Yes. I was a temp at a Catholic University doing data entry, talking to priests in initiation during lunch, all ready to dive into become Mr. Catholic when I decided to scroll through the Yellow Pages to see if I was missing any religions.
Flip flip flip hey what’s Orthodox?
Called the first one that was near enough to where I lived.
“Father’s not in. He’s out blessing houses. This is the Presbytera, his wife. Would you like to schedule a time to meet with him?”
I mumbled something and hung up, stunned.
“A PRIEST’S WIFE? MARRIED?!?!” Here I was, all ready to do the Catholic thing and had my mind blown. And then – “Blessing Houses?” the only house blessings I knew of were from my sister, who has been a Wiccan since she was a teenager.. something with stinky Sage or whatever.
I loved the idea of a married priesthood and actual house-call visits to bless material homes.
Within a year, I’m getting oil on my head and I became Eastern Orthodox Christian, which became my 6 year obsession after that.
I was going to either become a: monk or a priest. But then I realized that they EXPECT their priests to be married, which I had no plans on, so it was going to be ‘monk’.
So, that’s what put that on pause.