Saturday evening, I walked down to St. John the Baptist Orthodox Church in Berkeley. It is a small Russian Orthodox church without any pews, but has a few chairs on the side. There is a nice collection of icons, but the walls and ceiling are not covered the way they are in other Orthodox churches I’ve attended. Attendance at Vespers services are often fairly light and I was one of the first people there. The priest came out and welcomed me, asked if I was Orthodox and where I was from. I told him a little bit of my story. It turns out that he went to seminary with the Orthodox priest at the church I attend in Connecticut.

The service was familiar, except much of it was in Church Slavonic. Remembering listing to Rachmaninoff’s All Night Vigil on Memorial Day weekend, I found a few words coming to me during the service. I thought of my studies in Hebrew. Maybe learning Church Slavonic isn’t as remote an idea as I had once thought.

After the service I walked back through Berkeley, past the tents of homeless people and into what felt like downtown with nice restaurants. I met some of my classmates there for dinner.

Sunday morning, I slept a little later than usual, but got up with enough time to make it to All Souls for their 7:30 service. It was a small quiet nourishing service with interesting reflections about being the mustard seed. It was interesting to think of mustard seeds as an invasive species and there is perhaps some interesting ecclesiology there.

I went back to the dorm, had breakfast, chatted with a couple classmates, and then set out on the next leg of my journey. I walked across Berkeley to the east side where I attended Good Shepherd. I passed a dog park and a group of people taking Spanish dancing lessons in what seemed to be the parking lot of an abandoned gas station. I passed more homeless enclaves and eventually ended up at the church. It was also a small service and I chatted with people for whom life seemed a constant struggle, elderly people, offspring of elderly people, people without stable housing.

I thought of going to Good Shepherd with some of my classmates and the scene from Brother Sun, Sister Moon came to mind where St. Francis recoiled at seeing the lepers and Sister Claire said, “Yes, lepers”.

Perhaps we are all lepers on camino.