Getting back to the Austin trip: while I was out there, I found an Eastern Orthodox bookstore. This struck me as a truly rare thing to find in Texas (or anywhere else in the south, for that matter). I walked around in there for an hour or more, picking at this and that, until the Reader who ran the bookstore realized I was something of a curiosity seeker and offered me a tour of the adjoining church. I accepted gratefully.

It was very odd to see all the shameless visual depiction of Jesus and company. To my unschooled western eye, traditional icons will probably always look gaudy and cartoonish, but I tried to see with the same eyes as the people who worship there. More difficult for me to stomach than the icons (and relics-- they actually had some bits of bone from two saints discreetly stored in the sanctuary) was the setup of the altar. I was raised in a tradition that feared "priestcraft" profoundly and nominally eschewed all authority that didn't live between the covers of the sixty-six-book Bible. So knowing that the elements of the Eucharist were being kept behind a veil in a sort of holy-of-holies that only an ordained priest could enter gave me serious heebie-jeebies. But I was grateful for the tour, and the Reader was very kind in answering all my ignorant Protestant questions without rancor or judgment, so my overall impression was fairly positive.

I walked out with a book on the Orthodox doctrine of the Church, another book about the composer John Tavener, a small pamphlet giving a fire-breathing born-again Orthodox take on sola scriptura, and a crucifix for the rosary I was making. (Yes, I pray the rosary. Send complaints about idolatry to /dev/null-- I've been over this territory, and I've decided that I'm prepared to pray to anyone or anything that might help me act decent and/or Figure Things Out. Also, in case the name of the blog doesn't make it clear, I figure I'm probably Eternally Screwed anyway. What's a little extra pious idolatry to someone like me?) Anyway, I doubt Eastern Orthodoxy will ever be my cup of tea, but it was quite a highlight to an otherwise pretty mundane business trip. Moreover, reading some of this material has given me some food for thought on the subject of "authority". I'll probably to try to work some of that out here over the next day or two.