Gaashk
19hr ago
It's more that it stresses my husband out than that other people are actually judging us. He's very much a walk up a hill, light a candle, walk around it three times kind of churchgoer, as were many of the men in Georgia. He's spent some time in Muslim areas, and liked the part where he would get up on the middle of the night to eat dates for Ramadan, or go to a cow slaughtering or something.
Gaashk
1d ago
Personally, it's less about theological points than about Beauty. Catholics built plenty of beautiful churches in the past, but the Orthodox are still building them, even though there are a lot fewer members, and so it might only be one per city. That one will generally be beautiful. They will cover it in mosaics and iconography, swing huge chandeliers on feast days, embed eagles into the tiles, have a beautiful dome with Christ looking down. Many of the churches in America are new and aren't fully finished yet, but are as beautiful as the parish is able to make them. The chanting is as beautiful as the choir members are able to make it, depending on local skill levels. They do generally work pretty hard at it, and still care about the beauty in a way that Catholics used to, but often don't anymore, even when they've inherited grand and storied cathedrals. They're one of very, very few groups that are still making everything as beautiful as they're able to in Current Year, which is almost as important as theology. Of course Dostoyevsky, coming from an Orthodox tradition, would say "beauty will save the world."
I grew up Evangelical, and joined the Orthodox Church in college, when there was a Greek mission inhabiting a lovely old Catholic Church within walking distance of my dorm. I like standing silently, and liked learning to cook tofu and lentils from my charming Greek Godmother, and it was all very lovely. It continued to be lovely when I moved for a Great Books program, and found a church within walking distance, with a wonderful, experienced priest who I could listen to for hours, and did. I went to Matins, Vespers, Paraklesis, book clubs, and anything else that was happening there. And then I was in the Republic of Georgia, which has wonderful old churches and a lot of energy from rebuilding after communism, and also a very beautiful chant tradition.
The small children in Georgia came and went, I think, though I didn't watch them closely. They looked like they spent a lot of time playing in the courtyard (and there were courtyards for them to play in). I think that Orthodoxy does have room for families that walk up the hill to the church who's names day it is to light a candle and have a party. They would spread feasts (Supras) during fasting periods, and some of the people wouldn't eat some of the things, especially the women, but it wasn't that big a deal, they would still cook roast chicken for whoever wanted it. But Americans aren't like that, and ultimately my husband and I are American, and feel miserable coming and going from the church service to the children's room and back as necessary.
So every once in a while I post here about how I don't know what to do. The plan has been Just Do It for about five years now, and maybe one of these years it will take. My husband is more willing to go to an Orthodox Church with me than any other kind of church, was enthusiastic about naming the children after saints, having icons in the house, and playing Russian chants on the speakers. He's not at all enthusiastic about standing still and getting small children to be still for three hours, and would probably be happy as an alter server (or any role, really, other than getting the children to be still) if only we could Just Do It long enough to get there.
Gaashk
1d ago
They can certainly start exploring it. But that's different from "just go be Catholic." They can, of course, go to Catholic services and festivals, read Catholic books, talk to people, attend classes, and so on without believing. In historically Catholic regions they very often do, in fact.
Gaashk
1d ago
I'm Orthodox, because of their Liturgy. Husband, who grew up Catholic, is heading more my direction. But the children are unbaptized, because we are not good at making it through the (profound! beautiful! sublime! long!) Liturgy. Unfortunately.
Gaashk
1d ago
Haha, I'm now married with children. Because he kept asking me out, more than once, to interesting places, even though I turned down the initial invitation and even gift.
Gaashk
1d ago
Different worlds.
Grandparents, aunts, and uncles don't necessarily charge money money or complain. But they don't necessarily do anything, either. My uncles and aunts, who were on reasonably good terms in general, never ever babysat my brother or I. My parents never, ever babysat my younger cousin. They just didn't. We still got together for holidays. I tried to meet up with some in-laws to introduce the cousins, but it didn't work out, they were a bit busy, this seems normal, I guess. I went to a wedding with three young children, and got some compliments on managing them, but no offers of help.
My parents and in-laws will watch the kids sometimes, a couple of nights a year, if we make all the arrangements to get together and find a space.
Gaashk
1d ago
I truly truly do not understand why these people don't just go be Catholic.
You actually don't?
I did briefly consider becoming Catholic, went to Mass for a while, went to some events read a lot, and so on, so I'll bite.
