Orthodox Christianity Test

[Гост]

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[Klodovik]

   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. You’ve learned to stretch your legs during church without drawing attention to yourself.
   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 took down the little green pine tree air freshner in your truck in lieu of burning myrrh.
  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 say everything 3 times out of habit.
  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 at least three 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 sing folk songs in Tone 7 and they still make sense.
  32. 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...
  33. You’ve grown accustomed to the taste of wine because you’ve had it since you were a baby.
  34. You can automatically subtract 13 days from today’s date.
  35. You’ve been or plan on going to Jerusalem, or Mount Athos, or Constantinople, or...
  36. You could write a book on the symbolism in an Orthodox wedding… during the wedding… because they are just that long.
  37. When you go to the movies, you and your spouse sit on different sides of the theatre (and you both feel uncomfortable sitting down in public).
  38. You would like to think up two more of these just so that the list would come out to a good Orthodox number like 40.


*Orthodox Christians: Until recently, most scholars agreed that Orthodox Christians didn’t really exist. Like werewolves, fairies and Romanians, they were simply a charming Old World fable designed to delight children with outlandish details regarding the rich, luxurious beards and interminable arguments about the proper interpretation of Greek words. Upon further reflection, some scholars now cautiously hazard the guess that there are roughly 250 million Orthodox Christians in the world, with a lineage stretching back to the earliest days of the Church. As for what these strange, chanting, hirsute folk actually believe, though, no one is yet confident enough to hazard a guess.

[Klodovik]

Appendix:

   1.  You have an emergency head scarf in your glove compartment.
   2. You know all the take-out restaurants near your place of employment that serve meat-free, dairy-free meals.
   3. You think of peanut butter as one of the essential food groups.
   4. You think of shrimp as “vegan.”
   5. You have developed ways of stretching your legs while standing in place without drawing attention to yourself.
   6. You can’t describe your Sunday morning church service to co-workers without using foreign terms.
   7. You’ve ever gotten into an argument with somebody about the ingredients in marshmallows.
   8. History Channel shows about the Byzantine Empire make you wistful.
   9. Sending your misbehaving teenager off to a monastery on a Greek island doesn’t seem like a bizarre idea at all but a very practical one.
  10. Bestselling paperbacks containing obscure historical tidbits about the 4th century make you go, “Hey, that’s not the way it happened!”
  11. You use “icon” as a verb.
  12. You go to a friend’s wedding and wonder why the walls inside the church look so bare.
  13. The phrase “let us complete our prayers” doesn’t make you look at your watch.
  14. You know which brands of margarine are dairy-free.
  15. And buy them.
  16. Religious terms like ‘te deum’ or ‘mass’ in a book about pre-revolutionary Russia set your teeth on edge.
  17. You think “plagal” means “add 4.”
  18. “Old calendar” doesn’t mean “last year’s calendar” to you.
  19. You use “ecumenist” as a swear-word, or have had it so used against you.
  20. You use “Metropolitan” as a noun. And you don’t mean the car.
  21. You automatically do mental arithmetic if somebody mentions a date, or the number of a psalm.
  22. You know of two distinct groups of people referred to as “the seventy” and know from context which is meant.
  23. Your answer to “Is the Pope Polish?” is “Rome or Alexandria?”
  24. You think of chicken as a luxury and shrimp as a staple.
  25. “Georgia” makes you think of Tbilisi and not Atlanta.
  26. The phrase “both Catholic and Protestant” puts your nose out of joint.
  27. You think Rice Krispy™ bars are meat, but clams are not.

[Максим]

  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. You’ve learned to stretch your legs during church without drawing attention to yourself.
   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 took down the little green pine tree air freshner in your truck in lieu of burning myrrh.
  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 say everything 3 times out of habit.
  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 at least three 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 sing folk songs in Tone 7 and they still make sense.
  32. 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...
  33. You’ve grown accustomed to the taste of wine because you’ve had it since you were a baby.
  34. You can automatically subtract 13 days from today’s date.
  35. You’ve been or plan on going to Jerusalem, or Mount Athos, or Constantinople, or...
  36. You could write a book on the symbolism in an Orthodox wedding… during the wedding… because they are just that long.
  37. When you go to the movies, you and your spouse sit on different sides of the theatre (and you both feel uncomfortable sitting down in public).
  38. You would like to think up two more of these just so that the list would come out to a good Orthodox number like 40.


