Walking in Light With Christ - hip0's personal blog on System Administration, Free Software, Computer Security and Religion

Yesterday for few hours on our way back from Shipchenski Monastery, we went through Kabile Monastery (a nun monastery located 6 kilometers from Yambol Bulgaria and just 1 km away from the nearest village Kabile. According to Church tradition in V-th century during the reign of Byzantine emperor Constantine on the same place used to a huge early Christian cloister

Also according to local Church tradition, st. Helena (Elena) - the Mother of Emperor Constantine regularly sent her servents to take Holy Water from the Monastic Holy Spring. Even in the ancient times of existence the monastery is very probably the monastery was inhabited by nuns.
It is known the monastery continued its existence until the falling of Bulgaria under Ottoman Turkish 5 centuries (yoke) Slavery.

According to some annalist saint Bulgarian patriarch Evtimiy of Tarnovo (the last bulgarian Church autonomous patriarch before the fall of Bulgaria under the Turkish yoke) passed through Kabile cloister during his exile by Turkish sultan in Bachkovo Monastery. Tradition says Turkish soldiers believed there is a hidden treasure somewhere in the monastery(the monasteries at 12th, 13th century was rich and often contained many treasures). Because invaders couldn't find any precious stones or hidden gold inside monastery Turkish soldiers decided to burn down the monastery to the ground and buried the holy (healing water) spring.

Onwards for many centuries the monastic holy land was deserted, but locals from generation to generation kept the memory of the once great monatery alive. The consequential story on how the monatery was restored is quite long. A short version of the history goes like this. />
In year 1919, God appeared in a vision to old village lady Maria and told her where she has to dig to find the centuries "hidden" holy spring. In the vision the lady was told the monastic holy spring will be for restoration and healing of multitudes of people suffering from all kind of diseases.
The news about the re-finding of the Holy Spring, spread in the whole region and people started coming to drink from the Holy Spring to cure themselves from all kind of incurable diseases. The field where the monastery nowdays is was donated soon after by its owner Stoian Ganev

By God's providence in period 1919 - 1945, the monastery was rebuilt. The monastery was restored thanks to big efforts of Georgi Nikolov (a humble Christian) who travelled continously for years from village to village in Yambol and Sliven region collecting donations for rebuilding.



Kabile Monastic Yard

The monastery official name is Birth (Nativity) of Holy Theotokos Virgin Marry (Rojdestvo Bogorodichno) and currently is inhabited by 7 nuns. In the monastery there is a regular everyday morning and evening prayer service, a holy liturgy is served every Sunday. Similar to ancient times, the monastery has a special baptizmal chamber. Many people choose to baptize there children as a blessing in there. Abbot of the Monastery in present times is the lady Minodora.



The little "spiritual desert" of The Nativity of Theotokos is great place for anyone looking for a silent place for pilgrimage to spend some time in solitude and prayer to the Lord God.

Here are few pictures from the monastery, I didn't bring a camera with me hence I hold no copyright over pictures (copyright belong to there respective authors):



Kabile Nun Monastery (Bulgaria) - Healing Spring water photo



Inside the little Church of Kabile Monastery



Thanks be to God for all his kindness in showing me this nice spiritual place :)

For a short pilgrimage journey I went to Shipka. Shipchenski Monastery is a mountaint monastery near Yambol, Bulgaria. The monastery monks cells buildings are new and doesn't hold a hundred or thousand of years of history but still the place is very unique, surrounded by multitude of hundred year old pine trees just 3 minutes of climbing of an Orthodox Church building build in 1902 in memoriam of the great battles that occured for liberation of Bulgarian from Ottoman Turkish empire in Shipka Peak in years 1876-1877.

Yesterday night we spend the night in the monastery guest building. The monks there accepted us quite lukewarm and we were quickly accomodated in (a large room with 6 beds inside). The abbot of Shipka's Monastery is Archimandrite Januarij (January) - an early Christian great martyr saint. The archimandrite was very hospitable to us, arranged quickly a fasting dinner for us as well as later we had a small chat where he treated us with some of his self-brew Liquor.

As of time of writting in Shipka Monastery lives 6 monks and 2 novice monks. Its worthy to mention the Abbot's sharp sense of humour, fr. January was making nice jokes every few minutes.

