Russia -- 04-04-04, Palm Sunday, Later the same day (#5)

 

     I am sure I didn't appreciate at the time just how jarring it would be to experience, however slightly, such a rapidly changing set of scenes and circumstances. In less than 24 hours we had left the relative familiarity of western Europe for a world that was simply "other," unfamiliar. And we were in constant motion, so there was almost no time to "take it in" -- whatever that might have entailed. 

    Everything about our quick "tourist visit" to the Orthodox service on Palm Sunday brought this otherness into sharp, though confusing, focus. The Assumption Cathedral itself commands the highest point in Vladimir. It stands atop a bluff, where the view of the river and the vast plain below is extensive. The city of Vladimir extends across the plateau atop the bluff where the Cathedral stands sentinel.

     The reasons for building on the high ground are clearly related to security, to self-preservation. By the time an advancing enemy army reached the base of the bluff and began to make its ascent up the grade to attack, ( I'm thinking anytime before the use of air warfare) the city would have had considerable advance warning, perhaps days. And warning -- time to ready the defenses -- was crucial, then as now. The city would be "saved" by the church, after a manner of speaking. Historically however, this "lead time" did not always work. Vladimir was destroyed by invaders more than once over the centuries.

 

      Next to the Cathedral was a monastery. After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution the Church would have been preserved as a "museum," and the monastery was converted into a military barracks. No doubt many churches were destroyed under Soviet rule, but many also were secularized as museums due to their artistic, architectural, and cultural significance. 

    In this way and for this reason, many Orthodox churches were able to reopen after the Soviet Union broke apart. This, without modernizing -- a piece of the ancient past reappearing almost overnight. We in the west might have expected Orthodoxy to have been wiped out during the decades of Soviet rule, but it was not. 

    Nevertheless, it is into this presumed religious vacuum following the disintegration of the USSR that many religious groups, including our own, arrived. I do not wish to suggest that Global Partners should not have gone in -- far from it. What I am suggesting is that the situation (political, cultural, social, historical, and religious) is harder to assess and respond to from afar than we in the west might imagine.

  . 

       Beyond the former monastery is a much smaller chapel built by one of the Czars for private services. Though on a much grander scale, it reminded me of the small churches (or chapels) built by the upper classes in England for private services. Religious services for the locals, for the masses, were all well and good -- even necessary -- just so long as the aristocracy did not have to mix.

    Our quick walk-through of the Assumption Cathedral left me with many questions about all sorts of things, not least of which was how one ought to reconcile the role of tourism with ministry.

    Nevertheless, once we had gathered outside the Cathedral, our group split up. Two ministry teams from our main group, one headed by Mason Sorensen and one headed by John Horton, both pastors, headed out in vans. 

    The rest of us walked back to the main road to take a trolly-bus to the Wesleyan Mission Center for a Palm Sunday worship service. We were glad to get back on the trolly-bus, out of the weather: The wind was cold, cold, cold. Many of us had not dressed sufficiently just as the man at the airport had predicted. I was grateful for my wool stocking cap.

    Although it was conducted entirely in Russian, the service was a delight -- mostly young people and middle-aged adults.

    During the few moments given to "greet your neighbor" I greeted a teenage girl standing nearby who was embarrassed and quickly turned away. I had more success with kids -- the 5th grade daughter of a young Canadian missionary couple, and two unattached boys (street kids, someone suggested) who looked up questions in a phrase book to ask me: When did you come? How long are you staying? How old are you? It was a good exchange, I think; I had found my comfort level.

    Our missionary contact, Pastor Blake, brought a message from John 18 -- in English with a translator converting his words into Russian. Although John 18 makes a lot of sense for Palm Sunday and the run-up to Easter, I remember nothing about the sermon. No notes beyond the Bible reference and no visual memories apart from Pastor Blake smiling as he spoke into the microphone.

    From the Ministry Center we piled into a van for a short ride to a restaurant, where I dutifully noted "chicken, with ice cream for desert." Back to the hotel at 3:30. Pick up at 4 by the Canadian missionary and his 5th grade daughter, whom I had met in the service, to go to their house for "tea" -- pigs-in-a-blanket, shredded carrots in vinegar, peas, and potato salad.

    There is a lesson of some sort here: my notes on food are extensive but the sermon is entirely overlooked.

    At tea we met three Christian students, Russian, who belonged to yet another gathering place -- a house church where we would be heading next. We tried to express friendliness despite the language barrier. But whether it was jet-lag, language barriers, the culture shifts and expectations, or the quick changes in location I was struggling. Some in our group were much better at these interactions than I proved to be. 

    I can't remember a longer Palm Sunday before or since. After tea concluded, we got on yet another trolly-bus and rode to the end of the line. The tracks ended at a concrete barrier -- that kind of "end of the line." It was starting to get dark as we hiked across muddy lots and down muddy streets on our way to the house church, a first journey, I see now, deeper into the heart of Russia.

