Girl with God

A young girl quietly reads during midnight service, on the eve of Christmas at a church in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A pair of church candles are burning over the pages; more than a reading aid, the candle interpreted in the Orthodox Christian tradition as the light of the Holy Spirit and the enduring totality and singularity of the church, as one large community of faithful. Cultivating the presence of the sacred realm is an integral aspect of Ethiopian Orthodox faith. This dimension of spirituality, a sensory intuition that is developed at an early age, was studied through people’s attention to ritual materials. The Book, as the ‘living Word’, is one principal example of a vital object and source that inspires a vast domain of interactions, such as the intimacy of touch and the deference of prostration.