The monastery had 2 dining rooms one for guests and one for monks. We had the chance to eat in both during the less 1 day stay in the monastery.

Getting out of the "monastic walls", there are stone stairs leading to the monastic Church building.
The Church building is majesticly beautiful with "underground" crypt containing graves of Russian and Bulgarian soldiers, people who sacrificed heroic there lives in the bloody battle that occured between Bulgarian guerillas and Russians soldiers in The Battle of Shipka Pass
The Russian Church built in 1902 is dedicated as eternal memoriam of the heroic battle for the sake of Christ and restoration of Bulgarian Christian country, after we Bulgarians lived under the yoke of Islam for V centuries.

The Church is build fully in the tradition of Russian Orthodox Church buildings (probably by Russian Architects). The wall-painting (icons) are magnificient and painted in 19th century Russian renessance style.

In the Church it is pure joy for pilgrils as there are holy relics of many saints including the holy relics of Saint Alexander Nevski. Here it is maybe good to say today in Bulgarian Orthodox Church, we celebrate the "transferring" (carrying away) of st. Alexander Nevrski's Holy Relics. The Church is called The Birth of Christ in veneration of our Saviour's Birth. it is huge cathedral building with 4 Alters, where on of the alters is dedicated to saint Alexander Nevski.
Especially for the feast of St. Aleksander Nevski the Metropolitan of Stara Zagora - his beautitude Galaktion came and served the Holy Liturgy service. There were also about 12 of priests and monks who came and co-served the holy liturgy in order to venerate the great Russian saint.
Going out of the Church the mountain view from is absolutely "breath taking" and something worthy to see if you come in Bulgaria.
Something interesting is the big Church bells, one of the Church bells is currently the biggest existing bell on the Balkans. As you can guess the bell ding is super loud :)
Here are some pictures from Rozhdestvo Hristovo (The Birth of Christ) Church from Shipka to enjoy:



The Crypt of Soldiers who gave their life for nowdays Bulgarian freedom in Shipka Memoriam Church



Very near to Shipka's monastery, there is a pathway leading to exact place where severe bloody battles between Russian, Bulgarian liberators and Turkish army occured. Nowdays on Shipka Peak is a huge beautiful monument in ever-remembrance of the brave Bulgarian Russian soldiers who loose their lives for the sake of Bulgaria.

Every time I had to modify something in productive QMAIL server install, I end up with some kind unexplainable problems which create huge issues for clients. For one more time I end up with errors after minor "innocent" modifications of a working for more than year time QMAIL ....

After last changes I made to combined qmail install of Thibs, QmailRocks in Daemontools qmail start up files:

/var/qmail/supervise/qmail-smtpd/run
/var/qmail/supervise/qmail-smtpdssl/run


In both files I set variable:

SSL=0 to SSL=1:

After making the change I restarted qmail tested sending emails and all looked well. Therefore I thought all works as usual, e.g. e-mail are properly sent and respectively received to the mail server....

So far so good until just today, when I received urgent phone call in which my employer reported about severe problems with receiving emails.
Trying to send from Gmail or Yahoo to our mail server were unable to be received with some delivery failure errors ...
First I was a bit sceptical, hoping that maybe the errors reporting are not caused by the mail server but after giving a try to send email to the mail server in question the reported problem prooved true.
As always when errors with QMail, I checked what the logs says about the problem just to find in /var/log/qmail-smtpd/current log following err:

@4000000050374a0e1a5dc374 sslserver: warning: dropping connection, unable to SSL accept:protocol error


I've dig over almost all primary forums, threads and blog posts online but nowhere I couldn't find anymeaningful as explanation to the error, so was forced to look for solution myself.
Obviously, there was error with SSL, so my first thought was to check if all is fine with permissions of servercert.pem and clientcert.pem. The permissions of two files were as follows:

ls -al /var/qmail/control/clientcert.pem
-rw-r----- 1 root qmail 2136 2011-10-10 13:23 /var/qmail/control/clientcert.pem
ls -al /var/qmail/control/servercert.pem
-rw-r--r-- 1 qmaild qmail 2311 2011-10-12 13:21 /var/qmail/control/servercert.pem


At first glimpse I was suspicious concerning permissions of /var/qmail/control/clientcert.pem but after checking on other Qmail servers which worked just fine I was sure the problem did not root in clientcert.pem permissions.

