Tag: Brno

Easter Day worship in Prague and Brno

My pottery paten and chalice that I use for celebrating the Eucharist in Brno © Ricky Yates

When I was Rector of the Shelswell Group of Parishes in North Oxfordshire, quite frequently on Sundays, I would officiate at three services during the day – and occasionally at four. Certainly on Easter Day, I would always celebrate the Eucharist three times during the morning, in three different Churches, at 08.00, 09.15 and 10.45.

One of the joys of being the Anglican Chaplain in Prague, is normally only having one service to take each Sunday. And because our Ceskobratrské Církve Evangelické host congregation meets for worship at 09.30 each Sunday, our Sung Eucharist cannot begin until 11.00.

However, having held the first ever English-language service of Lessons and Carols in Brno last December, since the New Year, I am now travelling there to officiate at 18.00 in the evening on the second Sunday of each month.  My aim is to establish a satellite congregation in Brno, thus providing a second place of English-speaking Anglican worship in the Czech Republic.

On most Sundays, our Czech hosts in Prague, finish their service at about 10.30 which gives us a full thirty minutes to set up to begin our worship at 11.00. Being partly Presbyterian, they do not have Communion that often. But when they do have Communion, their service is nearly always fifteen minutes longer. And on Easter Day they do, of course, have Communion. Thus last Sunday, we had to wait outside until nearly 10.45, until we could gain access to the Church building.

This was my fourth Easter in Prague so I knew to expect many visitors in the congregation. And whilst a small number of the regular congregation are away from Prague at Easter, we lose far fewer than we do at Christmas or during July and August. However Easter Day 2012, not only saw a very good turnout of the regular congregation including several ‘lost sheep’ who we hadn’t seen for some time, but also a very large number of visitors. According to Honza, who went up to the balcony and counted, we were 90 adults and 22 children. The congregation was therefore bigger than any in the whole of 2011.

As on most Sundays, there were double figure nationalities present. We had a large number of American visitors and a smaller numbers of Brits. But we also had two visitors from Denmark, another from Malta and a young Ghanaian couple who told me they had travelled in from Hradec Kralové, 120 km outside Prague, in order to attend Easter Day worship.

We celebrated Christ’s triumph over sin and death in liturgy and song, making an extremely ‘joyful noise’ as our worship culminated in singing ‘Thine be the glory’ to the wonderful Handel tune ‘Maccabaeus’. As in previous years, this was the second time on Easter morning that the Church walls had resounded to the tune as our host congregation ended their worship with the self-same hymn sung in Czech.

After the service, as I and Gordon the Church Treasurer, together with David, another member of the Church Council, exited the vestry and locked up the Church, we once more experienced the peculiarities of the weather of recent months when we were greeted by a snow shower. So none of the three of us could resist starting to sing, “I’m dreaming of a white Easter” as we made our way across the road for Coffee Hour.

Then for me, it was back to my Oxfordshire days as I set off for my second service of Easter Day. But instead of hopping in the car for a ten minute drive to the next village, it was a three-stop journey on the tram, followed by a two hours and forty minute journey on the 14.42 Prague-Brno train, followed by a short walk to the little Czechoslovak Hussite Church which we are currently using for worship in Brno.

There was a great contrast to our worship in Prague in the morning. But as twelve of us gathered to celebrate the Eucharist on Easter Sunday evening, the worship was just as meaningful. Only one person present was a visitor, a British lady who comes to Brno at least three times a year to visit a close relative. The rest were English-speakers currently resident in Brno who I trust and pray will help form a new worshipping community in the second city of the Czech Republic.

Whilst it is feasible to return to Prague on the last train of the evening, as on my previous visit, I decided to stay overnight and travel back the next day. It makes the trip less tiring and gives more opportunity to talk with people after the service. And in this amazing small world, through the publicity put out by the Brno Expat Centre about our monthly services, I’ve reconnected with a young lady called Lynsey who I first met fourteen years ago with her parents on a French camp-site. Lynsey and her partner Johnny have recently moved to Brno to work for Monster, an online recruitment agency who have established their main European base in Brno. So I had the privilege of being the first guest to sleep on their newly purchased sofa bed on Easter Sunday night.

The Prague-Brno-Vienna train awaits departure © Ricky Yates

Exploring the Czech Republic

Suspension bridge across the Lužnice River © Ricky Yates

At the beginning of 2011, I wrote a blogpost entitled ‘Why I like living in Prague’. Whilst I still stand by everything I wrote twelve months ago, I should really have also added, ‘Because it also allows you to very easily explore other parts of the Czech Republic’.

