by laura beth

Pascha was awesome.

I will try not go into great detail here, but here's the overview. Since being in Orange County (since November 1), Kenny and I have been attending Saint Barnabas Orthodox Christian Church. We have meet amazing people there, and have become deeply interesting in the ancient form of Christian worship.

Pascha (Easter) follows Great Lent and Holy Week. The Orthodox church celebrates Pascha, with a Saturday evening service (10 pm to 12:30 am this year), and directly after the service is a huge feast and celebration. And let me tell you, these Orthodox cats sure know how to party. Orthodox folks fast during Lent (primarily from meat, dairy, wine and oil) and when the feast comes, it comes largely in the form of meat. Fried chicken, ham, lamb, pork, carne asada, hamburgers, bratwurst, mac and cheese, beer, wine, cigars, dancing. And on. And on. We parked the moho in the church parking lot overnight. I think we finally hit the pillow at 4:30 am. No joke!

The next afternoon there is a service called Agape Vespers. During this service a Gospel passage is read in as many languages as are represented in the parish, or I suppose whatever language a person is interested in or would like to share with the others. It is so simple and so beautiful! We heard English, French, Italian, Russian, German, Vietnamese, Swahili, and several more I can't remember at the moment.

But back to the Pascha service. This is really condensed, so be sure to read the links above. During the 40 days of Lent and then Holy Week, the Church has been preparing for the Resurrection of Christ. Repentence, fasting, giving, focusing, renewing, remembering who Jesus is and why we follow him in the first place. And then comes Holy Week, somber and dim (literally), in which the Church remembers the week leading up to Christ's crucifixion. Then the climax comes during the Pascha service. There's this part-my favorite part-in which is all comes alive. The church building is dim and candle lit. The people form a procession around the outside of the building with candles, in the middle of the dark night, softly singing:

Christ is risen from the dead,

trampling down death by death,

and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!

And then, the people come back into the church building which is now brightly lit, symbolizing the resurrection and the empty tomb. The tone is cheerful, rejoicing, and absolutely real and beautiful. I can't even describe it here, I am only scratching the surface. Amazing. Christ is Risen!!

ps. Our good friend Mike Merryman joined us for the service and a little bit of the party. As always, it was awesome to spend time with him. And also, sorry for the lame lack of good photos. Like some of our other wonderful experiences, we got too wrapped up in everything that was going on that we just didn't get around to documenting it well with the ole camera. Here's a few from the party. Arrgh!