Happy Easter, or as is said in our church: Хрїстóсъ воскрéсе! Воистину воскресе!
Or if you go old school: Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!
My miserable cold of three weeks and counting turns out to be a persistent sinus infection spreading to the chest. So, for those of you counting at home, this month has featured almost going blind/ essentially not being able to use my right eye for a week and a half, a three week and counting nasty sinus infection that didn't want to stay in my sinuses, and a grievously ill (to the point where we thought he was dying) doggie. Among other things. Is it any wonder that I feel a little... cursed? Of course, none of these things is terribly conducive to work and I'm desperately behind, which is why I left for the library on a Sunday morning instead of doing Easter things as I'd prefer. Except, in keeping with the cursed theme, the med school library is on an unannounced holiday schedule and isn't opening until noon. If there weren't paper materials in this library I need to see, I would have gone elsewhere. As it is, by the time I went elsewhere, this library would be open. So I've been killing time in a school with which I'm not entirely familiar, on an uncomfortable little couch stuck between elevators and escalators. There's no room to spread out and start doing real work, and everything I've got is in full view of every random person walking past (yes, I know you're reading over my shoulder as I type, random girl).
Sigh.
Anyway, back to the holiday. Easter is actually my favorite religious holiday, and I'm really tired of the whole "Look at how irreverent I am" crap I see from certain quarters. Look, it's fine if you're not religious, but "ironic" hipster offensiveness is still plain offensive. Yes, I know that there are a frightening number of nutjobs that use religion as an excuse for everything from asshattery to murder, but clearly I'm not one of them, and I hardly think it's appropriate to be an ass to someone you know (or even "know") as a way of striking back or something at those nutjobs.
Fifteen more minutes until the library opens. Fricking finally.
2 comments:
Church Slavonic? Did you have to learn it as part of religious education (comparable to what we Jews did with Hebrew) - if so, pretty damned cool.
And I get what you mean about just not feeling up for a holiday - or having everything else interfere with it - happened to me with Passover this year. Between craziness at work, losing Gillman, and everything else, I just didn't feel up to it. Making it to a seder and switching my diet around just didn't happen.
Can we swap out religious asshats? I deal with it from the opposite direction; sharing a cube wall at work with an evangelical who's sworn mission is to convert me. No matter how many times I tell him that Christianity as a whole just isn't for me - including the time when I thought about converting to Catholicism and just couldn't believe in Jesus - and that I do not share the political/social beliefs of the people in his community, he doesn't let up. And while loudmouthed anti-theists are equally annoying and disrespectful of others' beliefs, I'd sooner watch Religuous on a constant loop than deal with prosletyzing coworkers any more. Sigh.
Depending on the age of the congregation and how traditional the priest, the services in Byzantine churches are conducted in old (aka church) Slavonic, English, or a mix of the two. Going to Byzantine school and having a more traditional priest in the parish, it was constant exposure. Especially because we had to attend the morning liturgy if we got to school early-- conducted entirely in Slavonic.
I hope that there's a special place in purgatory and/ or hell (depending on the severity) where the over the top religious and anti-religious asshats have to live surrounded by their stereotypical worst nightmares. I think that's a fine punishment for asshats of all stripes-- imagine misogynists and rapists made subservient in a violently matriarchal society.
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