Blog entry by Lars Muhl from 11 July 2013

From a pilgrimage to Syria 2003.

The car jumped over the bumpy road. In front of us we could make out the impressive Convent of Our Lady Saydnaya emerge on the horizon. We were on our way there, to attend the annual celebration of the monastery famous Maria icon Shaghoura, which simply means ‘known’ or ‘unique’. The icon is a copy of one of the four icons, reputed to have been painted by Luke the Evangelist. The icon has miraculous properties. There are stories of pilgrims who have visited it and have been cured of their diseases. On the day of the annual celebration, it is said to have positive effects on women who can not have children. The women stay in the monastery overnight and 95 percent of them are reportedly fertile again. The monastery is according to the legend, located at the place where Noah planted his vines after the Flood.

When we arrived, it sure was swarming with people, the vast majority were women who had to stay overnight in the monastery. Every square meter of the long corridors were covered with mattresses and bedding. In one of the aisles, a bunch of Bedouin women were already engaged in the festivities and everyone who passed them, was drawn into their dance. An elderly woman grabbed me and swung me around in the air. It was a totally surprising act that must have looked pretty comical. She sat me down again, but maintained her firm grip on my hand, while she began a series of movements that most of all recalled a fertility ritual. The other women formed a ring around us, while the emitted a series of inarticulate howls. There was no way round it. It all went so fast that I did not get the opportunity to reflect on the situation. It was a veritable attack on my aloof and autonomous attitude. NOW I had to drop it, or appear as a self-righteous stiff stick that has enough of his own religiosity. It was a brief struggle before I surrendered unconditionally to the women dancing and whistling. That night I was dancing more than I had done for several years.

Thus freed from my rickety defense, I slipped into the stream of people who were on their way to the holy of holies. It is no coincidence that the entrance, to the small room where the Blessed Madonna hangs, is so low that you have to bend over to enter. The body attitude corresponds to the inner attitude, you must take when you stand in the room, where so many faithful pilgrims have prayed and surrendered themselves. The room is filled with lit candles, and you will not have to stay there very long,before a spark ignites a fire in the heart. Whichever faith you profess, you cannot fail to be moved by this place, where so many hopes are placed. Here, the Muslims and Jews are in line with the Christians. Here you are one for the Only One.

After a short meditation by the icon, I entered into the stream of people again that led through an opening, at the other end of the room. In a long hallway time between the icon room and the abbey church ,a few black-dressed sisters awaited, by whom the pilgrims was presented with a small envelope with a wick for candles. While the queue moved slowly, I found myself remaining in a contemplative state. My heart was completely open. A deep sense of unconditional acceptance bubbled up through me and imagined myself, in a state I can only describe with the trite term happiness.

Between the passage there was a bend, and I had just turned the corner and completed my Aramaic prayer, as an encouragement made me look to the left. There, in the shadow on the wall, hung a bashful red and golden icon depicting the Madonna and baby Jesus. For reasons which I am still not able to provide any plausible explanation, I stepped out of line to look at this icon more closely. It turned out to be what I call a vulgar icon, which just means that the icon is a reproduction. For three hours, I was standing in front of the icon. And suddenly I saw it. Suddenly I saw the symbolism that was so obvious, but nevertheless initially had been hidden from me. The picture was broken, and the broken line fell directly through Madonna solar plexus. Her left hand with which she was carrying the child, found itself under the line, while her right hand was the heart level, above the line.

‘You seem to like this madonna very much’. I turned around. It was the upper Sister Theodora of the monastery, and another sister who approached me. A short, intense moment, she looked at me. Then she lifted down the icon from its nail on the wall, kissed and blessed it, and then she handed it to me. That’s it. Without further do. I was completely speechless. Sister Theodora broke the silence:

‘We found the image in a corner here, fifty years ago. Someone must have lost it or thrown it here. A novice repaired it and made ​​this beautiful icon, as a proof of its genuineness. The icon is named ‘Our Lady of The Broken Hearted’ (The Madonna of The Broken Heart). It has stayed in this spot for all these years. Take good care of her. Wherever you bring her over, she will take care of you.

Later, when I was accompagnied to the door by a younger nun, I could see that there was something she wanted to say. I stopped, to indicate that I was responsive. She cleared her throat shily. Then she said as she pointed to my icon, now duly wrapped in coarse paper, ‘I think you should know that the young novice who made the icon fifty years ago, was Sister Theodora herself, when she had just arrived here. Goodbye.’

She turned resolutely, and returned in a hurry. I stood and watched her disappear through the gate.

We use cookies to personalize content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Se mere
Cookie indstillinger
Accepter
Privacy & Cookie policy
Cookie- og Privatlivspolitik
Cookie navn Aktiv

Privacy Policy

What information do we collect?

We collect information from you when you register on our site or place an order. When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your: name, phone, e-mail address and/or mailing address.

What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways: To personalize your experience (your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs) To improve our website (we continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you) To improve customer service (your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs) To process transactions Your information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service requested. To administer a contest, promotion, survey or other site feature To send periodic emails The email address you provide for order processing, will only be used to send you information and updates pertaining to your order.

How do I protect your information?

We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you place an order or enter, submit, or access your personal information. We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Payment gateway providers database only to be accessible by those authorized with special access rights to such systems, and are required to?keep the information confidential. After a transaction, your private information (credit cards, social security numbers, financials, etc.) will not be kept on file for more than 60 days.

Do we use cookies?

Yes (Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computers hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information We use cookies to help us remember and process the items in your shopping cart, understand and save your preferences for future visits, keep track of advertisements and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business. If you prefer, you can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies via your browser settings. Like most websites, if you turn your cookies off, some of our services may not function properly. However, you can still place orders by contacting customer service.

Do we share information with outside parties?

We do not sell, trade or otherwise transfer your personally identifiable information to outside parties. This does not include trusted third parties who help us operate our website, conduct our business or provide services to you, as long as those parties agree to keep that information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe that release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our website policies or protect our rights, property or safety or that of others. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be shared with other parties for marketing, advertising or other uses.

Register

The minimum information we need to register you is your name, email address and a password. We will ask you more questions for different services, including sales promotions. Unless we say otherwise, you have to answer all the registration questions. We may also ask some other, voluntary questions during registration for certain services (for example, professional networks) so we can gain a clearer understanding of who you are. This also allows us to personalise services for you. To assist us in our marketing, in addition to the data that you provide to us if you register, we may also obtain data from trusted third parties to help us understand what you might be interested in. This ‘profiling’ information is produced from a variety of sources, including publicly available data (such as the electoral roll) or from sources such as surveys and polls where you have given your permission for your data to be shared. You can choose not to have such data shared with the Guardian from these sources by logging into your account and changing the settings in the privacy section. After you have registered, and with your permission, we may send you emails we think may interest you. Newsletters may be personalised based on what you have been reading on theguardian.com. At any time you can decide not to receive these emails and will be able to ‘unsubscribe’. ----- Children's Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance We comply with the requirements of COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act), we do not collect information from anyone under the age of 13. Our website, products and services are all directed to individuals who are at least 13 years of age or older. Updating Your Personal Information We offer a "My Information" page (also known as the Dashboard) where you can update your personal information and change your marketing preferences at any time.
Gem indstillinger
Cookie indstillinger