red­neck Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian? If that kind of list could be devel­oped, it would truly be hillarious.

    Who says Ortho­dox priests don’t have a sense of humor?

    God bless you on your great site.

  • Grace

    Well now, if you want Red­neck Ortho­dox, you’d be want­ing to go on over to <a rel=“nofollow” href=“http://http//southern-orthodoxy.blogspot.com/%20rel=&quot; rel=“nofollow”>Orthodixie . Fr. Joseph may not have done a list like that, but then again, he just might.

  • Leah Paintin

    I just want you to know that being a red­neck isn’t about being South­ern, a very com­mon mis­con­cep­tion. Its about being coun­try and a per­son can be from the coun­try in any state. I’ll get us started with the first few…
    You know your a Red­neck Ortho­dox if…
    40. Your Parish is the Only Ortho­dox Parish within 60 miles of another Ortho­dox parish AND your parish sits five miles out­side of the near­est small town, You’re Redneck-a-dox! (St, Mary Holy Dor­mi­tion, Cal­han Col­orado)
    39. Every Pascha your wife fills your bas­ket with cheese filled beer brats, horse­rad­ish mus­tard and hot­dog buns! You’re Redneck-a-dox!
    38. When you get inside your car the inside ceil­ing has paper icons of all your favorite saints push-pinned to it… you’re Redneck-a-dox!
    37. Your icon cor­ner is dec­o­rated with fish christ­mas lights from the Bass Pro shop or red chili pep­per lights from Hobby Lobby… You are Redneck-a-dox!
    36. If you have named any of your chil­dren Pat­apius, Habakuk, Barsanuphias, Her­mo­genes, Boni­face, Zoti­cus, Ire­nar­chus, Mer­curius, Apphia or any other ancient, yet ven­er­a­ble and obscure name, whether cra­dle or con­vert… you’re Redneck-a-dox!
    35. If your idea of a really good time is cook­ing at monastery with only a gas stove and no other power, or run­ning water, on an island in Alaska, pro­vi­sioned for a cer­tain amount of time, depen­dant on God and with a mis­sion to accom­plish, liv­ing on gar­lic with mostly men around… you’re Redneck-a-dox!
    34. If your CD col­lec­tion includes burned CD mixes of bor­rowed Ortho­dox music from every­body you know… you’re Redneck-a-dox!
    33. If you buy a bunch of icons on eBay and have them blessed all at one time the Sun­day after you get them… you’re Redneck-a-dox!
    32. If your idea of a roman­tic week­end get-a-way includes look­ing for an eth­nic Ortho­dox fes­ti­val to visit… you’re Redneck-a-dox!
    31. If you bring your sleep­ing bag and pil­low with you to guard the tomb on Holy Friday/Saturday dur­ing the vigil you might be Redneck-a-dox!

    I leave it to the rest of you to come up with some more good natured Red­neck Ortho­dox exam­ples, some of these I have done, some of these I have seen done by peo­ple I love. We are all a lit­tle Red­neck at some level, but I pray we are all very Ortho­dox in all ways that count the most. A blessed Nativ­ity sea­son!
    Leah

  • Grace

    That’s a hoot and a half! I won’t own up to which ones I’ve been guilty of, but suf­fice it to say, I might be a Redneck-a-dox.

  • Maria

    These are all great!

    Shared them w/ my kid & he loved them!

    Shar­ing them w/ my par­ents & the rest of the fam­ily ASAP!

  • Paul

    30. If your horn on your truck plays “Christ is risen from the dead…” You might be one.

    29. If you removed your long­horn steer horns from the hood of your cadil­lac and replaced with a 3 bar cross you might be one.

    28. If your gun rack was turned into an incense or oil can­dle hanger you might be one.

    27. If you only fish on the right side of your boat you might bo one.

    26. If you have replaced your din­ner tri­an­gle with mul­ti­ple bells you might be one.

    25. If you know what a din­ner tri­an­gle is you are one.

    24. If your wife is regret­ting you took down the moose head because of all the huge icons now on the man­tle you might be one.

    23. If you go to a fam­ily fish fry and start extolling the ben­e­fits of crus­taceans you might be one.

    22. If you bring baklava to a fam­ily reunion you might be one.

    21. If your root cel­lar is filled with home canned hum­mus you might be one.

    20. If you took down the lit­tle green pine tree air fresh­ner in your truck in lieu of burn­ing myrrh you might be one.

    19. If dry bread and cheap wine bring tears to your eyes, you might be one.

    18. If your parish priest has named you Bub­basanuphius or Williedopho­lus you night be one.

    17. If you say every­thing 3 times out of habit you might be one.

    16. If your priest has to tell you clean­ing your shot­gun in front of your daughter’s date is not a sin you might be one.

    15. If you call the cows in to milk using the Cheru­bic Hymn over a loud speaker, you might be one.

    14. If racoons, armadil­los and pos­sums come up to you of their own accord, you might be one.

    13. If the monks at the monastery tell you ser­vice starts at 4:00am and you think this is sleep­ing in you might be one.

    12. You know more recipes for lentiles than you do for BBQ sauce you might be one.

    11. You make beer chicken with wine and no one minds you might be one.

    10. Qual­ity time with the fam­ily is play­ing “guess who that Saint is”, you might be one.

    9. You don’t plant accord­ing to the Farm­ers’ Almanac any­more but on St. Isidore patron saint of Farm­ers Day; May 15, you might be one.

    8. You bury flow­ers and eggs more than you eat or look at them you might be one.

    7. You spray painted the local water tower with “I love the Theotokos” you might be one.

    6. You sing coun­try songs in Tone 7 and they still make sense you might be one.

    5. Dur­ing Pascha you shoot dif­fer­ent sound­ing shot­guns in lieu of bells you might be one.

    4. You tat­tooed the (insert favorite feast scene) on you arm you might be one.

    3. You can teach the monks how to make bet­ter home made wine and can­dles than they can you might be one.

    2. When your priest comes to bless the house you also ask him to bless the barn, hay loft, chicken coop, dog houses, cow pas­ture, pig pen, dairy barn, tool yard and the back 40 you might be one.

    And the num­ber one way to tell if you are a Redneck-a-dox…

    1.

    I’ll leave this one to the site owner. It was just fun think­ing up things like the above. My wife’s name is Leah and this is how I found the site even if this thread is over a year old, I hope some­one finds humor in it. I will check back to see who has the best #1.

  • Sophie

    My Daddy is a priest! I’m only almost-12, but I think at LEAST 3/4 of that stuff
    applied to me!

    Here’s one: If you have a name like Sophia or Theodore, you shorten it down to Sophie and Theo.

    Да благословит вас Бог!

    Sophie ххх

  • Grace

    Sophie:
    Love that one! I almost for­got about this whole list, but it was fun to revisit. And now I need to go find some­one who can trans­late the Greek for me. :-)

  • Stephanie

    I love find­ing sites like these! espe­cially when over­seas and dont under­stand enough Russ­ian to last through a Sun­day ser­vice; sites like these help me remem­ber my faith and give me some­thing to post to con­tra­dict all the athe­ist and Islamic junk i see every­day :) Stuff like this should be dis­trib­uted to youth in sun­day school :) i’m 15 and love these!!

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