Posted on June 12, 2026June 10, 2026 in Places

II. The Tretyakov Gallery

I am not a fan of art galleries – I find them ever so slightly soporific. But not the Tretyakov. I am enthralled. Each new hall – and there are sixty-two of them – reveals a new wonder. I go around, choosing my favourite painting in each room, but soon I have to surpass my limit of one and choose two or three. The paintings go from the eighteenth century (Catherine II’s Victory over the Turks and Tatars) to the mid-twentieth century (these are among my favourites). There are portraits (lots of them), rural scenes, battle scenes, a remarkable and slightly surreal Appearance of Christ to the People by Alexander Ivanov, where the focus is on John the Baptist and the motley crew that have gathered around him (Christ is in the background, and you do not notice him at first). What makes it even more wonderful is the presence in the next hall of the studies the painter carried out for each of the characters in the main painting. They are clearly recognizable. I am touched by Vasily Tropinin, his portrait of a lacemaker (and indeed his self-portrait with the Kremlin behind him). There are portraits of famous writers, from Pushkin to Gogol and Dostoevsky to Chekhov, and composers like Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky. But my favourite portrait is the magical Girl with Peaches by Valentin Serov, the fruit and cutlery on the table, the plate on the wall, the greenery visible through the window, and the girl’s somewhat nonchalant gaze. She seems to have been captured with ruffled hair before leaping up from her chair to go out into the garden. Serov has a similarly liquid portrait of the last tsar, Nicholas II, and a scene of his happier coronation in the Assumption Cathedral, a bustle of colour and activity, movement and intensity. There is a peacefulness to the Russian countryside (the Russian soul?) – take, for example, The Rooks Have Come by Alexei Savrasov (available as a phone cover in the gift shop) or A Quiet Monastery by Isaac Levitan. There are battle scenes that reflect the futility of war (The Vanquished by Vasily Vereshchagin, with a priest censing the bodies of the dead). Ilya Repin is a master – he is famous for his painting of Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan, the tsar having just dealt his son a fatal blow to the head, but I prefer his portraits (his daughter sitting on a branch). I am very impressed by Nikolai Ge and his religious scenes – the Roman soldiers departing the scene of the crucifixion, almost laughing about it, while unbeknown to them, as the sun rises, an angel hastens to the ensuing resurrection. I am not such a fan of Mikhail Vrubel and his blotchy paintings – they seem to like him – but I do like the twentieth-century representatives: Evening in the Steppe by Pavel Kuznetsov, the humour of A Windy Day by Nikolay Krymov, and Constantinople. Dogs by Martiros Saryan.

Just when I think I cannot take any more, I reach halls 56-62, the end of the exhibition, with all the ancient icons, and my breath is taken away: St Nicholas and the Annunciation, twelfth-century icons from Novgorod; the early fifteenth-century Transfiguration by a painter of the circle of Theophanes the Greek; a King of Glory from my neck of the woods (the Balkans): Christ in Majesty by Dionisius; and then the crème de la crème, Andrei Rublev and his Saviour and Archangel Michael from the Deesis of Zvenigorod. I think my mouth drops open. A Russian looks at me with bemusement. My phone battery is exhausted, so I sit on the bench and contemplate the Saviour for twenty minutes, as he stares lifelike at me from out of the wood of the Trinity.

There are so many paintings to take in. I am struck by Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky’s Mental Arithmetic, the boys in S. A. Rachinsky’s free school racking their brains to get the answer right, again the intensity of their gaze, the shared effort, the wisdom and patience of old age as the teacher waits for them to work out the equation. And this is an overriding impression in Moscow: it is a city of industry, or better industriousness, people working in concert, it is not a city that is standing still.

I decide against doing anything else that day, the Tretyakov is enough, I drink an Earl Grey tea and eat a Danish pastry, and then head back to my accommodation, my mind full of images, models gazing at me from the canvas.

The Appearance of Christ to the People by Alexander Ivanov.
The Rooks Have Come by Alexei Savrasov.
Mental Arithmetic by Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky.
The Vanquished by Vasily Vereshchagin.
Portrait of Composer M. P. Musorgsky by Ilya Repin.
Heralds of the Resurrection by Nikolai Ge.
A Girl with Peaches by Valentin Serov.
Evening in the Steppe by Pavel Kuznetsov.
The Transfiguration by a painter of the circle of Theophanes the Greek (early 15th century).
Christ in Majesty by Dionisius (1500).
The Saviour by Andrei Rublev (c. 1400).

