Heritage

I just got back from spending a couple of hours at the annual fair at the St George Greek Orthodox Church just down the road from my house. Dinner was OK--I had the shish kebab/souvlaki, which was tasty but a bit dry (tomorrow I'll have the gyros, I think--the meat smelled wonderful!)--the pastries I'm saving for later look wonderful, and the music, and the dancing from the teen/young adult group were excellent. (OK, the youngest kids and the slightly older kids were cute.)

The guys in that group have to be some of the smartest in the congregation--all the young ladies in the group are lovely. And they're all--guys and girls--very good dancers.

Being part of a community event at a church made me think a lot about my own religious and cultural heritage.

Even though my Mom's own mother was French, and my Dad's grandparents were Irish on both sides, my siblings and I were raised fully assimilated Catholic Americans. We never heard anything about Irish or French heritage or culture. It wasn't until I was in my teens that I started learning anything about either heritage on my own; shortly after that my parents and most of my siblings decided they were also interested, and have remained at least mildly interested since then. This is also when I discovered I was also interested in other cultures and heritages and music based on those folk/ethnic traditions as well. And I decided I didn't have to understand the lyrics of a song to like it as a piece of music--this applied to rock and pop music in English as well, by the way. I'm not sure when the last time I really understood a song by Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell was, for instance.

(Maybe it has something to do with my full name--Stephen, from the Greek Stephanos, crown; Michael, Hebrew, meaning "who is like God?"; Robert, Germanic in origin, meaning "bright fame"; and Conroy, which is often thought to have entered Ireland with the Normans and to be derived from "con roi" or "with the king". Side note--when it was time for me to choose a saint's name for confirmation, my parents wanted me to choose Robert, which meant that my own full name, Stephen Michael Robert, would be a variation of my Dad's full name, Robert Stephen Michael, which I've always thought was pretty cool.)

(Another side note about names. I have introduced myself as Stephen since I turned 21, which was a long time ago now. People who call me Steve either are friends of my parents, or someone who never paid attention to what my nametag at work says or to how I answer the phone. Although I do not usually answer to Steve and always introduce myself as Stephen, I will answer to Stephanos if you're feeling Greek, Stefan if you're feeling Slavic or Eastern European, Esteban if you're feeling Spanish, or Etienne if you're feeling French.)

We were raised in the Roman Catholic church, and until we moved from the Chicago area, we were all comfortable in the parish to which we belonged, and my parents were both active in the church there. I did learn while quite young, though, that I seemed to have a lot more in common with a lot of the reformers and "heretics" than I did with the Roman Catholic hierarchy. I never quite agreed with "this is true because the Pope/bishops/nuns/clergy/Confraternity of Christian Doctrine says so". (As if Roman Catholics are the only true Christians.)

I was also interested in Judaism, since a lot of the kids I knew in school were Jewish (both Reform and Orthodox, I think) and there was a synagogue down the road from our house. I often went to community events at that synagogue and was occasionally invited by my Jewish friends to things at their synagogues as well.

When we got to Portland OR, though, we found that the culture in the Roman Catholic church there was a lot more conservative, and my family as a whole stopped going. I had several friends from school who went to the nearby Presbyterian church and I went to choir practice with them one day after school senior year, and wound up joining them for the rest of the school year. When I got to the University of Puget Sound up in Tacoma WA most of the people I met who went to church went to the main United Methodist church downtown, so I did as well, and went regularly for almost three years. (I still sang with the choir at First Presbyterian for a couple of Christmases, though, and it's still my favorite place of all for the late Christmas Eve service.)

My undergraduate major was in Comparative Religion, which increased my intellectual tendency towards skepticism. I came to the conclusion that although I am open to religious experience of the holy and sacred, I don't really believe in and am skeptical of organized religions--and for me, that also includes most organizations, professional sports teams, governments, and political parties. I am also not much of a joiner of organizations, either. (I also decided in college that although I still have a lot in common with reformers and "heretics", and would probably have liked Martin Luther, and really liked John Wesley, I don't think I'd have liked John Knox.)

All the same, I can see the comfort offered by belonging to some organization of which you feel a part, whether it's hobby- or interest-based, a political or social action group, or a faith-based group. I can understand how my youngest brother could agree with my sister-in-law that their kids not only would be raised in the Roman Catholic church but would go to parochial school, through high school, and that they themselves would participate as parents.

Time to go make some coffee to go with my Greek pastries.....



SMC