As you can guess another failure point I suspected was the previous day change of SSL=0 to SSL=1 in /var/qmail/supervise/qmail-smtpd/run and /var/qmail/supervise/qmail-smtpdssl/run. On that account, I immediately reversed back the yesterday setting of SSL=0 and then restart QMAIL.

The usual QMAIL to restart qmail is via qmailctl, but since so often qmailctl does not reload qmail current settings I had to also refresh current working qmail binaries via both stopping qmail with qmailctl stop and through /etc/inittab by commenting out in it line dealing with daemontools svscanboot:

Hence I first stopped all running qmail processes via init script:

# /usr/bin/qmailctl stop


Then commented line:

SV:123456:respawn:/usr/bin/svscanboot


to:

#SV:123456:respawn:/usr/bin/svscanboot


Onwards did reload of initab with command:

# /sbin/init q


Right onwards I uncommented the commented line:

#SV:123456:respawn:/usr/bin/svscanboot


to:

SV:123456:respawn:/usr/bin/svscanboot


And load up daemontools (svscanboot) via inittab issuing:

# /sbin/init q


Finally I had to start QMAIL processes:

# qmailctl restart
...


Change of SSL svscanboot daemontools service script SSL=0 to SSL=1 however created other problems for clients cause any present clients which used crypted connections to SMTP server viaSSL encryption rendered unable to send mails anymore with error messages like:

Cannot establish SSL with SMTP server xx.xxx.xxx.xxx:465, SSL_connect error 336031996.

To work around this issue I had to once again start SSL (set SSL=1) in /var/qmail/supervise/qmail-smtpssl/run and leave SSL switched off for /var/qmail/supervise/qmail-smtp/run.

Even doing this changes for about 20 minutes though I restarted QMAIL multiple times, qmail continued having issues with mails received with the shitty:

@4000000050374a0e1a5dc374 sslserver: warning: dropping connection, unable to SSL accept:protocol error


After multiple restarts "magically" the stupid server figured out it should load my changed setting in qmail-smtpdssl/run (before it finally worked I probably had to restart 20 times using qmailctl stop; qmailctl start ....

I've figured out as a good practice to put delay between qmailctl stop and qmailctl start cmds so in restarts I used a little 3 secs sleep in between like so:

# qmailctl stop; killall -9 multilog; sleep 3; qmailctl start


Also killing multilog (killall -9 multilog) is good practice cause often nevertheless restarts server logging is not refreshed ...

Something else that might be important is the AUTH settings in qmail-smtpd/run and qmail-smtpdssl/run in thisfinally working qmail they are:

AUTH=1
REQUIRE_AUTH=0
ALLOW_INSECURE_AUTH=0


Hope this post helps someone to solve same crazy error ...
Cheers

In case you need to DELete Windows temporary files directory to save some free space on an old PC or (group of PCs) in a raw you might prefer to use this CLI command lines:

DEL /F /S /Q %TEMP%
DEL /f /q /s "%SYSTEMDRIVE%\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Cookies\*.*"
DEL /f /q /s "%SYSTEMDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\Cookies\*.*"
DEL /f /q /s "%SYSTEMDRIVE%\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Local Settings\Temp\*.*"
DEL /f /q /s "%SYSTEMDRIVE%\Documents and Settings\NetworkService\Local Settings\Temp\*.*"
DEL /f /q /s "%SYSTEMDRIVE%\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temp*.*"
DEL /f /q /s "%SYSTEMDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\Local Settings\Temp\*.*"
DEL /f /q /s "%WINDIR%\Temp\*.*"
DEL /f /q /s "%TEMP%\*.*"
DEL /f /q /s "%SYSTEMDRIVE%\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\*.*"
DEL /f /q /s "%SYSTEMDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\*.*"
RD /q /s %TEMP%
RD /q /s %WINDIR%\Temp
RD /q /s "%SYSTEMDRIVE%\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temp"
RD /q /s "%SYSTEMDRIVE%\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Local Settings\Temp"
RD /q /s "%SYSTEMDRIVE%\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temp"
RD /q /s "%SYSTEMDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\Local Settings\Temp"


Another helpful thing for MS Windows users is cleaning up Windows Tempory Files on every system restart (reboot); doing so is possible by setting below's short batch script to exec on every system boot:

