Khristos voskres! Today is Easter! An excerpt from Blest Atheist
(Easter 2022 at Old Mission San Juan Bautista ) Excerpt from the beginning chapter of Blest Atheist (a repeat and more from Easter 2017 , never loses its significance...) Siberia on Easter Morning “ Khristos voskres ” (Christ is risen). One person after another greeted me with these words as I climbed the stairs of the little, wooden church in Akademgorodok, a tiny town at the end of the man-made Ob Sea, bejeweling the Siberian steppe 45 minutes south of the city of Novosibirsk. The intertwining snow-covered birch and kedr (Siberian pine) trees created an illusion of a land of fantasy, made more so in the late evenings by the moon reflecting off the naked silver-white birch bark onto the dark red-brown trunks and evergreen branches of the pines. This was not yet the inhospitable taiga ; it was somewhat south for that, but nonetheless the birch and kedr trees stood closely side-by-side like brothers-in-arms against a hostile white and cold universe. ...