Sunday Morning

It is remarkable how the Annunciation Greek Orthododx Church on Westnedge Avenue in Kalamazoo, despite lacking the trappings of an Orthodox church in an Orthodox country, still generates the intense feeling of being watched. The Alpha and the Omega (Revelation, 22:13), manifestations of God's infinite expanse picked out in blue against yellow stained glass, cooly observe us from high on the far wall. Saints stare in at us from the stained glass windows, exhorting us to put a name to a face and a deed. The church's modest majesty is concentrated on the far end around the altar, where a man in white is swinging a censer of incense. He wears a white cloak with the crucifix embroidered among other patterns on the back and sings intermittently, in English, to a gilded crucifix. The sensation of sanctuary emanates from the far end of the church. The man in white walks up and down the aisle with the censer and bowed Greek matriarchs make the sign of the cross upon their chests as he passes. The incense smells like myrrh or something else old that you only hear about in old books and maybe once came across in a supplies shop for musty fortunetellers. The smoke turns violet where it curls in the light of the Alpha and the Omega.

Words that I cannot understand reach out and pull on me. One of the chanters says “the liturgy for today can be found in pages 64 to 65 of the Divine Liturgy books.” I reach over the pew in front of me and grab the liturgy book from the seat pocket. The cover is not attached and the rest of the book slides out from in between my fingers but I convey the book to my lap before it disintegrates entirely. The liturgy is in Greek on the right side and in English on the left. Pages 64 to 64 cover the end of the “We Have Seen the True Light” and the beginning of the “Benediction Prayer.” I think it odd to split the assignment, but what do I know? The man who spoke recites a tale about the persecution of the Christians and the imperfectability of man. It does not match up with what I am staring down at and I feel very lost and wonder if I misheard. Here I am, a young atheist intruding upon a ritual I do not understand in the slightest, surrounded by Greek matriarchs. One of the women gives me a questioning look as the might in white passes among us again with the censer, off to my left and up the aisle from behind (I am sure he can see me writing this) and again I do not rise to make the sign of the cross while everyone else does. My eyes meet with the closest parishioner and her look is right—what am I doing here?

All say the Lord's Prayer in Greek and then in English. I remain silent. Amen. It is time to receive communion. I remain unmoving. I avert my eyes as the woman who stared me down earlier heads towards me. “You can receive the bread if you'd like,” she says and immediately the restraints evaporate. I begin to rise but the man in white has already finished the service and disappeared. Standing in the middle of the aisle I am caught up in the current towards the exit but instead I am greeted and introduced and reintroduced a few times on the way downstairs for coffee and pastries.

Dennis Andruson tells a story to a Bulgarian about his grandfather, who fought communists in Bulgaria in 1919 (perhaps their ancestors shot at each other), before taking me aside to talk about his daughter. She has just finished a book about the history of Greeks in Kalamazoo, he says. He hands me a book spanning the history of Greeks in America from 1453 to 1938 and tells me to go ask the priest to borrow it.

The priest, the man in white, is now Father Raphael Daly, wearing black and speaking comfortably with some of the children. He jokes about their lack of enthusiasm and tells me that I may borrow the book Dennis recommended, but he would not be surprised if I did not bring it back. I say nothing but that I am interested in church architecture and history, and he says that martyrdom is not just historical, that “people were murdered for what we just did up there and it's not just historical.”

The book starts with the end of a war and ends with the start of a war, spanning from the end of the Byzantine Empire—the last great Greek empire—with the fall of Constantinople to the beginning of World War II in which the Germans, Italians and Bulgarians occupied Greece.

The air raid sirens are stretching their lungs in preparation for...something as I walk to Greek Fest. My skin prickles as the wail reaches its peak, a grim reminder that war is why many Greeks left their homeland and came to settle in places like Kalamazoo. Among the most dramatic in recent memory is what the Greeks call the Great Catastrophe, when the hot-headed Greek elite invaded the metamorphosing Turkish Republic in 1922. The next year the Turkish nationalist Kemal Ataturk had bested the Greek military, which had not only failed to prevent the creation of a unified Turkey but had lost control of the Greek city Smyrna—now Ismir—situated on Asia Minor. In the ensuing exchange of populations, a million and a half Greeks were introduced into modern Greece, then a country of only six million. Some emigres settled in the Macedonian region. Others came to America.

