Normally, I don’t watch television; we don’t subscribe to cable or satellite at our house. But on a recent road trip I found myself lying on a hotel bed holding the old clicker and getting very, very sleepy.

You know how it is.

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock …

You’re getting very sleep. Very.
Very.

Sleepy.

Anyway, I was dozing with one eye, and surfing the channels with the other, when I heard a great commotion. It was a woman squealing: “O My God! My Lord! O My God!” At that point I was thinking, “Yep, this is why we don’t watch television: all the swearin’ and stuff.”

As she ranted into delirium, I realized it was one of those extreme home makeover shows. You know where they take a perfectly normal looking lived-in room and secretly make it over to look like a cubby in a doll house – full of pastels, stainless steel, art deco, fringe and stripes and stuff. Then the “customer” returns home and acts like they have flat out lost their mind! They yelp something like: “Oh, a8dhaoghuaognehoehgeoirgbnlk!”

Returning to my TV-induced hypnotic state, I was listening to this woman scream “God” and “Jesus” and such, when she suddenly blurted out: “There’s an iconostasis in my living room!”

And the camera panned over and, sure enough, the make-over crew had installed an icon screen in this couples’ living room! I sat up, staring at the TV. I mean, has Orthodoxy become so mainstreamed that they’re now making television shows about Mission work? I tried to change the channel, but …

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