PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I am making some final corrections to my poems, just in case the last moments of my lifespan draw a little too near a little too soon.  Simultaneously, I am watching my DVR's copy of David Lean's film, Doctor Zhivago.

The film's proper opening, after the prologue, never fails to impress me.  We are shown a panoramic landscape, and toward the bottom of the picture---the funeral procession for young Zhivago's mother, being conducted according to the Orhodox Faith.  However, in the foreground of the scene, the director, or the set decorator, or someone (on whom I pray God's blessing) has erected a three-barred Orthodox Cross.  When, in close-up, the procession enters the cemetery, we are shown what seems to be a plethora of Orthodox Crosses.  Then, a little later, in the monastery where Zhivago's new guardians are spending the night as guests of the abbot, we see that the bed occupied by young Zhivago has an Orthodox Cross engraved onto its headboard.

I first viewed the film in 1969 pr 1970, in a theater, with my mother, who did not quite understand either the spiritual or historical values being depicted.  That Sunday afternoon (oh, so appropriately) brought my first exposure to the supreme symbol of the Orthodox Faith, which I believe to be the Faith of historical early Christianity.    Some years later, during my freshman year in public school, the required civics course assigned us to create various maps (showing resources, historical events, climates, industries, etc) of either Germany or the Soviet Union.  I chose the Soviet Union---which, until the Bolshevik Revolution, had well cultivated and suppported the Orthodox Church.  The seeds were being planted, then; and now, in these late stages of my old age, which is medically compromised, I am benefitting from those growth yielded by those seeds.  

J-Called