Regular readers of this blog will know that Sybille & I have spent much of our holiday time these past eighteen months, exploring various different parts of this small landlocked Central European country. And whilst Prague is wonderful, there are times when some of the central parts of the city do get rather overwhelmed by tourists. But as I hope some of my previous posts have shown, there is much of beauty and historical interest elsewhere in the Czech Republic and these places see vastly fewer visitors.

The picture above is an illustration of what I mean. This is a mid-nineteenth century suspension bridge across the Lužnice River, near the village of Stádlec, about twelve kilometres west of Tábor, which we drove across in October last year. It is a beautiful spot as well as being a fascinating piece of engineering.

When originally constructed in 1847-48, the bridge took the road from Tábor to Písek across the Vltava River, near the village of Podolí. In 1960, it was dismantled, because of the flooding of that part of the valley of the Vltava River following the construction of the Orlík Dam, and replaced by a higher concrete bridge. The original bridge was then re-assembled at it current site in 1975 to replace a previous ferry crossing.

What I hope the picture also illustrates is the beauty of the Czech countryside because so much of it is forested – about 35% of the total area of the country. This is in stark contrast to the UK where the figure is no more than 10%.

Male figures supporting a building on Námestí Svobody, Brno © Ricky Yates

Also in October 2011, I visited Brno for the first time, as part of my exploration of starting a satellite congregation in the Czech Republic’s second largest city. Although I’ve now been to Brno three times, I have still to really begin to explore all that the city has to offer. Doing so is firmly on my agenda for 2012.

In my brief walk around the city centre during my first visit to Brno, I did enjoy seeing this building, located on one side of Námestí Svobody, the main city square. In contrast to so many buildings in Prague which are supported by scantily clad female figures, here it is four extremely muscled male figures who are trying to hold up the building and hold on to their loincloths at the same time!

One area of the Czech Republic that is also on my agenda to visit during 2012 is the Orliké hory / Adlergebirge / Eagle Mountains in East Bohemia on the border with Poland. The area looks highly attractive even though it doesn’t even rate a mention in our Lonely Planet Guide to the Czech & Slovak Republics. But what has really drawn my attention is that in the heart of these mountains there is a village that bears my name – Ricky.

The village is actually called Rícky v Orlických horách, and there should be a hacek, a little hook, above both the ‘R’ and the ‘c’ in ‘Ricky, as there should be above the ‘c’ in ‘hácek’. But as I know from past experience, for technical reasons that are beyond my comprehension, if I put one in, the letter will appear as ‘?’ in the text of this blog.

‘Rícka’ means ‘stream’ and so with the ‘a’ replaced with a ‘y’, the word is made plural meaning ‘streams’. ‘v Orlických horách’ just means ‘in the Eagle Mountains’. But regardless of what it means, I’ve never previously come across anywhere called ‘Ricky’. I’m looking forward to my visit!

 

Lessons and Carols in Brno

The Prague crew, together with Katka, gathered around the organ. From l to r, David Hellam, Karen Moritz, Katka Bánová, Larry Leifeste, Celieta Leifeste, Gordon Truefit, Ricky Yates © Celieta Leifeste

As I wrote in my previous post, last Sunday evening, 18th December 2011, the Prague Anglican congregation created a little bit of history by holding the first ever English-language Anglican service in Brno. In the appropriately named Betlémský Kostel / Bethlehem Chapel, we held a Service of Lessons and Carols for Christmas.

Brno is the second largest city in the Czech Republic with a population of about 400,000 people. It is home to a number of high tech companies together with numerous university and research institutions therefore meaning that there are quite a large number of English-speakers living there. But unlike Prague (population 1.3 million), where St. Clement’s Anglican Episcopal Church is one of eight mainstream English-speaking congregations, in Brno there are only two – a Roman Catholic one and an small Evangelical Fellowship with no Pastor. In terms of the Christian spectrum, there is a large gap in between for which there is currently no provision whatsoever.

Officially the whole of the Czech Republic is my ‘parish’ and in the more than three years I have been here, I have had a couple of enquiries from individuals spending a few months in Brno, asking if we ever hold English-language services in the city. Sadly, I’ve always had to reply saying that we don’t. In recent months, as I have talked with members of the Church Council as to how we might ‘grow the congregation’, it has often struck me that we ought to look at doing so away from Prague in places where there is ‘far less competition’ (if you will excuse that expression this context) and where there is almost certainly far greater need.

