Russia (#17) April 9, 2004 -- Good Friday Connections and Opportunities

     Three of the fathers -- John Horton, Troy Martin, and I -- had been asked to share thoughts about "fatherhood" with a young adults group. As I understood short-term missions at that time, this is where the real work of missions would happen. I had thought we would be returning to the house where the house church had met, but we were actually taken to the mission center. There were somewhere between 25 and 30 young adults attending. My notes record that we had a good time.

    We played some games, sang songs with a band, heard the testimony of a new believer, and then the American fathers shared. John Horton shared on the story of the prodigal son. Troy Martin shared on the "long vision" of fatherhood. Between these two messages, which I thought showed a good understanding of their audience, I shared on the issue of discipline.

 

    As a father and as the son of a father who disciplined, I know the subject fairly well from experience. Furthermore, it was not hard to find Biblical underpinnings for my comments. As a teacher, however, I found it hard to "read" my audience; they looked unresponsive. A few years later while teaching in Korea, I was more prepared for what body language and lack of facial expression suggested. I had thought about how to address the traditional lack of student interaction.  Although I may have been experiencing a cultural norm, I sat down feeling that I had missed an opportunity to do some good for these young adults.

    After the fathers had spoken, our group stayed for quite a while. There was a lot of conversation among the young people. Stefan played drums for a while with the band, then everyone cleared out and our group had team time. My spirits improved. All told, yes, we had a good time.

    For team time, Troy asked us to say a few words about someone in our group who had been kind to us. A lot of us offered things, but the one that stands out was this: John Woodard said he had a complicated relationship with Dan, one of our high school players, because Dan "gets under my skin in the worst way"; but he was also impressed with how easily Dan connected with kids and how eager he was to win them over. We all agreed and laughed because we had all had our own Dan experiences. Dan was pleased on both accounts -- as only Dan could be.

     At the end, I handed out the chocolate I had received at dinner, so we dispersed on that sweet note. Andrew, our interpreter, was waiting for Stefan in the hall to show him a beautiful wood carving he had made. We knew that Andrew had, among other things, done the wood carvings on the benches outside the mission center, so Stefan would naturally have asked him about the art of wood carving. 

     While I don't believe this was the carving in question, when Andrew showed up with this figure, Stefan bought it on the spot. And their art conversations, like many traceable cause and effect transactions, would lead us to one of the most profound and memorable experiences we were to have in Vladimir.

Russia (#16) The Virtue of Hustle

April 9, 2004 (Day 7)

     I'm usually pretty good at paying attention, especially looking and listening. I have had to learn when and how to ask questions since my natural tendency is to try to figure things out first. Figuring things out may be both a "guy thing" and an American thing, but I would like to think it is more than that. I remain hopeful that that the happiness I feel in "discovery" plays a part.

    That said, it is sobering to realize after a week "in country" that the lessons I needed to learn are still ground level basic. There are many parts to the business of lifelong learning for which paying attention and awareness are crucial. On that score, I note that our "American" breakfast on Day 7 included the usual -- yogurt, twinky-shaped donuts with nuts at one end, sausages in round pasta, scalding coffee -- and a treat -- pears! All in all, a good start.

    Our morning ministry was a visit to a school near the ministry center, less than 100 yards in fact.

The gym was a box-like room with a colorful floor. School children came in and sat on short benches along the wall, with their feet toeing the out-of-bounds lines. We didn't know beforehand that we would be playing a game; but there was a team on site, ready to play, so the boys played a spirited game. Every so often, as classes were changing, the seated group of children filed out and another group made their way in.

After the game, players from both teams put on various ball handling demonstrations and teamwork drills.

        Over the course of our time at that school, a dozen or more small boys came up to me a few at a time and asked for an autograph. I was told that it signified respect for authority. So this really had nothing to do with my current skill level, I get that. I signed "For my Russian friend" above my signature. Although it seemed unlikely they knew any more English than I knew Russian, they seemed delighted.

