On Wednesdays and Fridays you eat Hommos and Falafel.
• You are more comfortable standing in church than sitting.
• You can suck/vacuum up the crumbs of bread out of your hand without coughing.
• You can sing ison to any song (and you know what an ison is… LoL).
• Lent to you means peanut butter, tofu, soy, lots and lots of pita bread and hummus, and services at least five times a week.
• You're used to skipping breakfast on Sundays.
• On your first encounter with long words, you pronounce them stressing the 'next to the next to last' syllable.
• You wonder why the Pope crosses himself backwards when you see him on TV.
• You wear comfortable shoes to church, because you know you'll be standing a long, long time.
• To you, a 'topless' gal is one without a headscarf.
• You get great deals on Easter candy.
• You spend time figuring out the best way to remove smoke stains from your ceiling and wax from your walls.
• Before you pray, you say a prayer.
• You don't flinch when someone throws water at you.
• When you first tell people who ask what religion you are, at first they think you're Jewish. Oy!
• You're experienced at removing wax from clothing.
• The service routinely starts at least 15 minutes late and lasts 2 ½ hours — and nobody around you complains.
• You consider any service two hours or under short/regular.
• You know you're in an Orthodox church when the priest says, "Let us complete our prayer to the Lord", and there's still half an hour to go.
• At the end of Holy Week, you have rug burns on your forehead.
• Your Easter isn't Easter without an all-night party (featuring 10 dishes of sausage with cheese).
• Your priest is married.
• You have seen all members of clergy in purple robes.
• You can differentiate between the eight different chanting tones.
• You typically celebrate a feast day by observing strict fasting.
• You celebrate feast days the night before.
• You address the City as Constantinople instead of Istanbul.
• You can say "Lord have mercy" 40 times without making a mistake.
• You can say "Christ Is Risen"/"Indeed He Is Risen" in a million languages.
• You have tournaments of red-egg-cracking on Pascha... And you usually know who's being a wise-guy with the wooden one.
• You have multiple priests' numbers in your cell phone.
• You actually read the Bible in your spare time.
• You've slept overnight in your church for a retreat.
• You've grown accustomed to the taste of wine because you've had it since you were a baby.
• 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.
• You've been or plan on going to Hamatoura.
• You could write a book on the symbolism in an Orthodox wedding... during the wedding... because they are just that long.
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Wed Apr 18, 2007 12:09 am
