My last in the city; walked to the old city after Mass. Crossing into the old city is very much a change of worlds here. No visible antipathy, but the change is extremely stark. Hopefully this isn't because the two sides managed not to fight a full-scale war with each other for the last few decades. War, like death, brings clearer minds. But there's no need to go seeking either of these things out.
Walked up to the old fortress -- the elevated ground atop, like the fortress of the last city, is the point of the place (and in the current state of conservation, the only open part of the place), but some of the old Roman stones (I assume -- large, no mortaring for many years) are visible towards the back. The elevated ground above the river -- so many died to hold or attempt to gain it. And now we moderns just walk up the hill. Hopefully, though, being able to do so in peace doesn't make it any less meaningful. In peacetime, we must create our own meaningfulness -- or the peace might not last. Without a vision...
Then to the old adjacent church with the famous carved ikonostasis, but it's closed on Sundays, apparently. Someone was standing in the doorway though, and he let me in to take a quick look at the courtyard. Quite idyllic, especially relative to the environs.
I haven't had much much luck with the national orthodox churches in this part of the world. I can't fault them for that -- I am not of their εθνοσ. And churches need walls in order to be churches. Without such things, churches would not have the motion and energy to converge towards that which they converge towards. My guess is that the great danger of the Eastern rite is the quietism, and loss of energy among the people in the search for spiritual power. But the function must be made explicit: Fishers of men, not keepers of the aquarium, as an American Franciscan once said.