 

 

Russia 2004: Palm Sunday (#4)

 

April 4, 2004

     A most interesting day.

     At 8:30 we were served breakfast in the hotel: eggs, a twinky-style donut with coconut on top, a small piece of dark bread with ham and cheese melted on it, a container of yogurt, and extraordinarily hot coffee. The Russian women who served us seemed eager to know whether we liked the food -- a question they communicated by gestures and which we responded to with thumbs up, smiles, nods, and "good-good." Apparently, via our translator, they had wanted to serve us an "American breakfast."

     As we had arrived at our hotel, Hotel 59, pretty beat from the long hours of travel, and as the hotel was not lit up at night, we were not able to get a closer look at our accommodations before heading out for our first full day in Russia. 

     It snowed overnight. This morning the air was quite cold. We had no games or clinics scheduled for Sunday, only church visits, ministry opportunities. The first of these, more of a tourist moment, was a trip to a Russian Orthodox Church, the Assumption Cathedral. We rode the trolly-bus, which was warm and easy transportation, but generally old and dirty outside. A trolly-bus runs without tracks down the center of the street, attached overhead to electrical lines.

    The Orthodox Church was packed when we arrived, as one might expect on a Palm Sunday, with a brisk business going on just outside the church doors in pussy willow bundles, as a northern climate substitute for palm branches.

      How does one describe a 12th Century Orthodox Cathedral?

    I am not speaking as one who has experience with an Eastern Orthodox form of worship or devotion. Nor can I adequately describe the astonishing architecture. What I say descriptively is that the worship service and the architecture of the cathedral itself are a direct and vital expression of Orthodox theology -- here as it also clearly exists in the Orthodox (Coptic) Church in Egypt.

    Shortly after our visit, I made these observations: Huge central supports (columns) blocked access to the sanctuary and our view of priests carrying out the offices of worship. We entered to beautiful singing, a cappella, in harmony. We could not see the singers either although the music was majestic and otherworldly. Or, perhaps, a better word is ethereal. As I think about it in memory I would say the singing seemed to come out of the walls and ceiling. It surrounded us.

    I wish I had noted more detail. The outer area where we were permitted as visitors was crowded with devout worshipers, largely but not exclusively old(er) women dressed mostly in black. Every square inch of the interior, as is customary, was  "decorated," even the floor and ceiling. Decorations and icons of all sorts: gold work, vividly colored paintings of Biblical figures and stories and saints of the church, flickering lamps, words ( Bible verses?) in cyrillic (Russian) painted on walls, and so forth. As a lifelong protestant from what we might call a "plain" tradition, this attention to detail, to packing every available space with wonder and worship was beyond fascinating.

     At the back -- a place for the sale of religious books, relics, religious trinkets. We were not there to engage in the worship service, which I would have welcomed -- but to look around and then leave after our slow walk-through by the door opposite.

     We had been warned not to speak -- period -- not to stay long, not to touch anything, to move about patiently, not to disturb worshipers. We learned later that it was impolite to keep your hands in your pockets or to wear a hat, although most of the Russian women wore head scarves and many of the few men present wore hats. Some of the boys enjoyed the novelty of the place a bit too much, I should think. I felt more than one look of what I took to be disapproval. 

After our 20 minutes or so inside we regrouped outside for the next part of our day.

    Given a choice, I would have stayed in the church to stand quietly at the back and "take in" what I could. I had my fairly primitive disposable camera with me but the thought of taking pictures struck me as falling somewhere between rude and insulting, so I kept it in my pocket. [For the curious, there are many pictures on-line of the Cathedral's interior. Those are clearer, better pictures than I might have taken, but they are not the photographs I would have found most interesting or telling; they would not have followed my curiosities.

    Brief as it was, this walk through of an Orthodox Church brought into focus a number of discomforts -- cultural, religious, relational -- that I have felt and reflected on -- and continue to wrestle with. There would be more of these engaging discomforts in the days ahead.

 

 

Russia -- 2004: Moscow to Vladimir (#3)

3 April 2004, Later the Same Day

     At the head of the road to Vladimir, with signs of construction for new airline terminals behind us, we passed a huge war memorial, one of many in the Russian Federation. I have no doubt that the modernizing construction has changed many aspects of life in many parts of Russia since 2004. But as we passed the war memorial I was eager to take in as much of the recent past as I could, to experience what remained of the Soviet mandate that had occupied what I knew of Russia up to that point.

    I had thought at the time that Vladimir, our destination, was south of Moscow, but a check of maps clearly shows that it lies east and slightly north of Moscow, a 3 - 4 hour drive. Once we left the immediate vicinity of Sheremetyevo International Airport (SVO), as memory serves, we were on a two-lane cross country road-trip. 

