Free Table Finds (1)

A two-liter bottle of Diet Canada Dry Ginger Ale, along with some pamphlets in Russian. Found after dinner several weeks ago. I didn’t take the ginger ale because a) someone already opened the bottle and b) it was diet ginger ale.

Our First Gig!

Months of practice finally paid off at our Seminary Choir’s public debut at Holy Epiphany Church in Boston. We didn’t sing a concert. Rather, we did the weekend services, which was even better. There were five of us: Nicky Kotar, David, Anthony, Pete, and me.

Boston is one of my favorite cities on the east coast, at least judging from the places I’ve been. The last time I was in Boston was for the Boston Ball and Youth Choir Weekend last summer.

Pete and his wife Kate went ahead of us on Friday night, so just four of us left on Saturday morning, taking the old, beat-up seminary van for the weekend. Nicky had classical music CDs for our enjoyment. I voted for Mozart’s Requiem. Driving on the cold highway, past the snow-covered trees, we thus heard:

Dies iræ! Dies illa
Solvet sæclum in favilla:
Teste David cum Sibylla!

Which gave us a little memento mori for our journey.

We then listened to Dvořák’s New World Symphony, which sounded like every movie soundtrack ever made, probably because everybody ripped off Dvořák.

We arrived at downtown Boston around 2:30. I’ve had some experience in Boston before, but I wasn’t very familiar with the area, and it was hard giving directions. “Um, there’s a P.F. Chang’s. And a Legal Seafoods.” We wandered around a bit until our friends showed up. We met up with Alex Cooley and Nadia, and then with Pete, Kate, and Suzie. Suzie, a Boston native, gave us a whirlwind tour of the area around Boston Common, including the Make Way For Ducklings statues, the State House with its gilded dome, and some rearranged graves of famous Bostonians. By the time we made our transit we had to leave for Fr Victor Boldewskul’s house for dinner. So, we got into the car, managed to navigate through Boston traffic, reconnected with Cooley’s car, and drove like madmen through the streets of Boston, toward Roslindale.

We finally parted ways with Cooley at Fr Victor’s house, and went inside for dinner. Fr Victor was very happy to see us, and we had a light dinner of Chinese takeaway. At the end of the dinner, we opened up our fortune cookies. Mine said, “No one ever became great through imitation.”

“That’s funny,” Nicky said, “mine says, ‘Now is the time to be a role-model. The younger is watching.’”

We then went to church and sang the Vigil, which went by smoothly. We did the whole service by ourselves, and used all the pieces we practiced, which included various arrangements of ancient chant. Unfortunately, we didn’t do a special “Svete Tikhii” (O Gladsome Light) because we forgot to bring the second page of the piece.

After Vigil, we went to Fr Alexander Jarostchuk’s house, where we had a delicious second dinner. Fr Victor also came by, and he regaled us with stories of seminary life back when he was at Jordanville twenty years ago. Meanwhile, Fr Alexander’s wife Elena came in with some treats made with pineapple.

“I’ll be stereotypical,” I said. “Give me the pineapple.”

Return of the purpledryasnik!

Sunday also went well. I was wearing my infamous purple cassock, which always puts me in a good mood. After the liturgy we had a nice lenten meal in the downstairs trapeza. The babushki kept offering us potent potables. All went pretty well. After we had something to eat, we went to the Law of God class to talk about life at the seminary, fielding questions: “Yes, we can go out (if we get a blessing). No, we don’t eat kasha and bread all the time.”

We rounded out the trip with a final visit to Fr Victor’s house, where he showed us some old pictures from his time as a seminarian. We then did a little reprise of a couple of pieces.

Bow ties are cool.

It was a very memorable weekend. I’m very grateful to Fr Victor and Fr Alexander for their generous hospitality in hosting us, and hope to be back in Boston before too long!

Surprise Trip

Last week Thursday we were in Fr Andrei’s Russian Church History class, when Fr Cyprian stuck his head inside the doorway and said: “Who wants to go to St Nektarios today?”

St Nektarios Monastery is a Greek monastery founded by Elder Ephraim of Philotheou, located near Roscoe, NY. It’s a little over two hours away from Jordanville. In lieu of Greek class, we second-years were going to get a first-hand taste of Greek monastic life.

By a little pond near the trapeza.

Soon after ten o’clock, four of us second-years (plus Nicky Kotar) got into the black monastic van, and gunned it for Roscoe. After all, we wanted to make it in time for lunch. I brought a book along for the ride, but the undulating landscape was not very conducive to reading, and I had to set it aside.

We got there around noon, only to find out that lunch was actually going to be at half-past. We spent some time in the bookstore before heading to the trapeza. Lunch was simple: some potatoes, pickled green tomatoes, soup, some rusk. Yet it was very delicious. We quietly ate while a monk read from a high pulpit towering over the refectory. When the meal finished the monks sang the kontakion for Christmas, and we all processed out of the trapeza, while the abbot, Elder Joseph, stood to the side and blessed us.

We seminarians then went back inside and helped out with the cleaning up and preparation for the next meal, which took about an hour and a half. We spent some more time in the bookstore, taking pictures, etc. and then went to the monastery church, where a priest was blessing people with a relic of the True Cross. We received the blessing, and soon afterwards Vespers began. We stood in our monastic choir stalls (stasidia) while listening to the beautiful antiphonal chanting of Byzantine hymns.

By the end it was dark, and the grounds were all lit up with Christmas lights.

