Welcome to Journey to Cyprus Pascha 2009

Venturing Out – Holy Wednesday

Time changes are funny things. When our daughter woke up this morning, Jake squinted at his watch in the darkness and did a quick calculation. It appeared to be somewhere in the four o'clock hour and we thought we were making progress. She flopped around in our bed for a little while until we gave in and went into our little living area. The clock read 1am. Here in Cyprus, we are surely on the other side of the world and her little internal clock is not having any of it.

Several Disney films later, a cloudy dawn made an appearance with Church bells soon following. My husband, the hero that he is, took Audrey with him to the presanctified Liturgy and left me to get a shower (!) and some needed work done. He returned with a sleeping girl in his arms who woke up ready to hit the ground running.

Spring in Cyprus means a regular exchange between sun and rain, roasting heat and misty cool. Today was one of those cool days, so I fired up our little oven to roast vegetable and do the double duty of heating our flat's marble floors enclosed by two foot thick stone walls. Filled with the bounty of the early spring harvest, we loaded our crew into a small Mitsubishi SUV and made our way down the steepest paved road in Cyprus.

On the advice of our hosts, Jake had plotted a course for Pachyammos and the Church of Saint Raphael, where many miracles of healing have been reported. Situated perhaps 200 meters from the sea, the Church is newly built to honor saints whose deaths had not been known until they appeared to many of the faithful in visions. Today, it's stone walls act as a buffer against the whipping wind and we walk through the courtyard covered with bits of melted wax into the quiet dimness of the holy place. Every surface is either painted or intricately carved and we follow the story of the three patron saint's martyrdom by the Turks on the ceiling. We are not far from a small enclave of occupied territory and I can't imagine how it must feel to worship in a place dedicated to those who were so recently tortured for their faith.

Instead of driving back down the coast, we play adventurers and drive cross country, winding our way through the Trodos mountains. When I say winding, I'm not simply playing with language, the narrow, one -lane road doubled back and back and back upon itself. At the price of a few queasy stomachs, we were afforded vistas out of Jurassic Park, just with goats and wild sheep instead of dinosaurs. The shear cliffs dropped to hills covered in pinion pines and cedars and yellow, blue and pale pink flowers blanketed every open nook. As we climbed, the soil shifted from the burnt sienna color I never used in the crayon box to a chalky gray and then we were descending again.

We stopped in Polis so Jake could meet Father Joseph from Goudy, a Romanian priest who spoke better English than most people we've met. Apparently, there is a shortage of priests here and so many Romanians are serving in the Churches and making Cyprus their home.

Back in Droushia, I was determined to break the ugly cycle of time zone induced sleeplessness, so Jake went off to the Unction service and I put Audrey to bed at her normal bedtime back home. Check out his podcast to hear his reflections on that service and our day of adventures.