The Morning Maronite Service

This morning, I went back to a church because a relative (not exactly a cousin<-- shock) had donated a painting to a church in the next village over. It's a painting of Mary and Jesus. I called it Theotokos, but she didn't understand what I said, so I left it at that. I figure when you're painting the theotokos (mother of god) and donating it to a church, you'd know that's what it's called, but not in this case. This morning was a nearly identical service to last night. In fact, it was the same priest even though at a different church... I understood more of what happened this time around, but my the spoken arabic is far too fast for me to pick up any significant portion of it.

The churches here are the exact Lebanese style architecture large stones making large buildings. Inside, the church was decorated with a mixture of eastern and western christian icons, paintings, a christmas tree, kneelers, and altar. Like I had said, Maronite Catholicism is one of the stranger brands of "old" christianity because it's somewhere between eastern and western. Again, I was able to get through the motions and I picked up the words "ibn," "abba," "ya rab," "allah," and certain number (son, father, Lord/God, God) and the liturgy made much more sense, but the motions were no problem. One thing I thought was interesting was the eucharist was exactly in the middle of catholic and orthodox eucharist. All in all, I'm glad I went. Having spent a couple years studying old brands of christianity this was an interesting one to see in person. It's also exciting to be in the middle east to celebrate the holiday which recognizes Jesus' birth (of course, astronomer's have tracked dates and times and believe that Jesus was actually born 6 April 4BC, but no worries).

Happy birthday (sort of) Jesus. Merry Christmas to you even if you don't celebrate it. Here the saying is basically a wish of good health and not necessarily a religious saying. In Lebanon every greets for "Merry Christmas" in French and says it in English for the non religious purposes.