Q: May I/we come in?
A: Yes, that’s why we put “Welcome” on the door in large friendly
letters.
Q: Is there an entrance fee?
A: No, but you’re free to put something in the collection box.
In fact this isn’t such a frequently asked question, but some people
do ask it. I don’t know how many people don’t come in because they’re
afraid to ask. Perhaps we should put “free entrance” in small friendly
letters under the large friendly letters saying “Welcome”. I wonder if we
would get more in the collection box if we put “voluntary contribution”
too.
Q: Do you still hold services here?
A: (usually after a suppressed giggle) Every Saturday night, every
Sunday, on the eve of every great feast, occasionally on
the day of a great feast but only in the school holidays because the
priest has a day job as a physics teacher, and in Holy Week almost
full-time from Wednesday night to Sunday afternoon.
This one never fails to baffle me. People seem to think that we’re a
museum, or at least something obsolete, not an active, working, growing
community.
Q: How large is your community? (looking at empty space with
about half a dozen chairs along the walls)
A: There are a hundred people on the roll, and on a normal
Sunday about sixty in the service.
Q: Do they bring their own chairs, or what? Sit on the floor?
A: It’s customary to stand, but if you can’t it’s okay to sit,
that’s what the chairs are for.
Q: Aren’t your services terribly long?
A: Not terribly, no. About an hour and a half on Sunday
morning and two hours on Saturday night. One gets used to it.
Q: Are you all Russian?
A: (Prima, English-rose complexion, red hair and freckles,
completely deadpan:) No.
Q: Well, you must have some connection with Russia.
A: No, in fact most Dutch people here don’t.
Q: Well, how many people in the congregation are actually
Dutch?
A: More than half, and the rest are from a dozen different
countries: Russian, White Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Bulgarian,
Romanian, Greek, Serbian, Azeri, Uzbek, Eritrean and Ethiopian.
This is not counting the English/French couple who are moving to
France, and the Frisian who reads the Gospel in Frisian at the Easter
service.
Q: But the Dutch people are all converts, aren’t they?
A: (Prima, fourteen:) I was baptised Orthodox as a baby and so were
my sisters.
There are in fact some Dutch adults in the parish who have been
Orthodox from birth, or at least baptism: the priest’s son and daughter,
for instance, both in their twenties.
Q: I never knew there was a church here! How long has it been
here?
A: For fifty years in this town, for eight years in this spot.
There are people who pass the church every day and have never
noticed it, even though there’s a rather visible sign over the
door.
Q: Who founded your church?
A: Russian emigrants who came to the West as children in the
Revolution. Lots of people fled to Paris at that time and formed a Russian
community. Patriarch Tikhon of
Moscow told them “I’m compromised and I can’t lead you, turn to the
Patriarch of Constantinople” and they did, and that resulted in our
diocese. Some of them came to live and work here in the 1950s and started
the church, but we don’t have any of their descendants in the parish at the
moment.
Of the descendants I know some have left the church altogether and
some have left our culturally Dutch and politically neutral parish for
culturally and/or politically Russian parishes, but that’s none of the
visitors’ business.
Q: Does the priest stand with his back to the people?
A: (going to stand in front of them, facing the altar) Am I
standing with my back to you, or are we all facing the same way and I
just happen to be in front?
This actually enlightens most of the people who ask the question;
very interesting discussions have come from it.
Q: Do those stairs lead to the organ?
A: No, to the office and the library.
This never fails to baffle the asker. Not that we don’t have an
organ, apparently, but that we have such mundane things as an office and a
library upstairs.
Q: What are those cloths hanging over some of the icons for?
A: For decoration.
Q: Why are they on some icons and not on others?
A: Because those icons are on thicker wood so the cloths don’t
fall off.
One person honestly thought that the icons with cloths were somehow
of higher status than the ones without, but I don’t think so.
Q: Do you have some kind of patriarch? And does he
serve here every Sunday?
A: Well, we would like the patriarch to visit and serve, but
most Sundays it’s just the priest.
I think that people who ask that think that “patriarch” is the word
we use for “priest”, but that doesn’t make it less funny. Poor
Bartholomew, commuting to Deventer every Sunday!
Q: Is the patriarch a kind of pope?
A: No, the pope is a kind of patriarch.
Prima got that question; I’ll remember her answer. I like the variant
I got once, “Do you believe in the pope?” to which I answered “Yes, the
pope exists.” And then, of course, explained that the pope is a patriarch
all right but happens not to be our patriarch.
And some personal questions:
Q: Do you (singular, not the church) actually believe in God?
A: Yes.
Q: But how do you know?
A: I don’t know, but things happened in my life that
made it likely. It’s an emotional conviction, not a rational
conviction.
And usually, this sparks the whole “if there is a God, how come
there’s so much evil in the world?” debate, which can either lead to a
really good discussion (as it did last time) or leave me frustrated and
defensive because I’m called upon to explain all that.
Q: Do you (plural) see God as a man? (not “human being”, but
“adult male”)
A: Not as such (quotes Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own
image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created
them.”) But God is the Creator and that’s usually seen as a male
principle.
Q: But when God became incarnate (in various shades of
theology-speak) He came as a man, right?
A: Yes; He had to be either a man or a woman because people
usually only come in those two sorts, and in that time and place He could
do so much more as a man.
Not very theologically sound —I don’t like to use the “in that
time” argument— but it does the job and usually saves a whole screed of
“don’t you feel short-changed as a woman in the church”. Though we get that
question too, and can shock people by saying we aren’t protesting against
it.
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