@ECHO OFF
IF NOT %temp% == %tmp% GOTO both_
GOTO single
:both
DEL %temp%\*.* /F /S /Q
DEL %tmp%\*.* /F /S /Q
CLS
ECHO Deleted all files in the TEMP folder: %temp%
ECHO Deleted all files in the TMP folder: %tmp%
GOTO end
:single
DEL %temp%\*.* /F /S /Q
CLS
ECHO Deleted all files in the TEMP folder: %temp%
:end


You can download the script clean_windows_temp_files_on_win_start.com here . The script is great tool for Windows administrators of Win Domain Controllers or University / educational M$ Windows based networks, where PC security is at high risk. Setting the script to run on even "non-critical" home PCs is a great idea as it can save you a lot of troubles with SpyWare, Malware Viruses and other Windows targetted "Bad-Wares" :)

Cheers :)

Some clients of one of the qmail servers mail domain complained that there are problems sending e-mails with Thunderbird (pop / imap) client.

The exact Thunderbird sending error is:

Unable to establish a secure link with SMTP server smtp.examplehost.com using STARTTLS since it doesn't advertise that feature.
Switch off STARTTLS for that server or contact your service provider.


For for almost half an hour I pondered why the heck this odd error happens in sending mails with a fresh new Thunderbird (auto) configured mail address.
Few months back some clients were experiencing similar STARTTLS errors so I went back to check my previous post to get an idea what was wrong then in order to determine if the current reported error had to do with the previous one. My previous post is here - How to work around STARTTLS Qmail Thunderbird / Outlook mail sending (error) issues

After reading on the previous error and some assumptions I found out the whole problem lays in incorrectly set DNS records.
By default Thunderbird (and probably other mail clients) are configuring automatically as SMTP server (smtp.examplehost.com) if the DNS record for smtp.examplehost.com points to an IP address / host which belongs to another mail server, everytime thunderbird tries to send email the incorrect smtp.examplehost.com is used, hence the mail sending fails with the err:

Unable to establish a secure link with SMTP server smtp.examplehost.com using STARTTLS since it doesn't advertise that feature.
Switch off STARTTLS for that server or contact your service provider.

In my case the DNS for examplehost.com which is the mail server host was managed by Godaddy's DNS-es:

ns49.domaincontrol.com
ns50.domaincontrol.com


The A record for our domain smtp.examplehost.com was by default set in GoDaddy to point to incorrect IP, so the fix was simply to change the Domain alias of smtp.examplehost.com to the proper mail host.

Another thing I had to do is change variables in /var/qmail/supervise/qmail-smtpd/run and /var/qmail/supervise/qmail-smtpdssl/run

In both files I changed variables:

SSL=0
ALLOW_INSECURE_AUTH=0


to

SSL=1
ALLOW_INSECURE_AUTH=1


Also variables FORCE_TLS and DENY_TLS in /var/qmail/supervise/{qmail-smtpd,qmail-smtpdssl}/runshould be:

FORCE_TLS=0
DENY_TLS=1


Though the problem was occuring in Mozilla Thunderbird, i'm sure same email sending problem will be present if Microsoft Outlook Express or any other desktop pop3 client is used.
After this changes I had to restart qmail server through qmailctl:

# qmailctl stop; sleep 5; qmailctl start


This fixed clients mail sending issues ... hope this will help to others looking for way to remove STARTTLS, TLS, SSL qmail support ...


On 19-th of August 1903 happened the Indensko Preobrajensko Vyzstanie - (Ilinden Transfiguration liberation revolt). This revolt is important moment for Bulgarian restoration modern history. At this time South Eastern part of Bulgaria was still under Ottoman Turkish Empire rule and there was huge internal tension between local population striving to liberate and unite with rest of bulgarian lands.

