“One day Constantinople will be conquered,” wrote the Prophet Muhammad. “How beautiful its conqueror and how beautiful that conqueror’s soldier.” Moustafa the night clerk, in an aureole of black curls, had bent his head over a medical textbook under a … Read More
Kassia A comely woman’s face, her eyebrows arched and eyes heavy-lidded and red mouth succulent, glances sideways from within a mosaic fragment on the cover of the CD. The disc is titled “Kassia”, and records Byzantine hymns from “the first … Read More
I was a flaming young feminist and I hated St. Paul. I had never read him but no matter: the sisterhood excoriated him and his ilk – men of the Church who, from its beginnings, loathed women – and that … Read More
I do not remember a time when I could not read the letters. My (younger) sister has a memory of the two of us, on either side of our mother on the couch, the children’s Reader “Marusia” (Маруся) on her … Read More
If that sounds political, it is. But when it comes to a Ukrainian Orthodox Church anywhere in the world, the political is also cultural and spiritual – and personal, as in my case. August 9-12, 2018, in Saskatoon SK, I … Read More
I once gave a presentation announced as “From Two Hills to Thessalonica.” My point was that I had come a long way from All of Baba’s Children, my first book, which I had researched in Two Hills, Alberta, still a … Read More
INTRODUCTION I was baptized into the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada as the infant daughter of a UOCC father and a mother who had never stepped into an Orthodox church until her wedding day (a day she “hated,” she confessed … Read More