Communion

I woke up early Sunday; the streets were crusted with snow and empty as I walked three blocks to the metro. On the train I didn’t feel out of place with a prayer book in one hand, holding tight to the overhead support bar with the other. I read through some of the Communion Prayers, today is to be my first official communion, and my high-brow friends wanted it to be an event blessed by none other than the Patriarch.

So here I am trudging up the cobblestone street in the mud towards Sameba Cathedral, other young men stepping their classy shoes gingerly up the slope beside me. Sameba Cathedral; it is truly massive. I remember when I was here for the grand opening, again on the Patriarch’s day, other times for visits with friends, now here for communion as a member of the community. It is an awe-inspiring giant of a building, towering above the old city, even the Soviet blocks that have crept downtown.

February 7th, Sunday: a day of mourning in the Republic of Georgia. The Prime Minister, Zurab Zhvania, died of gas poisoning Thursday morning in the apartment of a friend. All claim it was an accident due to a faulty gas heater, though I'm not convinced.

I walked into Sameba Cathedral, finding it nearly empty, and there was Zurab, lying in an open coffin in the middle of the cathedral nave. Shocking. A red and white Georgian flag draped over his body, his face ashen, the coffin surrounded with flowers. Chairs stood to one side, and I saw several quietly despairing family members sitting nearby. Hurrying upstairs to find Simon and the Cathedral choir, I found no one. I was alone, staring down at the open coffin from the balcony.

Security guards prowled the cathedral; I fended off their scowls with blank looks and a telltale piece of sheet music in my hand. Slowly friends gathered. This was to be an interesting service I could tell.

I found one of my Godfathers, Nika, downstairs, he was looking hurt, and confided that Zurab had been a personal friend of his. I stood around with him near the family, as dignitaries came in to pay their respects to Zurab’s widow, mother, and three children. What does it mean to lose a major political figure? In my voting days, political figures have mostly brought a look of despair to my face, not the patriotic feelings of this crowd. How was it when JFK died? Zurab was controversial, but he was a leader, and Georgia will be hard pressed to find his replacement.

Simon came and took me back up to the choir loft to chant, and I was greeted with enthusiasm and slaps on the back, because of my new status as an Orthodox brother; ‘gilosavt, gilosavt!’ ‘congratulations!.'

We were about to begin chanting when Nika called me and told me I needed to come downstairs. So back down to the somber crowd I went, pushing my way through rapidly growing throngs and their retainers. One such character would not let me pass through at the final barrier even with my western-looking mug, and I had to call my VIP friends to come over and chew the guy out. Ridiculous, but that’s what has to happen over here.


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I stood with the somber crowd for awhile, then a priest collected me and we went into a corner where he asked me several biographical questions in broken english, and asked if I had a confession to make.

Now here is an interesting dilemma for a person with my upbringing. Hypothetically, my actions are based on my convictions, I do not carry shame or guilt for any of my actions. I didn’t grow up in a guilt culture. Nor did I grow up in a culture where actions might be ‘spiritually sinful’ but rather ‘morally reprehensible.’

Though many of my actions right now might be considered either spiritually sinful or morally reprehensible, I have created my own morality which works for me and I stick to it. Actions that caused me shame at one time I have recreated as justified acts, or I have stopped participating in those actions. How can one live in guilt of one’s own actions? For me, if I can’t justify an action, I don’t do it. I’m no saint, having as many faults as the next guy, but in terms of a confessing mentality, I didn’t know where to begin. So when the priest asked me to confess I felt ashamed only in that I could think of nothing that I was ashamed of.

He asked if I smoked, ‘no.’

He asked if I liked to drink, ‘when there is a supra and it is appropriate to drink, I do enjoy drinking,’ I said.

He asked me if I liked women. I said, ‘yes I like women. I respect women, I admire women, I have a mother and a sister, I have friends who are women, sometimes I also desire women....’ ‘Good, this is natural for a young man,’ he replied.

I was hoping for more, -maybe we were going to get to the ‘sin’ part, but that was it.
I think I have a lot to learn about sins and giving confession.


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I went back upstairs to the chanting balcony. The choir was singing beautiful complicated chant, with Simon huffing and fuming in front of them, occasionally losing it completely and throwing his tuning fork at an offending singer. This is strange for me, and actually I hate it. I can’t sing sacred music for an angry, inflamed director, sorry. Simon is a great guy, but a tyrant on the podium. Nontheless, I sang the service with the middle voice section, making babytalk conversation attempts during the break in my broken Georgian.

Then I was again summoned downstairs, this time escorted by Simon, who took me straight through to the back of the iconostasis. I hardly dared look around me because there were at least ten bishops and their full entourages back there, and it was kind of frightening how many gold gowns and hats and periphenalia everyone was wearing.

The Patriarch stood in front of a thrown-looking chair, and when we had a moment, Simon introduced me and asked for a blessing. The Patriarch asked my name, -‘Ioane’, asked if I understood Georgian, -‘tsota mesmis,’ said something else, and smiled peacefully at me.

I quickly bowed my head and cupped my hands for his blessing, which is the sign of the cross from his right hand. Then as quickly as we had entered, we left, and returned to the balcony of rowdy singers via the somber crowd of political dignitaries and mourning family members. Can I better describe how strange this day in the cathedral was turning out?!

Wait, no the communion! On the way back upstairs, we followed a priest into a side chapel and I was instructed to place my arms over my chest in the sign of a cross, the same way we used to do in Waldorf school to say our verses or if our teacher wanted us to stop fidgeting.

I approached the wine bearer, who dipped out a morsel of wine-soaked bread and delicately delivered it into my mouth on a golden spoon. The holy moment. I think I was a little preoccupied with doing the right thing, and couldn’t even really imagine what it meant as a ritual to be part of the universal divine, -connected to all living and sentient beings through the energetic life spirit we know as God in this holy moment. At the next table, I drank more wine and ate little pieces of bread. Welcome refreshment after a day of fasting, this service has already been going on five hours.


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Around this time, people who had been waiting in the soft snow outside, thousands of them, began to enter and process double-file around the coffin. It was an historical moment, an incredibly grief-ridden moment. Alternating with another choir of men who were down on the ground floor, those of us in the balcony sang chant after chant, ‘Holy God, Holy Immortal, Holy Almighty, have mercy on us, have mercy on us....' We sang chants for nearly two hours while the masses came in to pay their respects to a man many knew to be the action figure of the Rose Revolution, the man who made things happen.

Then speeches began. I was made to understand that Condoleeza Rice was present, though I can’t corroborate because I didn’t see her. The Patriarch made a soft-spoken speech honoring Zurab, an American read a heartfelt personalized speech to Zurab, a Georgian women read a translated letter from ‘Bush-ee,’ the Speaker of the Parliament House spoke, and President Saakashvili wrapped it up with an emotional speech about his best friend and right-hand man.

Saakashvili and the Patriarch stood with the family as the coffin was lifted and carried out by an honor guard, then we chanted truly gorgeous music as the thousands filed out below us. Outside, four hundred soldiers in fatiques, each carrying a Georgian flag, lined up for half a kilometer creating a wide isle for the procession as it filed out beyond the belltower. Even inside the cathedral, looking through the windows, I could hear the reverberation of the huge bell at the top of the tower as it boomed an echoing memorial across the cathedral plaza in fifteen second intervals.

We sang and sang as Simon fumed. What a mix of a day. A tragic day. A grandiose festival. A President’s speech, a Prime Minister dead. A Cathedral. A Communion, a Patriarch’s blessing. Singing medieval chant for the Glory of God.