Thursday 8 May 2014

Why is Romania different? Religion has a lot to do with it

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I realised only now that Romania's intense religiosity is not an Orthodox or Balkan thing. Serbia, Bulgaria and Russia are much less religious. About Greece I don't know. Quite unconsciously it is one of the reasons why Romania is so much more more attractive a country than her neighbours.

People go to India for spirituality - but I do not find India or the East very spiritual. They should come to Romania, especially Bucovina or the monasteries in Moldavia. Or for a very spiritual pre-Christian place, Sinca Veche.

On the subject of Eastern spirituality, I want to quote again Edward Norman, my favourite living historian, religious commentator and favourite Englishman:
"Through contact with liberal and Christian values the other world religions were sanitised and made acceptable to Western sensibilities: widows were no longer incinerated alive on their husbands funeral pyres, and the way was opened for that late-20th-century phenomenon, the Western idealising of Oriental religiosity, beads and mantras in Californian condominiums."

5 comments:

  1. I found Greek Easter pretty but tame, nothing intense about it a la roumaine. Alison

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    1. Mine was on Thassos. The midnight service was pretty but there was none of the awe and expectation you feel in the days before Resurrection night.

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    2. You should go to Georgia - wonderful country - the one country I like more than Romania..

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  2. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/jul/15/society

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