A Not So Spiritual guide to common deacon types you will come across.

Head banger: Willl always be seen bobbing his head up and down to the beat of the hymn. Extreme cases have been known where the entire upper body will rock back and forth. A subtype is known called the Stevie Wonder where they nod their head side to side.

Belly Dancer: Hips shake side to side while sing the hymn, becomes very pronounced when playing the cymbals or triangle.

Coyote: They don’t really know the hymn but howl along on the long parts also know as the Ambulance Siren.

Altar Egoist: Deacon who thinks he is a priest and recites all the priest portions of the liturgy, and more often then not stay silent during the response hymns. extreme cases he will even tell the priest how he should be praying the liturgy.

Confessor: Deacon who when singing a hymn has look of intense pain or constipation on his face.

Monkeyman: This deacon’s playing of the cymbals look and sound exactly the old windup monkey toys.

The Hitman: Every priest has one (or two), he is the deacon with just a wink and a nod will eliminate the erring deacon, crying child or miscellaneous annoyance.

Maestro: Deacon who makes large hand movement believing his hand motions are key to the deacons singing the hymn correctly. They are not.

Ninja: Also know as the Stealth Deacon, typically a man who does not dress as a deacon and noone expects him to know anything yet know the hymns better than those who do dress.

Parade Grand Marshall: This deacon believes he is indispensable to all church processions, you will find him rushing to carry the lead cross in in every procession, even wresting it away from any poor soul unfortunate to touch it in his presence. Extreme cases are called Pillars of the Faith they believe there can be no church rite that can successful occur unless they take part, such carrying the crowns and cape for weddings, controling the censer during liturgy et c.

Deacons may have a combination of the above traits. As with any wild creature always approach with caution, if cornered toss a deacons service book to distract them and run to safety.

After much anthropological observation of the Coptic male attempting a courtship ritual here are some suggestion:
1. Hitting on women does not involve physical assault. (who knew!)
2. Get the woman’s name right before talking to her.
3. If the woman is walking away from you as your talking to her, don’t yell so she can hear you as she walks away. Stop talking and retain what little dignity you have left.
4. Because she does not run away from you while you’re talking to her, its not because she’s interested in you but because she’s polite.
5. Telling her “You really need to get to know her” is not a good opening line.
6. No need for desperation, you will not shrivel up and die if you do not marry by a certain age (despite what your mother tells you in every phone call)
7. Stalking, while anectdotally successful, is not technically legal.
8. A restraining order is not playing hard to get.
9. It helps greatly if you both can speak the same language fluently.
10. Used a a patent-pending Coptic Pickup line from “Not So Spiritual Words” (there has 1 documented success!)

know its a forward but for some reason it strikes me as hilarious (wish
I could come up with stuff like this)

——— Forwarded message ———-
From: “Jane Doe”
To: CoptsTalk@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 23:44:52 -0500
Subject: [CoptsTalk] Current epidemic sweeping our culture

Dear fellow Copts and brothers and sisters in Christ,

I am writing this email anonymously. This is not my normal email address and not my normal profile so as to avoid anyone knowing who I am. Please do not try to find out who i am. The reason I am doing this will be come apparent when you read this email.

I am concerned about the problem, actually more the epidemic that is happening throughout our American culture. And our little Coptic community is a microcosm of this culture phenomenon. We are not getting married. There is a breakdown in the cultural value for family and for matrimony. As a woman, I’m writing this because I’d like to understand what is happening, especially from the man’s perspective. I think that I am not desperate, or maybe I am. But I see these beautiful young women, women that are walking with the Lord, serving, have promising careers; graceful, strong, amazing young ladies. And I just wonder, what’s going on? Where are the men? There is obviously nothing wrong with the girls. And from
what I observe there doesn’t seem to be any major issues with the guys.

So I just want to know what the issues are. I’m hoping that bringing this up will create some discussion and hopefully change the current dynamic or rather static situation. I seriously would not be so worried about it if I saw the girls getting together with the guys. But it just seems that there are more single 20
and 30 something’s then there should be.

Why does everyone make fun of some retreats calling them ‘meat markets’ and people are so cynical about other activities the churches have. Could someone please tell me what so wrong with wanting to meet someone and get hitched? What are wrong with set ups? What is the problem with coptsmatch.com? I have to be honest; something inside me has an aversion to these above-mentioned activities. But I’m wondering why? I heard once at a retreat someone telling the girls to hurry up and get married before it to late. But how can we if the men are not taking the initiative and getting to know us? And do men think that a girl in her 30′s is too old? Please be honest. What’s the truly Christian way of dealing with this? Not the Coptic way, the CHRISTIAN, BIBLE CENTERED way.

