Since moving to Utah I have not attended any festivals until today, and it was worth it. I'm doing this for the religious blog both because of what my friend I discussed while here and the fact that it has been the Trinity Orthodox Cathedral Community that has been hosting these events for over 30 years. Suffice to say much like religion, the experience was mixed.
I arrived at the event earlier than my friend and grabbed food, while here I had the chance to observe what was going on during the event. There tons of dance troupes that were on a stage in the large tent that hosted most of the folks there and many of them were named after Greek Gods (Dionysus Dance troupe for example). This is where I saw for a lot of the Church community history and legends are just as important as the faith from the Middle East (Christianity) that most of Greece is now.
I also saw how many different vendors had taken hold which after hearing a conversation between two old men has been at least somewhat of a controversy between some members of the group. Which is understandable, community is created and the event brings in lots of money for the local Greek Families and the Church but it also brings a corporate sell out feel when you have Bud Light stands and commercials right next to a Church and are selling jewelry in items when that was what pissed Jesus off in the New Testament with the money changers in the Church. So I get both sides on this debate.
Next I ran into the monument that was made in honor of sixteen Greek migrants who had died in their helping build the railroad through Utah, which was part of what brought many of the first immigrants here to Salt Lake City. I'd see more of this history in the Church's Hellenistic Museum after going through Trinity Cathedral.
Trinity Orthodox Cathedral is a beautiful place, and there a lot of members there to answer questions, which I didn't really have since there were so many papers around that gave the perspective of the Church. For one I saw the "One True Church"^tm that pervades most religious communities as there was a flyer that showed how the One True Holy Apostolic Church has a straight line that doesn't branch through the Orthodox Church, but that things branched and kept on branching with the Roman Catholic Church into the reformation showing that they didn't have the right idea. I always find this a bit disturbing and intriguing since the events of the Bible are so sketchy historically that I don't see how the tradition can justify itself except through making and believing the claim, regardless of the questionable circumstances and events of the life Jesus and the early Church. I talked about this with my friend when she arrived at the event and we grabbed coffee in the cafe that had been created next to the Church and Church Museum.
It was here we discussed religious fanaticism, our agnosticism on the supernatural and are questioning of organized religion. This quote by Carlin pretty accurately discussed our problems of people in groups which (looking at news and the communities we interact with) show how religion tends to make this problem worse.
“The larger the group, the more toxic, the more of your beauty as an individual you have to surrender for the sake of group thought. And when you suspend your individual beauty you also give up a lot of your humanity. You will do things in the name of a group that you would never do on your own. Injuring, hurting, killing, drinking are all part of it, because you've lost your identity, because you now owe your allegiance to this thing that's bigger than you are and that controls you.”
After the festival we went to Temple Square and the locations there (and the Mormon Church History Museum) which will be a post for another day...since that one has much more to cover than this one and goes into more detail on why I left the Mormon Church and would find it pretty impossible to rejoin.
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