The Orthodox Gambit

One of the prevalent aspects of culture in the Balkan region is the largely prevalent Orthodox faith. Orthodoxy is a branch of christianity and is divided into individual churches by the country it is practiced in (Greek Orthodoxy, Serbian Orthodoxy ect.) each of which is lead by a patrician. It is not a faith which I know much about besides that it involves a great deal of icons and many small churches and monasteries. However on the train from Thessaloniki to Skopje I was lucky enough to share a compartment with a Serbian Orthodox priest who was wuite happy to share some insight on the Serbian church, culture, language and current political issues. He was returning from living in a monastery on Mt. Athos in Greece to live in another one near Belgrade and spoke good if somewhat broken English. Some of the things he was most incessant in telling me were his disappointment in the Serbian Government for instituting new passports which contain chips which allow them to track him, his disappointment in the Russian church which he claims has degraded a great deal in recent years and his disappointment in the tourists visiting Mt. Athos for breaking many of the monk's rules there (No smoking, no shorts, no travelling during certain times , and most importantly no women). He was positive as well though he seemed quite happy to discuss the finer details of Serbian pronunciation with me and shared a number of tales from Serbia including one King who led the Serbians to victory against the Turks and established a reputation of justice by executing his own brother when that man had been accused of rape.

HE gave me the ame of a Russian bishop to rad in order to understand the faith better but as I have not yet done so I am forced to go by only what I see. And as I do not spend much time in churches (at least not when there is mass going on). However one of the most visible of orthodox practices is the practice of crossing oneself before a number of activities including eating sleeping and starting a journey. Of course there is a wide spectrum of distinction among practitioners as to how much this is necessary for example the Orthodox priest crossed himself before eating a handful of peanuts and one old woman in Thessaloniki crossed herself for the entire duration of a bus trip lasting at least twenty minutes.