    After lunch at the ministry center we boarded a bus to the Electropribor, the electronics factory where we had played the day before. A quick internet search will reveal that "electronics" actually means military technology and navigation systems, so there was considerable government investment in that facility. 

     We were expected to play two games but again played just one when competition for the boys' team did not show. Skip tried to play each father-son combination for several stretches, reviving my flagging sense that running the floor (my primary contribution) was worth the effort. I must add that Stefan played well in all his games while I, as in the photo below, had to be satisfied motoring up and down the floor.

    No photograph of Stefan and me playing together seems to exist, so the father and son portrait in front of the Olympic bear will have to stand in for an action shot. Also, of no small note, the best action shot of me in any of our games is of my textbook free-throw form shown here. 

    Do not be fooled, by the way, by the pot-belly on the player nearest the camera. He knew exactly how to use his size and weight for maximum effectiveness.

    This was a different team than we had played previously, but they too had played together for decades and had been champions of some city or regional leagues years before. We saw photographs from those days in the corridor after the game.

    After the game we ate a chicken and rice dinner with the Russian team. I sat at a table with a man who looked like Boris Yeltsen. He had brought his wife. When the food was served, he and his wife got up and left without a word. Just as our dinner party was breaking up, he returned with a bag of chocolate bars made by the company of another man on the Russian team. He gave the bag of chocolate bars to me as a gift to share later with our team.

   

    After dinner we got back on the trolly-bus for a ride back to the mission center. Waiting for us was one of the players from our game the previous day. He was one that we could tell had been angry at us for something during the game although no one knew exactly what. He may have been a little embarrassed to see us as we trooped in. We all shook his hand and said our little Russian phrases to let him know we were happy to see him again. Whatever burden he was carrying from the game was not one we remembered or held.

    It had been a full day, but for a few of us it was not over. We had a promise, made on our early trip to the home church, that we needed to keep. So, after changing into better clothes, those of us who had gone to that church were heading out again.

Russia (#15) Cultural Instruction of the First Order

 8 April 2004

    Today we went to our second half-way house, which is to say "orphanage," twenty minutes outside of Vladimir down a dirt track, through a small village of small colorful wooden houses, to a  huge building, plaster over brick in the Russian fashion. I'm not sure now what I meant exactly by noting "in the Russian fashion" but I will assume that it simply meant that this was a common feature and practice having to do with how brick buildings were treated.

    Olga, the director, told us the facility, which had opened the previous September (so, 2003), was built by a countess as a residence in 1904. During the Soviet era the building was used as a hospital. This kind of reassignment of building function (houses, churches, monasteries, and so forth) was common. The interior of the building seemed to reflect both its origins as an aristocratic household and its repurposing as a hospital, which would have required stripping away the overtly decorative features of the interior, leaving rooms, hallways, and foyers that were clean, in good repair, bright, and plain. There were many tall windows and the walls were painted in light colors. There were tall double-doors for each room, and, as one finds in many English houses, one shuts the doors on leaving the room.

    We were given a tour, then taken to a room at the top of the central stairway where 26 children ranging in age from 3 to 14 were already assembled, seated along the walls, waiting for us. In many ways, this orphanage visit was like the orphanage we visited the day before. Skip gave a little talk to explain why we had come, our boys did tricks with basketballs, and then Skip demonstrated Andy's rope trick that had captivated children in the other orphanage. 

    Given that as church people we were used to group singing, we offered our version of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," and then a Russian worship chorus we had memorized. Many of us were still singing from the phonetic sheet we had brought along. I'm not sure who picked "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," but it strikes me now as being an odd choice, to sing at an orphanage in Russia, given all the songs our group had in our memory banks.

    The children gave us gifts they had made, and we gave them WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) bracelets and candy. Before we left we were encouraged to purchase handcrafts the children had made. These purchases were described to us as essentially donations, so we were told to pick something out and avoid the kind of product inspection we might have used at a retail shop. I bought a rooster tea-cozy for 100 Rubles. It was a very nice, quilted, flowery patchwork tea-cozy that I thought I could give to my mom. We had seen the old sewing machines the children were learning to use, one of which, no doubt, was the machine used for the stitching on my tea-cozy.

