9/18/2019
Jonathan Dunne
Author Jonathan Dunne, who lives in Sofia, Bulgaria, sends his photographs of Christmas Eve, 2022, in the Russian Church of St. Nicholas.
I wanted to give those Orthodox books that most moved me, that I most enjoyed, not because they’re the ones I felt obliged to read, but because they spoke to me as an ordinary Christian pilgrim.
These are crosses I have come across in my everyday life, in Bulgaria and other countries, on holiday or while performing an errand. I hope these photographs will serve to remind us of the presence of God in our daily lives.
We have made a small selection of the best images to give people an idea of the riches hidden away in monasteries in Bulgaria that are often abandoned and can be difficult to get to.
After an hour and a quarter, having climbed Golgotha and gone past Scylla and Charybdis, you reach your destination, a trickling spring and in a cave you can only enter by wriggling like a worm a quiet pool of water, where we prayed for those we know under the Archangel’s watchful and merciful gaze.
I work with word connections. Language is like the environment – there is much more to it than may initially appear to be the case.
Jonathan Dunne is an English Orthodox Christian living in Sofia, Bulgaria; his wife is the Bulgarian poet, Tsvetanka Elenkova. He received the Orthodox faith in 2012, and began his pilgrimages to Mt. Athos in 2013. A writer, Jonathan has been keeping meticulous and introspective notes, the result of which he has offered to us here in this essay on Mt. Athos.
