An Orthodox weekend

My dear Friends

On Friday afternoon I jumped on a train and went up to Derby. My destination was a village 16 miles away called Hopton, where we were goiong to have a day's programme with members of the Orthodox Church. I travelled up with Fr Max Lavriotes, an Orthodox priest and good friend.

Our hostess, Vaila, met us at the station and drove us to her wonderful cottage in the Derbyshire countryside. Everywhere was in blossom and it was lovely to see the sheep in the fields. Vaila had another friend staying with her and around 9pm we all had a congenial dinner with wine. Her cottage is large and rambling and pretty old, full of Vaila's lovely things, with an old fashioned kitchen with an Aga cooker, on which she cooked some delicious vegetables to accompany our meal. I had an early night and woke to birdsong in the morning.

I took a walk along the reservoir and caught some of the lovely Derbyshire countryside. Around 11 the rest of the guests turned up for a talk by Fr Max on the unity of the church. He made the point about our common meeting point being our humanity rather than as individuals and members of different Churches, pointing out the part in the Creed where it says that Christ came 'for us men and our salvation.'

A lovely lunch followed and there were some really nice people there, some who had come from as far away as Scunthorpe. Soup, bread quiche and salad, wine if you wanted and great discussions. After lunch we returned to the lovely little drawing room where a gentleman gave a talk about St Catherine's monastery on Mount Sinai. Apparently some good roads have now been built up to it and the result is hordes of tourists with their buses, all attempting to climb Mount Sinai! The speaker discussed the icons in the monastery and showed us an example of one of Christ which was particularly beautiful.

After tea I relaxed and Vaila drove me to the train around 6pm-it had been a very interesting and enjoyable time.

Shalom from
Sister Gila