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You are here: Home / Archives for church

Photo: A Spiritual Moment

October 7, 2011 By Danny

Armenia is a small country who doesn’t get along well with its neighbors.  Somehow we found ourselves inside and found a whole lot of reason to spend a few days with virtually no other westerners around.  We were couchsurfers for a few nights in Yerevan and during the day we got out of town to see the [pictured] Geghard Monastery as well as the Garni Temple.
Before getting to Yerevan we had stopped in Vanadzor to see some other monasteries.  Having already seen those, Geghard was on some level “just another” monastery.  That being said though, it was interesting to see how much better the condition was at Geghard than it had been at the Vanadzor monasteries.  This was largely due to its location carved out of the surrounding cliff side.  It was a beautiful place and one worth visiting.  The most exciting part of the day for however, was our encounter with a few friendly Iranians!

To see more of our favorite photos from around the world check out our travel photo page. Let us know your favorites and we’ll include them in our photo of the day series.

IF YOU GO: The Geghard Monastery and the Garni Temple are both accessible from Yerevan without much trouble.  Yerevan is an incredibly pedestrian friendly city and really very easy to navigate.  Like nearby Tbilisi it has loads of art and historical artifacts but I think these are much more accessible in Yerevan than Tbilisi.

Filed Under: photos Tagged With: church, religion

Photo: Early Christian Priest

May 31, 2011 By Jillian

Entering into the rock hewn churchs in Lalibela, Ethiopia was like stepping back in time.  Dimly lit by the sunlight, the churches were hewn out caves.  Brightly painted religious scenes decorated the ceilings and walls and inside nearly every church was a priest.  Most simply ignored us, but a few entrepreneurial types pulled out crosses and religious treasures to show us.  This of course had it’s fee, which they were more than happy to collect.

Ethiopians practice a distinct form of Christianity.  Early adopters of Christianity, it is believed Ethiopia became a Christian nation sometime around 340 AD.  As Islam great in the seventh century, Ethiopia was in effect isolated from the rest of the Christian world, giving it today a very distinct form of Orthodox Christianity.  Lalibela is home to several monolithic churches, and is considered a pilgrimage site for Ethiopians.  Local clergy believe the layout of the churches to be a symbolic representation of Jerusalem, adding to its religious holiness.

To see more of our favorite photos from around the world check out our travel photo page. Let us know your favorites and we’ll include them in our photo of the day series.

Ethiopian Priest at Lalibela

 

Filed Under: photos Tagged With: church, religion

The First Christians Are Who???

September 20, 2010 By Jillian

IMGP6929The Armenians. In their little patch of land, tossed between the Islamic Ottoman and Persian empires, somehow managed to become and remain the world’s first Christians. Through the years they have maintained a distinctive Christianity which is more closely related to the Coptic Church than most other things. Their Monasteries are impressive and cover the country and are unlike anything that exists in Europe or anywhere else we’ve visited.

Arriving from Georgia to the north we set off to visit a handful of these structures. The first, Kobayr, was basically in ruins and saw only a handful of tourists each week. It is currently being reconstructed to become a house of prayer once again but this is likely to take many years. The second (Sanahin) and third (Haghpat ) were larger and more elaborate. Both were still in use and one,Sanahin, even had it’s Priest there, a man who spent 20 years with the Armenian Church in California and was only too happy to speak to a few Americans. The architecture in all of them was unique and interesting to explore if only for a short while. All were covered in Armenian script lettering which added to the ‘Indian Jones’ allure of the locations.

IMGP6996The fourth Monastery (Aktala ) we visited proved to be the most interesting. In it, we met the Priest who had only been ordained 6 months prior, and at this monastery for only 5 of those months. He was the first Priest of the monastery in over 200 years and was working painstakingly to to finish the refurbishments (outside asphalt was being poured to rebuild the crumbly road). The inside of the this church though was covered in Byzantine styled frescoes unlike the other churches we had seen in Armenia. This particular building had been designed according to the styles and customs of the church in Georgia as something of thank you for protection and a few centuries later fell out of use for this reason. (Nationalist identities in the Caucasus are particularly strong!)

IMGP7009He shared stories of each fresco and stopped when he reached the front of the room, where a canon had blasted a hole in the ceiling where Mary’s face should have been. He told us this had been done by some Turks but noted that they stopped after that one shot when they saw another fresco. This other fresco he described as Jesus’ trial by the Jew Herod who was wearing a turban. He told us that when the Turks saw this scene they stopped because they felt Allah was in the room. We neglected to point out the several flaws in his story of events as he was a rather nice man…which was good because he then took us to the secret rooms which were pretty cool.

IF YOU GO: We based ourselves in Vanadzor. There are few tourists in this region and even less in the way of infrastructure. The easiest way to see these sites is to hire a taxi for the day, which we did for ($22) 8000AMD. Vanadzor is a 2-3 hour bus ride from Yerevan on the Yerevan-Tbilisi road, if coming from Tbilisi you’ll need to pay the full fare to Yerevan and let the driver know you want to get off in Vanadzor. There is one institutional hotel in the town and several homestays for the same cost which can be more comfortable. The pizza place in town quotes its pizzas by the cost per slice, not per pie, so be careful!  A ride to Yerevan should cost you about 1200AMD.

Filed Under: Armenia, Europe, Headline, History & Culture Tagged With: church, monastery, religion

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