Thursday, February 24, 2011

Some Doors You Enter for Everyone

A friend called me the other day. “For Pete's sake,” he said. “How long are you going to leave us at the door of the cathedral?”

I was sheepish. “I've been busy. You know... marketing work. My book. I'm being workshopped at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. Revisions....page goals.....gee, you mean people are really paying attention?”

He assured me, people are. ”Well, life got complicated,” I told him apologetically.”Sometimes it feels as if adventure is far away from me. Must have been another person who was there. Not me”

“You made that trip for all of us,” he said. ”Write!”

So again...I am there.

 

Inside its impressive walls, I done a scarf and we cross the sweltering plaza, enter the massive doors and find ourselves in a towering space, cool; shadowy and mysterious.

Candles flicker, the smell of burning incense is strong. Brass and gold shine below walls of enormous frescoes.
 
Women swathed in scarves and huge aprons bend nearly double over hand-cobbled brush brooms, a continuous sweeping, sweeping, sweeping that did not stop while we were there. I find myself wondering if they might not be the prototype for the Soviet BabaYaga, the witch with the broom and the house that turns on chicken legs.
 
Inside the massive space sits another stone cathedral,
 

perfect in proportion and detail, a miniature of the great cathedral that encases it. It is the site, where in 327 the first convert, Georgian Queen Nana, converted to Christianity.
 
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Near it, the iconic glass and gold tomb of the Queen herself. I take pictures and again get in trouble – an old man in hat, boots and slavic-looking belted shirt, praying at the miniature cathedral believes that I have taken his picture. I haven't, but back off out of respect.
 
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Svetitskhoveli is our introduction to the history of Georgia. Here we learned the connection between St Nino and Saint George and the Dragon....