The last layer

Posted on October 31, 2023 by doradueck

The travel I spoke of in my previous post is done and I’m safely back and getting over the jet lag and happily into the final layer of my adventure. The first layer is the anticipation, preparation, occasional worry, and perhaps (at least in this case) some research. The second and thickest layer is the experience itself. And then, home again, comes the opportunity to think back, to reflect, to remember, to realize how rich it was and at the same time, in terms of the limits of two weeks, how inevitably partial. Nevertheless, although I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, I felt by tour’s end that it had more than fulfilled my hopes.

My son asked me for a highlight. I floundered a bit, because the best answer at that moment seemed “Everything!” but I pulled a sample by telling him about the free afternoon in Tbilisi when M. and S. joined me in my quest to find the particular view on Rustaveli Avenue featured in one of my grandfather’s postcards. The card is labelled “La place de Golowine avec le temple de la gloire.” I had learned that the street was named Golovin Avenue after Russian commander Yevgeny Golovin in 1841, but re-named Rustaveli Avenue, after the poet Shota Rustaveli, in 1918, when Georgia declared independence from Tsarist Russia. As for the Temple of Glory, whose pillars and steps one sees, that used to be the Russian military history museum but is now the National Gallery. Thanks to M’s infallible sense of direction, we found our way out of the warren of small streets in Old Town where our group had lunched to Rustaveli, Tbilisi’s most prominent avenue, and we got this comparison shot. In the postcard, the avenue’s slight curve is obvious, but it’s there in the photo too, visible between the trees.

My quest done, M’s desire was for a sit-down with hot chocolate, which we accomplished by walking back into Old Town.That was lovely, and might have been enough — our legs and feet were tired and urging us back to our hotel — but S. longed to see Holy Trinity Cathedral, which hadn’t been on our Tbilisi itinerary. M. and I said we’d join her. Google Maps made it sound easier than it was, but we managed the walk, altogether driving my IPhone step-count up to nearly 24,000 that day. But it was all definitely worth it.

Because of the postcards

Posted on September 27, 2023 by doradueck

Friends, tomorrow I set out on another adventure: a tour in the Caucasus. Namely, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia.

I was away for three weeks in July, road-tripping and retreating, and it felt big, and this seems almost too soon in its wake, but I’d booked this trip quite some time ago, and now it’s here. Tomorrow, Vancouver to Frankfurt to Baku (the capital of Azerbaijan). Two weeks with a small group of ten with Adventures Abroad, and then, since one of my sons and his family is spending the school term in Nice, France, I’ll stop to visit them for a week on my way home.

When I tell people I’m going to the Caucasus, the first question is often “Where’s that?” Between the Black and Caspian Seas, I say. The second question is often “Why?” It’s because of the postcards, I say.

My grandfather, Heinrich Harder, did his World War I service for the Russian Empire in the Caucasus. (The area was part of Russia then.) He was a medic tending the wounded on the trains that brought them from the front, where Russia was fighting the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), to hospitals in Baku and Tbilisi and so on. When he and my grandmother later immigrated to Canada, they brought along an album of some 80 postcards, most of them collected during his time in the Caucasus. This album ended up in my possession and one Christmas I spent my holiday time exploring the places on these cards via the internet. (The coloured ones are not colour photography but tinted from black and white photos.)

As I read his letters to my grandmother during the war, as I researched and contemplated the cards, the desire built to see — more than a hundred years later — some of the places where he spent several formative years of his life. It’s not really a follow-in-his-footsteps, because of course I’m on the schedule of an organized tour. But I will be there, in the cities of Baku, Tbilisi, Gyumri, Yerevan, all places he was too. And apart from that, I’ll be in a fascinating and complex part of the world.

So, tomorrow. Nothing further to do but go, and receive what there is, what will be. Nothing to do but be curious and open.

Accepting the chalice of our existence

Posted on September 16, 2023 by doradueck

Some time ago, a friend passed on a quote from the German Catholic priest Johann Baptist Metz (1928-2019), who stated that “Our self-acceptance is the basis of the Christian creed.” He described it as “accepting the chalice of our existence” and for some reason, this image struck me and has stuck with me.

I grew up in a low church environment, so chalice was not a familiar term or object, but there was the cup of the Eucharist and the cup Jesus spoke about when in Gethsemane he prayed, “if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will,” by which he meant his approaching death. The word chalice, with its roots in both drinking cup and cup of a flower, has a more evocative sound and larger scope for me than cup. When I think of the chalice of my existence it means the whole business of being me, not only whatever pain there’s been, but everything of past, present, and future. The tasks at hand, the particular aloneness of new widowhood, the particular losses and joys in aging, my relationships, my work.

Metz went on to say:

You shall lovingly accept the humanity entrusted to you! You shall be obedient to your destiny! You shall not continually try to escape it! You shall be true to yourself! You shall embrace yourself!

One afternoon during my writing retreat at St. Peter’s Abbey this summer, our small band of writers needed a break so we drove into nearby Humboldt to check out the thrift store. There was nothing I needed and the book section, except for dozens of Danielle Steele novels, was sparse. As I wandered around, waiting for the others, a chalice in white and blue (perhaps my favourite colour) caught my eye. It’s clearly mass-manufactured, certainly nothing uniquely handcrafted, but just the day before I had mentioned the “chalice of our existence” quote to one of my new friends, and here was a chalice, humble and ordinary, for the grand and entirely affordable price of $2. I knew it was for me!

Now it stands in my kitchen, reminding me in those moments when I’m tempted to dissatisfaction, of accepting all that belongs. And now and then, I drink something out of it too, either bracing or sweet.