Jonathan Dunne

Next: Moscow Zoo

Posted on June 11, 2026June 12, 2026 in Places

Moscow: A Visitor’s Impressions

I. Red Square

I suppose the place a Westerner visiting Moscow for the first time wants to see most is Red Square. This is probably the only image of Moscow I retained from my childhood. The military parade. Russia as a military threat. Victory Day. But when we left the Revolution Square metro station, my son took me past the statue of Karl Marx, somewhat blinded by the sun, to visit the Bolshoi Theatre. “Bolshoi”, such a resonant term for lovers of ballet, simply means “Big”. Next to it, unsurprisingly, is another theatre called “Small” and an operetta house we will go to a few days later (my son has a blind date, and I am there to chaperone him; actually he mistakenly bought an extra ticket). When I do finally make it into Red Square via the Resurrection Gate next to the History Museum, I find myself in a large, cobbled space with the Kremlin walls to my right, the emblematic St Basil’s Cathedral ahead of me, and a fancy mall on my left. Nestled beneath the Kremlin walls is Lenin’s mausoleum. One cannot help but be struck by the juxtaposition of Christianity and socialism, an impression that is reinforced later by a visit to Zaryadye Park, where on a walkway suspended above the Moscow River one can view the Kremlin (with the Archangel Cathedral clearly visible) and further down the north bank the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. As if to make the visitor feel even dizzier, each tower of the Kremlin walls is topped by a red star. I learn my first history lesson: Russians commemorate all aspects of their past, they do not try to do away with them, as has happened in Bulgaria, for example, where socialist monuments are dismantled and Dimitrov’s mausoleum was (with some difficulty) razed to the ground.

The walls are not so red, either. They are more russet. I gravitate towards St Basil’s Cathedral, known to the Russians as Pokrovsky Cathedral, a reference to the Virgin Mary’s veil (pokrov) and the protection Ivan the Terrible believed he had received in his successful military campaign against the Kazan Khanate in the sixteenth century, which was the reason for him to erect this church. The Basil in question is not the fourth-century theologian, but a contemporary holy fool who was later buried in the church. The familiar domes, looking like turbans, provide a splash of colour: blue and white, green and white, green and gold, red and green, gold. I pose in front of the church and the monument to Minin and Pozharsky, a butcher and a noble who organized resistance to the Polish invaders another fifty years later (in 1612). This would bring to an end the Time of Troubles and lead to the rise of the Romanov dynasty, which would rule over Russia for the next three hundred years, until the bloody revolution of 1917 and the rise of the Bolsheviks under Lenin.

It is easy to lose one’s sense of direction because the Kremlin is not four-sided, but more of a triangle, so you have the south side facing the river, Red Square to the north-east, and Alexander Garden to the north-west. Inside the Kremlin are four ancient churches: the Assumption, Archangel, and Annunciation Cathedrals, and a smaller Church of Laying Our Lady’s Holy Robe. Here also is the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, a large bell sitting at its feet, a chunk missing – it is difficult to ascend to heaven when you are so heavy – and the Senate. The Kremlin, therefore, far from being military in character, is an enclosure that houses churches built (two by Italian architects) during the Grand Duchy of Moscow. My favourite is the Assumption Cathedral with its towering iconostasis (the icons that hide the altar from view, I notice how in some of the grander Russian churches the iconostasis consists of five levels and reaches all the way to the ceiling, the icons of the second level being particularly large, some of which I will see out of context in the Tretyakov Gallery) and frescoes adorning the columns, ceiling, and walls; the Archangel Cathedral, with its icon of St Michael, prince of the heavenly host, was used by royals to pray for military success, and many of them are buried here, while the Annunciation Cathedral was used as a private chapel.

In the Annunciation Cathedral, a Russian woman is enthusiastically explaining the icons to a group of Asian tourists. The tourists answer her questions with comparable enthusiasm, like excited schoolchildren. The Russian woman is indulgent with them and greets their correct answers with mild expressions of joy. I am waiting to take a photograph of the iconostasis, but the male tourist’s head obstructs my view of the holy doors at the centre of the iconostasis. As they move to the left, a woman comes in and stands in front of the icon of Christ. She leaves, but the Asian group automatically shuffles to the right, again making it impossible for me to gain a clear view. They then exit the church, and I think my moment has come, but just as I am about to press the shutter, they come back in – either they have forgotten something, or a point has to be made more forcefully. I rue having entered the church at the same time as them, if only I had been five or ten minutes later or earlier, but in the end they leave and I get my shot. The Russian woman flashes me a look; she is eyeing me as a prospective student.

