I told him that I didn't actually know anyone from the Ukraine, although two of my great-grandparents had been from Transcarpathia.
"So you come from an Orthodox family," he said. "That's surprising because" -- I was about to interject that my Ukrainian ancestors had actually been Greek-Rite Catholic, but the priest kept talking -- "from the look of you, I would have guessed that you were a Mormon!"
"I am," I said. "Or was. I guess should really grow an Orthodox beard!"
During the service, I kept thinking about what he had said and wondering how he had known. I hadn't associated with Mormons for 20 years*, and my parents are both converts and couldn't have given me any "Mormon genes." In the end, I decided that spending my formative years among Mormons, I must have permanently acquired certain habitual facial microexpressions which, though not consciously noticeable, gave me a recognizably Mormon look which would probably be with me for the rest of my life.
Thinking back on that now, in the waking state, I think it makes a certain sense and wonder if there is anything to it.
* Although I hadn't consciously noticed it until I wrote this post, I actually had this dream exactly 20 years to the day after my resignation from the CJCLDS.
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Note added: Weird coincidence. I posted this dream about visiting a Ukrainian church, and it attracted two comments: one relating a dream about Hitler and the other replying to the first comment with "you're a Jew. Lol."
Later in the day, I was browsing one of Andrew Anglin's super-long meme posts, titled "Toon Tuesday: Honking with Hitler" ("I don't know why it worked out that there are so many Hitler memes today"), and one of the memes was this:
Googling the headline, I find that it's an old news story from 2018. Strange running into it right after that dream.
