Herban Sprawl

Big Kitty and I were honorary Greeks this weekend, volunteering at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church’s annual Greek Festival. We were on the buffet line, serving Greek green beans, pilaf, souvlaki, spanokopita and tiropita on Friday evening and Saturday for the lunch crowd. Needless to say, we had a ball, dancing around behind the line during the lull and hollering Opa! When the lines got busy, we were all business, yelling for Bob when we needed a new supply of whatever dish we’d been assigned to.

It all started last year when we spent a few minutes with our friend Basil Grapsas who is in his second and last year as the congregation’s president. He commented that it took a lot of volunteers, and, being the soft-hearted souls we are, we said we’d help. He didn’t forget and I got an email a week or so before the festival.

The only hitch in the whole business was that it coincided with AAUW’s annual used book sale and I needed to be there, as well. So we worked out a schedule and that was that.

One of the things I observed about this group is that the sense of community is tremendous. That isn’t to say there isn’t some sniping, but to have an entire church turn out and take up their various volunteer tasks is an important testament to the cohesiveness of the group. Even the youngsters had things to do, and even the older children who live elsewhere came back to help out. Nevertheless, as the Star City shrinks in terms of opportunities, the young people of Holy Trinity, who are expected to excel in school, have left home and the church has experienced the same membership drain that other churches do.

It was delightful to hear people converse in Greek, and I learned that not a few Russian immigrants attend the church because it is the closest thing to their own Orthodox upbringing. This particular church has been around since the late 1920s, so it continues to serve as the center of the Greek community at large. Basil, for example, lives in Radford.

One of his projects has been bringing in an icon painter to complete the decorative walls of the sanctuary. The building is 1950s modern, so the sanctuary bears witness to both the ornate past of the Greek Church, as well as the vintage ‘contemporary’ twist one finds in a fifty-year-old building. There are still some areas that need painting, but the largest pieces have been completed and it is an awesome example of art. The painter matched the original paintings, touched them up and repaired bits here and there so that everything would blend, and he did a marvelous job.

I mentioned this to an acquaintance from the Unitarian Universalist church, and she was dismissive. She is a recovering Catholic, so to speak, and is very comfortable with the intellectual stimulation provided by being a part of the UU group. What startled me, however, was the rather narrow-minded response to my declaration of the beauty of the sanctuary. She blew it off because of the nature of the religious pictures.

Here is where I part company with people of her mindset. To me, the beauty lies in the interpretation of the subject matter. Not having been raised Catholic, I don’t carry the kind of prejudices she does. Mine come from having been discriminated against as a minority Protestant in a predominantly Catholic community. However, I went to mass with my Catholic girlfriend when I was in high school – back when mass was in Latin – and I have a great appreciation for religious art. Granted, I can be pretty irreverent, as when I told Annalisa that Leonardo’s Mary in his depiction of the annunciation looked as though she was thinking, “Oh, crud, how am I going to explain this to my mother?!” And, to be sure, she looked to be about thirteen or fourteen in the painting, which would mirror the age a nice Jewish girl would be when she was married off.

The paintings at Holy Trinity reflect the orthodox tradition of sanctuary art, and with the sun streaming in, the scent of incense and the gloriously ornate altar accoutrements, it makes for a very inspiring place of worship. And that is the whole purpose of the icons… to inspire the believers to live a life that is steeped in the traditions of a strong family constellation, service to the community and to bear witness to the religious life of the fellow communicants. If I were not such a perfect example of Josie UU, it would be a place where I could worship and gain the sense of community that is so important to the fuller experience of a religious life. Alas, I will instead accept it annually as a schlepper of spanokopita and tiropita, or Greek green beans and pilaf! It is the least I can do to help them sock away enough money to complete their capital projects!

And, by next September, I hope I will have mastered baklava! Opa!