Leitourgeia kai Qurbana: Contra den Zeitgeist

Between school, the symposium, and Flesh of My Flesh being on her yearlong adventure in Germany, my life has been pretty much consumed on all fronts as of late, but I found out some fantastic news tonight that I wanted to make sure was disseminated as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

The symposium has been awarded a $2,000 Humanities Initiative Grant from the Indiana Humanities Council. I found out about this particular funding opportunity back in July, and as the deadline was 2 August I had to assemble the application very quickly (not to mention while I was in the middle of Kurt Sander’s recording project), but Prof. Rosemarie McGerr, the director of IU’s Medieval Studies Institute, and Mark Trotter, the Assistant Director and Outreach Coordinator for IU’s Russian and East European Institute, were very helpful and generous with their time, and provided wonderful letters of support for the proposal. After I hit “send” in the Starbucks in NKU’s student union building, there was nothing but to keep working on other sponsorship possibilities, and hold my breath.

In many ways I am less excited about the financial support than I am thrilled that the merit of what we’re putting together is being visibly acknowledged. I look at this as a huge step forward in terms of forging a relationship between All Saints and the university where together we can put together events that cultivate interest in Orthodox Christianity and raise awareness that All Saints exists in the first place. This is an academic event, yes, and it seems to me that there is much that an Orthodox parish in a college town should be able to offer in terms of intellectual and cultural interest, but it is also as a form of outreach to the campus. This is a way of being able to say, “Come and see.” Or, in this case, “Come and hear.”

It’s also a demonstration that support is out there for projects like this, and that All Saints doesn’t have to be the little church in the middle of nowhere that everybody ignores. I’m supposed to write letters to Indiana’s congressional delegation so that they know this is happening, since this is ultimately federal money. Yes, there is an Orthodox church in Bloomington, and even our congressmen know it!

By the way, if you aren’t able to attend the symposium but still want to support us in some way, please get in touch with me. Even with the IHC grant, there are still plenty of opportunities to be involved from afar. Drop me a line at rrbarret (AT) indiana.edu.

I guess this is technically publicity for the symposium, so that means I have to include this text: This program has been made possible through a matching grant from the Indiana Humanities Council in cooperation with the National Endowment for the Humanities.