Skadar Monasteries

In the morning we drove to the Skadar lake on the border between Montenegro and Albania, to visit monasteries on the lake islands. We stopped for a cup of coffee in Virpazar, an then got onto the narrow road hugging the mountain slopes for the next 15 km towards the monasteries. Tomáš a Djordje managed to give a live broadcast interview to radio Svjata Gora. This day was starting in the name of the letter S. Not only it was to take place on a Skadar lake, accessible by serpentine roads, also the name of the boat owner who was waiting for us, was Slaviša.
There were two male monasteries and one nunery, each of them on a tiny island. Moračnik island had the oldest monastery, and only one monk, Nikolaj, who lived there. The small church was dedicated to the Mother of God of Three Hands. According to the legend, the arm of the painter who painter her icon was chopped off, but he was praying incessantly and his arm grew back. As an expression of thanks, he painted the arm on to his patron St. Mary.
In the house of two rooms, glued to the side of a half-ruined medieval tower, where Nikolaj offered us pommegranate juice, Tomáš asked him if he lived there alone. Nikolaj’s answer was that he did not live there alone, he shared the house with God. Nikolaj did not like being photographed. Photography only captures the mundane surface, but cannot communicate the inner meaning and richness. He had a similar opinion about the cyrilic script—each letter can be read as a sign that corresponds to a sound, but also can carry sacred meaning, which is intuitive and deeply felt.
The island of Baška is inhabited by 5 nuns, and we were welcomed by one of them, the smiling sister Milena, originally from Albania. She took us around the two churches on the island. One of them was not in use, ever since they built it in the 14th century, because water was leaking in through the porous vulcanic tuft of which it wass made. This church was built in the same time as the original monastery and dedicated to Saint Djordje. Our friend Djordje paid hommage to his namesake, and in front of the humble altar, on an earth floor and under the rough stone cupola, he wrote out their name in cyrilic. The only difference between them was that one was saint and the other not really. He is a sociologist.
The second church was dedicated to St. Mother of God. Above the entrance, there is a cyrilic text in an unusual style of the Dalmatian monks, dated to the year 6948 according to the Serbian calendar (1439 A.D.). It marks the entombement of the remains of St. Jelena Balšič, the daughter of king Lazar, and the ruler of a Serbian province Zeta.
On a stone in front of the church threshold, a rosette was carved, where the “metropolita“ stands during religious ceremonies.
We landed on the third island, Starčevo, welcomed in a somewhat grumpy way by the monk Grigorije. Apparently, we docked our boat at the wrong place and so maybe somehow disrupted the holy order on this island. Nevertheless, meeting Grigorije ended up being very pleasant and interesting, reminding us of a mosaic that is being put together slowly from fragments, and whose beauty is only seen at the end, when the picture is complete. Father Grigorije was very educated and friendly, and we spent the next two hours discussing the meaning of life, while drinking the home-made juice of wild pommegranates that he offered us. Grigorij talked about simple life and mentioned that he does not need the information from newspapers and the TV, it is unimportant and distracting for him. His biggest wish was „to reach the Paradise.“ His world already looked like paradise to us, being surrounded by beauty and calmness of nature around him, a garden of olive trees, citrus trees full of oranges, lemons and grapefruits, and the wild bushes of pommegranates.
Day S was about to end. We were returning to the mainland. The shadows were surfing across the mountain slopes, shifting with the sun. The smell of the lavender growing on the rocky fields was mixed with the subtle smell of lemon flowers, which Grigorije gave us when we were leaving the island.