Our Pascha (Easter) isn't until May 5th this year and since we're staying with my mother-in-law right now, Nathaniel thought we should go to her service. Since formally renouncing Protestantism, obviously I don't go to a lot of things like this and on Easter Sunday it was particularly jarring. In the Orthodox church, everyone stands and faces the altar - even the priest, for most of the service. But as is customary in most Protestant churches, today there was a worship team standing at the front of the church and I couldn't help but feel like the 'worship' was really more of a performance. I've always felt that way.

After they were done singing, four women in white dresses got up and started doing an interpretive dance to a recording of a man and choir speaking and singing about the resurrection of Jesus. It was a really awkward dance. At the end, they ran out into the room and tried to get people to stand up and dance with them. Two people got up and they all ran to the front of the room, faced the stage and waved their hands around while singing \"He's alive\" and looking up at a glowing cross hanging above their heads.

One quick glance at the places they had been seating revealed husbands with tight shoulders and grimaced expressions, waiting for their wives to sit down and stop embarrassing them.