Prayer ground to a halt on Sunday at the Church of All
Saints of Southern North Carolina after the arrival of a new inquirer family
who was entirely too cute for liturgy.
Parents Jack and Anna Smith, 42 and 40, arrived with their children, Tony, 17,
Alexa, 15, Allie, 7, and crawling toddler Sammie, 11 months, and distraction
immediately began.
The problem wasn’t that their clothing was inappropriate,
parishioners said, rather it was the opposite. Barsanuphius Olson, 18, noticed
Alexa’s long, printed skirt, mild-colored but well-matched blouse, and earrings
that hung down like chandeliers immediately and began thinking of conversation
starters. Olson, who is single, said, “After 15 minutes in church, she noticed
most of the other women were wearing head scarves, so she went over the scarf
basket to borrow one. When she did that, I wanted to propose marriage, but I
knew I had to wait until coffee hour.”
Church grannie Natasha Klakhina tilted her head to the left
and got stuck saying “awwww” for 10 minutes straight when she saw Sammie crawl
quickly across the church. “He crawls like a little bunny rabbit,” she said,
noticing that he pushes on both knees at the same time to go forward.
After Allie picked up Sammie and the two of them stood
together quietly for the next 20 minutes, church mother Thekla Baker was
distracted by jealousy, wondering why her five children, who’d been going to
church for years, had to shriek and fight through the services.
When later interviewed, Sammie’s goos and gahs were translated
to mean “Orthodox churches are great places to crawl because there aren’t pews
in the way!”
Ksenia Anderson, 38, tried to maintain her concentration
through the service until just before the Great Entrance, she could not
concentrate. She went out to the lobby to call her teenaged daughter, and was
heard shouting in to her cell phone, “Get up and come to church in time for
coffee hour! I don’t care how late you stayed up last night – there’s this
really cute boy here and you have to meet him!”
Nicholas Thompson immediately noticed that Anna had brought
a dish for the potluck in to the church, and that it was still hot and wafting
succulent smells across the sanctuary. Thompson said he’s usually grumpy about
fasting, but this just made it worse. The Smiths live only five minutes from
church, so they decided to bring the chicken, sausage and cheese casserole
straight from the oven. When later asked, Anna said that she noticed on the
church Web site that it was a potluck day, but wasn’t aware that it was a
fasting Sunday for Orthodox people, nor that you were supposed to take food
dishes directly to the fellowship hall.
The church rector, Fr. Theodosius Davidson, said he noticed
all the distracted parishioners. He was starting to get annoyed with then until
he noticed that Jack was wearing a collared shirt that said “I ♥ to fix things,” and he
had a tape measure on his belt. Fr. Theodosius then looked out the church
window to see that the Smith’s truck had “Heating, plumbing, electrical”
printed on the side of it. “As I was reading the litanies, all I could think of
were repair projects needed on the church,” Fr. Theodosius said.
The only member of the parish not distracted by their
arrival was choir director Lidia Lesh. She did, however, notice the voice of
someone in the nave singing the bass part of “Lord, Have Mercy” correctly and
on key, and wondered who it was until Tony Smith came over and asked if he
could join the choir.
