Church Hopping, Ukrainian Orthodox Edition

This weekend I headed to a service at a local Ukrainian Orthodox Church here on the Upper West Side.  There were locked gates blocking the way to the stairs winding to the main entrance.  There were two other doors, both unpromising.  The less forbidding one was locked.  I almost didn’t try the other door.  When I did, it opened into a basement.  

The absence of a smiling welcoming committee was a good sign.  This was a place for regulars, or for people who really, really wanted to find it.  I stood in silence for a minute.  And then I heard faint singing.  That got me around a corner and up a stairway and into the beautiful sanctuary.  There I joined a small group, scattered haphazardly across the too-large space.  A few towards the back gave me a quick look.  It conveyed neither “Hi how are you?” nor “Get the hell out of here,” but something more like, “Why are you here?”

I slipped into a back row.  The liturgy had started at 10:00 a.m. and I was a little late.  Most of the congregation arrived even later than I did.  At 12:20 p.m., the priest began the homily on the text.  Like everything else, the sermon was in Ukrainian, but I’m sure it was great.  I understood two words, “Jesus Christ” and “Alleluia,” as both were repeated often.  We were out by around 12:45 p.m.  The fact that the service was in Ukrainian and that we stood the entire time (even the older women with walkers) did make it a bit of an endurance test.  My feet and lower back were killing me.  I could smell the meal they would share following the service, and decided I’d hurry out at the end before anyone could ask me to stay.

I didn’t have trouble passing the time though.  The architecture and the iconography kept me plenty preoccupied.  The smell of incense and the ringing of bells alters the imagination a bit.  You can believe more when you’re there.  We crossed ourselves frequently (right to left for the Orthodox, opposite the way Western churches do it).  Lots of bowing.  Lots of kissing of Scripture and icons of Jesus and crosses.   The main cross kissed most often was on the center table, laid on a bed of bright red roses.  During the entire service, members of the congregation would carry candles forward to light them and place them on the candelabras.  The place was full of light.

At one point in the service, an older man came to me with a tall stick with a candle on top and handed it to me.  I tried to quietly whisper that I was new here, just visiting (didn’t he know this, since there only about 30 to 40 of us there, everyone clearly Eastern European except me?).  He motioned for me to stop talking and just follow him.  A few others had been given the tall candles.  Together we moved to the front, paused, then lit our candles and stood around the front area.  I hadn’t planned on participating in a Ukrainian liturgy that day, but when a guy shoves a candle in your hand and pulls you up front, what are you going to do?  I finally realized that we were called to the front to bear a little extra light because the priest was reading the gospel passage for the day.  When he had finished, we put out our candles and returned to our seats.

I called the office several times in order to ask if they would rent space to Incarnation.   Worst thing that happens is that they say “no” (in Ukrainian, of course).  They didn’t say no.  They didn’t call me back at all.