Eastern Pilgrimage

Podlaskie is a mystical place. By some it’s considered the backwater of Poland, but it can also be considered one of the most beautiful regions. When fog blankets the damp geography an alien and spiritual world reveals itself, causing a stir in one’s poetic soul.  It can capture the imagination and spark an alluring rustic wonder. All along the border with Belarus in Podlaskie there are Eastern Orthodox communities. We were driving along that border, heading to one of the garrisons of Polish Catholic nationalism, Białystok. But before that, we made our way to an Eastern Orthodox site. The holiest Eastern Orthodox site in Poland.

I have experience with Eastern Orthodoxy from living in Georgia and Russia. It’s frustrating sometimes to keep track of the stifling conservativeness these churches represent in their respective countries. The Georgian church has been criticized for using violence and intimidation against alternative groups, like the LGBT community, and the Russian church is known for being too connected to politics in a system that needs a lot of reconstruction. Polish-Ukrainian-Belarussian Eastern Orthodoxy on the other hand has provided me a different dimension. The religious community is typically rural, and less strict in their practices. Whereas in Tbilisi, most Georgians would make the sign of the cross when passing a church, on the other hand rural Orthodox Christians living in Poland are less likely to do so.

The holy site of Grabarka Hill is a pilgrimage, and when you arrive you are struck by the jumble of uncoordinated crosses that seem to hold some spirit of the organic randomness prevalent in the aesthetic of Eastern Orthodoxy. Looking at the protruding randomness sprouting from the hill, I came to the understanding that some people walked great distances with these crosses, which can get to a decent size of a few meters tall. Legend has it that this hill helped prevent a cholera epidemic, and that’s where its sacredness comes from. A resident was told in a dream to go to the top of Grabarka Hill with a cross, which he did so after the advice of his priest, and from that moment those that drank the water were cured, and the cholera epidemic vanished.

Crosses from pilgrimages to Grabarka Hill
Photo taken by the author 

Orthodox churches always have the thick smell of incense. The scent pushes you into a deep comfort, and makes you appreciate your immediate spiritual existence. We walked inside and admired the icons around all the walls. It’s a small site, and not terribly interesting if you are not overtly religious, but it does put some interesting perspective on the communities that live on this border. I remember kayaking along the Bug river, which acts as the border between Belarus and Poland for a while, and hearing about Orthodox and Catholic Churches that were for communities that lived on the other side of the border. A catholic church directly on the other side in Belarus and vice versa an Eastern Orthodox church in Poland. It’s an inter-exchange of people across a border mostly distinguished by guard towers and patrols, giving it a stronger feeling of a frontier rather than a border. Here the exchange of distinct identities still exists in Poland, and it runs all along the border. The farther west you go, the more homogeneous Poland becomes, and even though you can find relics of a heterogeneous past, you will not find heterogeneous company.