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Greek Orthodox
ritual no longer in parking lot
Religion
- A church, which met at the Cedar Hills Shopping Center, secures its own space
The Oregonian - Thursday,
March
9th, 2006
Last
year, patrons of Coach's Bar and Grill in the Cedar Hills Shopping Center ran
into a mass of people chanting, singing and carrying candles around the shopping
center and its parking lot.
"We kind
of stopped the crowds outside Coach's," said John Davis, a member of St.
John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church, which has rented space in the basement
of the shopping center for about seven years.
This year,
church members will not interrupt any happy hours with their Easter season
processions. They are leasing a new, bigger building at 14485 S.W. Walker Road,
north of the Nike campus.
Last Sunday
was their final service in the shopping center. This Sunday, they will join the
congregation of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Northeast Portland. And
March 19 they will meet in their new space for the first time.
The church
was organized eight years ago by six people who lived on the west side of
Portland but attended Holy Trinity. The first service at St. John the Baptist
drew 35 people. Now, attendance averages about 130, with membership about 200.
Only 40
percent of the members have some Greek orthodox tie, said the Rev. Theodore
Dorrance. The rest were raised in other denominations or without any church
experience.
The service
-- most of it liturgical and sung -- is unchanged from the second or third
century, Dorrance said.
Gregory Russo
of Bethany, who spent 20 years in Protestant churches, first visited an orthodox
church in Georgia. He remembers a strong smell of incense and a 40-foot wall at
the front of the church filled with religious icons. "I saw these guys in
all these vestments coming in and out of these doors and then they would process
and walk around the church, and I'm thinking, 'What in the world is this?'
"
Years later,
in the Portland area, Russo joined St. John the Baptist, drawn to a
"mystical" experience he said was missing from his Protestant
tradition, where "usually, you know, God's a good buddy," he said.
Those who
want to connect with centuries-old ceremonies should be aware that the Divine
Liturgy service tends to run an hour and a half and most of it is done standing,
although people can sit if they would like.
For Lenten
services, the church dims its lights more and priests wear purple vestments to
convey a sense of "bright sadness" that reflects the season, Dorrance
said: "Beautiful but subdued."
JILL
SMITH - The Oregonian
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