    As I often do on such trips, I found a seat near the back with access to a window as I try to absorb as much of whatever is out there as humanly possible. It's an added bonus if I can move from one side of the bus to the other as scenery changes, thereby improving my chances of catching more.

    My notes are sketchy for this first leg of our time in Russia, but I remember considerable two way traffic early on which quickly thinned out. The highway, like many I have traveled in the US, was full of patches, heaves, and hole. It needed to be replaced.

    Evidence of the Soviet era was everywhere -- old blocky cement buildings (especially apartment buildings), military outposts along the highways, and so forth. A certain grayness dominates. Not all of the hammer and sickle emblems and not all the statues of Lenin had been removed by any means.

    Two hours or so into that first leg of the drive we stopped at a roadside restaurant for "shaklih," Russian BBQ, if I remember correctly. The restaurant was small -- two rooms -- with a huge guard dog outside near the entrance. I kept thinking it was a captive wolf. Even though it was chained and confined by a chain-link fence, that dog looked about as fierce as anything I had ever encountered.

    Consider it weakness if you like, but I did not make eye contact with that dog let alone position myself close enough to take a picture with my disposable camera. I had made the regrettable calculation that it would be better to leave my  real camera at home and purchase a couple of single-use cheap-o cameras just in case I somehow got separated from my better one.

 

    The wolf at the door notwithstanding, the food was delicious -- Russian salad, pork cubes (the shaklih, I believe), cole slaw, fried potatoes, and sprite. 

    I have tried hard to pay attention to the foods on our travels, especially to first meals, and especially when someone tells us this or that is "typical."

    As it grew dark during the last hour and a half of our bus ride to Vladimir, I kept nodding off until we slowed for the city itself. Vladimir presented a foreboding picture, entering, as we did, at night in late winter. A few people walked along the streets. Dim lights glowed in a few windows of old dreary apartment buildings.

    On arrival, I am surprised that our hotel is completely dark from the outside. We unloaded our bags and equipment from our bus, stood around in the lobby waiting to be registered, which involved surrendering our passports and getting our room assignments. We have been more or less awake for better that 40 hours. A description of the room can wait.

    I slept like a log.

  

Russia 2004: First Impressions (#2)

3 April 2004

  Our flight took seven hours overnight from Toronto to Frankfort and, after several hours of layover, another 3 hours to Moscow.

   Set aside for a moment the weeks and months of preparation for this journey, the practices, the prep talks, the pep talks, the Visa process, the individual fundraising. My first impressions of Russia began with the landscape as we flew in low on our approach. I kept looking out the window at the huge forests and long, winding rivers, at the long, straight, two-lane roads and the still-idle farmland -- all still in the lingering grip of winter -- waiting for a first glimpse of Moscow, a city I knew well but didn't know at all. Then without ceremony we landed. Just like that. We were in Russia.

     Moscow airport at that time was smaller than expected, aging and decaying, with an air of old communist years lingering. Dark, sad, austere. We waited in the passport line with many other foreigners, working our way slowly toward one of three uniformed officers who had to verify each passport and visa via computer, be sure the paperwork was complete and in hand, and stamp the works. Our officer was a rather boyish looking man in an army uniform. He was very serious about his work, silent and unsmiling; efficient and deliberate, but not especially fast.

    We had been told to have our paperwork ready and to stay on task and, importantly, to avoid the common American tendency to joke around in line or to chat up officials as they did their jobs.

    Eventually, we all made it through to baggage claim. There were dozens of bags strewn around waiting for their owners who had yet to be processed.  It was easy to find our bags since we had marked them all with pieces of yellow CAUTION tape before leaving Houghton. 

    Some of us found a public bathroom while we waited for the last of our group to be cleared. The restroom was small as I remember -- one stall, one sink. A white-haired old man with weather-reddened face and a bottle of hard liquor was vomiting loudly into the sink. We took our turns at the stall and went out quickly, using bottled water to wash our hands in the corridor.

    What can I say about these first experiences in Russia with Russians, so different from each other and both so very serious. My heart and mind were being filled and wrenched at the same time. It was not possible to know, then, what was a singular experience and what might be typical.

    We moved our bags through customs without a hitch. A middle-aged heavy man with dark hair and a Stalin-like mustache, also in uniform, waived us through without getting up from his chair. "Your uniforms are not good!" he joked, "you'll freeze!"

 

    Just beyond the customs area was a half-glass wall/corridor and several hundred people in winter clothes waiting, some holding up signs for particular travelers. Ken Blake and a young woman named Anastasia were waiting for us. Ken was the field director for Global Partners in Vladimir. Anastasia was the first of three or four translators we used in country.  

    Once outside it was clear new facilities were being built to replace the old terminal. The sun was shining. Ken phoned the bus driver who arrived quickly and we set off for our temporary home in Vladimir.