That morning, we visit Lenin’s Mausoleum. The queue is not long, and the constant drizzle helps to keep it down. We are not required to buy a ticket, entrance is free (entrance to the Kremlin is 11 euros; the History Museum and St Basil’s Cathedral both cost 20 euros, which I find a bit steep). We pass through security and along the wall, where the ashes of prominent socialists are interred, including the Scottish Arthur MacManus and the American Bill Haywood, before going down some steps and entering the mausoleum proper. A guard indicates that I should put my phone away and not take photographs. We descend some more steps, turn a corner, and there is Lenin in his casket, brightly lit in the surrounding darkness and surprisingly intact after a hundred years. Here is the architect of the 1917 Revolution, the one who promoted and was later pushed aside by Stalin. Stalin is buried outside, along with other leaders, while other prominent socialist-era politicians, such as Khrushchev, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin, are buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in the south-west of the city. It is difficult to avoid a comparison between Lenin’s embalmed body and the relics of a saint in an Orthodox church, and the impact on Russians must have been similar. There is an aura about him. We pause for a moment before being encouraged by a disembodied voice somewhere in the shadows to move on. As we leave the area, the Spasskaya Tower strikes twelve and follows this up with a jaunty rendition of the Russian anthem. I am not sure what century I am in or what the dominant ideology is meant to be.

Red Square (taken from the third floor of the History Museum).
St Basil’s Cathedral with the monument to Minin and Pozharsky.
The Kremlin walls and the domes inside the courtyard (Annunciation, Archangel, Bell Tower).
The five-tiered iconostasis inside the Assumption Cathedral.
The entrance to Lenin’s mausoleum.
The view along the Moscow River from the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge.

Jonathan Dunne

Next: The Tretyakov Gallery

Posted on May 31, 2026 in Poetry

Airborne

I have lived

the life I wanted,

done everything

there was for me

to do.

I have sailed on the Nile

on a felucca,

slept on Mount Sinai

with a stone

for a pillow.

I have ridden a camel

and sat around

a Bedouin’s fire,

gazing at the night sky,

the cosmic ash.

I have walked into the temple

at Abu Simbel

and followed the path

of the sun.

I have climbed to the top

of a pyramid,

surveyed the great expanse.

I have entered a tomb

in the Valley of the Kings

and seen its riches.

I have raced across a busy thoroughfare

in Cairo

by keeping in step

with the locals,

and safely reached

the other side.

Now my to-do list

is empty.

I have no ambitions,

I realize the futility

of shadow-boxing

with the world.

I am not going to win.

My only concern, then,

is to care for others,

to let the Spirit

fill my emptiness

and give me wings.

Jonathan Dunne

Sofia, 31 May 2026

Posted on May 26, 2026 in Places

Thessaloniki in Flowers

The most common colour of flowers in and around the city of Thessaloniki in Greece is pink-purple, followed by white. Many are native to the Mediterranean basin or, more broadly, to Eurasia, but several are from America (amaryllis, pinklady, pink-sorrel, silverleaf nightshade), there is one from Australia (the wonderfully named crimson bottlebrush, the last of the photos), and perhaps surprisingly there is a whole group from South Africa (Cape Marguerite, sour fig, treasure flower). Flowers are just as widely travelled as we are!

Posted on February 2, 2026June 10, 2026 in Language

Harmony and Language

In the documentary film “Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision” being released on Friday, His Majesty King Charles III makes the point that we should be living as a part of nature, and not apart from it. We should not see nature as something out there to be exploited, rather we should see ourselves as being interconnected with the rest of nature and reliant on it for our well-being (both physical and emotional). In this short piece, I would like to suggest that language agrees with him.

Let us start by looking at where the idea of separation comes from. You can only see something, such as the environment, as being there to be exploited if you view it as being separate from yourself. If it is a part of you, you won’t want to exploit it. Separation comes from our ability to count. To count something, you must draw a line around it, otherwise you cannot count it. This is why we have uncountable and countable nouns. Uncountable nouns tend to be concepts, things that are too large or woolly for us to comprehend (to draw a line around). Countable nouns are things we can contain – in our imagination, or literally, in a bag or a bottle – and they are preceded by the indefinite article a or an. So, we might have rice and a bag of rice, or milk and a bottle of milk. The first is something that flows constantly, it seems to have no beginning or end; the second is contained (and note that it is the container, the bag or the bottle, that causes so many problems to our environment, it is our drawing a line around something in order to trade in it – in order to count it – that causes pollution).

