MariaM wrote:
On thing puzzles and, I'm afraid, rather disgusts me.
What's with these pewless convert churches where people sit on the dirty floor during the sermon, like children. In most pewless Orthodox churches, no one over the age of five or six sits on the floor. I certainly never allowed my children to do such a thing in the pewless church we attended. If you are going to insist on no pews, then have some respect and remain standing.
I thought I was the only one who thought this was weird. During the sermon I want to sit, but don\'t want to sit on the floor. We have a few benches and chairs on the edge, which I usually take. When it\'s crowded, though, I\'ll sit on the floor. Fortunately we have rugs that are vacuumed weekly.
Even weirder are the \"humility battles,\" where people reach a stand off, both refusing to take a chair. As a result, women in their 60s are sitting on the floor next to an empty chair, even when it\'s crowded. And I\'m on the floor, looking at that empty chair . . .
In Ukraine they have a phobia of sitting on the floor. Once my kids wanted to sit on the steps in front of a shop during the summer while their mom was shopping. I let them sit, warning them about what would happen. In fewer than five minutes, an older woman walked by and fell into a panic.
I fall in between the two views, but I wonder what an old Ukrainian woman would do if she saw a church full of people sitting on the floor . . .
