This festal morning seemed bleak weather-wise, but not spiritually. The rainy drizzle continued from yesterday. When my alarm went off at 7 a.m., the street lights were still on, if barely. It’s hard to imagine the sky this gray and overcast in late August.
Celebrating the Great Feasts regularly is difficult in the villages because of the lack of clergy. But so much of Orthodox life historically is lived out in villages, with feast days punctuating the calendar. A total of seventeen feast days, not counting Sundays, were still given workers in the Pribiloffs after the Purchase. Even now in Greece, the EU is demanding a reduction in days off for holy days as a part of economic reform.
Marshall had that village liturgy feeling: I’ve felt it before. The bell rang: people came to church. No one drove a car. Perhaps one ATV was parked outside. Everyone else walked a block, two blocks, or maybe a little more. These same individuals work together, go to school together, play together and pray together, with one event simply folding into another.
Our liturgy was uplifting. More of it is done in Yup’ik than at Vespers.
There was a brunch at one of the parish council members’ homes. As usual, it was quite a spread. And, as it is turning out elsewhere, it becomes a pastoral visit. People are very candid about themselves and they seek guidance from the clergy. Hearts are opened, tears are sometimes shed, and burdens are many times lifted. So it was today.
The afternoon was down time. I tried to get into my reading: Jack London‘s Call of the Wild and White Fang. I figured it was good background material for a trip here. Somehow I had missed out on both while growing up. A gray, wet afternoon gave more excuse for napping than reading.
I awoke, finding my power off again. I don’t know why. So, with no coffee to jolt me awake for Vespers, I lolled around. Then I trudged up the slippery incline to church.
Again, it was a village at prayer. Virtually everyone from the morning attended, with others there as well. One set of responses was done alternately in English, Slavonic, Yup’ik, and Greek.
I’d heard 12 confessions last night with perhaps 18 more this evening. Here there is a practice of signing a confession register each time a person confesses. It is dated, along with the name of the priest hearing the confessions. (During the liturgy the next day, each person will be commemorated with prayers.)
I’d read of this old, Russian practice in literature somewhere, but I’d never been in a parish that still practices it. There is such continuity here with the guidance the missionaries gave them, almost 200 years ago.
Supper was back over at Reader John’s house: King Salmon soup! John had noticed my relish for Tabasco sauce at brunch, apologizing for its absence tonight by the offer of jalapenos instead. Who would’a thunk?
Before I knew it, it was 10 p.m. (22:00), but children were still outside playing. There was a large puddle opposite John’s house with at least six little boys floating little boats made of scrap lumber on it. They pulled them with strings through the muddy water, up a ramp and splashed them down on the other side.
“Who’s winning?” I call out.
“I am!”
“I am!”
“I am!”
John motors me home again, on the ATV: top speed is 7 mph (11 kph). He takes it slower when I’m his cargo. He avoids as many water holes as possible, and takes it even slower when he can’t.
Returning home, I find the power back on. I’m none the wiser.
I’ll make sure that I have a back-up alarm set to get me up tomorrow.
Blessings with the Feast!