God is uncountable. He is without limits. He is too large for us to comprehend. In the Creation, recounted in the opening two chapters of the Book of Genesis, what he did in effect was make himself countable. He made individual creatures and a planet for us to live on. Creation is the act of making the uncountable countable.

The name of God in Exodus 3:14 (the name he reveals to Moses at the burning bush) is AM. If we apply the phonetic pair m-n to AM, we get an. Language here – with a simple change brought about by applying a phonetic pair – is showing us how God made himself countable, because the indefinite article precedes countable nouns. Read these two words, AM and an, differently, and you get a man.

Man’s purpose was not to create. That is God’s job. We cannot create out of nothing, we can only give meaning to what already exists. We are not authors, we are translators, since nothing begins or ends with us, things pass through us (and we pass through them).

Read the word man in reverse and add a final e (very common in English), and you get name. This was man’s purpose: to name the creatures (Genesis 2:19). By naming them, he gave them meaning, he said amen to God’s will. All three words – name, mean, amen – have the same letters.

But we can go a different way. If I take a step in the alphabet, from m to l, and add the letter d, from man I get land. This is where man lives (hence the importance of nature). If I apply the phonetic pair d-t and add the letter p, from land I get plant, because this is what man must do in order to eat something, he is reliant on nature in order to survive. And if I add the letter e, I get planet. This is what the planet is for – for man to plant crops. God has given him a home.

But whereas God made us countable in order that we might have free will and make our own choices, we have taken this countability to mean that we can do with other people and things whatever we like. We have abused the relationship. We have put the ego first (not God). This is the relationship that we need to repair.

Exploitation is a result of countability (you cannot exploit something unless it is separate). So, we need to repair this breach, or at least to view it in a different light (as something to be respected, for example).

King Charles III explains how nature works in cycles; language also demonstrates this. We start with a seed. The first thing a seed does is sleep. I have rotated the letter d and added the straight line represented by the letter l. This is what we do in our lives when we are oblivious to our surroundings. That straight line represents the ego (it doesn’t matter whether it is written with a capital I or a lowercase l). Once it is in the ground, the seed dies (front vowels e-i). But it dies in order to bear fruit, to become something bigger (a tree). Nature is showing us the path to be taken by the ego – it must die to itself, to its selfish desires and fears, in order to grow in stature.

The seed puts out first a root and then a shoot. These words are connected (mid-vowels e-o, phonetic pair d-t, alphabetical pair r-s, addition of h). The root divides into two, while the shoot – which, as it appears above ground, looks remarkably like a tooth – becomes a tree and divides into three. The tree puts out branches (it doesn’t remain as a straight line), it grows leaves (to harness the power of the sun) and flowers (to attract insects), and the flowers give way to fruit. Fruit is just root with an f on it, and so we return to the beginning… Language is showing how nature is cyclical (in fact, the word return is in nature).

I think this is what His Majesty, with his attention to the importance of the environment, is encouraging us to do – to return to nature. Not to see ourselves as being cut off from it, but as a part of it, reliant on it not only for our physical needs, but also for our peace of soul. It’s like a neighbour – if you are at odds with your neighbour, how can you live peacefully?

The environment attends to our physical needs (without it, we will not be able to eat and we will die). It is beautiful to look at and it gives us peace. But this is not its ultimate purpose. I believe that nature, the environment, is an example out there for what should be happening in us. We also need to bear fruit, not just nature. We also need to die to our selfish impulses for the greater good, just as a seed does when it sprouts in the ground.

In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 13, there are two parables that teach us about this. One is the Parable of the Sower. This also is a metaphor out there for something that should be happening in here. A sower goes out to sow. Depending on the ground’s receptivity, the seed takes root or it doesn’t. This is really about our ability to hear the word of the kingdom and, having heard it, to bear fruit in God’s name.

If the earth is a metaphor out there for what should be happening in here, then what is our earth? The answer is very simple. Take the last letter of earth and tack it on the front. You have heart. The heart is the earth where the seed of God’s word has to take root and bear fruit. That is the message – of Jesus in the Gospels, but also of nature.

We have to be able to see and hear in order to bear fruit in God’s name – Jesus places great emphasis on our ability to see and hear – and for this we need to learn humility. The humility to admit that our sight has been imperfect, which ironically is what then enables us to see.

