In Communion

I really like the site In Communion, the journal of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, whose advisory board contains such well-known and wonderfully canonical members as the Archbishop of Albania, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, Fr. Thomas Hopko, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Mother Raphaela Wilkinson, and others with whom I'm not familiar. As a sample of their content, here's a nice story from the Spring 2008 issue (and, since Pascha was on April 27th, my post is only two months too late!):

Nicholas Arseniev recounts an event that occurred in Russia, one that is quite characteristic of the faith of the Russian people.

During a public conference held in Moscow at the Polytechnic Museum during the fierce repression of believers, a Bolshevik commissioner in charge of education violently attacked the “out-dated faith” of the people, crying out that it bore the mark of capitalism and was not believable.

At the conclusion of his presentation, the orator invited his hearers to engage in a brief dialogue. No one was to speak for more than five minutes and, of course, only after having properly identified himself.

A priest from a rural background timidly stepped forward and was greeted by the orator with obvious contempt.

“Remember, no more than five minutes.”

“Yes, very well. I’ll be brief,” the priest replied.

Climbing toward the podium, the priest turned toward the audience and declared:
“Brothers and sisters, Christos voskresse!” [Christ is risen!]

They all answered with one voice, “Voistinu voskresse!” [Truly he is risen!]

“I’m done,” added the priest. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

— from Michael Quenot’s book, The Resurrection and the Icon St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997

From the Pascha / Spring 2008 issue of In Communion / IC 49

You know you're in BC when...

Many people are under the impression that all of North America is one big uniform culture, and all cities are carbon copies of the same consumerist, car-oriented prototype. But not so! There is lots of regional variation, and I love BC's local environmentally-friendly culture. Here are some of the things I saw in my short 4-day trip in May/June:

• A guy rode a unicycle and walked his dog at the same time! Awesome!
• There's tons of those old Volkswagon Scooby Doo vans from the 70s.
• My cabbie took less tip than I actually gave him. (I'm told this isn't a general thing, but it was really cool)
• People are so environmentally conscious that they try out diaper-free parenting. (I've had some interesting heated conversations with friends about this topic - they all seem to think it an impossible absurdity - but really, when you think about it, what did people do before the invention of diapers, even before cloth diapers? And what do poor people worldwide do with their babies?)
  
• At least in Victoria, people are just as likely to ride their bikes or take the bus somewhere as they are to drive.
• Cooperative food boxes for low-income people emphasize locally-grown, organic fruits and vegetables.
• Many stores and businesses put out dishes of water for dogs passing by.
• Everywhere is filled with beautiful flowers.
• The mountains and the beach. That's all.
• People randomly do cool stuff, like play haki sak.
  
• The escalators at Vancouver airport slow down when noone is using them, to conserve energy.

The West Coast is pretty cool. In another life I so would've lived there and been a part of All Saints of Alaska Orthodox Church. For now though, I'm happy to just visit whenever possible.

The mountains are magnificent Georg...

Oddly enough, this is turning into a bit of a travel blog, but I've been neglectful of it lately so there's some blog catch-up to do.

The title refers, not to the Austrian Alps, but the Canadian Rockies. I only got a quick look at them through the airplane window on the way to BC last month, since Air Canada put me in the most middle of the middle seats, as far away from a window as you could get. They were quite majestic white and grey peaks rising out of the clouds. I didn't want to bother 3 different people to take a picture, but I would definitely like to actually visit them in person someday.

I did get a nice shot off of Wreck Beach in Vancouver though:


The flight coming into Vancouver was spent mostly sleeping, as much as was possible in such a constrained environment. One thing that amused me was that Air Canada called their seats in French "fauteuil", and the equivalent word in Romanian, "fotoliu", means "armchair". Those are definitely not armchairs.

Following that flight I got a connecting flight to Victoria, where I had an amazing time catching up with my wonderful friends.

Then I took the last ferry back to Vancouver, at 9pm, switched about three buses late at night to try to get from the ferry terminal in Schwartz Bay to UBC where I was staying, finally got lost somewhere in a residential area (that oddly enough, I was half-familiar with it from past visits, so maybe if I'd been more awake I would've successfully navigated it), got fed up and took a taxi to the rez. By that point I'd been awake for about 23 hours and just collapsed, and the small hard rez bed felt like a princess' four-poster bed with a down mattress.