I am an Orthodox Christian. Or, to put it better, I aspire to be. I was baptised into the Orthodox Church on 14 September 2002 in Munich, Germany.

I grew up in Chicago, Illinois in a Protestant household. We didn't go to church often, but the idea of God was something that was just as certain as the concept of air.

The public schools in Chicago have often been described as some of the worst in the nation, and in part due to that, my elementary schooling took place at a "non-denominational" (Protestant) school. My family also had connections to this school - my older cousin attended there, and years back, when the school had been a Lutheran school, my dad and his siblings attended there.

Although there were a couple of school years where things weren't so bad, most of my time there was absolutely miserable. There were many times when I didn't have a single friend in my class, and I was constantly tormented by my classmates who made fun of me for everything I did, whether it was getting good grades, or the way I talked, or that I still insisted on bringing a lunchbox to school even in the eighth grade. Most of the teachers realised what was happening, but refused to do anything about it. I think much of that had to do with the fact that the "mission" of the school was to serve poor, minority kids in the inner-city, and since my family was neither poor nor "minority", they turned a blind eye to a lot of what happened under their noses.

If this hypocrisy wasn't enough to "turn me off" to God, my parents split up when I was thirteen. As far as divorces go, it was pretty nasty, as there was abuse involved before the breakup, and lots of intimidation and threats afterwards. Those "Christian" people that I knew from my childhood only exascerbated the situation by trying to deny a lot of stuff that happened actually did. I never was able to give up on my belief in God, but I had absolutely no use for church.

In my senior year of high school, I was on Academic Decathlon, and one of my teammates was the son of missionaries from Korea. He was extraordinarily smart, but more importantly than that, he was genuine in his very strong, yet quiet, faith. I suppose it was his example that really got me thinking that it could be important to find a place "in church".

In college, I was typically "too busy" to be actively searching for a church. Besides this, I had started going out with a young man who was Roman Catholic, and when we weren't arguing about whether I was going to go to hell or not, we'd attend mass together. However, that relationship crashed and burned my senior year.

I spent my last six months of university as an exchange student to Germany. I was an international relations major, and my biggest interest would have to be Russia and Europe from the time of WWII until the present. While "Holocaust studies" seems to have come into vogue in the US, I can't say that I'm impressed with this for the most part, because I believe that while it is important not to forget the atrocities of the Holocaust, one ought not forget everything else that connects into that. In late April or May of 2000, my group visited Dachau, and I was drawn to the little Orthodox chapel there. I took a picture of it, and when somebody asked me later if I had taken that picture because I was Orthodox, I couldn't help but shake the feeling that I ought to be, even though I knew practically nothing about the Orthodox Church at that time.

It wasn't until I was back in Chicago, many months later, that I worked up the courage to visit an Orthodox Church. It felt like I had stepped completely out of time. Finally, I felt like I was experiencing something closer to true faith than I had ever experienced in my life. I was scared, after all, I grew up in an environment where the Orthodox were pretty much ignored, and if they were mentioned, they were regarded as "not really Christian" and idol-worshippers for kissing icons and whatnot. Besides, my mom still worked at my elementary school, and I'm sure that it didn't look good for her for me to become Orthodox. (After all, my 3rd grade teacher went to Russia for a year to help "evangelise" the Russians!)

In any case, I moved to Germany in the beginning of 2002. The culture over here is definitely different than in the US - on one hand, there's a lot more "religion" that seems to be part of the fabric of life, which wouldn't be tolerated in the US, with its "division of church and state", but on the other hand, there are fewer people of whom it can be said that they take their religion seriously. There's hardly any "German" Orthodoxy - almost all the people attending Orthodox services are originally from other countries. My church is made up primarily of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

Even so, this is the place where I was baptised, and even with the difficulties, I try to live my life according to my faith, the faith handed down to me from the very beginning of Christendom. I can't say that I'm an exemplerary model of it, but I struggle through. I rely heavily on the internet to stay in contact with other Orthodox, though I have connections to Orthodox here in Germany as well. One of my consuming interests is the White Rose, which has put me in contact with Fr. Artemoff in Munich, who, besides being one of the people who probably knows the most about Alexander Schmorell, is also one of the people working towards the reunification of the Patriarch in Moscow and the ROCOR.

My faith is important to me, because it is through God that we have the chance to truly live. He affords us hope in a sea of chaos, He gives us love in the face of overwhelming nothingness. It is no easy road, but one well worth traversing. May the Peace of the Lord be with you, and I hope to see you along the Way.