8 May 2016. Politics Through a Cartoonist’s Eyes…

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6 June 2014. WTF! It HAS to be Russia…

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It’s feast time! Sunday is Pentecost, the end of the Easter season. You’d best feast, for another Lent is coming up, which isn’t as long as the Easter Lent (it only goes until Peter and Paul), but that’s Orthodoxy for ya! WTF! It HAS to be Russia… you can’t understand it with your mind, you can only accept it for what it is…

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15 April2014. The Art of the Pisanka in Moscow… A True Holy Rus Tradition

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We’ve all heard “Ukrainian” caterwauling about  pisanki. Well, it’s not true. All the Slavs do them… Poles do them (including Hutsuls and Gorali)… Czechs and Slovaks do them… Russians, Carpatho-Russians, and Belarusians do them… Slovenes, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Croats do them, as do the Sorbs and Kaszubs (the most westernmost Slavic peoples, who live in Eastern Germany and Northwestern Poland, respectively). Not only do Slavs do them, most Northern Europeans do them… Magyars do… Romanians do… Germans do… Lithuanians do… and the patterns used are very similar, considering the distances involved. That’s not all, kids! It cuts across confessional lines… Orthodox do them… Catholics do them… Evangelical Lutherans do them.

In short, pisanki are a treasured part of Easter for MANY peoples, spread out over a large part of Europe. Ergo, for any one group to “claim” them isn’t only ridiculous, it’s downright nasty. Pisanki are all-Slavic (and more)… that’s that.

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A Photo Essay. A Point of Unity. Orthodox and Catholic Easter in Byelorussia

Byelorussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko (1954- ), with his extramarital son Nikolai (2004- ), lights a candle at St Nicholas Church in Petrikov (Gomel Oblast) on Easter Sunday

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Metropolitan Philaret Vakhromeyev of Minsk and Slutsk (1935- ), Exarch of all Byelorussia, serves Easter liturgy in Minsk at Holy Spirit Cathedral

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Believers at Easter liturgy at Holy Spirit Cathedral in Minsk

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Blessing of Easter food baskets at the Nativity of the Mother of God convent in Grodno (Grodno Oblast)

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Blessing of Easter food baskets in Vitebsk (Vitebsk Oblast)

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Catholic Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz (1946- ) of Minsk and Mogilev, held the Easter Vigil in the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary

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Believers at the Easter Vigil at the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Minsk

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The Easter Vigil, was held at St Xavier Roman Catholic Cathedral in Grodno (Grodno Oblast). Catholic Bishop Aleksander Kaszkiewicz (1949- ) of Grodno lights the great Easter candle.

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In Byelorussia, most of the population is Orthodox, but some 15 percent are Catholic. Everyone lives together in peace… there’s no ethnic or religious strife there. That’s as it should be… we stay on our side of the fence, you stay on yours, and the gate between is unlocked… there can be no “unity”… but there can be friendship, and decent pragmatic folk will grasp that, for it’s good, no doubt on that score. As for the airy-fairy schemes of loud-mouthed pseudo-intellectuals, I think that all good Catholics would agree with me… “send us letters of friendship only… send us no more letters on doctrine”. We’d clink a glass and drink to that… and God would smile at it all. Is it so wrong to acknowledge our DIFFERENCES? They DO exist, after all…

My thanks to Mike, the original poster of these images.

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