   The rooster appears in this group photo in front of Phil Stockin. But it humbles and embarrasses me, now, to confess that once we were outside again, before this group photo, I stuck the tea-cozy on my head as if it were a hat -- to everyone's amusement. I was acting, I suppose, on my usual impulse to express the humor in things.

    Almost immediately I realized that anyone inside the orphanage who happened to look out could see me wearing the rooster on my head and find my "joke" to be offensive. I remember this specifically because I was asked several times to put it on my head again for pictures and I refused. 

    Perhaps none of the kids or adults inside the building saw my moment of casual humor, I don't know. Perhaps anyone inside who saw me would have thought it funny. Again, I don't know. Perhaps it doesn't matter either way. Regardless, I knew immediately that my action was demeaning, however unintentional. Alarms were going off in my head. This was not the first lesson I had ever learned about cultural sensitivity, and I am sure I didn't understand the lesson completely, but I felt it strongly. As I look back I realize that cultural sensitivity and spiritual sensitivity in that moment were one and the same. What, after all, is the benefit of spiritual sensitivity, spiritual discernment, for which we have all prayed, if it ignores cultural sensitivity and general inappropriateness at moments like this?

    There were more personal lessons to come. That afternoon we played against a veteran men's team, but since the other boys team did not show up, the game was essentially our high school guys and Andy Norton against their men. Given their level of experience and talent, my notes tell me that I played just one minute at the end of the first quarter. At the time I remember hoping I would be sent in again. As I look at the photographs now of my 55-year-old self playing, I know why I wasn't.

     On the other hand, as visible in this teams photo, I seem to have made a connection with Victor, the man with the whistle. Perhaps it was all about good sportsmanship rather than competition after all.

    After a day of hard, humbling, and eye-opening personal lessons, I noted that we had good conversations over dinner. At my table were Victor, who was Director of Culture at the electrical factory where we played, and Alexander, the man who had been active in setting up our games and visiting sites. I note that we parted after dinner having exchanged a lot of information and good feelings. It was a positive and hopeful way to end a day full of lessons in spiritual maturity that I am still processing.

Russia #14 An Interlude Concerning Angels

     One would not be surprised to find angels in cemeteries, carved into the faces of grave markers or perched atop a stone pillar. That and the presence of crosses on Orthodox Churches everywhere in Russia did not prepare me for the angels we found at war memorials. Americans commonly employ angels at war memorials in our country, too, but seeing them in Russia cast them in a new light. It allowed me to see them in a new way.

    This imposing angel-topped obelisk honoring fallen soldiers stands at a large memorial installation in Moscow; it is dedicated to the many who died during WWII.  Russia has suffered greatly and for many centuries from various wars, invasions, the constant need to defend. The figure at the base of this obelisk is St. George slaying the dragon. St. George and the story of his slaying the dragon holds a long and honored place in the Russian narrative.   

     This white memorial with three kneeling angels, as I understand it, had been very recently built when we visited during one of our tours of Vladimir. It was one of several we stopped to see.

     One also finds angels in places and contexts. I might have thought these strange before I encountered them. While we lived in North London, for example, we frequently shopped near "the Angel," identified physically with these silver wings.

 

     Some years after I took this photograph, I came across a reference to "the Angel" in Islington, North London, in Oliver Twist, the Charles Dickens novel. Dickens's reference predates the erection of these wings and he would not recognize "the Angel" were he to return for a visit.

    Still, it was a joy for us to live there and discover this treasure, which like the memorials in Russia signify a deep and complex history of human activity. I am grateful for these opportunities and experiences.

 

 

 

 

      Somewhere in the last few decades Donna has begun collecting angels of a smaller variety for display during the Advent season. These, crafted of a variety of materials, tell different stories, display degrees of formality, and, as one would expect, demonstrate a range of artistic vision. They also offer us different ways of thinking about the role of angels, seen and unseen, in our lives.