The revolt was planned to raise some publicity in western world and show that the lands of Strandzha mountain are belonging to the newly established Russian liberated restored Bulgaria. Ilindensko Preobrazhenski Uprising was preceded by another revolt which happened in nowdays Macedonian lands near the city of Ohrid. The revolt is named under Ilindensko Preobrajensko Vyzstanie name because actually, the 2 revolts were perceived as one common effort to liberate and unite ex-Bulgarian empire territories with mainly Bulgarian and Serbian population to the newly re-establed Bulgarian land. Ilinden is important day for Bulgarian culture in english it means (Saint Elijah's day) as the people of the early 20th century had strong faith the 2 revolts received a common name after the two Church feasts Ilinden (st. Elijah's day) and Preobrazhenie (The day of Christ transfiguration). The revolt was organized and planned by the even to this day existing Bulgarian organizatoin VMRO - Vytreshno Makedonska Revolicionna Organizatia - (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization).
VMRO asks on a few times the then Bulgarian army to join them in the uprising efforts, but the then Bulgarian king refuses foreseeing that this could cause another war between the newly re-established 5 centuries unexistent Bulgaria with the still large and powerful Ottoman empire.


Though uprising was quickly brutally extinguished by Turkish as planned the revolt was able to raise a huge dispute about the so called "Bulgarian problem" and in 1913 part of Strandzha mountain was united with Bulgarian country. The Bulgarian population of the parts of Strandja mountain which remained in territory of Turish empire was forcefully chased to central Bulgaria.



The total number of "guerillas" who participated in two revolts was 26 000. This 26 000 bravehearts faced enormous 350 000 people Turkish army! Of course the outcomes of this uniqeual powers were clear. Still some members of the uprising held hopes thta maybe Russia or some of the western countries would help them with provisions and people "reinforcements". 994 "guerillas" died in the uprising.



The turkish army demolished 201 peaceful people villages (12 440 houses!) and killed brutally 4 694 (peaceful inhabitants in this number kids and woman) by slaughtering and burning them alive. 30 000 of people from the ravaged villages escaped from their homelands and become refugees in Bulgaria. As one can guess whole Civillized Europe was in shock that in 20th century such a blood bath could happen in Europe ....

Its 5th day since I'm in Tsarevo . Its my first time in Tzarevo but hope not my last time. The place is absolutely charming !
There are more than 15 beaches in the region, plenty of beautiful rocks, a little sea port and 2 beautiful Churches - one located on the tiny little city street as well as the second ancient Church located on a sea rocks nearby the sea coast.



The whole main city (old) part is concentrated near 3 main streets one of which can be considered central. Once one walk the central street you pass by a little park (sea garden - as we call them in bulgaria) located on right. Continuing straight in the main street in the eyesight of the viewer is a strange beautiful looking natural water carved rocks.

Once you walk towards the rocky shore mixed with sand at one's sight view is a large cross:



Tsarevo is a place for people who like rocky places as there are too many of rocks all around the town.
Most of the beaches here are a mixture of rocks and sand, so probably people who prefer luxurious beaches won't like it, but for "wild souls" like me it is pefect :)br />
Here is a picture of the central Tsarevo beach.



Today in morning for the usual Sunday holy liturgy we went to the rock located Church Dormition of Virgin Mary with Galin and his little kid.
The Church history is ancient and originally the most ancient Christian Church that was there is probably from 5th or 6th century as in many other places in Bulgaria. The current Church (stone) building is from 1895 before the liberating war for Bulgaria with Ottoman Turkish.

Dormition of Virgin Mary Church is one of the important "landmarks" of Tsarevo. Though the church is on such a "desert" place it is fully functional; Holy Liturgy is served on each big Church feast and any tourist Christian can go during day hours 09:00 - 20:00 h for short prayer or supplication.

After the Holy Liturgy, I spend some time staring at the sea view from the rock on the back of the Church building. The panorama one get from the rock eminence behind the church is amazing beautiful (purely inspirational) ...

Here are some pictures of the Church, I don't hold copyright over the pictures, so the pictures belong to the respective persons who took them.

On 15 August one day before Debian Linux birthday and Debian manifesto announcement another important project for free software realm came to existence. On 15 Aug 1997 Miguel de Icaza, posted announcement explaining the major goals of the GNOME - GNOME Desktop project
The original announcement of GNOME Desktop Project can be read here
Last year GNOME has went through severe ups and downs, it was criticized and decredited by many of the true "believers" in the project because of the drastic turn the project does. Lest the ups and down, GNOME project is one of the most succesful free software project and in my view the most succesful FOSS software GUI.

Its interesting fact two major free software projects celebrate birthdays with 1 day difference. This makes August a major month for free softwar As a long term Debian and GNOME user I felt obliged to drop few lines in thanks and congrats to GNOME which powers my desktop for 8 years already.

