Monday 6 April 2015

The largest Armenian church

Today Tom and I visited St Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral, the largest cathedral of the Armenian Apostolic Church in the world.

While not the largest church I have been in, it's still a reasonable size with a very high ceiling. They were partway through a service and had managed to fill it with incense. We stayed for about 45 min. The altar was surrounded by flowers and it was periodically behind a curtain like it was a stage. All the women in the congregation had their heads covered with a shawl, sometimes beautiful and sheer, sometimes what looked like a bit of old curtain. I observed one woman share a shawl at the front of the queue so that she could receive communion. The choir at the back of the church was beautiful. Throughout the service it didn't seem to matter too much of you were sitting or standing. Quite a few people were standing or kneeling up the front in the central aisle.

Something else we had observed was clarified by Artur yesterday. Most of the trees by the side of the road have a painted white base. We even saw them slapping the hot, smelly, white concoction on with brush brushes. My guess was road markers. It's actually a pesticide to keep climbing bugs off the trees.

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