The Orthodox faith and Greek Fest are two integral means by which Kalamazoo's Greeks, originally a displaced people, have come to embrace, maintain and celebrate the culture of their homeland in a new home they have made uniquely their own. “We maintain our faith first,” Elias Kokkinos had told me about being a Greek in Kalamazoo. They do not desire to convert anyone but they also do not want to isolate themselves. Elias takes pride in contributing to the continuity of the original Christian chruch. His manner of speaking is refined, brisk and business-like. He gave me his office phone number. He has a secretary with whom I can leave a message if he is not in. He is Stacy's (of Theo & Stacy's) brother-in-law and helps run the Dionysous Restaurant and Theo & Stacy's.

I arrive too late to Greek Fest—it has already been colonized. As a casual anticapitalist I cannot help but wrinkle my nose at the Coors Light logos plastered everywhere. The beer tent is selling Alfa, an Authentic Greek Beer that is the authentic Greek Coors Light. Vaguely defined “tickets” have supplanted common currency in this alternate-universe Greece, and a Coca-Cola costs two. In a certain light, it is an amusing commentary on the concept of currency itself. The Dionysos Restaurant provides the food for the event, which is only appropriate: Greek Fest got its start in the basement of the restaurant. The festival exploded in popularity when it was introduced to and embraced by the people of Kalamazoo, as the event's history is summarized in a happily-ever-after way on the official website. Embrace it they have; the festival grounds teem with throngs of people soaking up the Authentic Greek way of life—mostly through their stomach linings. Dionysus himself—ancient Greek god of drink and ecstacy—would probably have liked to see a bit more ecstacy. Teenagers scrounging for summer pocket change staff the food tent. One of them pronounces “gyros” correctly (silent “g,” roll the “r” into its alveolaric cousin “l”), but I cannot tell if she is Authetically Greek or has been instructed in pronunciation for purposes of authenticity. Bryce Buffenbarger, a recent convert to the Greek Orthodox Faith, observed of Greek Fest that “there's like 20 restaurants in the area all owned by Greek people. So it's a display of their capitalism, their making themselves, how they founded themselves in this area.” As a result, Greek Fest looks like a tourist trap more than a celebration of culture. Or, it looks like the American Dream.

The priest is an overgrown rosy-cheeked Irish altar boy, full red lips, cherubic face and all. He knows only, as Dennis puts it, “a few words in the original tongue,” that is, Greek, but “he sings beautifully.” Dennis had chanted that day in the service and his voice was hoarse but he nevertheless talked continuously, always with broad gestures. When I arrive the next week to talk more with Dennis and return the book I borrowed from the church, the priest tells me he didn't expect to see me again, figuring I'd “gotten my quotes and moved on.” I felt compelled to apologize for disrupting his expectations—still unsure if those expectations were because of my West Coast secularism—because he'd stuttered out the end of his sermon when I walked in. He says later that he's allowed to be rude because he's not Greek. He does play a strong foil to their hospitality, though while I did not ask him what he meant I got the sense he was acutely aware that he was not constrained by Greek cultural norms. The Greek for hospitality is “xenophilos,” or literally “love for strangers.” The priest had used it that morning in commendation of Greek Fest.

In my experience when conversation in Greece turned to Greek-Americans it almost invariably came to the conclusion that Greek-Americans try to be more Greek than Greeks by amplifying perceived norms into iron laws of conduct. I heard that they were deadly serious about the Orthodox religion to a fault, utterly buy into the “traditional” Greek dress for celebrations (the Greek Fest website does have a prime example of this; the “traditional” Greek look, with frills and fluffy slippers and silly hats, was invented by Greek intellectuals in the early 1800s—it is polyester history), and abuse the exclamation “opa!” It could have been that the post-service social crowd at the Annunciation is mostly native Greeks living in America (as opposed to Greek-Americans born here) with a few non-Greeks among them, but nevertheless the accusations ring hollow. As Greece is a very old country, what it means to be Greek has changed tremendously over time. Before the Orthodox Church, the Greek identity relied mostly on shared language. Once Christianity settled in, it was a matter of language and religion, especially after the birth of Greek nationalism in the 1820s, prior to and during the Greek war for independence from the Ottoman Empire (Dennis would like to add here that the only way to get a room full of Greeks to stop fighting is to push a Turk into the room). Today Greek identity rests on language and heritage. If the priest practiced his Greek a bit more it would not have been too hard for him to claim some kind of Greekness in previous eras, especially given his Orthodox faith. But it seems today that only Greeks speak Greek. It is easy to understand the devotion of many Greek emigres and Greek-Americans to the Greek Orthodox Church. Their language and their faith are the two best tools for the maintenance of their cultural identity in the face of the all-consuming American morass. It is how Greeks survive as Greeks.

Sunday Morning from Steven C on Vimeo.