The West forgot something. Rome went legalistic. Protestantism went rationalist. Megachurches went corporate. But the East? The East kept the mystery. Eastern Orthodoxy never tried to systematize God into neat theological boxes. Aquinas wrote summas. The Orthodox wrote hymns. The Catholics built arguments. The Orthodox built icons. The monasteries never stopped. Mount Athos. A peninsula in Greece. No women allowed for a thousand years. Twenty monasteries. Monks praying around the clock. The spiritual lung of the church. When the West dissolved monasteries for profit, the East kept them. When modernism swept through Western Christianity, Athos remained. Still there. Still chanting at 3am. Still keeping the flame. The calendar matters. The Orthodox rejected the Gregorian calendar. Many still use the Julian. Thirteen days behind. They don't care about astronomical accuracy. The calendar is liturgical, not scientific. Time itself is sanctified. Every day commemorates saints. Every season has its spiritual meaning. The year is a cycle of death and resurrection. Orthodoxy is uncomfortable. It asks everything. It does not accommodate. It does not update. It does not make itself palatable for modern sensibilities. It demands you change, not that it change for you. This is why it grows slowly. This is why its converts are intense. You don't drift into Orthodoxy. You're called. You struggle. You submit. The West optimized religion for scale and clarity. The East preserved the mystery at the cost of accessibility. One built cathedrals of logic. The other built cathedrals of smoke and gold and chanting that goes on for hours until you lose yourself in it. The CIA doesn't glow in Orthodox churches. Too much incense. Can't see anything. Glory to God for all things. The elephants are coming. Hail King Terry The Terrible.