So what’s the issue? And how do we combat this situation? I hope that you guys out there will not be afraid to answer me. Maybe if we spoke about it openly we would come to some kind of understanding, Hopefully then Mars and Venus will come closer in orbit.
A few theories I have:
1. Men are afraid of commitment
2. Society and media has created the “perfect man’ and “perfect woman” to which we are comparing everyone, hence we are all picky
3. Girls are too picky so guys are afraid to ask
4. We have been taught that dating is ‘wrong’ so we chose not to date because of our reputations.

Thanks

Questioningcopt

Ps: I hope to get plenty of honest responses

F.B.I.tis:

Where during important church events, such as major holidays and especially during papal visits, people who normally don’t go to church show up wearing dark suits and sunglasses and acting important. They are often wearing or carrying a badges. Almost always fake, upon closer examination of the badges will often say things as Crest Cavity Patrol or Lil’ Detective. They sometimes can be seen touching their ears as if they were wearing an ear piece. Have been known to tell people when confronted “Do you know who I am?”

Matchmaker Syndrome:

Most people are afflicted right after graduation from college. They find suddenly the old ladies of the church take a keen interest in them. Ladies who never said more than hello to the person start asking questions about their field of study, future earning potential, and idea of a perfect mate. After an impromptu ambush interview these old ladies will almost weekly thrust potential mates at the person, usually at the most inopportune times, such as entering the bathroom, having a mouth full of korban et c.. This assault does not stop until the subject is married, occasionally it will continue even after the person is married only stop after they have children.

Confused Deacon Complicated Tourettes:

A condition that mostly afflicts young inexperienced deacons. What occurs is when said deacon is placed in front of a microphone, their mind freezes and and a random phrase comes out of their mouths. At best its just the wrong response, usually it is something that ends up insulting half the congregation.

Theistic Oxymoronism: Where normally non-religious Copts bring religion in to aspects of their lives it should have no part. Such as one opens a strip club and asks abouna to come and pray in it to bless it. Praying the agpeya at the horse track to improve their odds.

Hereditary Genetic Reversal: When saintly moral parents give birth to child that Satan himself would refuse to take credit for. Or the reversal where people who have managed to survive only by the grace of God give birth to a highly intelligent child. Unfortunately the former is much more prevalent.

Stupidity: Plain old run of the mill stupidity but apparently at higher severity and rates of incidents than in the general population

<Sixth Sense Syndrome: Usually strikes the aged of the congregation, possibly due to their own proximity to death. The afflicted will be found speaking to saints as if present with them. But this syndrome goes much further than normal piety. They do not only speak to the saints asking their intercessions or help in hardships but can be found arguing with saints over things like the price of milk, complain to them about their children or other such subjects that are of no interest to anyone especially saints.

Coptomegalomania: The sufferer when given a minor responsibility in the church will naturally assume that he/she should now be consulted by abouna for approval for all things. They believe if the can be trusted for a minor task they can be trusted with the church keys. This also extends with hierarchical matters where if His Holiness happens to know their name, then they assume they are destined to sit on the throne of St. Mark regardless of the fact that they maybe married or women.

• Standard run of the mill Copt will see the sign but disregard it thinking it applies to everyone else but them.
• Relic hunting Copt will think the pope’s limo must have stop at that sign on the way to their church, so steals the sign as a blessing.
• Extremely pious Copts will stop and not move until someone tells them its okay to move.
• Religiously paranoid Copt will debate with himself whether or not stopping at the sign is really God’s will or a ploy by the devil to cause him to fall and in the process run through the sign causing them to debate whether or not to confess the fact he ran through the sign which was God’s will or to praise the Lord for allowing him to overcome a snare of the enemy
• Militant Copt will think the stop sign was put on purpose on the road they travel by the muslims to oppress them so not only do they refuse stop at the sign but tear it down and write articles on how the sign is an evil plot by the muslims.
• Super-deacon Copt just drives right through the sign never noticing it because they’re to busy singing to their favorite hymn tape.
• Guilt ridden Copt stops at the sign but then spends an hour confessing to abouna about how they had bad thoughts about running through the sign.
• Self-hating Copt will run through the sign (see Standard Copt) but they have a puerto rican flag hanging from the rearview mirror.
• Frustrated sunday school teacher Copt stops then gets out and runs screaming from a van full of sunday school kids.
• Overly-legalistic Coptic refuses to stop because nowhere is there anything mentioned in the diskalia or church canons about stop signs.
• Hypocritical Copt doesn’t stop (see Standard Copt again) but goes out of their way to tell every one they did.
• Status-seeking Copt tells everyone the stopped at the same stop sign Pope Kyrollous (or any other prominent Copt) did.

Why is it when abouna sprays water at the end of the liturgy, people fight to get wet; yet refuse to exit the church when its raining, i.e. God sprinkling the water?