Paşte Fericit

Orthodox Easter is a many-fold event. It is preceded by over a month of fasting, and days of frantic, thorough cleaning and food preparation, all of which would be of absolutely absurd proportions out of context. The celebration of Easter, itself, is the sweet fruit of those labors. Then there is a week of feasts and celebrations, concluded with an Easter for the Dead. Of this latter, I still know relatively little, but I'll make sure to share interesting experiences and adventures in a later post.

But let's start from the beginning.

Orthodox Easter began at midnight, on the first moments of Sunday, and continues through sunrise. I would love to tell you everything about the ceremony: the singing and chanting, the prayers, and passing of fire. I would love to do so, but I'm afraid it's a secret. And by "secret" I mean that I slept through it. Bah! I suppose I was simply too exhausted to sufficiently respond to the myriad alarms I had set to go off at 11:45 Saturday night. So, instead of participating in a celebration for which I had long been waiting, I caught a few senseless hours of sleep. Luckily, all was not lost.

The Easter service is held at the church, and can be divided into at least two sub-ceremonies. The first, of which I may have dreamed but certainly did not see, involves about four hours of singing prayers and receiving blessings from the priests. This is the part that meant the most to me, and I will be beating myself up about missing it until next Easter. Still, I hear it's exhausting, difficult to bear, and absolutely wonderful. The conclusion of this part of the Easter service is marked by the sharing of a holy flame which is brought from Jerusalem. Last year, a person actually carried the fire by plane from Israel to Moldova, and then distributed it throughout the towns and villages. This year, I don't know.

What I do know is that the church rings bells to mark the beginning of the second sub-ceremony. I know this because it was these bells, ringing at about 4:45 am, that finally pulled me from my sleep. I heard the bells, saw that it was quite dark outside, and thought maybe it was almost midnight. A short, panicked paralysis following the discovery of the actual time, and I rushed to get dressed, hoping to catch whatever was left of the service.

I arrived in time for the the blessing of the Paşca (pashka, pronounced with 'a' like pasta), a special Easter cake. Not everybody goes to the midnight service, but as I hurried toward the church, small groups of shadows also worked their way up the road to the church, quickly filling the small church grounds and then forming two long rows on the street leading away from the church. It was a clear night out, but only a sickle moon, so most of the light came from the hundreds of candles people had lit and stuck into their Paşca. I arrived just as the priests were beginning to splash holy water over the cakes and their owners.

As with the school blessing ceremony, the priests were accompanied by a small entourage: the head priest carried the holy water, which he flung using a small bundle of basil; another priest (this one my friend) carried the little metal ball of incense familiar to Orthodox and Catholic, alike; yet another priest carried a box for monetary donations. All sang prayers as they made their way down the lines, occasionally stopping to fetch another pail of holy water. Apparently, it is proper to shower the holy water liberally, quite without reserve. Understanding the significance, I appreciate that the priests are not stingy with their blessings, even if I need a towel, afterward. (Some volunteers, and probably some Moldovans, detest getting showered with holy water, but I am not among them in this.)

That's pretty much it for the ceremony. But Orthodox Easter is far from over.

Taking the Paşca home, my girlfriend and I cut pieces of the sweet bread and enjoyed some non-drowsy (thanks to the holy shower) conversation with very strong coffee. Eventually, the rest of the house came alive, and the Easter celebrations could be seen quite clearly on the horizon. I had a couple invitations for Easter feasts, and ultimately decided to join a couple from one of my adult English classes. One semi-unforeseen catch on this decision was that they would be taking me to a primarily Russian-speaking household, and while everybody there was able to speak Romanian to me, it is neither their mother tongue nor their language of choice. Another (completely) unforeseen catch was that, despite living in the middle of one of the best wine-producing regions of Moldova, this Russian family generally prefers vodka. The Russian wasn't a problem, and the vodka was simply a matter of preference, for me. So, in all, it was a great feast.

Orthodox Easter follows more than a month of fasting. For strict adherents of the faith, this means a completely vegan diet, no alcohol or other intoxicants, and a bunch of other sacrifices that generally make protestants cringe. Following such dietary suffering, most Orthodox Christians celebrate with appreciable overcompensation: more food than you can shake a stick at, and (sometimes) insane amounts of alcohol consumption. I'm not a large guy, and despite my highly-active metabolism, there's really no possible justification for the absurd quantities of food and (alas) vodka that gradually filled my mouth, stomach, and even that hollow left leg. *wink*

I'm inexpressibly glad that I was able to participate in at least some part of the Easter ceremonies, and I had a great time at the Easter feast. But it's not over yet. As I said, this next week will consist of further feasting and celebration, concluded by Easter for the Dead. Thus, I'm sure many more adventures will find and corner me before it's over. Wish me luck!

Preparation for Easter

In this part of the world, Easter is just about the most important time of year. It's not all about bunnies and candy, as the secular culture of the USA has made it. Instead, it is a mixture of highly-serious religious observation and light-hearted family and community celebration. I have yet to experience either aspect of the holiday, first-hand, so I'll wait to explain the history, ceremony, and customs of Moldovan Easter until after Sunday. Right now, people are preparing. And how!

