In the Monastery

In the Monastery
04-28-05

I once read Umberto Eco’s book ‘The Name of the Rose.’ Not that Betania Monastery is the site of a multi-murder mystery or exactly a bustling monastic community of villagers and visiting dignitaries, but arriving as I did, I felt the great timelessness of the church which Eco weaves together so well in the book. One can’t escape the feeling of being very removed from the world of technology and progress when a twelfth century church overlooks such daily activities as gardening, praying, eating, and sleeping. The very rigidness of the monastic ritual life, which is so dedicated to the time of day and night, contrasts the feeling that one is not living in time at all.

Quiet conversation and a welcoming gesture awaited my arrival, as I wound my way uphill past a small cemetary, men silently bent over their tasks in the gardens and into the shadow of the medium sized basilica dedicated to Mother Mary. Father Theodore is tall and thin, with piercing blue-gray eyes and a no nonsense stride. He welcomed me quietly into the church yard. Raised in the American south, he toured as a promotion manager for a circus after college, became a millionaire in corporate business in the Texas and Chicago, but finally gave away all his funds and lived as an Orthodox monk in monasteries in California and Alaska for ten years before moving to Georgia four years ago. His cell at Betania was small and neat, two beds hugging the whitewashed walls, a simple small table and bench by the only window, the three foot sill serving as a bookshelf.

Walking outside, a red-bearded monk ushered us into the main church, where twelfth century frescoes line the walls. One of the most famous frescoes in Georgia survives here, one of the four remaining images of the legendary 12th century Queen Tamar. I asked permission to sing a chant, and sang the same resurrection chant I had practiced on the cows while walking to the monastery, the notes rising beautifully into the space above. Many spaces don’t have acoustics, but I’ve noted before that the master builders of the 11th-12th centuries certainly knew the laws of acoustics when they built these churches all over Georgia and the greater Christian world. Who were these builders? The music fits the space as the space fits the music, written at the same time for the same purpose of praising God with our highest artistic capabilities.

The first thing the red-bearded monk said to me nearly floored me, considering I had just finished writing and presenting an essay on the history of the chant preservation team Sharadze-Koridze-Kereselidze not two weeks before.

‘Did you know Pilimon Koridze’s pedal-organ, later Saint Ekvtime Kereselidze’s, is in the room where you are staying?’

The organ?! The same organ that Sharadze bought for Koridze in 1894 to aid him in the historic fifteen year transcription project in western Georgia which was to yield the bulk of hymns which survive today?! I could hardly believe it. The very same organ on which Koridze would labor day after day hammering out the notes he would write so passionately about:

“I have been many places in the world, but in all the world these are the most beautiful, most complicated chants I have ever heard. Day and night I pressure myself to work and work and work because I don’t want to lose any more of these chants” (Pilimon Koridze).

Later as we looked at the simple six-stop portable organ, one pedal broken, a toothbrush, book, and a couple icons haphazardly scattered on top, I waxed eloquent on it’s illustrious history to Fr. Theodore’s great surprise. If for nothing else, some intuitive powers had guided me to Betania simply for this finding.


Monastic Cycle:

I wanted to write about the service rituals at the Monastery, but there are so many tangents!

At six pm a bell rang, and stepping out of our cells we all faced east and listened to one monk intone a short prayer. There are only about four monks and two resident priests, but about twelve soldiers are also here at the moment, working and praying with the community. I learned later that the pregnant wife of one of their buddies had passed away of cancer not three days before perhaps accounting for the large number of highly penitent young men present.

The bell rang again, and we filed silently into a small mess hall. Standing above the rickety benches of two long rickety tables, a monk and priest intoned prayer before we all sat down to a simple meal of beans, bread, and hot tea. Ants ranged over the table, but we didn’t mind. We ate silently and hungrily, as one monk read from a book on the lives of the saints in a gentle monotone. Dishes were passed back and forth with hardly observable hand gestures, there was no eye contact. I was reminded of my days in the Vipassana meditation retreat center in New Zealand, when fifteen of us had quickly developed this type of body language which allowed us to maintain our ten day commitment to non-verbal communication or eye contact.

