A Pastor, some oil, and a nudge toward mystery

Setting the stage for Orthodoxy a decade ago

Illustration by ChatGPT

I didn’t grow up with anointing, and I wasn’t exposed to it through any of my churches as an adult.

But one weekend—years before I ever stepped into an Orthodox church—a pastor marked my forehead with oil, and opened me up to considering more.

It was during an Emmaus retreat in the stillness of a mountain camp, one of those intense weekends set aside for immersive spiritual reflection and renewal. I was there as a pilgrim, learning about the potential we have in our Christian walk when we prioritize God, serve others and give with abandon.

That weekend had many profound moments, but the anointing with oil took me by surprise. Do we even do that? And yet, the pastor gently spread the oil onto my forehead to drive home the idea of the priesthood of all believers.

I don’t think I fully realized it at the time, but I could sense that something special had just occurred: the planting of the idea that the spiritual and the physical can meet mystically.

Years later, when I found myself in an Orthodox church for a feast day, the memory of that first anointing came rushing back. The priest stood with a small brush and a bottle of fragrant oil—rose-scented, I think, because it was a feast related to Mary.

He marked a cross on my forehead, and as I inhaled the scent and felt the coolness of the oil, I was struck by how deeply sacred it all felt.

The gesture.

The blessing.

The smell.

The sense I was touched by something holy.

And I realized, I wasn’t resisting it. I wasn’t questioning it. I was ready for it.

Looking back, I think that Emmaus weekend gave me a language I didn’t know I’d need. It didn’t teach me some in-depth theology of sacraments, but it gave me space to feel something that wasn’t just emotional hype or intellectual. It was physical. Grounded. Real.

I didn’t have the framework for it yet, but it was enough to open a door.

While Orthodoxy felt foreign at first, it did not feel threatening. In the ancient space filled with chanting, incense, and oil, the physical and the spiritual weren’t in conflict, they were in harmony.

Oil could heal.

Bread could be holy.

The sign of the cross wasn’t just a gesture; it was a prayer in motion.

What I once thought of as symbolic or extra—the rituals, the materials, the repeated prayers—has started to feel essential. Not because I understand all of it. But because I’ve experienced how these things carry grace in a way words alone can’t.

The door with that idea was cracked open 10 years ago at Emmaus, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

And now, on this side of the journey, I can see how that one act—oil on the forehead, done by a pastor who probably didn’t think twice about it—set something in motion.

It gave me a curiosity—a glimpse of something deeper.

I served on several Emmaus weekends after my pilgrim walk, doing my best to represent Christ to the men in attendance (you can only ever be a pilgrim once). My pilgrim walk was the only time I ever saw anointing done on one of those weekends.

I don’t believe that was a coincidence. I see now how God was laying the groundwork, planting the seeds that weekend that would lead me to a new chapter a decade later. I knew I left that mountain changed by an encounter with God. It’s incredible to realize that chapter wasn’t entirely written as I had thought.

I’ve come to see that what I viewed as purely symbolic on that weekend might have been far more real than I imagined.

In Orthodoxy, anointing isn’t a nice touch. It’s a moment when heaven meets earth.

And because I’d already been nudged in that direction—however gently by Pastor Charles of all people—I was able to receive it, not with skepticism, but with gratitude.

I don’t think that moment at Emmaus was accidental. It was grace, peeking in through a crack in the door I didn’t even know was there.

And now, years later, I’ve finally stepped through it.

These reflections are part of my personal journey—how I’m seeing and interpreting things in the moment. Like any journey, my understanding may be limited or incomplete and will likely deepen over time. I share these thoughts not as conclusions, but as honest glimpses along the way.