Focus on Life: Week 9 - The Door

Sally Russick of The Studio Sublime is hosting a year long challenge which is... sublime... as you'd expect with such a studio name. The challenge is named 'Focusing on Life' and every week Sally is sending a prompt on what should we focus the following week.

This week's prompt is getting deeper than ever:

A door opened and I went through it. 

 ~Temple Grandin 

 Let's open some doors to see what awaits us on the other side.

I had the perfect door in my mind, but I couldn't get there this past week, so I went to the bookshelf and picked up a beautiful book "Romania: Signs of faith". It talks about faith and religion and old culture... it talks about- and for- the soul.

In there I found my picture (I knew it would be there):

Gate of carved wood - Maramures; 1996
photo by Dan Ioan Dinescu
Book: Romania, signs of faith - published by NOI Media Print

This is a gate of a house in the north-western area of Romania, a region called Maramures. A place where things still happen as they were hundreds of years ago. The farmers grow their own food, they care for their animals: horses, cows, sheep, pigs, chickens. Every Sunday they dress in their best clothes (some are still sewn and embroided in house, by the women) and they attend the Holly Liturgy in the village's church. They have a cross carved in their gates - the gates and fences are true pieces of art, carved manually by specialized wood workers, a tradition carried from one generation to the next.

If you knock on a door in such a village the head of the house will open it and let you in. They will sit you down and feed you, whatever they have on the table they will fully share with you, even if they never saw you before, even if they will never see you after. To try to pay them for their hospitality is an insult. To love their neighbour and to care for their guest, to give him shelter and host the stranger (the one that comes in peace!) - that is part of their nature.

The hospitality of the people in that region is renowned and it goes back in history (our traditional folk stories all talk about strangers being welcomed with bread and salt and wine). You have to be there, to watch the early morning fog engulfing everything, to witness a sunrise in the hills and mountains, to breathe the dew - and maybe you'll understand the people. People who follow the secular rules of wrong and right, who see everything in the simple light of faith, without judging you, though. They have this incredible link with God, an old link (our faith is almost as old as faith itself: the country has been Christian since ~100 AD): they don't "go to Church", they breathe and live through it. For them (and us) God is truly your neighbour, the one whom you love and greet every morning and every moment, the Heaven truly starts at the village border.

Knock! knock!

Welcome! If you come in peace you'll be received with love and you'll find shelter for as long as you need it.

Thank you for coming into my world today - and please make sure you knock at all the other doors. Sally is a generous host through this wonderful journey!