Things are Slowing Down...

I'm noticing that lately I've had a lot less going on that I felt was noteworthy, as things have been slowing down and settling into a normal rhythm.  Probably the blogs will begin to shorten, too.  This weekend was the first really quiet, stay-at-home weekend I've had--it was nice to just relax and read and so forth.  On Saturday, a couple of the more fluent English speakers (and readers in the Church) and I spent some long hours over my horologion and theirs to translate the liturgy and note the small differences in liturgical traditions, so I can now begin working on a side-by-side horologion (we'll translate the rest of the services on subsequent weekends).  I noticed a few small differences the next day between what we translated and what was actually done in this particular Church, but as I have a copy of the text and format we use in Church, I can note them later.  Otherwise, Sunday was pretty normal:  Church, then Mama Davit's--where, for the first time, we watched a little TV (starting with what appeared to be an "Orthodox Channel," or at the least a channel on Georgian culture with an emphasis on the Church) before eating.

Yesterday was the annual commemoration of St. Ilia (Elias/Elijah) the writer and martyr under the communists.  He helped the poor and wrote about their condition, and about life in general, under the communists, and was not afraid to speak out against them.  I'm not sure if it's his day of commemoration in the Church (he's not in my St. Herman's Press Calendar for that day, but whether that's because he's on a different day or because his canonization (assuming he has been officially canonized by now, as I understand is the case) isn't well known outside Georgia, I don't know), but they celebrate it on Nov. 16 every year in Q'vareli, where he lived.  As this is very near to my village, a lot of teachers and students went.  It was the grand opening (though it's not 100% finished yet) of the man-made Ilia's Lake.  We got to listen to some great Georgian folk music and see awesome traditional dances in the afternoon before a concert in an outdoor ampitheatre at night, capped off by a visit and speech by the president of Georgia, Mikheil (commonly shortened to Misha) Saak'ashvili.  I probably could have met with and talked to him shortly (he speaks very good English), but I didn't feel like fighting through the crowds, and wasn't too particularly worried about it.  There were a few different camera crews there, and it was on the news when I got back home.

Well, that's the update--everything else has been pretty much the same as usual.  Like I mentioned, this will probably be more of the norm until my break in December, so expect less blogging, for the most part.

In Christ,

Teopile/Theophilos Porter