There was also a rather unique nativity scene, executed in a Byzantine iconic style:

Right after dinner we had to take leave of our hosts. We drove back at a leisurely pace. It’s nice to have a little vacation now and then.

Parks and Ordination

The period after Thanksgiving seems to go by very quickly. Two weeks of classes are sandwiched in between the Thanksgiving vacation and exams, which actually are a bit of a vacation in themselves. Papers get turned in, loose ends get tied up, and all the while our minds are already checked in and boarding the plane. It’s a busy time.

Last weekend, we had two big events happen. On Saturday (December 3) a contingent of officials, higher-ups, bureaucrats and activists descended upon our monastery for a ceremony celebrating the inclusion of Holy Trinity Orthodox Monastery into the National Register of Historic Places. The whole impetus for getting the monastery recognized was the proposed building, not too long ago, of a number of wind turbines (“Each as tall as the Statue of Liberty,” according to Fr Luke) about a mile east of the Monastery. The monastery joined forces with local interests groups opposed to this development, and applied and received historical landmark status at the state level. Federal recognition allows the monastery to potentially receive grant money or tax credits for the upkeep of its buildings. Usually religious buildings don’t receive this kind of recognition, but according to the powers-that-be, not only does the monastery represent the local community, it is a landmark for the entirety of the Russian Diaspora.

So, a number of people spoke about their individual and group efforts to preserve the monastery and fight the wind turbine people (who were forced out of business, apparently because of shady dealings that they did). Fred Miller, one of the members of the New York State Preservation League, spoke about how he had help understanding our Russian Orthodox ways with the help of one of the nuns in the nearby skete: “Whenever I got something wrong with protocol and what-not…Mother Barbara would grab me by the throat!”

After the talk, we partook of a big spread of refreshments and the visitors got a tour of the monastery grounds.

The next day, one of our seminarians got ordained. It was the Feast of the Entrance of the Holy Mother of God into the Temple. Igor, the seminarian in question, got tonsured a reader before the beginning of liturgy, and then ordained a deacon by Archbishop Gabriel of Canada. Fr Igor will serve for the next forty days in church and will be ordained a priest on Christmas Day.

But otherwise, everything is все нормально, business as usual, here in Jordanville. At least until uborka.

The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe

And now for something completely different. As I’ve noted before, some of us seminarians watch Doctor Who on a regular basis, and we’re quite excited about the upcoming Christmas Special: The Doctor, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The BBC has put up a prequel, which you can see above. And here’s the trailer!

Common Courtesy

Today I received a very slanderous comment from a clearly confused individual. The anonymous commenter made some very serious and nasty remarks about someone I know personally. Of course, I was both shocked and delighted. Shocked because of the nonsense that people can get away with saying under the cover of anonymity, and delighted that I finally have a troll. My blog has made it in the Internet world!

I’ll take this opportunity to lay down the law regarding comments. If someone writes anything which whiffs of slander, back-biting, tale-bearing or the like, I will immediately delete his comment and that commenter will be persona non grata on this site. This blog is free of the contentions that plague much of “Internet Orthodoxy”—I intend to keep it that way.

A Victorious Union

Last weekend, I went with my friends Pete and Kate M. to a wedding in New Jersey. I last saw the bride and groom, Nicolas and Victoria, at last year’s youth conference at Jordanville. At the syezd, Archbishop Gabriel, in his opening address, expressed his hope that the 150 assembled youths form 75 marriages.

Well, one down, seventy-four to go.

Before we headed out, we attended the baptism of the baby of one of the local residents. Bishop Peter of Cleveland came to baptize the baby, which was held in the monastic baptistery. I love baptisms; they remind me of my own baptism nearly four years ago. After the baptism and the churching, the parents held a reception in the local bed and breakfast. Fully satiated, the three of us hit the road.

It didn’t take too long to get to New Jersey. We went immediately to St. Elizabeth’s in Princeton, where the Youth Choir (a.k.a. Cooley & the Gang) was gathered to sing Vigil and Liturgy, as well as practice the wedding music. While we waited for the others to shop up, I had a happy reunion with my Canadian friends Manya and Katya, as well as with my other syezd friends John and Michael. Cooley had us go over the repertoire, which was made up of many of the standard wedding hymns. One of the unique pieces was “Eternal Father,” the official Navy hymn. We used it for the entrance hymn for Nicolas, who is a naval officer. For the bride we used the first verse from an Englished “Agni Parthene.”

The next day, after singing the liturgy, we went to St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral for the wedding. St. Alexander Nevsky is one of my favorite churches, with its bright frescoes and architecture reminiscent of both the New Cathedral in San Francisco and a super-sized version of the monastery church at Jordanville. The beautiful interior and spacious hall make the church an ideal place for a wedding. We continued to rehearse for the wedding, though “Eternal Father” had a funky tritone at the end which gave us basses a hard time.

The wedding was beautiful, and everything worked out. The bride and groom looked very happy (from what we saw from the choir loft) and were married with Greek wedding crowns made of silver. I think we sang well enough, and even got that tritone, thanks to one of our more musically proficient basses. Fr David, one of the priests, called Victoria “Victorious,” which I think was an inspired mis-speaking.

The reception was very fun, and I got to catch up with people I haven’t seen in a while. I also got to dance quite a bit! In all, it was a very enjoyable weekend.

I’m very grateful to Nicolas and Victoria for inviting me. May God grant them many years of blessed married life!