Happy Birthday GNOME! Happy Free Software month ! :)

The distribution on which almost all main stream GNU / Linux distributions turned 19 years old.
20 years in active development and still up and running Thumbs up for the Debian guys :)



Debian first release came out on 16 August 1993. The Debian philosophy and goals were outlined by the Debian distro "creator" Ian Murdock in Debian Manifesto. The original Debian manifesto is available for reading as part of Debian documentation in /usr/share/doc/debian/debian-manifesto
I've used almost all of available major Linux distributions but I haven't found better than Debian or Debian based derivatives for both server and desktop installs.



I've red there is a sort of tradition that Debian users celebrate each Debian anniversary with a huge cake eating parties. Unfortunately yesterday I was sick so I couldn't enjoy deb's birthday.

Happy Birthday Debian ! :)

As an Orthodox Christian, striving to know the ancient practies of our Saviour Jesus Christ Church by God's grace some few months ago I was granted to I spend few months of time with an Coptic Oriental Orthodox Christian (Medhat Baky). Before meeting with Baky, I knew not that in Egypt there are Christians at all. The little time I spend with this Oriental Orthodox was very beneficial in spiritual sense. I was amazed of the deepness in which Baky knew Christian faith. I was amazed also by the Grace of this Christian as Christ's joy and presense was very powerful in him. Unfortunately for some reasons historical and political reasons Copts Orthodox are not in official communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church. Copts rejected decisions of Holy Fathers on all Ecumenical Councils after 3rd one.Interestingly the same Church which has for 20th Pope (Patriarch) saint Athanasius the Great which jealously was protecting true Christianity on III-rd ecumenical council did not participated in the rest of the Church ecumenical councils. Because of that in-participation of Copts in ecumenical councils, nowdays there are some dogmatical issues, where we the Eastern Orthodox (in my view incorrectly accuse) copts for being Mia-physits (Monophisits). According to definition Mia Physis means (one nature / one incarnate God nature), or in other words it claims Christ has only one incarnate nature (the nature of God) and no human nature. The dogmatical problem of Monophisitism, is quite severe, according to our Orthodox Eastern understanding by monophisite we accuse Copts for believing falsely that on the Cross the divine nature of Christ suffered only. Though the Monophisitism issue holds back the true communion re-union between us and copts I believe this whole issue is more on a "phylosophical" than a faith level. Coptic Orthodox nowdays is mostly in Egypt, Ethiopia and Africa and numbers 18 000 000 members. It is interesteng to mention even though, officially they're considered divided from the Only Holy (Apostolic) Orthodox Church because of their reject of Ecumenical Council 4, 5, 6 and 7, Copts spiritual life is still preserved in the early centuries and faith in them is strong. It would be great if this 18 000 000 of Christians the whole worldwide congregation of Orthodox Christians which as of time of writting is estimated from 300 000 000 to 400 000 000 people ! :)

Officially Copts Reject the accusation of Chalcedon ecumenical council (for disbelieving the two natures of Christ). Just for the sake of info on the Chalcedon Ecumenical council copts were judged to be heretics. Back in the day copts claim there was a political reason, as there were church fights to abolish the independent Egyptian Pope - which maintained that Church and State should not mingle.
Well anyways, I don't know who is right and who is wrong Copts or us, but what I know for sure is nomatter the dogmatical difference between us Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox in essence our faith is alsmost the same. Coptic Church gave born of many saints, through years many of this saints are also saints in whole Orthodox realm. Below is a nice videos I found on youtube explaining well, the basics of Copt faith and few interesting facts of their ancient faith.



Christians of the Nile Valley: An Introduction to the Coptic Orthodox Church - Part 1



Christians of the Nile Valley: An Introduction to the Coptic Orthodox Church - Part 2

Some time ago, while checking spiritual related videos on youtube, I've stumbled on nice movie about probably one of the last left desert hermit monks.
Our age is an age of decaying spirituality and seeing something as hermitage is something absolutely unique.
The movie interestingly shows the desert near Cairo and st. Anthony's coptic Christian monastery. The monastery is named after saint Anothony - The Great (who is well known in whole Christian dome as a forefather of monastic life. It is interesting fact that still 17 centuries after the creation of the monastery by St. Anthony this spiritual fortress continues to function as an open "Window to Heaven".



