Where to start...

So let me tell you why I'm doing this (other than an inordinate fondness for the sound of my own typing). Well over a year ago I was having lunch with my friend Shannon. We aren't often in the same city, so it took a while to work our way through the family-and-friends news. When we moved onto more random subjects, we started talking about Art Bell -- you know, that guy that has the amazing late-night talk show that features UFO aficionados, alien abductees, and callers enamored of various extra-terrestrial forces. We marveled at the wide variety of psychologically suspect belief systems that crop up on that show.
And then she said, "So what's new in your world? I answered, "Well, I don't think I can be Protestant anymore." And then I gave her the highly condensed version of my rather haphazard study of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. It went something like, "So there's a priest, lots of fasting, a liturgy that's 1500 years old, and incense, and etc.etc.etc., and icons, the Theotokos, saints, etc.etc.etc., and more fasting, Roman Catholicism splits off in 1054, standing during the entire service, etc.etc.etc., mystical transformation of the elements during communion, etc.etc.etc., and did I mention kissing those icons?"
When I finally ran out of steam, she said, "Hmmm. So, if I google this 'orthodoxy' thing, am I going to find that this isn't much different from the stuff those Art Bell callers come up with?"

Ouch.

So it occurs to me that over the last couple of years, as I've been talking with friends about this little journey, that there's way too much information and contemplation to dump onto someone in one sitting. And I do confess to a good deal of convert enthusiasm, that can make my exposition a bit incoherent for the uninitiated. So I hope this blog can be a space to explore and consider, and trace the path Jeff and I have taken to this point.