I always find that my life feels most disoriented on holidays that are celebrated in the West, but not observed in Kyrgyzstan. Today is Easter, and while there are a few churches in Bishkek and throughout the country, the holiday certainly is as visible and evident here in Naryn as a triple rainbow might be.
Pictured is the nearest house of worship to the giant yellow spaceship in which I live. It is an attractive little mosque with a shining gold dome. I have wonder...ed what it looks like inside, but it is not my place, nor is it right, to enter sacred spaces simply to satisfy personal curiosity and so I shall never know what the mosque across the street from where I live looks like, what the sacred feel of it might be.
I have spent the last ten minutes sitting on my dark blue couch, trying to estimate where the nearest church to me might be situated. I think the closest one is a tiny Russian Orthodox chapel, just the other side of Dolon Pass, perhaps 70 kilometers from where I reside. And I'm not sure services are even held there anymore, because in the multitude of times I've driven by the chapel I've never seen any evidence of it ever being used.
What a contrast it is to the previous I place I lived, a town of 10,000 people, where churches seemed to almost outnumber houses. There must have been at least a dozen Baptist churches of various shapes and sizes within 5 kilometers of me in that Arkansan enclave, not even counting all the other kinds of churches present there. Yet I am not confident I could say whether it was that town in Arkansas or this one in Kyrgyzstan that feels more Christian to me, or if the message of Easter feels alive in any place I know.
Perhaps it is because I realize that, yes, tradition matters and observance of our religious beliefs is important, but ultimately Easter, or any religious observance, is alive only in the way it lives in our hearts and in how we take what is in our hearts and how we apply this living message to our lives in the world. The Easter message can have meaning to someone, no matter where a person might be, even if it would take that person a five-day ride in a yak cart to get to the nearest place of worship. Or it can be dead in the middle of a town with twenty five churches.
When I stop typing this post, I will leave my apartment and stand across the street from the mosque with the golden dome, far from any church, and contemplate the message of sacrificing self for the benefit of others that is the cornerstone of the Easter message. Then I will return to my apartment, where are there are no roasted hams, no Easter eggs, or bunnies, or anything resembling my memories of Easter and I will wonder whatever happened to the Easter message, and I will contemplate how the world and me and everything else in between ended up where it is today.
What a contrast it is to the previous I place I lived, a town of 10,000 people, where churches seemed to almost outnumber houses. There must have been at least a dozen Baptist churches of various shapes and sizes within 5 kilometers of me in that Arkansan enclave, not even counting all the other kinds of churches present there. Yet I am not confident I could say whether it was that town in Arkansas or this one in Kyrgyzstan that feels more Christian to me, or if the message of Easter feels alive in any place I know.
Perhaps it is because I realize that, yes, tradition matters and observance of our religious beliefs is important, but ultimately Easter, or any religious observance, is alive only in the way it lives in our hearts and in how we take what is in our hearts and how we apply this living message to our lives in the world. The Easter message can have meaning to someone, no matter where a person might be, even if it would take that person a five-day ride in a yak cart to get to the nearest place of worship. Or it can be dead in the middle of a town with twenty five churches.
When I stop typing this post, I will leave my apartment and stand across the street from the mosque with the golden dome, far from any church, and contemplate the message of sacrificing self for the benefit of others that is the cornerstone of the Easter message. Then I will return to my apartment, where are there are no roasted hams, no Easter eggs, or bunnies, or anything resembling my memories of Easter and I will wonder whatever happened to the Easter message, and I will contemplate how the world and me and everything else in between ended up where it is today.
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