Thursday, March 05, 2009

BLOG: A beautiful start to Lent in Tbilisi (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)

Posted By: Sarah Marcus at Mar 3, 2009 at 18:43:29 [General]
Posted in: Foreign Correspondents , Religion

Yesterday was the start of Orthodox Lent, which is still a rather stricter affair than the excuse to diet that Lent is in many non-Orthodox countries. (I've no doubt many non-Orthodox Christians take Lent seriously and think about why they're giving up their vice of choice, but I have not met many of them.)

Not that I would have known the significance of yesterday had I not stumbled on a rather beautiful occasion in Tbilisi's old town.

Dusk was falling when I was enticed down a cobbled street by the sound of a choir of female voices uplifted in a hopeful, beseeching melody. As I drew nearer to the music I saw a small crowd of men and women surrounding an open doorway, straining to get a glimpse inside the building, mobile phones held aloft to capture a moment.

The music was coming from the women in the crowd, who repeated its few beautiful bars over and over. As the crowd - more women than men, more young than old - surged forward I caught the sight of long black robes swishing up the stairs inside the open door.

full article >>>

No comments: