I am having a different kind of experience, Scott. Having said goodbye to a rather large and widespread base of friends from my Protestant background - I am finding it harder to make the same kind of headway into making friends in the Orthodox world.
Part of it is my hesitancy and tentativeness with so much that is new and unfamiliar to me in the jargon of the Church (I still think Kontakion is someone from Kentucky), the lives of the Saints and the rubrics of worship. I still don\'t really know the difference between worship and veneration. Outwardly, it looks the same - and I haven\'t cultivated what it\'s supposed to be like inwardly.
Another part of this feeling that I\'m still an outsider is because a large portion of my identity as a worshipper was nullifed. If you had asked me to describe my worship five years ago, I would have claimed that I was worshipping in spirit and in truth. Now I realize that it was more like \"Wisdom: let us pretend\" - and I am still in that mode. My worship is extremely shallow.
Still, another contributor to my floundering is that the parish I attend is extremely small and I don\'t quite know how to persuade people to \"come and see\" - although I do ask... nobody seems to be interested in taking me up on the invitation.
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