Impressions

Sand, marble, desert and oasis confronting each other. A monastery in Techirgiol across the road from a lake where there is a pier, and bathers in skimpy suits. I, in my head covering and long skirt, conscious of a contradiction that invites me below the surface, and I dive. 

In the basement of the church is a small chapel where nuns quietly say vespers. The marble walls feel cold, the nun's prayers, the candles, a fire. Another contradiction. I come up for air and remark to my son how beautiful the mosaics are. Mosaics depicting Bible passages, all in different shades of greens, blues, browns, greys, every colour of the rainbow, arranged by a knowing hand. 

There are washrooms near some broken ground. I think I heard "archaeological site" in Romanian, but it could have been a construction site. I'm not sure. I'm slow to learn, but everyone's patient with my bad attempts at conversation. Mostly queries in desperate, short sentences. 

There is a fountain, there are two, a graveyard, a room, and they both somehow still feel alive. Beyond the heaviness of death that separates us from the saints, there is an abiding life in everything they touch, in the memories of people who got to know them, in the pictures where they are almost always smiling. 

And in the monk's eyes, so young, so vital. Here is someone in black robes who has died to the world with one of the brightest smiles I've ever seen. Here is another priest's wife I only knew through the internet. I hug her and thank her for my prayer rope. She gives me one of the biggest hugs, me, a stranger. Chance meetings at the intersection of many contradictions. Fire, stone. Water, earth. Life, death. I thank God for these springs of His grace.

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