Ceramic, wood, metal, fabric; majestic, humble, starkly innocent; faceless or ornately detailed -- all make a contribution to the host of angelic beings we set out for that most holy holiday season. We use them in this seasonal way, but angels are surely not confined to any one season or occasion.

    I do have favorites among these angels, of course. I am very fond of this hand-carved and hand-painted angel from the nativity set carved by our Russian translator and my friend, Andrew. This strong personal connection to Andrew is also a strong connection to the faith community in Russia, to the Russian "folk" culture, and to the Biblical narrative we re-imagine and celebrate at Christmas.

    Angels have served many functions, of course; they are not confined to Christian holy days. In our own family life, Donna and I have experienced the presence of angels. Those experiences deserve their own story on another occasion; their reality, though unseen, is tangible for us.

     Apart from that, we know that however much we are attracted to its "weight" angel figures can be misused in ways that make them superficial. Or in ways that attach them to deeply meaningful, deeply disturbing events or beliefs or circumstances. A careful look at the angel with the trumpet in the first photo will show that the obelisk takes the shape of a bayonet, which is attached at bottom to the muzzle of a rifle. For me at least, that coupling of angels to the bloody end of a weapon of war is hard to resolve.

     Nevertheless, in this Easter season, I come back to our Christmas angel collection. My favorite is a seated angel. Like its counterparts at the war memorials in Russia this one, too, is a cemetery angel, where it appears as a sign of hope for the dead. 

Unlike the other angels, however, I imagine this one to be seated at Jesus' tomb. In Mark's account of Easter morning, he greets the women who have come to anoint his body. "Do not be alarmed," the angel tells them. "You seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. He has risen." 

    The angels we find in cemeteries signify our hope of resurrection. The angel at Jesus tomb testifies that resurrection is an accomplished fact.

Russia (#13) Places off the Beaten Path, thank you please

      Back at the Mission Center on April 7th, after our morning at the orphanage, we had a "Russian lunch" -- salmon soup with potatoes and carrots, bread, followed by circular pasta and tiny meat loaves that might have been sausages. And very hot tea instead of very hot coffee. No yogurt, sadly. I was getting used to it, but there you are.

     We boarded the bus at 1 for a trip out of town.

     We traveled for an hour and a half through incredible countryside, seeing monasteries, old churches, even some famous ones none of us had ever heard of -- all at some distance. That the countryside is filled with this historic evidence of Christianity is evident everywhere.

     We saw huge fields where farmers were burning off detritus from last growing season, smoke drifting toward the horizon. Here and there, many old-style villages -- two rows of facing wooden houses on either side of a dirt road, many of the houses painted bright blue or green. And the famous birch forests that I have read about in Russian novels.

     We traveled on a two-lane road, rough as rough, dodging potholes when possible. At one point we saw police around a car accident -- a truck had bumped into a small car, rear-ended it. The presence of police on the highway created a great deal more interest on the bus than pastoral landscapes and ancient villages that held my attention. Perhaps we were looking for some signs of confrontation, but there were none.

    We turned off the main highway onto another road that led through a very primitive town, on toward Kovrov, a city used for high security industry during the Soviet era.

                                 

   We played our basketball games in a munitions plant on the nicest floor we had seen to that point. The boys played tough once again, winning by one point in overtime. There were lots of spectators, especially kids. The Dads played a better game overall than our first one although we still lost by 13 or 14 points. I noted for posterity or, perhaps, to revive my shrinking hopes for basketball respectability, that I scored 7 points. Thus, the high point of my international athletic career.   

     After the games we gave away all the WWJD bracelets we had brought along to the teenagers and especially to the smaller boys who came around to ask questions and get autographs. There were many opportunities to tell who we were and why we had come.