*Orthodox Christians: Until recently, most scholars agreed that Orthodox Christians didn’t really exist. Like werewolves, fairies and Romanians, they were simply a charming Old World fable designed to delight children with outlandish details regarding the rich, luxurious beards and interminable arguments about the proper interpretation of Greek words. Upon further reflection, some scholars now cautiously hazard the guess that there are roughly 250 million Orthodox Christians in the world, with a lineage stretching back to the earliest days of the Church. As for what these strange, chanting, hirsute folk actually believe, though, no one is yet confident enough to hazard a guess.

Ја сам се пронашао у броју 4.

[gost]

UPOREDNO PRAZNOSLOVLJE: You know you're a Gen-X Catholic when...

34. ...one of your earliest memories of Mass involves watching four teenage girls with long, straight hair strumming guitars.

35. ...one of your earliest memories of Mass involves watching four teenage boys with long, straight hair strumming guitars.

36. ...there were more felt banners bearing hippy slogans in your parish church than statues.

37. ...you never understood why the priest kept rearranging everything and removing things from the church all the time: statues, confessionals, kneelers, etc.

38. ...you wondered why some of the old ladies put doilies on their heads in church. What was that all about?

39. ...you think an historic church is one with kneelers. [Thankfully, this is changing!]

40. ...Friday was "hamburger night" at your house.

41. ...you were a girl altar server in the 70's or 80's, and didn't realize that you were breaking the rules.

42. ...growing up, you only knew of one family that used NFP...and they were Presbyterians.

43. ...in all your years of Catholic school, you never had a nun for a teacher. Oh, and ruler? What on earth are you talking about?

44. ...you heard older people talking about a "Baltimore Catechism", but you never actually saw one.

45. ...Seven Cardinal what???

46. ...your 9th grade religion class included learning the Our Father and the Hail Mary, because most of the kids in class didn't know those two prayers.

47. ...you've heard the words "Benediction" and "Vespers" but aren't really sure what they mean. But you can sing the sappy “Kumbaya” and “On Eagle’s Wings” with no problem.

48. ...you wonder why some people receive communion on the tongue.

49. ...you think Extreme Unction is a new professional wrestling show on TV.

[Drumroll for the best ... ]

50. ...your overall religious instruction left you with impression the only mortal sin was first degree murder and/or judgmentalism: everything else is venial and therefore irrelevant.

[Klodovik]

@Gost

Sta da ti kazem drugo, nego da ste zreli za novi Koncil...

[gost]

Šiza brate Papigo, oćel da bide ekumenski, ovaj ikumenski? Prvi niški?

   

[Klodovik]

Sve zavisi hoce li se prelati usaglasit tko ce biti prezidentom istog?

P.S. "ekumenski" sabor je "vaseljenski", a "pravoslavni" sabor je "lokalni", tako je odvajkada kod nas. Bez ravnopravnog prisustva i ucestvovanja jeretika, takav buduci hepening ne moze poneti epitet "Osmog" (je l' viidis kako vas postivamo, a? ). Naravno, tu ima jedan mali, dodatni uslov: njegova resenja i zakljucci moraju nedvosmisleno potvditi nasu teoloziju, a osuditi vasu.

[gost]

[Klodovik]

A tko je ovdje tko, ne mogu skuzit na prvi pogled?

[gost]

Ma nije bitno tko je tko, bitna je igra. 

[Klodovik]

Naravno, vazno je samo da se lova vrti.

[gost]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v_JhmkbzH8

[Klodovik]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN27NH5jQ8M&feature=related

[gost]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqwqPne2JOc

[Klodovik]

Tesko je vreme, ko u kog' da se zakune;
tesko, jer nisam od onih koji glume...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EkXhGb3SO8&feature=PlayList&p=28D04C9E33FAF199&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=56