I had to be in the town in the middle of the UK for a few months. Someone recommended me to a certain “church house”.
Until my stay there I did not know that I was bent. I knew that my Church was quite sexist, i.e. many priests treated the women with condescendence and dismissal but I did not know that it could be otherwise. In fact, the whole of Russian society is quite sexist; the Church being only a part of it, in this respect. The quip “Jesus Christ appeared to the women first because He knew that they would not be able to keep their mouths shut” is a clerical norm; many consider it to be a fine example of Orthodox humour. I do not, and not just because I am a woman but also because the speaker ascribes to the Christ his own vulgar perception of women. I have endured this condescending attitude for the sake of acquiring humility although I felt that there was something wrong with the notion that women must be chastised for their own good: perhaps it was good for women but could not be good for the men chastising them. Also, it reduced a woman to the state of an infantile silly girl (that of course has its benefits).
The issue of sexism was painful for me: I knew that Jesus Christ had never treated women like many of our priests or other Orthodox men did. Further more, there is not even a hint of condescendence in all Gospels stories about His meetings and conversations with women; if one opens the Gospels s/he feels the wind of freedom blown into their face.
The church of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the church house were located in the midst of the Muslim quarters, not so far from the mosk. I have just returned from Scotland, and was in love with all things Scottish and I immediately got myself into a trouble. The priest was an Englishman, and almost immediately after being introduced I told him that Scotland must be independent and that Scotts had a far superior, culture to the English. Fr J. exploded in a not very English way, we exchanged a few sharp pokes, and I thought that the relationship was irrevocably ruined. There was something strange there though. Later I realized what was “strange” was that Fr J. spoke to me as an equal. We were both rude but equal.
I was not a “silly” or “annoying” woman to him, or “a woman first of all” in a way that obscures a person by a ready-made scheme. I was a human being made in the image of God, just like everyone. He (and his wife) was not a priest in the sense of “someone who has an authority and had to be obeyed” but he was an equal or even a servant. There was the air of very natural freedom around him just like that in the Gospels.
The Liturgies in that church were very communion-oriented. This sounds like oxymoron because the Liturgy is supposed to be communion-oriented but the reality is often far from that. In that church the Eucharistic prayers (including Anaphora prayers) were read aloud clearly and with great solemnity, nobody counted “God have mercy” forty times waving his fingers, the people knew what was happening and conducted themselves accordingly. The congregation was international: English, Romanians, Greeks, Russians, Ethiopians, Gypsies, etc.; the language of the services was mixed, with variations depending on which nationalities where present in the church.
These months spent in the church house have unbent me so substantially that from then I began reaping the consequences. I could no longer put up with demeaning attitudes within the church, even if it was under the mask of “my own good”.