The Vine and the Cross

By Jean Marie Ivey

In 1987, during the cold war, Alexandra, on a singing tour to the Republic of Georgia, USSR, found herself transported, through the Georgian music, to the fourth century AD, in a mystical journey full of mystery, romance, martyrdom, and ultimate faith that brought Christianity to that country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644248355

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The Vine and the Cross

Jean Marie Ivey

Copyright © 2019 Jean Marie Ivey

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2019

ISBN 978-1-64424-834-8 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64424-836-2 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-64424-835-5 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Déjà Vu

People of the Earth Together

Walter

Alexandra

Tbilisoba

AD 300, Kartli, Colchis, Iberia7

Amirani

Sioni Cathedral of Dormition

The Robe of Christ

The Story of Bedisa and Yehonatan

Yehonatan

Bedisa

The Great Persecution

The Grotto,

Leila

The Story of Zacchaeus(More Commonly Known as the Apostle Matthias)

Confrontation

The Baptism

The General’s Lament

Martyrs

The Birth

Mtskheta

Svetitskhoveli Cathedral

Nino

Jvari Monastery

Gulisa

The Performance

Acknowledgments

აღიარება

I am deeply grateful to the following people.

First and foremost, I acknowledge Walter Nowick, founder and director of the Surry Opera Company in Surry, Maine, for his vision of peace that brought the World War II and cold war countries, USA, USSR, and Japan, together, with music, in an organization called People of the Earth Together. He established my connection to the beautiful country and people of the Republic of Georgia, USSR. He taught us to sing their music at a time when the cold war was raging and brought us there to perform with them. Without Walter and the music, this story would never have been told.

Patricia Taniashvili belonged to our troupe of singers and traveled to Georgia to sing. She loved it so much that she went back to teach for a year and got married there. Her photographs, blogs, and stories were invaluable to me in my immersion into the Georgian culture.

Tatiana Bukin lives in Georgia and reviewed and edited the Georgian text for this book. Thank you, Tatiana.

I have special thanks for Elizabeth Van Dyke, who taught me to sing. She was the person that came to me one day, in 1986, during the cold war, and said, Do you want to go to Russia? Come sing with the Surry Opera. She introduced me to Walter, and indeed, I did join and sing with the company for many years, traveling three times to the USSR, two times to Georgia, and one lovely trip to Japan to join with the Japanese in great music. On that trip to Japan, each singer was paired with a Russian. We stayed in Japanese homes, none of us knowing the other’s language. Elizabeth (Beth) was a soloist and a great professional musician. I owe her my voice.

I owe a great debt of thanks to my granddaughter, Elizabeth Georga Menzietti, and her son, Sylus Cousins, my great grandson, for reigniting my faith and bringing me to the little church of Ellsworth Falls, where I found a true church family. Elizabeth also gifted me the book The Georgian Feast that provided valuable information on Georgian culture and cuisine. The music director of the church is Sheldon Bisberg, who was also one of the great soloists in the opera company. In the short time I have been there, I found great inspiration in the messages each Sunday from Reverend Mary Angela Davis and Reverend Keith Bowie, each week, unbeknownst to them or to me, touching on a subject I was currently writing about. I found it astounding that Keith preached about the Apostle Mathias for three weeks at the very time I was researching Mathias, who brought Christianity to Georgia.

Jonathan Kidder is an inspiration to me for his indominable faith through great adversity, and he became a mythical part of the story.

Last but not least, I thank my daughter Donna Marie Lee for her editing skills and for her willingness to listen as I read her chapter and verse through the research and storytelling.

Thank you to my publishing coordinator, Stacy Tatters, and the editors and designers at Page Publishing.

Foreword

Patricia Taniashvili

I’m pleased to be able to share a few thoughts with you about The Vine and the Cross. The reader is in for a treat!

Marie and I were privileged to share several trips to the Republic of Georgia, back in the days when it was part of the Soviet Union, and her experience of being in that place—that sense of having lived there before—is one that I also experienced.

