Easter in Betania

04-24-06
Easter

We decided to sing in Betania Monastery again this year. It was SO beautiful.

I wanted something deeper than just singing there. I wanted to live aesthetically, honestly, peacefully. I wanted to sing out of a religious experience and perspective, not a choral perspective.

I hitchhiked to the monastery on Great Thursday, with Giga and Dato, two chant brothers who decided to come at the last minute.

Already the three monks, two priests, and ten to twelve visiting parish members were in deep fast. We requested to have a little food since we had just arrived and hadn’t eaten at all, so we were given some cabbage soup and bread, hmmm tasty.

Services from 4-9pm maybe, I can’t remember. We bunked in a small cabin in the woods uphill from the monastery, preparing to wake at 7am.

Betania Monastery was built in the twelfth century, out of a reddish tinted yellow stone. It is not massive like Gelati or Alaverdi, but it is quite large for being out in the middle of the woods. Perhaps many monks once lived here, in wooden houses scattered throughout the forests. Hanging over a steep river gorge, the monastery is on the only flat piece of ground in the entire area. Across the river, the hills rise steeply for several thousand feet, and even to this day, no villages have been built there. Above the monastery, there are some houses in a distant field, but basically it was built to be isolated and it still is. From the hill overhead, one can see the block apartments of one of Tbilisi’s suburbs creeping up the valley, Betania is a 90 minute drive from the city. The roads wind and twist through the hills above, and if one doesn’t know where it is, like I didn’t last year, it’s a hard find.

Throughout history, that has been an advantage for Betania, because invaders infrequently found the monastery, and it has survived relatively intact. Inside is one of the only surviving frecoes of Queen Tamar of the 12th century, Georgia’s most famous queen.

On Good Friday, we ate bread, with salt, and cold water, at noon. That was it. That’s fasting man. We were hungry. Services were mostly read, and we chanted just the responses Lord have Mercy, Christ have mercy. I couldn’t understand the Georgian prayers, especially because our older priest has no teeth and is used to reading quickly; already during Holy Week he had personally read all four Gospels out-loud.

I tend to space out during the long stretches, so I often had the experience of returning to my body at the nudge of a friend, and a sung pitch. We were three basses, so I sang the first voice. I would be day-dreaming, then a pitch and suddenly I was singing, that simple. Then daydreaming again, as the services went on and on.

It rained. All day Friday. We napped between services, 7am, 11am, 4pm, 8pm…

Saturday there was Divine Liturgy at 4am. Giga arranged for us to arrive later, special privilege for chanters. I didn’t complain. We went at 6:30am, and chanted straight until 11am. Then we had a delicious bowl of beans with our bread. And hot tea. Then fasting for the rest of the day. Sleeping.

In the afternoon I woke up to rain pattering on the metal roof. A distant sound, not insistent. But opening the door, I saw that it was falling, heavy, gentle quiet rain. Soaking the forest and grasses, everything so green it made your eyes weary. Green everywhere, the earth was oozing and dripping green, the fresh, light green of spring and new life.

We sat in our bunkhouse and practiced the difficult series of Easter ‘Irmos’ that have challenged chanters for centuries. Gorgeous chants. I practiced first voice with them, but prayed that Luarsab would show up as he had promised, so we could listen to his natural first voice, instead of my straining baritone.

I saw the green outside suddenly glow as the sun came out. The rain continued. I grabbed my camera mid chant, and rushed outside. Sure enough, a rainbow was hanging low in the valley behind Betania Monastery, and I couldn’t restrain a huge smile as I tried to shelter my camera from the drops, and snap a few photographs in the blazing rainy light. The wet yellow stone, red tin roofs, and green green green everywhere. Isn’t the sight of color a joy and a gift? I wish never to take it for granted.

Already there were many more people hanging around the church, folks who had hiked in because the muddy roads were now nearly impassable.

Luarsab made it, with two more basses. We met another man who chanted in Tbilisi, and together we banded together, a choir of seven for the All-Night Easter vigil.

I slept until 10:30, services started at midnight.

The inner sanctuary glowed with candlelight, perhaps a hundred or two hundred candles burning in little stands placed near the pillars, under the icons. Candles along the iconostasis, and in the hands of young men, middle-aged women, and children, casting deep shadows in their faces and on the walls far above.

Ah, the acoustics! We sang and sang. And finally, we took a fifteen minute pause and prepared to carry all of the icons around the church three times. At the right moment, we began our chant;

Aghdgomasa shensa kriste matskhovar, angelosni ugaloben tsata shina, da chvensa ghirs mkven kveqanasa zeda, tsmindit gulita didebad shenda. To Your Resurrection, O Christ our Savior, the Angels in heaven sing! Enable us who are on earth to Glorify You with a pure heart!

We sang until 5:30 in the morning, then we ate cheese, warm meat, and cracked red eggs as the sun rose behind the cathedral. And we sang Mravalzhamier, -Many Years! To toast each and every one present, to celebrate the risen Christ, and give thanks for our gathering in the green of Betania’s spring-soaked forest.