No sermon this Sunday or last Sunday as I’ve been on my summer holidays, in Kyrgyzstan. A lot of people asked me why I was going on holiday to Kyrgyzstan. I hope the photos below explain why!
Classic Kyrgyzstan scene, near Karakol.
Is the Skaza Canyon real life or a Star Trek scene?
Kyrgyz cowboy, near Karakol.
Last light on the Terskey Ala-toos, shot from the main road near Karakol.
A baker’s dozen of the best shots I took while back home this month. All photos © Gerry Lynch.
The last days of 2022 saw me make my first visit to Dublin since 2013 and to Kilkenny since, I think, 1995! A trip to interview the delightful (and Most Rev’d) John Neill for my doctorate. I did a day trip from Belfast to Kilkenny by train, which I don’t particularly recommend giving the timings, … Read more
Nobody is quite sure when the Wansdyke was built, but the most commonly advanced theory is that it was built by the Romano-British after they were abandoned by the Imperial power to defend their stronghold in what is now Gloucestershire, Somerset, and northern Wiltshire, in the face of Saxon expansion spreading northwards from the English Channel. This would date it to around the end of the 5th Century. Regardless of exactly at which point in the transition from Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England it was built, it seems that the much later Anglo-Saxons had lost any idea about its purpose when, despite several centuries of Christianity, they named it Woden’s Dyke, after Odin, the king of the Norse gods, around the 9th Century.
The eastern section, in Wiltshire, has been much less disturbed over the centuries by agriculture and building than those further west, and this section, north of the village of Bishops Cannings, is particularly dramatic when lit by low late afternoon sun from the south in autumn and winter.
On a rainy day in midwinter, with the rain belting down for weeks, it can be a little disappointing, a flat bank of mud surrounded by dirty puddles. Yet the sun can transfigure it into mysterious magnificence in all seasons, always easy on the ankles, even for someone with my short legs and my fat belly. The ground remains springy and fast when in a hot dry spell when the surrounding terrain is drained and hard; and also when it is surrounded by wet muck.
It is as much as 4 metres high in places. It is followed by a long-distance footpath for all of this stretch. The view in the distance reaches to Tan Hill, at 294 metres above sea level the joint highest point in Wiltshire.
This is deep England. The countryside is not especially dramatic but rolls with a heart-healing, gentle, beauty. I walk here regularly, with various circuits of 12-18 miles (19-30 km) starting and finishing from my home in Devizes taking in stretches of it. When the light is like this, it makes my soul sing and fills me with gratitude for being alive.
St John’s provided the context for a stunning St Matthew’s Day sunset, as I walked home from the Tuesday evening Mass at St Mary’s. What a lovely town Devizes is. I am lucky to have ended up here for curacy. Also, I love my Nikon D750 as much as I did when I first got … Read more
Viewed here from the Paton Bridge is the enormous and ancient Pechersk Lavra monastery complex in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. This is the crucible in which East Slavic Orthodoxy was formed and is arguably the third most important religious community in the history Christendom behind only Monte Cassino and Mount Athos.
Kyiv Pechersk Lavra (Ukrainian: Києво-Печерська лавра; Russian: Киeво-Печерская лавра), also known as the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, was founded as a cave monastery in 1051, since which time it has usually been a preeminent centre of Orthodox Christianity in Eastern Europe. Together with the Saint Sophia Cathedral a few kilometres away, it is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Among others, the remains of Imperial Prime Minister Peter Stolypin, assassinated at the Opera in the city centre, lie at rest here.
While remaining a major cultural and tourist attraction, the monastery has been active again as a religious community since the 1980s, having been shut down by the Soviet authorities in 1928 and turned into a museum-park. Nowadays, there are now over 100 monks in residence.