The Last Anchorite - the true story of one of the last left Hermit monks (Part 1)



The Last Anchorite - the true story of one of the last left Hermit monks (Part 2)

Enjoy!

Christianity is well known to have almost "countless" number of known and unknown Christian martyrs. Martyrdom has been considered of a high esteem especially in the dawn of Christianity. Short after the martyrdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, many faithful to his teaching (including many of the holy apostles) endured martyrdom similar to the Lord's crucifix on Golgotha.

We're almost living in a peaceful age with no official persecution of Church the if compared to many of the previous centuries. Nomatter faithful Christian still shed their blood for Christ. Probably in Christian missions, all around the world even in the moment of writting this article some faithful Christ servent is suffering martyrdom. In this post I will devote to one modern day Russian martyr saints of our Orthodox Christian faith - Father Danail Sysoev. He is most recent martyr saint I know of. Fr. Sysoev is still not officially canonized in the Russian Orthodox Chuch because according to Church canons, to proclaim someone officially a saint - 50 years or so has to pass since the saints earthly death.
Fr Danail Sysoev was a faithful God servent who has who lead a lot of people to the Lord Jeuss Christ, by writting books, radio and TV talks, preaches and spiritual governing. I heard of him by Vsevolod a Russian brother in Christ from Moscow, I met just few days ago. Vsevolod shared with me that he is a spiritual child of father Danail Sysoev, because it was through him he was lead to Christ ....

Father Danail Sysoev was a fervent missionary for Christ and turned probably tens of thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of people to faith in Christ in the only fully thruthful Orthodox Christian faith.

The Father was threaten numerous times over phone to stop preaching Christ or else he would be killed. But the continuing threats did not frightened him at all but on the contrary he even more fervently continued preaching the Gospel following the instructions of the Lord himself who said himself:

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
- Mathew 28:19-29

The father has done a great work for the heavenly kingdom, writting in his short 35 years of eartly living - 28 books and pamphlets ! ! !, besides that he was leading holy liturgies, doing missionary work, was a confessor of many and was taking care for his family ! ! !

The new-martyr saint works are explaining in good detail the Orthodox Christian faith and how by following and understanding correctly our faith we can reach paradise (The Heavenly Jerusalem) our Lord Jeus Christ promised us.
The Hierarch inspired hundred of thousands Christians all around the world to do a missionary work and live a life for Christ and is a well known and probaly the most bright nowadays primer of a person who strived for the kingdom like our Church holy priests did in past.
Danail Sysoev was dreaming for martyrdom and explained in his works that Martyrdom is one of the best glorious ending a Christian can have for his faith.

The Father was famous among muslims in Russia for leading open debates with Muslims, questioning validity of Islam and showing with multiple sources that Christ is the only "door" through which one can enter heaven.
Because of that and because of his truthful life like every Christian again in accoradnce with what Christ said in Holy Gospel that true Christians will be persecuted, blasphemed and killed for his name the father had many enemies.

The missionary work Fr. Sysoev is one of the biggest missionary works within the Russian Orthodox Church.
Whole Russian nation was in shock in 20th of November 2009, when an unknown masked man entered a Church, called out Father Sysoev's name and shot him twice - once in forehead and once in chest ...

The whole brutal scene occured in a Church building which the father built himself collecting money in his lifetime....

Below is a short TV report of the brutal murder of the new-martyr, as well as the last preach of the father translated to English:





By the preach it is easy to determine the great spiritual experience and spiritual hights the martyr reached prior to his martyrdom.
There is also a full length documentary in Russian about Father Danil Sysoev life but unfortunately I couldn't find it with english subtitles and it is worthy for Christians who knows at least a bit of Slavic language. You can check Q idu domu (Pamqti otca Daniila Sysoeva) here - http://youtu.be/sqk0EambOQw.

As a kid I have been very big fan of The Prodigy. Prodigy were considered absolutely revolutionary style band in the 1995 - 2004 years. As an ex-big fan of the band and cause of the fact I happened to be near to Burgas I decided to attend their performance on August the 5-th.
Spirit of Burgas as every year happens on the beach of Burgas.