I mentioned the phonetic pair d-t earlier. Add this pair to see and hear. What two words do you get? Seed and heart. Language is telling us that when we see and hear the message of the kingdom, a seed is planted in the earth of our heart and we are enabled, through the intervention of the Holy Spirit, to bear fruit. Nature is a lesson out there for what should be happening in here. When we become spiritually healthy, then we will treat the environment as it deserves.

And just in case we were in any doubt, Jesus provides another example: the Parable of the Tares (again, in Matthew 13). Someone sows good seed – the wheat, the children of the kingdom – but an enemy comes in the night and sows weeds – evildoers. The slaves of the householder ask whether they should remove the weeds, but the householder says to wait until the harvest (the end of time), in case they uproot the wheat as well.

Weed and wheat are connected (phonetic pair d-t, addition of h). They look alike, just as people in society look alike and we cannot always be sure of their intentions. But there is one fundamental difference. There is something that wheat has that a weed doesn’t, and that is ears. Wheat is able to listen.

Nature is an example out there for what should be happening inside us. The seed is the word of the kingdom – to love the Lord your God, to love your neighbour – and that seed should be sown in our heart, just as a physical seed is sown in a field. When this happens, we learn how misguided we have been, we learn humility, and we redirect our priorities towards the kingdom (this is the meaning of repentance, metanoia in Greek). We also bear fruit, just as a tree does. And once we can see, the rest of creation rejoices. It recognizes us for the first time. We establish a relationship that is one of love and care, which is King Charles’s message in his film “Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision”.

Jonathan Dunne

http://www.stonesofithaca.com

Posted on December 25, 2025May 31, 2026 in Poetry

Apfelsaft

for my father

The sun set in the glass.

Did you know what was coming

when you crouched under the stairs

and listened to the bombs

drop on London?

Did you know what was coming

when your guardian travelled down

to see you

in the grand surroundings of Christ’s Hospital,

Vaughan Williams’s shock of white hair

in the chapel,

and shuffled off

in the growing darkness

to catch the last train home?

This was love,

wasn’t it?

Did you know what was coming

when you stuck it out

to become an officer

and were put in charge

of men older,

more savvy,

than you were?

Is this when your appreciation

of Bach

began?

Did you know what was coming

when you shared a bedsit

with your mother

and became determined

to better yourself

by listening to all of Beethoven’s symphonies

from the library?

Or when Eddie

took you to the terraces

at Brentford

(“make way,

he’s only a littl’un”)?

Did you know what was coming

when you measured up

to my grandfather

and married Mum

(early colour photos

of us pottering in the garden,

you look dashing in them)?

Clearway Promotions,

Claygate Dramatic Society,

Cancer Research Campaign

– you built yourself up.

You drove us

in the dark

to foreign countries

where they spoke funny languages,

you put us in tents

a stone’s throw from the water

(we would need those stones

to weigh down the corners

when the storm came along).

You took your responsibility

very seriously

and instilled it in us.

You could be bloody-minded

– I wouldn’t have wanted

to cross you –

you grew in stature

and yourself became a Samaritan

to those in need.

You were widely respected,

you were somebody,

an ugly sister, Bob Cratchit,

you had a sense of humour,

and that twinkle never quite

left you.

You liked in the early evening

to stand by the drinks

– yours was a G and T,

Mum’s was a sherry –

and while smoking a Silk Cut

to tell me what was going

through your mind.

It helped you to lay it out,

you were not one to leave things

to chance.

And so,

when we sat on the terrace

overlooking the Black Forest,

you poured sunlight

into my glass.

It was something new,

something I hadn’t tasted before,

and this gave you a great satisfaction.

I don’t know what we talked about,

you probably reminisced about your time

in Germany,

the dunes of Sylt,

but I have glimpsed that sunlight

ever since:

on the ghats of Varanasi,

on a starlit night in the Sinai,

sitting with Bedouins,

in Piornedo,

on a Sunday with a hangover,

on the rocks of Lakatnik.

I will keep it with me

for when the stormclouds gather,

it will be the stones that weigh down

the corners of the tent I inhabit.

And I give you a drop of the golden liquid

for your onward journey.

You have realized now

that the demons are insubstantial,

their only weapon fear

of what doesn’t exist,

and the easiest way

to unravel a knot

is to slice it.

You are breath and water,

creation itself,

the sound God made in the beginning.

You can sing to your heart’s content,

join in the chorus,

as when you sang an aria

from the Messiah

to the doctor

with a sheet over your lips,

except that now you are voice itself,

running water,

a ribbon that God laid

on the earth

to give us life.

