Aman Yala
Yo, yo—listen up. Me and my boy Joe are playing at Golden Fest next weekend (Saturday, January 14) in New York. We’ll be doing a short set featuring mostly dance tunes from Lesbos. Yeah, you heard me right. Lesbos. Όμορφη Λέσβος. So put on yo dancin’ shoes and come get your Opa on.
posted by Sandouri Dean Bey at 8:38 PM
5 Comments:
Sounds like a great time. I'm down in NYC all the time for theater, opera and museums but those dates aren't possible for me. When are you guys performing next in the Boston area?
Are you involved with the life of the Greek Church on Belgrade Avenue in Roslindale?
Will-
We'll be performing at Balkan Night, which will take place on Saturday, March 11 at the Friends of the Performing Arts in Concord, MA. I'll post something closer to the date.
Although I am technically a member of the Greek church in Roslindale, it's not because I'm especially religious and certainly not because I think church membership is important. I became a member back in '04 when my sister and brother-in-law asked me to be the godfather to their firstborn son. I was quite thrilled, but it required that I be a member in good standing (i.e. annual dues paying member $$) of an Orthodox church, not necessarily Greek, but any Orthodox church. So I joined. But I didn't pay my dues last year, so I didn't get an '06 calendar, which I kinda miss cause it tells me when all the saints' holy days are...
Interestingly, all of the priests involved in my nephew's baptism knew I was gay and partnered and were OK with that. My brother-in-law's family, on the other hand, was not OK with it. They protested the decision to allow me to stand in as godfather all the way to the Boston Metropolitan (the Greek equivalent of S.P. O'Malley's office), who did the remarkable thing of basically telling them to piss off; he ruled that if the local priests performing the ceremony could accept an openly gay man as godfather, then the Archdiocese would not interfere with their decision. It's an amazing example of the latitudinarianism that prevails in the Greek church in matters such as this. Their position is far from perfect--their formal position comes across as quite homophobic--but their attitude concerning my role as godfather gave me a new respect for them.
Gosh, that was a long answer to a simple question...
Long, maybe, but good to hear. Thank you. I felt better about the rank and file Orthodox priesthood also from reading it.
What is your understanding on some of the paired military saints in the Greek Orthodox Church? I have read some very well researched material that several of them were lovers, particularly Saints Nearchos and Polyeuct. John Boswell in his book Same sex Unions in Pre-modern Europe is particularly eloquent on their mutual love and commitment.
Well, there are quite a few paired male saints in the Orthodox...er, pantheon, but the ones with which I'm most familiar are Ss. Sergius and Bacchus, to whom Boswell devotes quite a bit of attention.
There's lots that can be said about them. However, two things struck me in Boswell's discussion of this pair. First, there's their role in the predominantly Eastern liturgy of αδελφοποίησις--those enigmatic "same-sex union" ceremonies that pretty much are the focus of Boswell's book. Those mysterious rites are filled with prayers and invocations to Sergius and Bacchus. Second, the Church's own version of the Sergius and Bacchus story (that sounds like a bad Byzantine made for TV movie), they are more or less lovers. I say that because in the hagiographical text--which probably dates to before the 11th century C.E.--they pledge their love to one another and they phrase it in such a way that evokes marriage.
When Joe and I had our ceremony some years ago, we borrowed elements from the liturgies documented in Boswell's book. We included prayers to Sergius and Bacchus and told their story as part of the service. I even painted an icon of them to be used during the service as well.
During our honeymoon in Istanbul, as kismet would have it, our guesthouse was a few blocks away from the 6th-century church of... yeah, you guessed it, Ss. Sergius and Bacchus. It's referred to as "Kucuk Ayasofya" (Little Aghia Sofia) because of its resemblance to the big Aghia Sofia, which was built a bit later. It's still a functioning mosque, which it became after the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453. It's in pretty rough shape though. When we visited we had the place to ourselves. It was quite romantic and magical.
Will, thanks for reading and posting comments. I hope you continue to do so :)
Oh don't worry--with my passion for history and for Byzantine art and architecture your blog is a great resource for me.
Sadly, the night you're playing in Concord I'm in New York for a performance, reversing he situation this month.
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