igrockspock

Yes, I'm back with the Georgian trip!

Day 1: Overview | Day 2: Vashlovani Nature Reserve | Day 3: Jvari Monastery and Svetitskhoveli Cathedral

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The night of the Jvari Monastery and the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral (still Wednesday) we stayed in a little vineyard tucked away in the back of beyond, which required a hike along rough tracks and up and down roads. Our luggage was (thankfully) taken by a very old jeep - Soviet era, we were told. It surely looked it!

A B&B up in the mountains

The vineyard had been owned by a former church minister, and they were still doing it up. The road there was a little rough, and a few of the women struggled somewhat with the path.

There was also almost no signal.

But there were kittens!



This night was a particularly bad case of "we can't eat anything, we're too stuffed full of food". I didn't even take photos of the food, I was so full!

And the next morning was no better.





Ruins and vineyards and buildings on the walk back down to where the bus awaited us in the morning:

Thursday: Uplistsikhe

Yeah, it's a bit of a mouthful...

Uplistsikhe Rock Village dates back to the 2nd Century BC, and translates to 'God's Fortress'.

The carvings and design of it indicate both pagan and Christian residency (a pagan temple's fire altars were filled in when the community converted to Christianity and the space used as a chapel/cathedral), and multiple cultural influences from outside Georgia are indicated by its architecture and decoration before it was sacked in the 12th Century by the Mongols.







There was so much of it to see, but we only had an hour, so it was a very truncated tour of a really interesting historical site.

And I spent long enough in the chapel that I and my roomie (only other non-American on the tour, apart from the 'host' who was local, and the 'organiser' who was ) lost the rest of the group on the way out of the site. I found the chapel particularly fascinating to me for the black Madonna-and-Child portrait, the layout of the space, and the "drooping arms" cross symbol, which is representative of St Nino's grapevine cross she carried to Georgia when she brought Christianity to that part of the world.





Oh yes, and the black Madonna and child!



No, not me! (I just realised the juxtaposition of the photos. XD XD)

More seriously, there was a woman in the chapel who was praying or observing her pilgrimage. I had to be quiet while she was there and even after she left, I had to be quiet because there was a woman manning the shop right outside the door. *sigh*

I find it a bit restricting, actually, that the chapels and cathedrals all demand silence of you. There are times for silence, of course. But there's also time to sing and be joyful - to shout to the Lord! To everything a time and a season, as Ecclesiastes declares. I did manage to sing a hymn in a chapel in Positano, Italy and that was fun!



Anyway, there was a tunnel we missed out on seeing because we didn't work out where the rest of the group went, and then we got stuck at the top and ended up having to go back down the way we came, whereupon we met the rest of the group and went along to the bus.

On the way to lunch, we passed through the city of Gori, which is Stalin's birthplace. Many of the older Americans wanted to hop out and have a look at it, and I hopped out because the architecture looked really interesting!

C'mon, tell me this isn't fascinating to the daughter of an architect!

Gori: birthplace of Stalin

The location is the house in which he was born. The neighbourhood was "bought out" (*cough cough* we know how that goes in the west, now imagine it in Soviet Georgia!) and everything else razed to bring you...this edifice of stone and magnificence...

The Americans exclaimed over the details of Stalin's life. Me? I looked around at the architecture (very interesting, oddly beautiful for what I think of as 'communist brutalism') and then out at the public gardens surrounding it, and the Georgian national flag flapping in the wind. And I turned to our Georgia guide, grinned, and said "Stalin would have hated it." And she grinned back.

It was pretty much a fifteen minute stop because we were already kind of late to lunch. But then, we were still kind of full from the previous night and breakfast, so it's not like we were rushing to get to eat!

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Lunch at Sisters-in-Law winery. The owner used to be in the diplomatic service, but married a guy whose family owned land out in the countryside and now runs a restaurant that they built out of reclaimed everything. All the bricks, all the wood, all the furnishings found and repaired and now reused. It's very permaculture.

books and food and activism against an oppressive government: what it can look like

They're also very socially active (also very permaculture) to the point where they decided to close the restaurant this summer, because they wanted to participate in local protests against pro-Russia government and they were worried about retaliation. That's a dedication to the cause. There were assorted signs and stickers around the place that showed the sentiment of the younger generation about Russia, but the older generations often recall the good times of the Soviet Union and want that back.

Sounds a bit familiar, really.

They definitely had some permaculture books...



Also, there was a wine there that was absolutely amazing, and honestly I'd have shipped an entire crate of it back home except they didn't have any left over from that batch! *sigh*

A beautiful place with a beautiful couple doing good, solid things in the world.

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Kutaisi
At this point, my memories are growing a little fuzzy. I shouldn't have put off typing this up for so long, and since I've been back, a lot has happened!

But I do remember that the dinner in Kutaisi was a bit ordinary, all things considered...



A walking bridge, quite close to where we were staying, and the last light of day.

"Lamech, son of Methushael, said to his wives, ‘Adah and Zillah, listen to me; wives of Lamech, hear my words. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me."

It's disproportionate violence to the imago dei, not merely sanctifying one over the other, but eliminating the other for daring to risk the one.

The ancient world said "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: as you have done, so shall it be done to you". We know the pattern of that through history. Blood feuds. Honour prices. Duels.

Our modern codes demand justice, yes, but part of the intent was to give grace for betterment or improvement. It was not a hand for a hand, nor even a hand for stealing, but a limitation for a while with the chance to make better. And sometimes people did manage to work out how to make better than they'd done.

And sometimes we just returned them to the situations they were in, that turned them back to the practices that got them in trouble, without any attempt to change what went wrong the first time.

Which worked about as well as one would expect.

Anyway, here we are, back at the violence of Lamech of the line of Cain - Cain who was marked by the blood of his brother, one like to him but unlike to him, also. Disproportionate violence to be visited on the 'lesser' - a hand for a injury, a life for an interruption.

Truly, humanity doesn't change, just goes round the block again with a fancier set of tools.