By Alexia Chiriac
About 1 meter off the ground, on one of the pillars of the Gračanica Monastery, there is a small door. Barely noticeable among the hundreds-of-years-old frescoes lining the walls, there is the entrance to a chamber that overlooks the whole monastery. This chamber was used as a place for the monarch to pray in safety, away from the general population. But I didn’t see it like that. I saw it as a way to see the needs of the people, to understand them. When in that chamber they could see over the whole church, and they could watch people as they pray. What I didn’t understand until I got there was just how embedded religion is in identity and how big of a place it has in people’s hearts. Religion is a deeply rooted part of Serbian identity, but until you experience it, until you feel it, there’s no way to completely understand. Religion as identity is not only about tradition, but also about compassion, community, kindness. It puts a focus on who you are and what’s important for you. That secret chamber, no matter its past use and the original intention behind it, feels like a place of understanding. Once you enter that door in the pillar, and you reach the top, you no longer think about just yourself, because you can see it all. That secret chamber feels like a place of understanding, and a place of a need to understand.
After the tour of the monastery, I wanted to light a candle. In the Orthodox tradition, people can light candles for the living and the departed, for protection and for rest. Even though I have been a non-practicing Orthodox for many years (I’d like to call myself faithful instead of religious), I felt the need to light some candles, for my family and for my friends. When I went to ask the guide where I could do this, one of my classmates joined and said they wanted to do it as well. The guide asked me where I’m from and then asked if I am Orthodox, and when I said yes, he lit up. It was a fantastic moment of mutual recognition, and I think that was one of the moments where I fully understood what it means to have faith as part of your identity. It’s finding community wherever you go, in people you have never met. He showed me where the candles were and as I was walking towards that place, my classmate came up to me. They asked me a very simple question. They asked: “Is it ok if I come light some candles with you?” For me, that meant the world. That simple question showed so much compassion and kindness in that moment, and above it all, it showed the desire to understand and to respect somebody else’s identity and customs, in order to ensure that they didn’t somehow accidentally step on them. What this trip has shown me the most, is the need to have this kind of attitude towards everything around you. The need to step lightly and with an open heart.
For the past three years I’ve been stuck between two places: at home religion has always been an integral part of our identity, our values, and our traditions. In Amsterdam, it was the opposite, I had to create my own community and values, away from a part of myself that I had taken for granted and maybe never quite fully understood. But coming here, to such a charged place, forced me to put a mirror up to myself. And not just to myself, to what I had learned, to who I had met, to everyone and everything. Just like the secret chamber, once you find that door on the pillar, and you walk through it, you can see it all. You gain understanding. Of yourself and of others. We learned in class that the Serbian identity is deeply tied with the Orthodox religion, and when we were talking about it I kind of understood on a mental and academic level, but until I was faced with the reality of others’ experience and my own, I didn’t understand on a deeper spiritual and personal level. Because at the end of the day, we are all stuck in our own worlds, on our own levels of being. We are so stuck that we feel like we understand everything, when in reality we understand so little about what others experience. And the problem is, until we are put in a place where we are faced with our own limitations, with ourselves, we don’t realize it. Taking the steps towards understanding is the easy part. Talking to people, being present, being compassionate, it’s almost instinctual once you start. Once you open that door, hidden in a pillar between hundreds of frescoes of ourselves and our lives, that leads to the desire to understand and experience life through another’s eyes, you can never go back. What’s hard is noticing that tiny door and its need to be opened.
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