Course Dispatch
Ecumenical site visit provides unexpected spiritual refreshment
Ethiopian Orthodox iconography, for illustration purposes only.
By Dr. Emily Guimaraes ‘28
Big smile. “Yes! Of course.” When I received the assignment in Dr. Liza Anderson’s historical theology “What time are services tomorrow?” class, I knew I’d enjoy the practice of visiting a faith community different “3 a.m.! Or you could come at 4.” from my own. I also knew it would be stressful. **** I once spent a month working in Tanzania and worshiped in the Anglican church there. That was one of a few experiences I’ve had as a visible racial minority, a “mzungu” pointed at by children. I chose to seek out an Ethiopian Orthodox church for my site visit because of its unique antiquity and continuity as an African non-colonial church. The listing I could find gave service times starting at 3 a.m.
When I returned the next morning, the church building was silent. But lights were on, and the door was open. I went in and found myself in the altar precinct with a priest who shouted and shooed at me. “Woman! Out!”
It was the signal I needed. I do that. I put my hands together in prayer, bowed my head, and approached the car. He rolled down the window. “Does your church welcome visitors?” I asked. 12 | Church Divinity School of the Pacific
lines of race, dress, or language, just looking past them. In Christ, there is no Jew, nor Greek.
At about 4, I was handed a Bible, open to Mark 1:35-45. “Here is where we are, so you can follow.”
Around 7, the video screen began displaying the eucharistic liturgy with an interlinear English translation. I was amazed by the familiarity. And yes, this is what I, too, think of as “the main prayer.”
By 5, the place was filling up as more people drifted in. A deacon fired up a couple of video screens: Now the congregation could follow a script unreadable to me. The dominant sound was voices in polyphonic chant.
I got out quickly, with profuse apology, Two women sat down near me, tucking through the curtain and into an empty their children right in to sleep on the floor under the pews. They checked in congregational area. Another with me hospitably a few times. man pointed to where I should sit. (“Women.”) “Can you understand any of this?”
That couldn’t be right, I thought. I The three of us were the only people decided to walk by this congregation in the building. on Saturday afternoon and see if the building posted service times. Nope. “Did someone invite you?” he asked. I sat down on a bench, thinking about “No. I am here to visit. Is that OK?” giving up. Then I saw someone come out of the back of the church. I’m not shy, but there was a cultural barrier, a language barrier, a race barrier. And then, after he put on his seatbelt, he paused and made the sign of the cross before starting his car.
There were smells. There were bells. My Anglo-Catholic heart just settled right in.
“Yes, of course.” I sat down and regained my composure. The room was a basically familiar Orthodox layout: congregation facing a wall with icons. New to me in the Orthodox context were pews! A powerful smell of incense permeated the building, the same blend I’m accustomed to from my own tradition. The service began. Two men, one in vestments and one wrapped in a white cloth, chanted in an unfamiliar language and musical mode.
“Nope,” I said. “But the art helps. And I can pray. Really, I’m great.” “When the main prayer starts, there will be translation in English.” Something about the art, the music, the incense, the fact that the only words I understood were “Maryam” and “Jesuchristu” repeated regularly, and the impossibility of doing anything else set me free to pray. Which I needed. I received genuine gestures of welcome from many people, despite how different I looked from literally everyone—I think because, as this very long service wore on, I did not look so different. I was just praying, as we all were. We weren’t obliterating
The Eucharist in Orthodox worship is offered on behalf of all present. Among congregants, primarily young children and the elderly receive. All of us were liberally censed. Since few adults my age approached the table, I did not feel excluded as I typically do as a guest at the Roman Catholic mass. I was a bit stunned when I had the opportunity to really look around. It was around 8. The place was packed.
ordained leaders of this congregation to have grown up in positions of such authority and then to live and work in a Western city. It gave me a new appreciation for how hard it is for a man from a patriarchal culture to encounter a woman like me as his physician when receiving medical care. The church I visited is clearly at the center of a secular immigrant community as well as a faith community. I wondered how members who don’t feel deeply connected to the faith stay connected to their language and ethnic community. I quit wondering that when someone needed my parking place and I realized there’s a whole food-centered event after the service.
I don’t, fundamentally, experience Jesus’s voice as “Woman! Out!” But it has taken me a long time to arrive at this conclusion. I honor that many people continue to feel most comfortable in communities with more rigid gender roles, though I remain deeply curious how this will evolve over time. I came away more open to the diversity and beauty of the Christian experience while remaining committed to our Episcopal tradition of inclusion, equality, and welcome. I can be an ambassador of my own faith and bear respectful witness to the faith of others with whom we share what matters: the love of God in Christ.
These wonderings and more left me with a fundamental question we had been discussing in class: Where is “the heart of the parish?”
By the time the post-communion prayer concluded five and a half hours This parish displayed an icon of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. His heart is into Sunday morning church, I was found in each of us when we are open exhausted and headed for the door. Several people invited me to stay: to him in prayer. It is found in the love “We are now going to have fun! Please, shared between Father and Son and reflected in our love for friend, family, join us!” community, and stranger. This love, the work of the Spirit, is the heart of **** the parish. It is the job of the priest to help explore that heart My most important and lasting in prayer and reveal it impression of the visit was the primacy in liturgy and work. And and deep Christian unity created in the prayer and eucharistic experience. clearly this parish is doing a fantastic job of that right now: they are praying up a storm, A secondary impression was the and thriving as a people of dissonance of gender segregation. I Dr. Emily Guimaraes ‘28 | Photo by Leo Sorel God together. wondered what it must be like for the 2025 Edition CROSSINGS | 13