Saint Anna Greek Orthodox Church

 Saint Anna Greek Orthodox Church in Sandy. Named for the mother of the Virgin Mary who is referred to as Anne in other Christian traditions.

Modern looking on the outside, inside it was being renovated, the carpet was stripped so concrete floors. There were icons and candles and incense, I wasn't comfortable with taking pictures inside the sanctuary.

Matins begins at 8, which is basically psalm singing by the priests and select others. Your supposed to arrive for the 9 am Divine Liturgy service at some point during this hour, though people continued to arrive after that past. When I arrived at around 8:48 there were maybe 20 people in the sanctuary, there was probably around 100 by the end of service. Attendees skewed older and female, but a healthy mix of family's, some of the children were at Church camp in Colordo. Many of the attendees, unsurprisingly, looked very Greek. Parishioner dress mostly semi formal. There was a choir, also dressed semi formal.

The priest faced away from the congregation for most of the service, like old school Catholics.

Musky incense smell, place was hot, AC out, they had fans going. The ceiling was exposed metal, bars, beams and such. Unnaturally faux fancy chandeliers hung there from.

Acapelia singing, there was a keyboard present but it was just used to set pitch.

The seats were among the comfiest I have encountered at a church yet, though they were largely a ruse. I would nickname this "Standing Church." Early on everyone around me started standing so I started standing and stayed standing for the next hour and 8 minutes, save for 3 short breaks, the longest of which was maybe 90 seconds. It was exhausting. (Some older people, young children and a pregnant woman sat more often.)

I'm usually not very critical of the services I visit but this was probably the least fun so far. It didn't really offer me anything, lots of standing, chanting type singing (which I like less then Christan rock), recitations, for most of it the priest talked in a ritual cadence that was hard to follow.

The communion portion started about 10:05 with the hosts being paraded around the sanctuary, along with a big gold cross, a gold dish thing, incense; by alter boys, priest and some others all in white robes. Your supposed to always be facing these emblems so you turn to follow them as they move around the room. 

After that you can sit. Most took this sacrament, I of course did not. Priest uses a ladel to spoon feed recipients the wine from an urn like container, then they were given the bread (it looked rather fluffy) to consume on their way back to there seats. This whole process starring with the proceasion took around a dozen minutes. The sermon didn't start until 10:17, lasted about 9 minutes, then 3 or so minutes of announcements (the Bishops coming next week), the congregation dismissed though most came up front again for what looked like a dab of Holy Water on the forehead. There may have been food or something outback because most people were exiting that way, but I went out the front to head home and lie down.

In a rarity nobody greeted me at any point while I was there.

The priest looked Bruce McGill or Glenn Beck like. Sermon used the geological concept of Pangea for a metaphor about the church breaking up, divisons in the church. He talked about the 4th Ecumenical Council (451 AD) which formally made Constantinople 2nd to Rome in authority, paving the way for later break. He talked about some obscure sounding distinction as to the degree to which God can be said to be of one substance, this theological disagrment (which I couldn't follow) apparently still divides the Greek Orthodox from other Orthodox sects like the Coptics and Armenians. He closed with the hope that eventually the other groups would get on the correct page about this and restore unity.

While the last bit was interesting,  for the most part the service was tough to stand through. The phrase "Let us be attentive" was used alot during the Liturgy, probably because of the temptation to zone out. It felt like the service was less about pence for sinning then penance for sitting. I might be willing to go to a different type of Orthodox service in the future, or one in a more ornate bundling, but I don't think I'll go to another service at Saint Anna's.