Orthodox Easter

Blue sky made an appearance early this morning, so good to wake up to. The Sunday Service was from the Ukrainian Catholic exile community in London, celebrating Easter according to the Julian Calendar a week later than the rest of the world. We were treated to some traditional resurrection hymnody, but what caught my attention was hearing the response to the Litany of Fervent Supplication in the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom used with prayer petitions relevant to current conflict. 

As an indigenous church, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church, to use its full title, has been in communion with Rome since the seventeenth century, rather than in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch, or the Patriarch of Moscow - other groups of Ukrainian Orthodox are in communion either with Constantinople or Moscow. It reflects the tensions and conflict of interests which have plagued the history of Ukraine for the past five hundred years.

In a way this is  what has happened to churches of Orthodox tradition in the Middle East which also changed allegiance under Roman Catholic influence and support post-reformation. The second Vatican Council affirmed the contribution of Eastern Rite church communities and enabled them to adapt to the times in a way Eastern Orthodoxy is still reluctant to do. 

Traditional Slavic Orthodox churches would be less likely to adapt classic petitionary prayer to current conditions. It's something I noticed this morning, because of encounters encounters with the Russian Orthodox church in Exile as a student nearly sixty years ago, when it was possible to get to know (and sing) the entire set form of the liturgy off by heart, leaving the variable bits to the experienced cantors. I owe a lot to the Orthodox way of prayer, and its original poetic way of expressing theological and spiritual insight in hymnody so different from its western equivalent. 

Western and Eastern expressions of Christianity are equally riven by religious and cultural divisions which are institutionalised into different church communities. There may be an acknowledged essential unity of teaching and purpose between them all (or most of them), but living with differences when exposed to geographical, political and cultural tensions is as difficult now as it was in the years after the birth of the church. What is most lacking, to my mind, is a universal sense of humour, to enable us all to admit that taking everything too seriously makes us no different from those scribes and Pharisees challenged by Jesus.

When I set off to celebrate the Eucharist at St German's, I kissed Kath goodbye, but when I returned just before one, she was still there, about to leave, as she's been unable to contact a friend to visit on her way home, so we kissed goodbye again. Then I cooked lunch.

Poor Owain. He left us to catch a train at nine last night. The train to boarded never left the station, and he sat in it for an hour before a cancellation announcement was made, due to someone wanting to jump from a railway bridge outside Newport. It's disgraceful that it should have taken so long to alert passengers and give them the choice to wait or go by other means.

I don't understand why an alternative means of transport wasn't arranged once it was clear there was a problem that might take time to resolve. British Transport Police would have attended the 'jumper' and had a presence at Cardiff Central. What's the matter with them that it took an hour to inform passengers of the futility of waiting? Rather than return to Meadow Street, he contacted electrician James and Jo his wife who live in Grangetown, a shorter walk to a couch for the night, rather than returning to Meadow Street, but it was midday before he got back to his flat.

We walked in the park for an hour before tea, then after supper I went out again on my own. A young man accosted me as we passed each other saying "You look beautiful, would you mind if I took your photograph? I'm a portrait photographer." I was intrigued by this chat up line and agreed. He told me he was in his final year of a photography course at the University of South Wales. In his bag was a Mamiya medium format film camera - the real deal. He said he'd just returned from a photo expedition in Turkey, and was intending to work in a European country after graduation. He took three pictures of me, hoping that the evening light was adequate for the film he was using. I guess I'll never know, though he did say that the final year class photo exhibition would be shown in the St David's Centre for a week from the tenth of June, so I've made a note to visit. Maybe I'll find out then if his shots were successful.

On returning home, I completed work on the Morning Prayer video and uploaded it to YouTube. As the biblical reflection was about Moses striking water from the rock at Horeb, I hunted down a photo to use of Ayin Musa - the spring of Moses, taken in 1999 while visiting Frank Dall in Jordan. 

It was on one of the many rolls of film which I digitized early in retirement and sits in its own Google photos album, easy to find. Cherished memories of travels in times past. I wonder if such opportunities will ever happen again?