It was a narrow and rough rural road, with potholes and deep puddles of water left by recent rain. Somewhere behind heavy bushes a lake splashed, and I was searching for the way to go round it and get to the highway. The car was tossed around, and I looked forward this part of my way to finish as soon as possible. For a couple of kilometers, only the road ahead and branches above could be seen and nothing like a settlement around.
And suddenly, in the opening between trees a dome emerged. After a couple of road curves I approached a hill with an untended church on its top. The building, however, was surrounded with scaffolding. I stopped and decided to get out of the car to look at the temple.
I went up a hill and saw that the door of the church was open. I found instruments, building material and improvised hastily made wooden table by the building. It seemed that people had to be nearby. Indeed, a little farther, a car was parked and there were two people – a man and a woman in work clothes – near it.
I came up and asked the people what that place was. They told me that formerly there was the Parečča village there. Nowadays, only old forsaken gardens remind of it. They knew little about the church but there was, according to them, a legend in the vicinity that it was built more than 400 years ago. Having heard it, I smiled to myself, since it was rather in the late 19th century that they built such pseudo-Byzantine Orthodox churches in our lands. However, fairy-tales and rumors are sometimes more persistent than documents and scientific proofs. But the next fact really impressed me: those people were hired out by a local lady who widowed and after that decided to invest everything she had in giving a new life to the old abandoned church. It is so touching, I thought then. But I was even more touched with what I saw inside.
Services were apparently seldom held there. Probably, the church didn’t even have a priest serving their permanently. And it took me some time to realize what its interior resembled. And then it hit me: it was a common rural house, well-maintained and loved by its sincere and a little bit naïve owners. The ceiling, wooden and painted in light blue (they obviously thought of the color of clear sky painting it), simple and nice stenciled patterns on the walls, the crucifixion in a cozy white curtain lace setting, with coverlets and carpets at the foot – that in no way could one leave a dirty boot print…
In the same way old Belarusian rural ladies decorate their unpretentious wooden homes with everything they consider beautiful – motley curtains, laces, plastic and paper flowers, handmade embroidery, knitted carpets and home-woven textiles. They cover cheap icons with embroidered towels and love everything to be clean and orderly. As soon as spring comes, they paint window frames, doors and fences with inspiring and gaily blue – the color of heaven and mystery. They meet you with a smile and scrutinize your face trying to guess whether the guest is satisfied or not: “A guest in the house means God in the house,” they say in Belarus. Actually, their relations with their God are just the same. They invite Him to their homes, talk to Him as to a neighbor and no doubt, He hears them.
And this temple cared by common unindifferent people looks like a part of that world – full of simple coziness and devoid of formality and pathos. Centuries ago, painting icons, old Belarusian artists departed from strict canons and traditions and painted Jesus Christ, Virgin Saint Mary and the saints as if they lived in the neighboring street. And here, common people fit up the home for their God – and, it seems to me, He came and took up His abode there.
Sincerely yours,
Volha Blazhevich.
P.S. Some time ago, I saw a recent photo of this church. Now, it is painted white and sky-blue.
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