A Priest's Blessing

A Priest's blessing

icon stand
Monday October 26, 2009
My tour today was originally supposed to be Kharkov city tour but they had asked me to swap my tours so I could get the good guide, Mikail, and go out of the city today to the landlord’s estates. I didn’t care so that’s what we did. Unfortunately it put us at a museum I was to see on a Monday and like most countries and most museums, this one was also closed on a Monday. It is in the town of Parhomovka which has a sugar beet factory (which only runs two months out of the year but this was one of the months and it is nastily stinky) and a 200 year old church of Protection for God’s mother, and this museum which is in an old Italian style Palazzo building. It’s a small museum but with a unique collection including Rembrandt’s and Picasso’s that the owner was able to purchase after WWII for the price of food to the owners of the painting. Try as they could to scare up someone with a key, we never did find anyone and I have lost out on seeing this museum out in the middle of the Ukrainian villages.

Priest of the church
We did find the priest to come and let us into the church though and he was the one to show us around. That’s the first time I had a priest personally show me his church. Vlad, my agency contact and driver, translated the church as being the "Church for the Protection of God’s Mother", or the “Church of the Protection for God’s Mother”, or the “Church of the Protection by God’s Mother”. He used all three and I’m not sure but what he was translating Christ into God which would make more sense if it were Protection of/by/for Christ’s mother. Whatever it was, it was a magnificent little church. Of course it was pretty well ruined in earlier years including the middle dome and copula lying on the ground in front of the church. But donations, albeit slow in coming, had revived this church and it was renovated in a 15 year project and this priest has been there now since 1994 and is understandably proud of his flock and church.

icon painting
The priest showed us around and pointed out the various icons and paintings and scarves donated by members to drape over icons. He even opened the door between the icon stand and the priest area behind it where lay people don’t go. He let us look into the inner sanctum but as women, we couldn’t go in. There was an alter back there, and it also was entirely covered in paintings. There were also his tools of the trade, a large Bible, a chalice and a few other items I really didn’t recognize but then I was so delighted to get a look behind the screen that I probably missed seeing a few things.
Finally it is time for us to move on and he lets me take a photo of him standing next to the most prominent icon in the center of the church. As we are leaving he says and Vlad translates, “God bless you”, then later, “God’s blessing upon you”, and finally one last time as we are out of the church and on the way to walking out of the churchyard. Wow, three times I had a priest say to me, God bless you. Is it possible that he has ridden with Vlad before? I’m sure it is mainly just his way of saying goodbye but I think it has to count for something in the grander scheme of things and I’ll take whatever help anyone wants to give.

icon painting in church
From the church we are back on the road meandering from village to village until Vlad triangulates onto the next stop. We have a brief moment at the monument to fallen soldiers from the Afghanistan conflict. This is actually a very moving monument in that a dead soldier is pictured covered with his field blanket and his comrade in arms is sitting next to him with his head bowed, grieving. For a Soviet made monument, it is quite touching and not the usual large over the top gargantuan elaborate façade.
Next we head down a dirt road to the singing terraces. These terraces were made in the 19th century as a garden for exotic plants. Trees were planted on each level plus plants not necessarily native to the area. The terraces were made with bricks and faced south so that the sun warmed the bricks and released the warmth into the soil after dark and the plants thrived. Now it is pretty broken down. The steps leading up each level are just mud at this point and bricks are falling off at every terrace. The terraces were still used for parties and concerts until recently when officials realized that the terraces were in danger of collapsing. So now they are not used, not being renovated, and not well visited. Wind blow through the trees caused a whistling which led to their name but now it’s hard to say what will happen to them. There is a lot in the Ukraine that needs restoration or at least care so that it doesn’t disappear into dereliction and dust but the money is not there.
Another few stops on the road to see a well that has a stork as the long handle and to see a moose (he called it an elk) cut out that marks the spot where another memorial of some kind will be built but it isn’t happening yet. We are heading now to the Sharovka estates and after a couple of wrong turns we do find it and get out for a visit. My guide, Mikail, really doesn’t want to go inside. He has much to show me, he says, on the outside so we visit the outbuildings, the gates, the wall, the ruined greenhouses, the pond, the fountain, the outside gardens, and the imported rock (see my “tales blog for that!) until it is too late to be allowed to enter. People can really have some strange fears. They live in the Ukraine where it is quite possible they have had radioactive dust blow over them and into and around their country for years (from Chernobyl) but he didn’t want to enter the estate because at one time the building had been used as a tuberculosis sanitarium and he thought there was still a danger there from the disease. I think probably not but I have to recognize other people’s fears if I hope to have them recognize mine. This would have been a beautiful estate in it’s day and while there is some restoration of the main building, the grounds are not in good repair and not likely to get any better.
We take off and leave behind the scruffy dog that accompanied us on our walk through the grounds and head for our last destination of the day, the landlord’s estate of Natalivka. We make it past the gates that were designed by the man who designed Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square. And that’s as far as we got. You’ll have to read my 5 ½ hours blog to know what happened. Hope I am keeping you in suspense.