Kissing and Crossing 2

Outside, people are filling up their plastic water containers from a tap in the wall with the same unsmiling and dedicated seriousness of purpose - maybe indeed because it's water from a holy spring: but the quantities they were taking made it seem as if they were going to at least use it in the bath-tub, if not in the loo too ...

There are two priests standing there in the courtyard, apparently just allowing themselves to be seen; I gain no impression that they see themselves as being available to give spiritual or pastoral consolation to troubled souls. But in case of any doubt, there are signposts at every turn proclaiming that it is "Strictly forbidden to videotape or photograph the clergy", as if doing so would either reveal unutterable esoteric secrets, or in some way rob them of their spirituality. I must say that, rather than enhance my view of their spirituality, it makes me immediately think of 'Don't feed the animals" at a zoo.

Almost the most interesting aspect of it all is that the monastery is right alongside a rather new motorway. It certainly doesn't look as if it was built after the road, and I find myself wondering what kind of processes led to a motorway being routed right alongside a place whose income is presumably generated largely by passing visitors; and whether in such cases in the future, the Patriarch won't find himself making competing bids with Ronald MacDonald ...