    Then both teams climbed onto our bus for a short trip down tiny lanes to a restaurant. John Horton and I were joined by Andrew, our interpreter, and the three big players (center, two forwards) -- Yuri, Mikhale, and Sergei. 

     We asked about each other's occupations, man-talk as it were. When John said he was a pastor, Yuri started asking him questions with Andrew interpreting. Before long John had shared his testimony, John Wesley's testimony, and the plan of salvation. It was amazing.

     I managed a halting conversation with Sergei, who spoke as much English as I spoke Russian. As we got up to leave Sergei gave both John and me a coin from the old Soviet Union. The coin showing Lenin with right arm raised in that pose familiar to everyone from that era was well worn on the front side as if it had been rubbed repeatedly with a thumb. I don't know if these coins were or had been in common circulation. What it cost Sergei to part with this coin, I can only imagine; but as a gesture of friendship it was unmistakable and touching.

    As our bus began to move back toward Vladimir through the dark, dark countryside, we were asked to move toward the back for team time, leaving our Russian translators and organizers in front behind the driver to have their own conversations.  As we sang a couple of hymns at the end of our team time, two of the Russians -- Alexander, our contact with teams in Kovrov, and Oxana, a university professor -- came back to sit near us. 

    When we stopped singing, Oxana stood and said, "Can you sing more?"

    So we sang more, maybe 8 or 10 hymns and songs of the faith, often singing three or four or five verses of each if someone knew from memory how the next verse started. All of the us Dads (churched fathers) and many of the boys knew these songs well from years of singing them in church. Many of us knew harmonies as well, so the singing took on a richness as if we had been singing together for decades. Singing them acappella, in the dark, in this unplanned way as the bus bounced along, was a uniquely moving experience for many of us. As had happened earlier at our visit to the orphanage, I was aware of how profoundly my world was being enlarged, and I was extraordinarily grateful for God's goodness.

    I don't know what this experience meant to our Russian companions, but when we ran out of time or ideas or songs and the bus grew quiet again, Oxana stood again and said "thank you, please."

Russia (#12) Places Not on the Map

 07 April 04

     In these days of ubiquitous and instantaneous communication, it is both strange and surprising to consider just how few options we had in 2004 on our trip to Russia. We had one satellite phone and no cell phones with us. No one but John Woodard, our IT guy, had a computer. We had given over sending "news" home to Skip, who would log on every couple of days to provide updates.

     When we were given place names as we boarded the van for our site visit, I wrote them down along with whatever information might also be disseminating from the group leader. The further back in the van or bus one was seated, the more fragmentary or generalized the information. I note this difficulty because when we would headed out, as we did to an orphanage on this morning of the 7th, I cannot locate it geographically except to say that it was not far away.

    At the orphanage, we heard from the Director and from the school psychologist. The Director explained that he was "Papa" for the children residing there.

    Then we moved to another room to watch the children perform. One teacher sang and told stories. She called on several of the eighteen kids assembled to participate at different points of the performance.

    Most of the kids living in this home were not orphans as we normally think of that term. They were "temporary" due to family problems such as alcoholism, domestic violence, and the blight of extreme poverty. "Temporary," I gathered, meant that they could go home when conditions there improved or when foster homes became available, although it struck me that neither situation was likely. Their parents were not deceased, as a rule, just not able to care for their kids adequately.

    While we watched, one little girl showed off her gymnastics skills. Then the "sports director" -- a retired gymnastics coach of some national reputation -- did hand stands, balancing on the hands of another adult who was lying on the floor. We cheered and applauded, of course.

    When they had entertained us for a while, our group stepped in to provide a few entertainments of our own for them. One of the guys juggled basketballs;

 

another demonstrated a rope trick that required two participants attached with ropes to separate themselves from one another without untying the ropes; and a third person (neither photographed nor named in my notes) performed several card tricks.

    The show stopper, however, was clearly Mason Sorensen who played an animated version of "Mama's Little Baby Loves Shortn'n'in Bread" on his harmonica. The entire room got into it -- even the smallest kids were clapping to the rhythm.

