Tianeti Monastery

Tianeti Monastery

07-20-05

There’s nothing better to come back to after a trip out of country than a purely Georgian -style adventure into the wilderness to sing services with two of the best chanters I know in an 8th century monastery. Today became extra special because for some reason I felt like Dad was close by.

Meeting time: 8am - I’m there, as are most the Georgians, except for two important guys who we had to go find in their houses, after we tried to find wine and bread for the service, which are arguably the main ingredients of a Christian service... but we’re in Georgia, so delays are to be expected.

Anyway, we left by 10am, and within three quarters of an hour, we were off the paved roads and asking directions from villagers as we careened around potholes on the ‘boulder n’ ditch’ highway up into the Tianetian highlands north of Tbilisi. We climbed and climbed... I looked back. An incredible vista of green rolling hills leaped out of deep gorges, the sandy gold of the fields hazy in the summer light. I thought surely the monastery would be at the top of the mountain, as most monasteries tend to be, but on top we saw a broad hidden highland valley ahead. The fields stretched away with hardly an ugly Soviet building to obstruct the view and even the animals and villages were so scarce it was hard to believe we were still in Georgia. We had entered a valley removed from the faster pace of city Tbilisi or Washington DC life, a place where fast is determined by how quickly the village dog lying in the road might move for the oncoming minibus. Not fast.

There are approximately zero signs and at least five hundred gravel tracks launching off in every direction. We eventually made it to the monastery after detouring into several random villages full of mud-stewing piglets and asking directions of quizzically capped men with tools.

At the final push, the marshutka couldn’t make it up the hill, so we all piled out to walk. An 8th century tower, built with round river stones and mortar, dwarfs a small one room, cut tufa stone church which butts against the base of the tower. Both had brand new red tile roofs, as did a dome nearby which could only be the ‘marani’ wine cellar, and a long stone building with brick arches newly built for the monks. Only one lives here now, but congregation guys are living here to help build up the place, including one fifteen year old who remembered me from a day I lectured at his school with Luarsab.

Vaso, Gio, Giorgi, and I sang for a short service, the acoustics were just right for a small choir. There were two groups of people waiting outside after service; the men and boys clustered around a group of benches, amusing ourselves by taking turns riding an old horse, who wisely would not go faster than a walk, while all of the women and girls sat across the clearing under some trees. Gratefully, all joined together for the supra, which I’ve been disappointed to find sometimes only accomodates the men.

At the supra, Father Basil asked my last name, then the origins of my last name, and finally gave a toast to me. We sat in the shade around a recently built, rough-hewn wooden table, eating hearty chunks of bread with tomato, fish, and potato-stuffed bread cakes. Wine was tasty and toasts were brief.

Vaso, a member of Anchiskhati choir and our directer, initiated a few songs, and he can sing so well, what a pleasure to be at the same table with him.

Toasts for this monastery, for the church, and finally one for the fond memories of our departed. A breeze made me glance around, and through a small opening in the forest, I could see bits of fields and fences in the valley far below, just a glimpse through the trees. I thought of Dad and marveled again how much he would have loved this situation. I thought of how much better of a scholar Dad was than I will ever be; how, for instance, he would have known not only where we were at the moment, but also the entire history of the monastery, the type of architecture used, and the great heroic, tragic, and incredible events in local history that affected this place and its inhabitants.

I also realized that I have different strengths than Dad, such as being able to easily adapt and flow with new situations and communicate simply with many different kinds of people, qualities which have placed me in situations Dad would have loved but into which he would have had other ways of arriving. Not that I credit myself with my good fortunes in Georgia or in life... I will take the opportunity to say again I thank Waldorf, Wesleyan, my friends, and my parents for giving me the personality and the curiousity to be able to travel, the US economy for being able to support the arts and artistic people, God for giving me inspiration and insight into subjects I love like Georgian music, and the hospitable society in Georgia for making this year so warm and open to me.

And in that moment that was held, before chinking glasses and sipping wine in honor of those who have left us mortals behind, I thought about Dad, who he was, and what it was he loved to do.

There was such an inner fire for learning there, so much love for knowledge, for the mysterious, for the unsolved, the unseen, the unimagined. He had so much energy to devote to subjects that were esoteric, not quite of physical, tangible life but of the ways in which people experience and seek extra-sensory realizations, and these energies carried him through his daily life somewhat in a dream, but always pushed him on towards new subjects of interest, new passions in knowledge. He studied classical languages, ancient civilization, Buddhism, Shintoism, Shamanism, early Christianity like the Gnostics, but also had a passion for the possible spiritual metaphor that was passed on through mythologies and great stories like Noah, Atlantis, Viking explorers, the Knights Templar, and others. What was this world he lived in and who could he share it with I wonder...?

Well we wrapped up the supra, and drove home, sleeping most of the way as is my habit when I combine wine and long bumpy roads. I craved an icecream back in Tbilisi where it is sweltering hot and humid (almost as bad as D.C.), but it’s a fasting day, so I contented myself with an equally satisfying cold bottle of water. Later I looked on the map, and I still can’t figure out where this monastery is or where we had been all morning. Great excursion though, can’t complain, I mean, we didn’t even break down on the way home.