Diocesan Projects and Parishes Thursday 3 June – After the five day road trip around central and southern Syria we came back to Sweida a bit tired and cranky, so we mostly stayed at the Bishop’s residence in Sweida, hung out, ate, washed clothes, and mounted icons of Christ, the Theotokos, and St Timon. Friday [...]

This section is difficult for me to write on through sheer weight of ignorance. We were supposed to learn something about Syria’s history and the difficulties people there face, especially politically. Most everywhere we went there was some reference to: this church collapsed because of the Ottomans, the relics of this saint were taken by [...]

Appreciation is an art; one that I’m not very practiced at. I have had a lot of experiences of feeling inadequate to the task of appreciating that which is before me at a given moment. There’s a lovely scene in Prince Caspian where Lucy gets up in the midst of the night to find that [...]

Latakia Sunday 30 May – We attended Orthros and Liturgy at the Dormition monastery, where we had stayed the night. It was a lovely service — Orthros especially. The town the Dormition monastery is next to seemed to be focused primarily on greenhouse plants, especially tomatoes. After breakfast and a bit of salon time with [...]

Damascus Friday 28 May – We packed our things as efficiently as we could and took off on a five day pilgrimage road trip through southern and central Syria. Bishop Saba arranged our schedule, and mostly we were late and didn’t quite know what to do when, but things worked out more or less alright. [...]

Traveling There’s something about the train ride from Santa Fe to Albuquerque that never to incite in me a poetic frame of mind. I start humming Fernando Ortega songs about God’s Creation, exclaiming about how lovely the light on that mountain is, how pink the sand is, how the tumbleweeds congregate like tribbles in the [...]