Exercising Spiritual Muscle
One truism in the world of fitness is to "surprise" your muscles. Don't go through the same routine and allow your body to get too comfortable which will, at best, merely maintain current levels of fitness.
Our Byzantine priest had a surprise at Vespers yesterday, something to awaken us from our comfortable numbness. Nearing the end of the service, he said we should all come up (there were perhaps 20 of us), form a line and hug each other and offer the 'kiss of peace' which was of the European sort - a peck on each cheek. My immediate reaction was to gauge the distance between myself and the back door and to calculate the odds of being noticed leaving. But that was so patently outside the spirit of Lent that I couldn't pull the trigger. So the first person went up and gave the kiss of peace and then stood to the left of the priest. The next person offered the gesture to both the priest and that person and then stood to the left of them, and so on...It was all very sweet. Most of us seemed a little more enthusiasm when greeting the opposite sex, which I suppose is only natural.
No comments:
Post a Comment