Jonathan Dunne

Sofia, 24 December 2025

Posted on May 24, 2025May 24, 2025 in Poetry

Deor

One of my favourite Old English poems, and my first translation from Old English! The translation is accompanied by a photo of a six-hundred-year-old downy oak at the entrance to Bosnek village, on the south side of Mt Vitosha in Bulgaria, which has resisted the twists and turns of life.

DEOR

Weland himself among worms experienced misery,

The single-minded nobleman endured hardships,

Had for himself as companions sorrow and longing,

Winter-cold pain, often found woe,

After Niðhad laid fetters on him,

Supple sinew-bonds on the better man.

That passed, so may this.

To Beadohild was not her brothers’ death

In mind so grievous as her own thing,

That she had readily perceived

That she was pregnant, could never

With courage have considered how that should be.

That passed, so may this.

We have heard that Mæðhild’s lamentations

Were endless, Geat’s wife,

That sorrowful love deprived her of all sleep.

That passed, so may this.

Theodric had for thirty winters

The Mærings’ burgh; that was known to many.

That passed, so may this.

We have heard about Ermanaric’s

Wolfish thought; he had widely the people

Of the Gothic kingdom; that was a grim king.

Many a warrior sat bound by sorrows,

Woe in expectation, wished constantly

That his kingdom would be overcome.

That passed, so may this.

Sits a sorrowful person, deprived of joy,

Grows dark in mind, it seems to him

His share of hardships may be endless.

He may then consider that throughout the world

The wise Lord turns constantly,

On many nobles bestows honour,

Certain fame, on others a share of woes.

As for myself, I should like to say this:

I was for a time the Heodenings’ bard,

Dear to my lord; Deor was my name.

I had for many winters a profitable position,

A loyal master, until Heorrenda now,

A song-skilled man, received the right to lands

The protector of nobles had previously afforded me.

That passed, so may this.

An Old English poem of consolation found in the tenth-century Exeter Book, translated by Jonathan Dunne. It is possible to view the manuscript of the Exeter Book online. The poem is on folios 100r and 100v. I first read the poem with the help of my tutor at City Lit, Stephen Pollington.

Posted on April 27, 2025April 26, 2025 in Sermons

The Gift of the Church

Readings: Acts 5:27-32; Psalm 150; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31

The Sanhedrin! Even the name sounds intimidating. One can imagine a row of austere, displeased faces, probably seated on thrones or a podium, certainly higher up, in ornate clothing, with ornate headdresses, peering down at these upstarts, Peter and his gang.

This was the Jewish legislative and judicial assembly. It met in the Temple in Jerusalem, in the Hall of Hewn Stones. It wasn’t disbanded until 425. It wasn’t so long ago that Peter and the other apostles had been beholden to such people, had owed them allegiance.

But now the situation seems decidedly unfriendly. The apostles “were brought in”. They were “made to appear”, in order to “be questioned”. They were informed in no uncertain terms that they had not being doing what they had been told. This small community was challenging the established order!

I wonder how Peter felt as he confronted them. Was he trembling at the knees? Was there a quaver in his voice? Did he feel belittled? Or was he so full of the recent experiences that he had cast all caution to the wind?

He says some things that must have sounded truly shocking. We must obey God over human beings (i.e. not you). He refers to Jesus, this man from Nazareth who had just been raised from the dead, they couldn’t find his body – “whom you killed by hanging him on a cross”. That’s a pretty direct accusation. He has been exalted so that he might bring Israel to repentance. The great House of Israel, of whom I’m sure the Sanhedrin felt like the legitimate representatives, the only ones qualified to discuss such matters. Not only that, but also to forgive their sins. They must have been reminded of the paralyzed man who was let down through the roof, so that Jesus could heal him (Lk 5:17-26). When Jesus told the man his sins were forgiven, there were murmurings among the Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting nearby. To indicate his authority, Jesus then told the paralyzed man to stand up and walk, which he promptly did, shocking them even further.

Peter ends with a reference to the Holy Spirit, “whom God has given to those who obey him”. That doesn’t sound as if it includes the Sanhedrin.

The whole of their world has been shaken, just as the foundations of the earth were shaken at the Crucifixion. Don’t we need something like that to waken us spiritually? I didn’t learn to drive until I was 48. My grandmother didn’t learn to drive until she was fifty, and I wanted to follow in her footsteps. So, I cadged lifts or walked everywhere for thirty years! I was the fourth child, and I think my father was a little exhausted of taking his children out for driving lessons. Anyway, I was more interested in books.

