Something resembling a Greek or Middle Eastern festival is a staple of Orthodox parish life, it seems, and All Saints is no different — although we don’t call it a Greek or Middle Eastern festival, we just call it “The Festival on Fairfax” (Fairfax Road being where All Saints is located). Once a year, the community pulls together, throws open its doors to the world, and busts out the tsatsiki. Not to belabor a previously expressed point, but we legitimately have the best gyros in Bloomington, thanks to Johnny Ioannides (whose name I will continue to shout from the rooftops, since they’re just that good) — it’s just too bad it’s the only regularly scheduled day of the year they are publicly available.
Johnny Ioannides, the man who brings us the best gyros in Bloomington. Can we open this man a restaurant, please?
(But it is not, emphatically not, a Greek festival. Or a Middle Eastern festival. Really. We also sell hot dogs. But no borscht.)
It’s always a good time, and in many respects, shows off the best sides of Bloomington’s little Orthodox church that could.
There are, truthfully, many things which differentiate what we do from the typical Greek festival. It’s not the mammoth fundraiser that many are; it’s not like Holy Trinity, where we charge admission in addition to food and merchandise, go all weekend and raise three quarters of the annual parish budget in the course of three days. Nope, we let you in free, we run one day only, and it pays for itself with a chunk left over but it’s hardly make-or-break for our day-to-day operations. More than one day, and we really hit a point of diminishing returns — particularly if we start having to pay staff rather than use volunteers. Getting bigger every year the way we do, we might have already hit this. Besides, Holy Trinity has the whole city of Indianapolis; we… uh, we don’t.
At any rate, the hope has been that eventually it would be more of a way of evangelizing, of being Christ to our community, rather than fundraising, but exactly how that will crystallize, precisely, remains to be seen. As with many things surrounding All Saints’ transition from being a small church community, only one or two steps removed from a mission, to being a mature parish, identity and defining characteristics are somewhat in flux for the moment. For one thing, much of Bloomington doesn’t even know (or care) we exist; in time, we hope to be more of a presence in the community. For the moment, the Festival on Fairfax is a fun way of at least holding an open house for our neighbors.
(Hey, there’s a thought. What about doing something that’s explicitly labeled and structured as an open house for the community?)
Anyway, here are some of the pictures I took throughout the day. Church tours are, of course, something we do, and there’s an information board we post relating the interior of an Orthodox church building to the interior of the Jewish temple. The big colorful image (blown up below) is, shall we say, a rather idealized digital model of a traditional Byzantine structure. I agree with my godson Lucas (who put the board together, and conducted the tours) that it would be nice if there were formal diocesan guidelines for building churches something along the lines of “come as close to this as you possibly can”; alas, much of Byzantine church architecture seems to assume the existence of an Emperor and his treasury, and the readiness of same to pay for things. Very tough for a smallish working class community to be able to come anywhere near this (as you can see from the acoustic tiles filling in for the dome).
The only Orthodox cemetery in Indiana
On the other hand, we are making good use of the property we have (some 24 acres), and slowly but surely we are building something which we hope will still be there in a couple of centuries. For example, we’ve got the only Orthodox cemetery in the whole state (so far as we know, the next nearest is at Holy Dormition Monastery in Rives Junction, Michigan).
A hayride in the Grove
We’ve also got a large section of the property called the Grove which is intended to be a common area for public events once it’s finally done. It’s close to being done; flooding over the summer, as well as a few other issues, set us back a bit, but there’s a stage built, electricity wired, a pond dug, and other access points and landscaping are being worked on. Fish and a water pump will be added to the pond (both apparently in an attempt to help deal with mosquitoes), as well. Hopefully by next summer’s music festival it’ll be completely ready to go; I believe the plan is also to hold at least a good chunk of next year’s Festival down there. In the meantime, the hayrides conducted during the Festival go through there, at least.
The Big Tent
The center of the action for this year’s Festival was the Big Tent — this was the eating area, it was where the music was performed (we never seem to quite pull of dancing, alas), and it was where the food was served.
The SmallTown Heroes
I have to say, I enjoyed the SmallTown Heroes immensely — enough to buy their CD, which I’ve also really liked (enough to review here eventually, I think).
Fr. Athanasius Wilson, Fr. Peter Jon Gillquist’s predecessor, paid a visit to the Festival — always a joy to see him and Kh. Loretta. We don’t get to see him much anymore with his mission up in Greenwood. This community will always love him to pieces, and for very good reason. Without Fr. Athanasius, there would be no All Saints Orthodox Church right now, period. He was the right priest for the time, just as Fr. Peter is now (and hopefully will be for some time).
Fr. Athanasius Wilson and Fr. Peter Jon Gillquist
Besides tours of the nave, we also had the bake shop and silent auction inside the church. You want baklava? We’ve got baklava. Or, well, at least we did. You snooze, you lose. The parish bookstore was also open for business, and we had copies of Cappella Romana‘s The Divine Liturgy in English for sale and displayed prominently, natch.
Eric Leveque (left) trying to work off the freshman fifteen with Charles Coats
Speaking of baklava, evidently a couple of folks ate a bit too much and found a novel way to try to work it off.
The Festival closed with Vespers. This is something for which we’re still figuring out the best approach — before last year, we just cancelled Saturday Vespers, but it occurred to us that it didn’t make any sense, if we wanted the Festival to be more about outreach and evangelism rather than fundraising, to not include a service. Reaction has been mixed — last year it worked very well, and this year… Well, the trouble is, many of the parishioners are still having to work the food booths and whatnot while Vespers is in progress, and there’s still very clearly Festival activity going on come 5pm, so there jisn’t really a compelling reason for people to go inside (particularly on a gorgeous day like last Saturday was), and there’s no large-scale movement of the parishioners to generate momentum, either. So, I’d say that this year, we had fewer people than we would have for a regular Saturday Vespers, with many of the people we’d normally see at that service being outside selling gyros, and almost none of the Festival visitors. Maybe one or two, if that.
And just like that, it’s six o’clock and it’s over until next year — 10 October 2009. Mark it on your calendar now. Best gyros in Bloomington, I tell you.
Leitourgeia kai Qurbana: Contra den Zeitgeist 