We and about eighty other ordinary people from Maine were lucky enough to learn to sing the great Georgian national opera, Abesalom and Eteri, under the direction of a remarkable visionary, Walter Nowick of Surry. How else could we come to Tbilisi and be part of their stunning music and culture?

Few of us had even heard of that place, and I, for one, expected it to be another dark and dreary place, full of sober ideologues and chilly receptions. How wrong we were!

Coming home when you never expected to be coming home, stepping into a loving circle of faces you seemed to know, and understanding where the next street or turn leads, all of these came in a rush of colors, laughter, tastes, and pure joy.

Marie has put all of this into a well-plotted story, characters meant to pull at your heart, and ideas to stretch your mind and give you some understanding of our time there.

It happened to her, and it happened to me. Consider a trip to Georgia, and see for yourself.

Russian Shawls and Georgian Lace

She learned that a ragtag group of singers joined together in harmony can become part of a great movement for peace. In the performance of music, there is no past, present, or future. There is no race or gender. There are no rich or poor. There is no anger or enemies, no fear or despair. The universal language of music connects those who sing together. And music shall untune the sky.¹ Music alone shall live; never to die.

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¹ From Handel’s Ode to Saint Cecelia.

Déjà Vu

Exhausted by the journey from Leningrad, Alexandra awoke from a deep sleep. The driver of the bus appeared unconcerned about other travelers on the road, seemingly taking pride in his supremacy and immortality. The bus careened around a curve in the narrow road, and below appeared the Kura² River and the old city of Tbilisi, rising above a cliff like escarpment. She was awed and troubled by both a feeling of familiarity and dread. She had felt this last year upon entering the Republic of Georgia for the first time on a musical mission of peace, a tour with the Surry Opera Company from a small town in Maine, America. But this was different. She caught her breath. Her chest tightened with anticipation, unexplained pain, fear, and grief.

She thought, Oh my God, I’ve been here before, not just last year but long, long ago. I am coming home.

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² Kura is the Russian name of what the Georgians call Mtkvari.

People of the Earth Together

This was Alexandra’s second visit to the USSR. Glasnost was in the air. The cold war was about to end. Having come uninvited two years before, the Surry Opera Company (SOC), directed by Walter Nowick, returned with the blessings of the state. The director’s mother was born in Russia almost a century ago. He was so distressed at the possibility of a nuclear holocaust that he turned his great musical talent toward joining former enemies with music. He called the musical endeavor People of the Earth Together.

Alexandra thought about Walter and why she was here.

Walter

Walter Nowick was a Juilliard-trained pianist and a veteran who served in Okinawa during World War II. After the war, he remained in Japan for sixteen years and studied Zen Buddhism, becoming a master and returning to Surry, Maine, to create a Zen community.

In the early eighties, Walter saw a television movie called The Day After, about the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. He was so moved by the possibility of such a happening that he gave up his Zendo, and with a series of Beethoven Sonata performances, began raising money for Ground Zero, a local disarmament group. But that was not enough, and he became determined to establish an opera company.

He began by auditioning and recruiting soloists from the local Gilbert and Sullivan Society. Then he established a chorus with some members of the Zen community, as well as farmers, townspeople, fishermen, and other folks who were committed to the love of music and a better world. The operas were only sung and not acted out with costumes. Walter wanted the chorus to wear their most comfortable and brightest garb when singing. He did not like formality and stuffiness. There were many families and small children in the chorus. He never ever allowed anything other than the best renditions of the music, and the accompaniment was stunning, as Walter was a musical genius. He often sang the role of Boris and other leading roles as he played the piano and directed the chorus, all at the same time. He was a wonder.

The Surry Concert Barn

The barn on his farm became the concert hall. It sat near his sawmill where he created wooden mandalas and milled the beams to modify the barn to accommodate many pianos, audience seating, and staging for the chorus. There was a three-legged cat that purred and weaved in and out between the singer’s feet as