      When he was finished, he gave the harmonica to the Director for the kids to use, and then he gave out candy bars. We donated the basketballs as well. It was a great way to end our short visit.

     As we climbed back into the van,  I thought about our short trip to the orphanage. What is to be said for showing up if only to sit, smile, clap, and observe as I had done? We tend to think of ministry opportunities in terms of grand gestures of some sort. Our thinking emphasizes doing. Was it enough just to be there? 

     I don't have a good answer to these questions, yet I know I would not have missed this experience for whatever else I might have been doing. My view of ministry was undergoing major reconsideration. In our technology saturated times, maybe making the trip, being in the room, seeing these kids face to face was communication enough. I know it was for me.

Russia (#11) "Aht - LEECH - nah"!

     As an element of our preparation for this missions trip to Russia, we were told that our responses to the country and to the culture would likely change over the ten days we were there. We could expect, broadly speaking, to think everything is wonderful early on before finding all that "goodness and wonder" replaced by overwhelming negatives -- a kind of manic/depressive experience. That up and down roller coaster should, finally, even out, find a middle ground, allowing us to see the country for what it is, neither all good nor all bad. This last state of mind would allow us to see Russia realistically, objectively. The caution for us was that some would not have enough time in country for their perspectives to even out.

    One doesn't have to leave home to know that there is enough "bad stuff" virtually everywhere to complain about if one is disposed that way. Complaint-worthy stuff can be comprised of many things on a trip to a foreign country -- being outside of one's comfort zone, discovering that few things meet one's expectations, actual hardships of one sort or another, or, even, boredom. 

       All this to say, my personal experience in Russia, as it has been with all the countries I have visited, did not follow this pattern. For me, it has all and always been "aht-LEECH-na" ("excellent," according to our Russian phrase sheet), as I told my student questioner at the Pedagogical University. Oh, the privilege and joy of being there!

      Even posing for a group photo in front of a statue of Lenin, whose patched, pasted, and strangely preserved body lies in state in a mausoleum alongside Red Square in Moscow, was a once-in-a lifetime treat. I'm not sure where the little boys who joined us in the photo materialized from but, I guess, everyone enjoys a serendipitous photo-op! 

     We were told that many of these soviet-era monuments had been torn down, but the ones that remain -- and there are many -- remind us that politically inspired hero adulation is tenuous and fleeting.

   We were fascinated, or course, by the gym floors that infused vivid color into our days. In many of these gyms we also found the Russian Olympic Bear mascot from the 1980 summer games that the US pulled out of over human rights concerns. These bears adorned many walls in the athletic venues we visited.

     On other walls in these athletic spaces we found whimsical cartoonish figures meant, I suppose, to lighten the mood and encourage the young athletes. Here, in down time before or after games, the boys found a training room with these figures. Stefan took on the climbing rope challenge and was rewarded with an encouraging thumbs up from the big dog on the wall.

     At some point among these astonishing sights and opportunities, it began to dawn on me exactly how extraordinary it was for us to be in Russia at that moment of relative peace and congeniality. The Dads among us, having grown up in the Soviet era, had to regard this experience as nothing short of miraculous. 

      I would have this sense constantly in the days to come. 

     I remember early on our first day in Russia, as our bus was driving away from the Moscow airport in, we passed a police station. In front of this small station were two uniformed solders sweeping the walkway with short handled brooms made of bundles of sticks or limbs. But for the uniforms, the long military overcoats, they might have been mistaken for the babushkas one sees frequently tidying up.

    I was not fast enough with my camera to capture that scene. Like so much from that trip -- and from life as we might experience it -- I saw a richness that passes too quickly to be captured or saved, but for which I will always be grateful.

    All notions of basketball prowess aside -- the idea that our primary task of making friends and being ambassadors of good will, our mission, was growing in me. It seems right to me now, all these years later, that what we understand of what we are doing in God's service must be grounded in the common details of place and time -- a grounding that fills us with unspeakable wonder.