The face of Catholicism probably varies pretty widely by region, some of the churches I visited included:
- Pretty oldish church with a nice facade where they were strumming guitars and talking about the evils of abortion. Nothing wrong with it, necessarily, sure. But not attractive.
- San Xavier. Went there for a candlelight concert with my athiest grandmother. Stunning! Went there for Holy Week mass with a friend, guitars, roaming dogs, Spanish. Fine, sure, they can do what they want.
- "Theology on tap" conversation and social time with a priest. Nice, I liked it.
- Latin weekday Mass at a famous and beautiful church. Was in Latin. Was read. It's what's on the label, I can't judge.
- Chimayo. Love Chimayo! Will return. I probably have some blessed sand somewhere.
- Lived down the street from a convent, and would walk there for prayers. It was lovely.
- Worked at a Catholic school. It was fine, though their senior year retreat was kind of weird and seemed to be fostering sleep deprivation on purpose.
These are all reasons to hang out with Catholics and visit historic missions, which I certainly still do. I would consider sending my kids to Catholic school (my husband did).
None of them are reasons to actually become Catholic if you don't believe its teachings, which is very, very common. I don't like the rosary, but if I did I wouldn't let not being Catholic stop me from saying it.
Gaashk
1d ago
I can't say I've never encountered communities like this, but certainly not in the US. I know some Albanian families overseas who wouldn't consider it unusual and a bit of an imposition to babysit at below market rates.
Gaashk
1d ago
No, I wouldn't have even pretended. I would, at worst, have sighed a bit at his puns.
Gaashk
1d ago
The guys I know who can’t seem to find a single woman to date… you can tell why from like a 5 min conversation.
One such man I know IRL, who I was friends with at the time, said something like "I would ask Gaashk out, but she would probably stab me," in front of me. He did not in fact ask me out), and is still single and complaining about it on Facebook.
Gaashk
1d ago
Was he flirting with her? Were you? Was she someone you wanted to go out with?
Gaashk
1d ago
We had a baby in a 500 sq ft apartment, didn't want to continue that way, threw out and gave away a bunch of our possessions, and moved across the country in a single vehicle to a place where we could afford a 2400 sq ft house on one income for five years (though we're going to have to make some changes soon). This is fine, because we aren't working white collar finance jobs that require a city. Also, we like that kind of thing. There are real industries as well, several of the fathers in my homeschool group growing up worked for the missile company, for instance.
Inconveniently, trading kids is just not a thing in American culture, even church culture, even with cousins (or when I was a kid, actually. My introverted parents were responsible for all childcare despite living in the same area as grandparents and siblings). If the kids are invited to something, I have to stay there and supervise them the entire time, and do nothing else. Everything is Childcare, including church, and hanging out with mother friends, and going out to restaurants. C'est la vie.
Gaashk
1d ago
Now to broaden this outside of just Christianity, I'm curious what the Motte thinks of symbolism as a whole?
I remember really liking "Being as Communion" by Fr Alexander Schmemann, though it's been a while, so I don't remember it in any detail. Also "The Universe as Sign and Symbol" by Fr. Nikolai Velimirovich, though in general his poetry compilation "Prayers by the Lake" is better. In general things like holy water and blessing more things, not only Communion, is good -- we should bless things more. There's a grape blessing, blessed oil, blessed basil, and so on. This is good! I don't have a strong opinion on whether anointing people with oil from a shrine does something in particular or not, but still think that kind of thing is a good tradition.
Last night I was listening to Jonathan Pageau talk about art and stories and Orthodox art and so on, and it was mostly what everyone has known and talked about most of my whole life, but still good. (My example, not his) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was an excellent book because it relied heavily on Christian symbolism, to the point of being basically about that, with also some sailing involved. The movie of the same was not very good because it stripped out most of the symbolism and replaced it with a video game style quest plot. If the entertainment industry were replaced by deists comfortable with Christian symbolism, that would be an improvement. His example was Snow White, both on account of the new movie, and because his small publishing company has made their own storybook version of the tale, and the illustrations do look very nice. I'm still not going to buy it, I don't like Snow White much, but would recommend it to anyone interested.
Gaashk
1d ago
Because if half the country wants them here, and can leverage the courts to ensure free education and healthcare, then they will. The US system allows cultural trench warfare, the current term of art appears to be "No Kings."