Earlier this year whilst I was pondering all of this, I had a totally unexpected phone call from a fluent English-speaking Czech young lady from Brno called Katka. I should really say extremely fluent as she makes a living as a freelance interpreter and translator. What Katka wanted was any old hymnbooks we might have, so that the Czech congregation to which she belongs, could occasionally sing a hymn in English. Taking her phone call as the prompting of the Holy Spirit, I put to her the idea I had of trying to start a satellite English-speaking Anglican congregation in Brno.

Fortunately, Katka was immediately enthusiastic and has since spent numerous hours doing research on my behalf, finding possible Church buildings to use, and helping to organise publicity, particularly via the Brno Expat Centre. The project has also involved me in two day trips to Brno by train, in order to meet people and look at venues. But all of this preparation led to the successful holding of our first ever service last Sunday evening.

I’ve also been most encouraged by the support and enthusiasm of members of the Prague Anglican congregation regarding the Brno venture. As can be seen in the photograph above, five of them volunteered to come with me to Brno for the service. All of them first came to our Sunday Eucharist at 11.00 in the morning in Prague, then managed some quick refreshment at our post-service Coffee Hour, before taking the tram for three stops to the main railway station in order to catch the 13.42 train for Brno. The return train got back at to Prague at 23.15 meaning that we didn’t get back to our respective homes until around midnight.

Larry & Celieta Leifeste at the organ with no volume pedal! © Ricky Yates

Our organist was Larry Leifeste who with his wife Celieta, only joined our congregation in August when they moved from Texas to Prague. It was obviously the first time he had ever played the organ in the Bethlehem Chapel and he found that much to his surprise, it had no volume pedal. How then did he increase the volume? By literally ‘pulling out all the stops’!

Celieta sang two wonderful solos – a setting of the Magnificat and an American spiritual ‘Sweet little Jesus boy’. David Hellam and Gordon Truefit both read a lesson and together with me, sang the individual verses of ‘We three kings’; Gordon as ‘gold’, myself as ‘frankincense’ and David as ‘myrrh’. David along with Karen Moritz also did the important job of welcoming all those who came.

Katka also read a lesson as did three other Brno people that she successfully recruited. Katka also helped to lay on some wonderful post-service refreshments giving me the chance to talk with several of those who attended.

Several of the thirty-strong congregation filled out contact forms with various expressions of interest in being part of future services. Currently, these are planned to start on a monthly basis on Sunday 8th January 2012 using a smaller nearby venue belonging to the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. More details can be found on the new Brno page of our website.

I am really quite excited about starting a satellite congregation in Brno. I suspect that we will be quite small to start with but, as Jesus said, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” Matthew 18. 20 TNIV Or alternatively, ‘from small acorns, large oak trees grow’. Watch this space!

 

Václav Havel – death of a statesman

Front page of 'Dnes' - Monday 19th December 2011
 Yesterday, Sunday 18th December, was a very significant day in the life of the Anglican Church here in the Czech Republic when we held our first ever service in Brno. However, just as I and five members of the Prague congregation were leaving Coffee Hour following our Sunday morning Eucharist in Prague in order to catch the train to Brno, news reached us of the death of Václav Havel, leading dissident during the communist era, first President of post-communist Czechoslovakia and, following the Velvet Divorce, President of the Czech Republic 1993 -2003.

I returned home from Brno, just after midnight last night, to find the death of Václav Havel as the leading news story on the BBC News website – the first time in over three years of living here in Prague that I can remember a news story from the Czech Republic being so featured. However, within a few hours, the story had lost top billing to the death of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. In many respects, this is understandable as the death of the North Korean leader means there is a great deal of concern around the world as to what future leadership will emerge within that unpredictable nuclear power.

Living here as a foreigner in the Czech Republic, I have been trying to get the measure of how Czech people feel about the death of one of their most famous citizens. As I had previously understood it, the general consensus was that in many respects, Havel was more highly regarded outside of this country than within in it. Judging by what has happened within the last 30 hours or so since his death, that understanding may well be wrong.
The picture above is of the front page of today’s edition of Dnes /’Today’, one of the leading Czech national newspapers. The first section of the paper, all sixteen pages of it, is completely given over to reports about a whole variety of aspects of the life and death of Václav Havel to the total exclusion of any other news. In the second section for regional news, the first three pages are given over to describing the reaction in Prague to Havel’s death. All of that I believe, speaks volumes – newspaper editors usually know what their readers want to read.

What will be totally new territory for this nation is the organisation of a state funeral at which the attendance of numerous major figures from around the world is expected. No Czech national of the stature of Václav Havel has died since the fall of communism just over twenty-two years ago. Preparations for this event, which it is currently suggested, will happen this coming Friday, will be interesting to observe. As for the first ever English-language Anglican Carol Service in Brno, a blog post will follow shortly.