Ah interesting. During my religious phase I joined the Orthodox
   Church (a Carptho-Rusyn one)) but was inspired heavily by ROCOR
   friends I had made online in the mid 1990s.

   I even stayed at a ROCOR monastery in... um.. Tennesee I
   believe.. for about 3 weeks in the late 1990s.

   I even made monasticism my retirement plan.. in case.. you
   know... the whole money thing and paying off a mortgage thing
   just goes *poof*. It's an interesting and stable existence it
   seems and I liked the daily routine. I would've stayed longer
   than 3 weeks but I used up my vacation time from work to do it
   (they didn't know where I went) and i was satisfied when I got a
   taste for it. It's for me, just, not at that point.

   Interest in religious matters petered off after that (and
   teaching myself a little Russian - or trying) - but the
   Philokalia which I read all of them cover-to-cover and
   highlighted and took notes in taught me a lot about human
   nature. Decontextualized, there's a lot of great stuff in there.

   All started when I was a teenage custodian at my Methodist
   church I grew up with. 13 year old kid, cleaning up garbage cans
   after school. I looked around the.. Narthex is it? (I forget the
   room names now) and thought, "they need more candles in here".
   The "love everybody/serve man" (with a side of bacon) I learned
   as a kid from Methodist sunday school was helpful but there
   wasn't any depth beyond that. Candles, I later realized,
   represented the missing depth. Almost becoming a Catholic priest
   (working in a Catholic university as a temp doing data entry (I
   think I was Unitarian at the time, maybe Quaker), I looked in
   the phone book to see if I missed any religions that I wanted to
   investigate during my lunch break.

   "Ok, what's this Orthodox church thing? Never heard of it".

   Called. Priest's wife answered. (Priests with wives and kids!
   Check) "Oh, Father's out blessing houses (it was January).
   (Check! I always liked the Wiccan (lol) Catholic inspired
   blessings but didn't like all the arcane language stuff).

   Checked it out. No statues (didn't like the embodiment in stone
   thing) but some great medieval art - all totally symbolic (the
   long noses, the strange inverted perspectives - all completely
   on purpose)... and lots of Libarace-style gold and pomp and
   Anglican beauty. [loved Anglican music - they got that part down
   pat, especially the boys choirs and the pipe organ music -
   marvelous stuff].

   I liked getting an alt.history of the world. Free education
   there. Pieced the gaps I had in my American education (like, you
   know, WHAT HAPPENED between fall of rome and Mr. Smart Guy
   beyond fighting Welsh and Norsemen? I found out where Western
   Civ MOVED to... or really, never left.. until that "we're gonna
   fix Islam once-and-for-all dude in 1493". Don't blame him really
   - power-happens)

   So yeah, it was fun journey. Made lifelong friends from it. In
   retrospect, it was only maybe a 3-5 year obsession.. but it was
   a blast.