Dan,
That sounds like a fun family history! Thanks for sharing.
I actually remember about your Ruthenian roots, from the discussion a few
years ago.
And your clarifications make perfect sense. Sorry if my comments sounded
critical.
And I just looked up your grandparents' church in NJ.
(It is interesting to see three different Orthodox churches in a small US
town, - all within 2-3 blocks from each other.)
Somehow (the looks are different... maybe the fact that both are rather
smallish?), it reminded me of the St. Nicolas church I saw some 4 years
ago in a small (but some 400-years-old) village ("Bol'shoe Goloustnoe")
on the shore of Lake Baikal:
https://42graphy.org/galleries/2014-08-baikal/1-selected/_IR29959.html
This is a totally new church built in 2001 in place of the previous
churches (the first one was built in 1701, and the last one was destroyed
in 1937).
Here is one more view of that church:
https://42graphy.org/galleries/2014-08-baikal/b-goloustnoe/_IR29956.html
Your rather complicated history of the diverse religious
connections/associations reminded me of a fun fact by which I get amused
every time I recall it: the official name for the Eastern Orthodox Church
is "Orthodox Catholic Church".
Cheers,
Igor
On Wed, 9 Jan 2019, Daniel J. Matyola wrote:
Igor:
When I wrote that it was Russian Christmas, it was still Jan 7 (barely)
where I was. I know that other Orthodox churches celebrate the Nativity on
Jan 7, but I reflexively used "Russian Christmas" because that is what we
called it when I was growing up. My extended family, on both sides, was
divided into almost equal shares of Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and Eastern
Orthodox. My father grew up in a Capatho-Ruthenian Greek Catholic Orthodox
church, and although I was raised Lutheran, I went to the Orthodox church
for weddings, funerals and every Easter and Christmas. In my nuclear
family, we celebrated on December 24 at our home, then joined my mother's
extended family on December 25 and my father's extended family on January
6-7. With my Mother's birthday Dec 10, mine Dec 18 and my father's Dec 23,
we had a month of holiday celebrations.
My wife and I spent 2 weeks in Russia years ago, including a river cruise
from Moscow to St Petersburg. I must have seen hundreds of churches there,
and entered dozens, plus several monasteries. Most, aside from St Isaac's,
were quite colorful. "Gaudy" was perhaps an inappropriate word, but I used
it without meaning hey are tasteless. Colorful, or perhaps "flamboyant"
would have been a bit better, but that latter term is commonly used to
describe a specific form of architecture quite unlike that of the Russian
churches. "Enthusiastic" might be the best description of the style. My
grandparents' church in Manville, New Jersey, was small and old-fashioned.
When they rebuilt it abiut 40 years ago, it was topped by 5 gleaming
onion-shaped cupolas, in the enthusiastic style I saw all over Russia.
Of course, the wooden churches of Kizhi are among the most beautiful of all
religious structures.
Dan Matyola
http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/danieljmatyola
On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 10:49 PM Igor PDML-StR <pdml...@komkon.org> wrote:
Bob,
It is a nice and intriguing image, but it appears a bit too dark
on my
monitor. I suspect it would look better with white matting.
Interspersed below are my comments to Dan.
Igor
Bob W-PDML Mon, 07 Jan 2019 15:07:46 -0800
> This is the Russian Orthodox cathedral in London, photographed
with my
> phone on Christmas Eve (not Orthodox Xmas!) after dinner with
some
> friends who live nearby.
>
>
> https://preview.tinyurl.com/yd27mncz
>
>https://lightroom.adobe.com/shares/00f4c7321374431ea848517ce1613814/albums/
775e41e7fe91462d820fd3ba97d4cc07/assets/d9dff94892dc435d9a93ee80a347da4a
Daniel J. Matyola Mon, 07 Jan 2019 16:52:49 -0800 wrote:
> It works for me in Chrome.
>
> I like the lighting and the patterns of light and dark. To my
eye,
> however, it looks nothing like a Russian cathedral.
Dan,
"All cats are grey in the dark".
(I thought it was a Russian proverb, but I've learned it is
attributed to
Benjamin Franklin, but in fact appeared earlier in John
Heywood's book
of proverbs (1546).)
On Mon, Jan 7, 2019 at 8:55 PM Daniel J. Matyola wrote:
> Russian churches tend to be gaudy, like St Basils and the
Church on the
> Spilled Blood
I wonder which meaning of the word "gaudy" you assumed here.
I would say that they look very elaborate and rich/expensive,
but
it is far from being tasteless (as often implied by the word
"gaudy".)
Besides, those two churches stand apart from most others. Just
google
"Russian church" and the see the variety of designs, most of
which are
very different from these two.
BTW, while I am not an expert in architectural styles, from what
I
know, this style is called "pseudo-Russian" (or Russian
Byzantine style).
Cheers,
Igor
On 8 Jan 2019, at 02:25, Daniel J. Matyola wrote:
> BTW, today is Russian Chrisrmas.
>
> С РОЖДЕСТВОМ
Actually, it was yesterday, January 7, but you might have been
in
a different time zone. And to be more exact, - it is not just
Russian, but
apparently it is celebrated by the majority of the members of
the Eastern
Orthodox Church (albeit it is the minority of the autocephalous
Orthodox Churches)
That's confusing, isn't it? In simple words, - the Orthodox
Churches in
several other countries in Eastern Europe/Asia celebrate
Christmas
according to the Julian calendar. Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine,
Serbia,
come to mind. And I just looked it up: The Orthodox Churches of
Macedonia,
Montenegro, Jerusalem, Poland are on that list.
Anyway, C Рождеством! :)
Igor
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