Maybe "preparing" is too soft a word. It's more like turning the houses upside down in a spring cleaning to trump all spring cleanings, and preparing for the biggest and most wonderful feast possibly imaginable. The cleaning doesn't require further explanation. Everything must be proudly sparkling and brimming with pure cleanliness before Christ rises. I'm still not fully on-board with this concept, but I guess I understand why it is important the others.

The most visible (and curious) aspect of this pre-Easter cleaning is to be found on the roads. Every respectable curb is coated a brilliant, shining white. Or, at least, it is brilliant and shining for about a day. The curbs are not painted with "paint" per se; rather, they are whitewashed with what seems to be a chalky water. I'm pretty sure this is the same annoying substance covering the walls of most non-wallpapered rooms (such as schools). Benefit: it's cheap and easy to apply. Reason it's not worth it: it's chalk. A brief and gentle grazing of a wall covered in this stuff leaves an embarrassing white mark on everything. But to paint a curb with this chalk is a whole new level of senseless, as the first wash of rain strips away 100% of the glorious whiteness. Well, but it looks good for a few days, so there you have it.

The food is another matter, though. While I may feel ambivalent about the cleaning and the white curbs, the culinary exposé of tomorrow's holiday is entirely something to be anticipated with glee and rumbling stomach. Said rumbling stomach is amplified by the period of fasting leading up to Easter, known in Romanian as "Post" (equivalent to Catholic Lent, but much more extreme: people are strict vegans for over a month). Moldova has a rich tradition of sweet cakes, roasted meats, knotted breads, and excessively sugary candies with which to break Post ("post" with a lower-case 'p' simply means "fast"). The last day of Post, today (Saturday), people are supposed not to eat for the entire day, until after the mid-night Easter service. Then, immediately after the service (which ends around 6:00am), each household digs into the biggest masa (feast, or literally "table") of the year. Oh boy!

I'll be attending the Easter services, here, and I am very excited -- not just for the food, and certainly not for these spring cleaning rites. This will be my first Orthodox service since I arrived, and I am very much interested in learning more about this particular faith, and perhaps partaking in regular services and even a catechumin.

That's all for now. More on Easter after the fact, so stay tuned.

The Blessing of Schools

First of all, let me say that the following is based strictly on observation. It is neither my opinion nor fact unless specifically identified as such. Second, I have been working on this post for weeks. The reason for its delay has been my inability to carefully weave an informative yet apolitical essay on a matter that involves the interaction between religion and government. After many attempts and several stressful paragraphs, I've decided to cut the informative yet potentially explosive preface and just explain the story. The links used in that prefaces, should you desire to imagine the potential controversy, are: Here, here, here, here, here, and here.

OK, let's see what I can do about a simply retelling. Ready?

A few weeks ago, following several tragedies involving students from my school during the winter holiday, an event occurred at my school which I'm sure most Americans (of the US variety) have never experienced. The school was blessed. Given the fact that the vast majority of Americans are Christian, in one form or another, this probably didn't bother most volunteers. However, I know that a significant portion of volunteers (as with Americans, in general) are non-Christian or even non-religious, and their experiences with such an event are probably beyond my imagining. I suppose I fall into the 'Christian, in one form or another' category, although primarily on grounds of theology, not practice. So for me, the event was intriguing, culturally educational, and even touching.

The school day began as normal. After the second or third lesson, all of the students at school convened in the foyer and milled around, chattering, while the priest prepared the ceremony, the three or four choir singers discussed something inaudible, and the teachers passed out thin, yellow candles to the students. Just before the ceremony began, one of the teachers noticed the absence of a candle in my hand, and (after confirming whether I wanted one) quickly found an extra for me. The ceremony was relatively brief, with the priest singing some beautiful prayers and the whole crowd repeated making the sign of the cross with dizzying speed and synchronicity.

At one point, a list of names was read, which I deduced to be the names of people specifically being blessed, of which my own name was one. Shortly thereafter, having finished the initial batch of prayers, the priest walked around in the crowd, flinging holy water onto the students and teachers using a bouquet of fresh basil. It should be noted that basil is only used for religious ceremony, here; despite it's delicious effect on food, adherents to Serbian, Macedonian, and Romanian Orthodoxy abstain from using basil as an ingredient.

Once the students had been blessed, they returned to their classrooms and continued with the daily lessons. But the ceremony wasn't quite over. Back in my English class, I explained that this was the first such event I had ever experienced. Then I asked them, "Why do you think that is?" Some of the students suggested it was because we don't have Orthodoxy in the States, which is a good guess. When I explained that such events would be considered illegal in schools in the USA, most of the students seemed very surprised. It stimulated a lot of interest in hearing about why government in the States is (supposed to be) secular -- where the idea comes from, and why such separation of church and state is so important for such a culturally (and religiously) diverse place as the USA.

About ten minutes into this discussion, the school blessing ceremony caught up to us. While we were discussing why religion is necessarily absent from public schools in the States, the priest and his choir were walking from room to room in the school, blessing all four walls and singing further prayer. The priest entered our classroom, threw water on each wall (and on any students or teachers in between), said another prayer (accompanied by the choir, in the hall), and then moved on to the next room. The ceremony wasn't very well explained to me, but it left me feeling honored to be included in such an event. It also left me with a feeling of curiosity and intrigue, which I hope to answer with discussions with the priest and other members of the community.