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Living In Sin
2005-05-11, 1:42 p.m.
After work, I met Adonis at the Greek Orthodox church up the street from our apartment, for a 5:40 meeting with Father George.
Father George (FG) is a young Greek priest, with kind eyes, jet black hair and one of those "Hip" demeanors you wouldn't expect from a father of the church.
He used phrases like, "Oh my god" and "damn", and had a computer with internet access in his office, and offered us cheesecake.
He sat and talked to us for two hours, taking occasional calls on his Verizon cell phone, and making suggestions to us as to how we should procede to "live in sin" without "commiting sin" for the next month, until we're "married".
I held my breath, thinking he was going to advise me to move out.
I liked Father George, but I didn't agree with everything he was telling me. It was hard for me not to speak up. I couldn't help myself.
He was telling us to abstain for the next month.
And then in regards to children - birth control and in vitro both sins.
"But I'm 35 years old. One child is enough."
"How many children you end up having is up to god."
"And if i can't get pregnant and want to use in vitro?"
"This is unnatural and not from god."
He proceded to tell me a story about a woman who used in vitro and ended up with 20 fertilized eggs.
I thought about all the stories I read about women having twins, but I had never heard of such a thing.
And then somehow the topic of abortion came up. (I've never had an abortion, but I have many women friends who have.)
"But what if a woman is raped?"
"Still a sin to abort the child who is the product of such an awful act," he explained. "Your body is not your body, it is god's body, he gave it to you as a gift, just as children are a gift from god."
I could feel myself growing increasingly uncomfortable with this idea of converting.
Then FG asked us if we lived together. He explained he was not prying, and we didn't have to answer.
"Yes." I could feel my face flush. I knew what was coming next.
He suggested we try to abstain from "relations" until we're married next month. But when Adonis explained that we were marrying at city hall, and it would be a year before we were married in the church, Father George said "WE will have to figure something out then."
Adonis looked serious. Father George looked concerned. I looked at both of them and wanted desperately to say, "Everything was okay in our lives until we came here. What was I thinking?"
"What if we marry in the church here", I suggested. "We could fly your parents here, the same cost for us to travel to Greece and get married," i offered Adonis.
Adonis didn't say anything.
Father George explained that the cost of getting married in the church would be no more than $400.
Suddenly our whole word was being uprooted.
Just when we thought we had it all figured out.... now GOD, someone i had never seen or heard before in my life, was part of this decision.
The problem is I'm not sure what I believe. I want to believe in the bible, but there's a voice inside my head that keeps telling me the bible was just a book written by humans whose perceptions of what took place in the days before and after jesus are full of contradictions.
Also, how do we know these twelve MEN weren't cult leaders who made up these stories to get people to follow their own agendas?
How do we know that jesus was the son of god, and not merely some charismatic motivator, not unlike Anthony Robbins?
You see, i could be in a room with eleven other people and witness what appeared to be a miracle, but could have also been explained as a coincidence. But because we all want to believe in miracles, because the world needs more of these stories, we all agree to agree that what happened WAS a miracle. And then we all go home and write our own perceptions of what took place. But there could have been twelve other people at that same event who saw it from a different angle, and can explain the miracle scientifically.
FAITH.
That's what it all comes down to.
FAITH that everything in our lives is happening just as it should.
That without pain there can be no happiness. So having faith that even the pain has a purpose.
FAITH that if you give up all your beloved pets, and your independence, your apartment where you lived comfortably with a very good friend, learn a new language, a new culture, and a new religion (fasting 40 days without meat, dairy, or fish) to prove your love for someone, that it will all work out in the end.
Father George must have noticed I was a little ambivalent about the situation, brcause he advised me to think hard and long about my decision. He assured me that just because I'm planning to marry in the Greek church, does not mean i have to convert. However, Adonis and I would have to sign some kind of waiver agreeing to raise our children in this faith.
As Adonis and I walked home, I felt comforted by the fact that he and I were both on this journey together. that the next time I went back to sit and talk to Father George, Adonis would be there with me. But a little bothered by the fact that I was being asked to give up sex in the name of a religion that i had not yet committed to.
And then I thought about the stories Father George had told Adonis and I about demons. A story about when one of the other fathers in the church had gone to greece to perform an exorcism on an eleven year old girl who was possessed, and how when he approached to breath on the girl (the breath of a priest comes with god's blessings) the demon got very angry and spoke to the priest in a man's voice, and started to bring up the priest's past.
"Demons will do this," Father George explained. "They will use your past against you because they know that if they can embarass you or make you feel ashamed, then they have gotten to you."
I thought about my past. About the fact that there was still so much Adonis did not know about me (had explicitly told me he didn't want to know), and that I would have to confess these things to a priest if I converted. I thought about the fact that I likely still carried some degree of shame and embarassment about these things and wondered if that was the devil trying to bring me down.
And then I thought that if demons were real, then surely god must also be real.
But it would be much easier to be accountable only to GOD. Not to have to go before a priest, another human being, to come clean with all that i felt ashamed of - the sins of my past.
Now I was being asked to do something I had never done before.
Confession.
I went home that night and read an excerpt from JOHN, Chapter 20, Verse 19:
"So Jesus said to them again, "Peace to you! As the Father has sent ME, I also send you," And when he had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the HOly Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
I don't want my sins to be retained.
But how comfortable will I be asking a man I don't even know to forgive them if I haven't even forgiven myself?
I was already feeling edgy when we returned home then to find that all the construction going on upstairs had managed to cover our kitchen in a layer of soot, not to mention all the demolition - the chunks of shattered of bricks. (Adonis is working on the apartment upstairs and for now there is a big hole in our ceiling in the kitchen.)
I spent the day before scrubbing that kitchen clean and making our apartment feel more like a home than it had been since I'd moved in, and now all of that seemed like such a waste.
Everything was dirty again.
I was ready to give up. "Thats' it, i'm not cleaning this place again until you're done."
But something inside me started cleaning and wouldn't stop.
The desire to make everything dirty clean again.
Or was it the faith that the next day wouldn't be as bad?
Regardless...the kitchen would not be clean again until the work upstairs was completed.
I thought of this as an analogy for my life. The dirt of my past won't go away, it will keep coming back to haunt me until the work - the spiritual work that I need to do is completed. And the work cannot be completed until I literally come clean with my past.
YESTERDAY - TOMORROW 
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