A large number of nice underground rock / punk / jazz / reggae etc. continuing for days is not so common on the balkans so Spirit of Burgas is quite a unique undeground music gathering ...
Spirit of Burgas is taking place now for a 4-th year and starting to become an established Electronic, Dance, Metal feast here on Balkans.

Below is a list of all the bands that played on Spirit of Burgas 3 days feast this year;


The 1 night entrance fee was quite expensive 40 EUR, but for a famous band as Prodigy used to be I guess, plus the many other bands that were playing on different scenes on the beach I guess the price was normal. The 3 days entrance fee worths it money much more, for a 3 days ticket the price was 60 EUR. The beer price was also too high; 1 beer price was 1.60 EUR. For a richer countries this prices are nothing but for the low sallaries in Bulgaria the price is still quite expensive.

Besides the high price, the only beer one can buy on the beach was Becks (taking me out the choice to chooes another beer), everywhere there was those annoying writtings on both billboards and video sceens B'ECKSPERIENCE, Jack Daniels, DSK Bank etc. ....

Prodigy performance started about 10:30 on the Main Stage - a big scene facing the sea. Prodigy break out and enter, the scene right after a performance of modern punk band SUM 41

I don't know the music works of SUM 41 and hence I skipped most of their concert checking the other stages. On most of other stages mostly Bulgarian Punk / Rock / Alternative musicians were playing.
Prodigy's scene break-up was done with some famous buzzling sounds known from their works. The Stage was very over-crowded, according to some estimations the concert was attended by about 15 000 people ! ! !
During The Prodigy's play all the other scenes were shut off in order to allow everybody to enjoy Prodigy.

The music played was great, but I didn't liked the vox messages "Keith Flinth", which was something like;

Where is my People?, My Prodigy People, My Voodoo People etc. etc.

As a Christian I know pretty well Prodigy's music message is not in consonance in Christianity and hence I didn't liked to be associated as a "prodigy person", cause I'm not really. Something else, showing off the low prodigy vocal culture was his frequent use of the F*CK word, which btw was probably the most used word by almost every musician playing...

The scene lightning was rich but not bright, enough to clearly distinguish what is happening on the scene.
On the back stage, there was the name of latest prodigy album - How To Steal a Jet Fighter with a background of an old jet fighter plane.



The group scene performance was quite aggressive as always, actually probably it is the primitive behaviour of the band and the primitiveness in music that attracks them fans. People nowdays are too much civillized and the wild primitivety is something we hardly miss.

The Prodigy in the beginning @ Spirit of Burgas 04.08.2012



The Prodigy - Breathe, Live @ Spirit of Burgas 2012



Prodigy Spirit of Burgas 2012 Black Sea Party Zone 1



The Prodigy Spirit of Burgas 2012 Black Sea Party Zone 2



Prodigy Spirit of Burgas 2012 Black Sea Party Zone 3



Prodigy Spirit of Burgas 2012 Black Sea Party Zone 4



Prodigy Spirit of Burgas 2012 Black Sea Party Zone 5



Prodigy Spirit of Burgas 2012 Black Sea Party Zone 6



Prodigy Spirit of Burgas 2012 Black Sea Party Zone 7



Prodigy Spirit of Burgas 2012 Black Sea Party Zone 8



The Prodigy - Spirit of Burgas 2012 Black Sea Party Zone 9



Prodigy Spirit of Burgas 2012 Black Sea Party Zone 10

By the way during the concert all around the scene, there was massive marijuana smell. Probably kilos of Mara (as smokers call it for short) was smoken by fans during prodigy performance.
As a result, many of the ruffling fans were in a tranced "Nirvana" state :)
Something, I've noticed is the quality of Prodigy performance, has severely fallen if compared to old concerts of the band period 1999 - 2002.
One moment in the concert was really pissing off for me, when Keith Flinth instructed the public to GET DOWN, saying something like:

Now everybody GET DOWN, I SAID GET DOWN the sheep fans just followed the ORDER; This was pure "MIND CONTROL" as almost everyone squatted; The girl behind me tried to push me to kneel down as I refused to squat. I told her that "I don't follow orders, jokingly and didn't squatted :)

This squatting from Christian position looked like exactly like worshipping Prodigy as [ idol (God) substitute ] ...
The concert end up in a very stupid way; there was no encore performance, not even introduction of the band members to the people and even a no simply BYE to the fans. They just shut off and went away silently like a beaten dogs :)