After the meal we stood for prayers, then silently filed out into the drizzle, returning to our cells.

At 8pm, the bell summoned us to the smaller, Saint George’s church, a mere cubicle of a room set off to the side of the larger basilica. We crowded in, and stood facing east in the dim light of two candles while red-beard and the priest intoned the Compline service.

An old priest sat on a bench, but at a certain point rising, he donned special robes and cuffs with Fr. Theodore’s assistance, and read from the Gospel book at a central podium. As he moved around, we all shifted in position, standing shoulder to shoulder in the closet-sized church. Nearing the end of the service, carrying a bowl of water and a brush, we left Saint George’s and filed solemnly around Mother Mary’s Basilica in the night rain, chanting,

“My Spirit, my spirit, wake up, why are you sleeping? The end is coming soon and you should be anxious, wake up! Christ God, who is everywhere and fills everything will receive, forgive, and accept you.”

I know this chant in three voices, but they sang a different melody and I couldn’t pick it up. Instead I concentrated on avoiding the downspouts of water running off the roof, but was soaked anyway when we were doused with holy water back in Saint George’s to close the one hour service.

Father Theodore advised sleep, but as I’m in the habit of sleeping from 2am to 9am, sleep didn’t come easily at 9pm.

At 2:30am a rat-a-tat on a big wooden gong woke us for the night services; Matins, First Hour, Third Hour, Sixth Hour, Ninth Hour, and Vespers all grouped into one. The services began at 3am in Saint George’s and I felt for all the world like a tiny ant in the dark of the universe as I crossed the lawn in the rain, my whole existence captured in this simple route between cell and church.

Normally this service would last until around 6am Fr. Theodore confided, but I came at the beginning of Holy Week, a time when services call for a full reading of the four Gospels; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I had already missed the reading of Matthew the night before, but tonight the old priest, donning his special robes and cuffs, read Mark and half of Luke in three sections, each section lasting nearly an hour. During other parts of the service it was possible to sit down, so between the soldiers and I, we managed to trade spots on the five available bench seats, but stood for the duration of the Gospel readings. The monks and priests read very rapidly in Old Georgian, and needless to say, I didn’t understand a word of it until suddenly the words of a familiar chant would pop into my dazed ears, quickly subsiding back into a monotone of gibberish.

As the light of dawn gradually warmed the glow entering through the single slit window, I took my leave, and in a predawn misting rain, I walked for half an hour through a forest of chirping birds. Returning, I challenged myself to remain standing until we finally ended at 8:30am.

I went straight to bed exhausted, and was awoken again by the bell at noon for prayers and lunch, a reenactment of yesterday’s dinner scene. Silent entry, readings from the Lives of Saints, simple passing of tea and rice millet, prayers, and silent exit.

After lunch, now completely unaware of day or night, I took another nap, and then took off on an adventure, my sense of time completely warped with the six hour night service and the dull gray lighting of another overcast day.

I missed 3pm prayers, but returned in time to dry my clothes out a little bit before 6pm prayers and dinner. I managed to burn a hole in my jeans and completely incinerate a pair of socks from a little hidden hole in the stove top which exposed a direct flame to my clothing (earning more dummy points for a greenhorn camping trick).

Then our day repeated the same as the day before. How many centuries, without the interruptions of violent history, has this service continued? I felt myself locked in rhythm, yet somehow outside time. I suppose there are many ways to experience time. Depending on how one organizes one’s life, time will act in different ways... In Tbilisi this year for example, I have not established any type of strict rhythm that would keep me conscious of passing hours, so in a way I am plagued by the sense of time passing without my noticing it.

But in the monastery, one steps into a precise order of day that can either be oppressive or liberating. I found it liberating. Besides the obvious difficulty of standing hours on end semi-listening to words I could not understand, the daily structure allowed the time I was not in service to be much simpler and focused than when I’m in Tbilisi.

As I was leaving, I asked the priest if they would have chanters for the all night vigil on Easter’s Eve. Well no, he said, so I volunteered the Luarsab-John team services. We’ll be back, and we’ll bring the sound of ancient Georgia back to it’s rightful home. The Easter vigil services are full of some of the most beautiful chants, I can’t wait!