I think religion can be pretty ridiculous. That’s why I’m part of one, truth be told. I believe the existence of the universe points to the existence of a God – and said God has a sense of humour. Just look at babies. And dark matter. And the craziness associated with both.
At the christening this past summer, I remember worrying that Lev would poop himself during the proceedings. I remember the disapproval of the lady at the church service desk – Alexey and I being too uppity and “counter-culture” for her taste. I realized that the reason we took our son to be christened was, in part, the reason as to why we love life: life’s batshit nuts and full of contradictions. All you can do sometimes is stand with a lit candle in front of an icon and pray for the best,
Also, lol.
Natalia A. 
Amen. 😉
@Natalia Antonova
This is completely off-topic, but I thought you might want to be aware that there is a bogus “Natalia Antonova” website that duplicates your current, real website (which is listed at http://nataliaantonova.com).
The bogus “Natalia Antonova” website is located at https://nataliaantonova.com. When I accidentally typed in the bogus site’s URL, my browser notified me that “https://nataliaantonova.com” uses a security certificate lifted from another website (maybe lifted from your own, real website here?) and that the creators of the bogus site might be trying to intercept comments that were intended to be sent to your real website (possibly trying to read IP addresses?).
Just thought you should know.
@ Natalia Antonova
I might have overreacted to what I thought was a ‘bogus’ website. Internet explorer responds similarly when I type “https://…” before the URLs of other blogs as well. So maybe IE (or some relevant internet system) automatically creates near-duplicate URLs for each website.
My comment dated November 13, 2011 at 7:37 a.m. refers to a comment that is still in moderation.
Seems to me the Jesus the Christ was considered “counter culture” for his time. As far as the “uppity” goes I wasn’t there but I thought we were supposed to treat all people as our brothers and sisters. Sounds to me like the uppity problem was on the other side of the desk.
I don’t know you but I hope I guessed correctly from the candle/icon statement that you are Christian. If not I apologize for the assumption.
Rick
Yep – Orthodox.