Gaashk
1d ago
I'm not sure what the rules are for truck drivers in America, but it was pretty visibly the more established white truck drivers who were hanging out in the right lane, and the new immigrant truck drivers who were passing. If there are laws punishing new drivers who are acting the same as old responsible drivers, then, sure, those are bad laws.
Also, a lot of this could be resolved by increasing stupid 70mph speed limit (113km/h) on highways to 80 or 85 as in Europe, so you can catch up if you are inconvenienced for 30 seconds behind a truck or other vehicle.
This suggests lack of familiarity with American interstates in multiple ways.
- Yes, of course the other drivers can go 80 - 85 most of the time, the cops do not enforce 70 - 75 at all. That is largely why they are upset when they are cut off by a vehicle going 75.
- Cath up? To whom? It isn't exactly about getting home 10 minutes sooner. It's mostly about not being sandwiched between large trucks.
- It's probably 5 minutes inconvenience per vehicle, spread out over a two to eight hour drive, so maybe an hour or two of being in irritating and unsafe conditions over the course of a day of driving.
The alternative is to fly, but in the American West not only is it expensive for a full car's worth of people, you still have to rent a car at the destination, and even rent car seats.
my mental model of a trucker is still a fat white guy with a hat.
There are still a lot of those, and a smaller number of black and hispanic guys, but they mostly stay in their lane, probably on cruise control, and if they get over it's because someone is stuck on the side of the freeway or something. My guess about the leapfrog guys is that they think of themselves as therefore working harder than the cruise control guys. The aggressive Indian drivers seemed to be an I-40 specific phenomenon (there are new truck stops springing up there, serving Indian food as well), it isn't noticeable on N/S highways, and was less of an issue on I-10, it looked like there were more highway patrol enforcing the laws there.
"Elefantenrennen" (elephant racing)
Haha, that's a good term, I hadn't heard it before.
I just got off of a road trip on I-40, and mostly want to register my dismay at the state of the semi truckers there, related to 3 and especially #4. It is Culture War, because most of the truckers in question are Indian.
Truckers should all go the same speed in the right lane of a two lane highway! They should not be leapfrogging each other, trapping small vehicles between them, as they pass excruciatingly slowly, often on hills and curves! If they cannot manage this, their trucks should be on autopilot the entire time they're on the interstate! It is both unsafe and extremely annoying, drivers often can't even use adaptive cruise control if available, because the truckers will cut them off in the left lane, then go 10mph slower.
Also a bit related to #5, commercial trucks should not be cutting smaller vehicles off, with or without signaling, ever, and I do have a lot of sympathy for people who speed up into their spaces to avoid having stuff flung into their windshield from a poorly secured truck, even hay is pretty annoying, but the gravel trucks have big signs saying "not responsible for cracked windshields," and indeed it's pretty hard to prove to the police. I once had a crowbar fly off a truck and impale my windshield, nearly killing the front passenger.
Gaashk
2d ago
Parts of Chicago do it as well, despite the acceptable public transport infrastructure and decent city planning.
Gaashk
12d ago
Ultimately, even pro-choice women mostly want humanity to continue another generation. So we have a volunteer military, and volunteer motherhood. If people stop volunteering, then that society deserves their slide into irrelevance and possible subjugation that will follow.
Gaashk
12d ago
The first fear is having a child who is not, ah, as fortunate as the preceding three.
I was worried about that with my third as well, since I was around some of the kids who had lost the genetic lottery, and it really sucks. I think the odds of having an unbearably bad condition that isn't detected in early scans, and isn't caused by bad behavior on the mother's part is pretty low, though. (I did not personally get the tests done other than ultrasounds). I'm going on a road trip this week on a busy freeway, which is also not risk free, there are plenty of somewhat small risks that are worth taking.
I don't think I'll have a fourth child, especially since I'm closer to 40. My pregnancies were pretty easy, I was eight months pregnant, starting long road trips in the middle of the night and carrying around my toddler in the summer heat. The births were basically alright. It's both age and finances that would prevent me from having another. We need to be able to both work sooner rather than later, and get our finances in order, our current situation isn't long term sustainable even without an additional car payment for an expanded vehicle.
Yeah, most of the married people I know met their husband in a fairly small cohorts, such as a church or volunteer group (not rotating volunteers, a specific stable cohort), where that sort of thing is more likely to work out, and both parties will experience negative repercussions if they act badly.
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