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.