It took me until I came to Bulgaria to learn to drive, and I’m very glad I waited. My instructor, Mr Gujev, really woke me up. He made me realize that I wasn’t in an armchair, watching a film with popcorn, but I was in control of a machine that could kill people. He made me into a very responsible driver. One time, we were on Tsarigradsko Shose in the east of Sofia, driving towards the centre, and he told me to go up to fifty. I was quite happy going at 35, thank you very much, so he pushed his hand down on my right knee and forced the car to go faster. I was petrified initially, but then I began to enjoy it.

Isn’t that how it is with new experiences? To begin with, we’re reluctant, but then, with a guiding hand, we realize there are lessons to be learnt, boundaries to be pushed, and we’re often grateful afterwards. We realize that we have grown.

These men and women have certainly grown as a result of their allegiance to the Nazarene, the one who calls himself “the Alpha and the Omega” in John’s Book of Revelation. The appellation appears three times (also in 21:6 and 22:13), though it’s never quite clear if it refers to God the Trinity or to Jesus Christ.

The name “Alpha and Omega” refers to the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. He is the beginning and the end. He is the white space behind the language of matter. There is not a time when he was not, to refute the Arian view that Jesus was created.

In our culture, we are very keen on straight lines. We use them to package things. We use them to parcel out land, to create borders. The ego in English is a straight line: I. As is the number we teach our children to count from: 1. The line separates. It is a wall or a tower and liable to fall down.

I can see three ways to escape the line. We can make reference to a third point and form a triangle (a pyramid, which is much more stable). We can delete the line, draw another line through it. This forms a cross, but a cross is also a plus-sign (the meaning of losing your life in order to find it – Mt 16:25). And we can breathe air into the line, open it out – as when you breathe air into a plastic bag or inflate a balloon – and form a circle, in effect counting down from 1 to 0. The triangle, the cross/plus-sign, and the circle.

These three symbols, if you can picture them, spell the name of God in Revelation, Alpha and Omega (A+O). The triangle closely resembles a capital A. Then you have the plus-sign and the letter O. This is the spiritual meaning of the name – it is a call to escape our individuality, our selfishness, and to place ourselves in God’s service, which is the fullness of life.

It is a way of believing, and when we believe, we receive. The Holy Spirit, in the reading from Acts, “whom God has given to those who obey him”. “Life in his name”, in the reading from John. “Eternal life”, in the post-Communion prayer we will hear in a moment.

Jesus says to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” He is referring to us, the Church across the ages. He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This verse might be taken to support the inclusion of the filioque clause in the Creed, to say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son. But this is not the Orthodox view. This clause was included after the Creed was composed in the fourth century, and it was included unilaterally, at the Third Council of Toledo in 589, not by the Church as a whole.

I believe that Jesus here is offering the disciples the Holy Spirit (“whom God has given to those who obey him”), so that they can forgive others their sins, just as a priest does in the absolution. This doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit proceeds from him, simply that the Holy Spirit is in his gift, and I think we would be very wrong to go against the authority of such an important theologian as Gregory of Nazianzus, who contributed to the writing of the Creed at the Council of Constantinople in 381.

Christ is the Word. The Holy Spirit is breath. Breath is in the Word, but it comes from the lungs of the speaker.

Do you see how Peter and the other apostles have filled Jerusalem with their teaching? This, despite the fear they felt of the Jewish leaders, which caused them to lock the doors. It is the Holy Spirit that releases us from our fear, that delivers us from the death of sin and enables us to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness. That, and participation in Communion, where we receive the body of Christ and his blood – “him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood”, as it says in Revelation.

Along with Thomas, the doubting one (and who hasn’t doubted? It is a part of faith), we should count ourselves blessed for these gifts – the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, the institution of which we celebrated only ten days ago, and the reception of the Holy Spirit, which the Church marks at Pentecost. This is a time of giving, like the air we breathe, the food we eat, the blossoming of spring, not a time to count the cost. Christ has already done that for us when he went to the Cross.

We are language – breath, water, and flesh. Our purpose is to have meaning. We are words on a page, living in eternity. Our job is to believe, so that the Holy Spirit can work through us and we can be imbued with meaning.

