PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Some short while after the Zhivago family have fled Moscow and settled in Varykino, on property that was once owned by his mother-in-law's family (but has been appropriated, but not now in use, by the Bolshevik thugs), a newpaper arrives bearing bad news.  Zhivago's father puts on his glasses, reads the headline in horror, and then slumps in grief.  He mutters, "They've shot the Czar, and all his family."

This, to me, is the most dreadful moment in the whole movie; a moment that, very often (until I came to join my Faith to that if the Orthodox Church) caused me actual physical distress to hear that.  To this day, it gives me a chill, but, immediately, comes the comforting reminder that they are not merely the murdered but the Martyred, canonized as Saint in the Orthodox Church.  I think also of the tens of thousands of Orthodox Christians---ordained and lay; ennobled and common; devout or nominal---all murdered, but through their Faith becoming the Martyred---to assuage the unlimited bloodthirstiness of the need for vengeance that demonically possessed the bulbous-headed failed lawyer, Vladimir Lenin.  

In addition to the Romanox martyrs, I think, primarily, of Elizabeth Romanox (the czar's sister-in-law, abbess of a convent), and of Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd, also brutally martyred.  Before his execution, Benjmain was stripped of his episcopal vestments and dressed like a peasant, as the Bolsheviks feared that the execution party would refuse to carry out the execution if they had realized who the victim was.

I just also read, while writing this, that, in certain instances, when groups to ve executed included Orthodox clergy, the priests were permitted to conduct a brief funeral service among those who were about to be slain.  I am a most unworthy and spiritually clumsy communicant of the Faith and Church for which these martyrs were slained; yet, even to the least, like me, that Faith has reached out to invite, and receive, and sustain.

I wear two crosses around my neck.  The smaller one is a metallic blue crucifix, and on the reverse side of the crossbar, my screen name, Starward, has been stamped.  The other is a somewhat larger Orthodox cross---indicative of my connection to the Orthodox Church, which I consider a privilege, and, also, worn in memory of the Poet Constantine Cavafy, and of the Romanox martyrs.

Starward