Jonathan Dunne, www.stonesofithaca.com

Posted on March 5, 2025March 3, 2025 in Sermons

Ash Wednesday

Readings: Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 51:1-18; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Sometimes, when I take my dog for a walk, he lingers behind, locating scents that only he can smell, and I wander ahead. He likes to come running after me and, like a good rugby player, to make a feint and dodge me just as he reaches me. It is a joy to see his ears flapping in the wind. But there are times when I turn around that he has disappeared, and I call to him. Has he followed some female? A golden retriever, perhaps? I stand, wondering whether I should retrace my steps, go looking for him. And then I realize, as I face forwards, that he is only five feet away, not behind me anymore, but by my side, discovering a new scent. I don’t know what the locals must make of me, this strange Englishman calling out to a dog that is right beside him. When I look back at the landscape behind me, it is as if he is invisible. He is unseen.

This is how we are to perform acts of charity, according to today’s reading from Matthew. When we give to the needy, when we pray, when we fast, we are to do it in secret and our Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward us. We are not to seek the praise of those around us. We are to do it for our Father, who is unseen.

Lent is a strange journey from glory to glory. Let us not forget the previous Sunday’s reading was about Jesus’ transfiguration on Mount Tabor, when he appeared alongside Moses and Elijah, the Old Testament law and prophets, and shone dazzlingly white. But as we are reminded, this is not a moment you can hold onto. Peter was mistaken, Luke tells us (Lk 9:33), when he suggested building shelters for the three of them. They had to go on from there – Jesus to the Cross, but ultimately to the Resurrection and Emmaus, where he accompanies us on the road; Peter to Rome; James and John to their places, not the least of which was for John to write his Gospel. If they had stayed behind to witness to one event, to try to grasp water, none of this would have happened.

We also are on this journey. Joel tells us that “the day of the Lord is coming”, but it is not a day full of wonder, as we might expect, it is “a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness”. We are to “rend our heart”. As the Psalmist says in Psalm 51, “a broken and contrite heart, you, God, will not despise”.

We express our repentance. We are sorry that things are not how they should be. People suffer, are ill, are exploited. Others lord it over them. The journey as expressed in Psalm 51, a very important psalm which is part of Orthodox Morning Prayer (except that there it is numbered Psalm 50), goes from being “sinful at birth” to purity of heart.

Celtic Christianity would have a problem with the phrase “sinful at birth”. In their view, we are intrinsically good, just as the creation around us is good, and what we have to do is rediscover the sacredness within. But the journey is the same. To “be reconciled to God”.

I like to think of it in terms of language. The I, the ego, is a straight line, a kind of barrier. This word, I, sounds the same as the organ of sight, eye, and if we rotate the line by ninety degrees, indeed it looks like a closed eye.

So, we breathe air into the line and make a circle, the letter O. We open it out. “O” can be an expression of realization – “Oh!”. We become aware of God’s presence in our lives. It can also be an exclamation of repentance – “Oh!”

This realization, and repentance, is what opens our spiritual eyes and enables us to reach spiritual maturity. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” This is the doctrine of theosis, deification. St Athanasius of Alexandria wrote in his work “On the Incarnation” that “God became man so that man might become God”. He wrote this in 318, as a young deacon, before going on to help draft the first version of the Creed at Nicaea in 325. He also came up with the first listing of canonical New Testament books.

God became man so that we might become gods – gods by grace, not by nature – so that we might inherit eternal life, enter the land of paradox where truth resides. We are “genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything”.

It is this recognition – realization, repentance, return, it doesn’t matter – that enables us to fix our eyes, open now, on heaven. And this, for me, is the most important line in today’s readings, the line that we can take with us through Lent: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” We have rediscovered God, come to a realization, but there is a change in us. We do not return to the Garden of Eden, we do not try to hold onto the moment of the Transfiguration, to store it in a shelter or on film. We return to a state of innocence – a lack of willingness to do harm – but this time with knowledge. We must pass through the stage of physical knowledge in order to reach spiritual maturity, not only because it enables us to have children and so to be co-participants in the creation of man, but also because it teaches us what it is to hurt and not to want to inflict hurt on others.

Lent is a journey of endurance – troubles and hardships, yes, but also truthful speech and sincere love. We are poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything. Deep inside us is a flame that, like the disciples of St Brigid or the inhabitants of the Hebrides, we must keep burning through the long winter’s night in the expectation that it will blaze up in the morning.

Jonathan Dunne, www.stonesofithaca.com

Stones Of Ithaca

Meaning inside language.

II. The Tretyakov Gallery

Moscow: A Visitor’s Impressions

Airborne

Thessaloniki in Flowers

Harmony and Language

Apfelsaft

Deor

The Gift of the Church

Ash Wednesday