Russia (#18) -- 10 April 2004 -- The Day Before Easter

NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND

     The last of our basketball opportunities was a 3-on-3 tournament held in a small gymnasium at a sports center. This is the kind of competition that gets many players excited since it offers multiple opportunities to have a good game that does not require running the floor. Pick and roll, pass and cut, block out and rebound. Stand at the 3-point line and launch one up. It should have favored men in their fifties who hadn't played together much. Alas!  

    I was paired with Ken Brubaker, Mason Sorensen, and Skip Lord, which, unfortunately, made me the "big man" on our team. I used to play "big" reasonably well, but not any more. We lost all three of our games, finishing, as they say, out of the money. There were some pretty intense games, however, especially in the under 30 category. The team that won the whole thing had three real bruisers, that being a result in no small way to their ability to put the hurt on opponents. I took part in the 3-point shooting and the foul shooting contests, which I figured (incorrectly) would allow me to leave international competition with a shred of dignity. But, no: I went 1 for 5 in the 3-point and 3 for 5 in foul shooting. No sour grapes here, but I think it was the unforgiving rims.

    My disappointments were overshadowed by the success of the tournament itself in drawing young people to the event where we were able to mingle, to share good will despite the language barrier. Local TV coverage also meant that the local church got some very positive exposure.

    After the tournament our friend and interpreter Andrew took some of us to meet a friend of his who is a master wood carver. The trip to his shop near the Golden Gate of the old city was a story in itself. We took the trolley-bus to a spot near the restaurant where we had had dinner the Sunday before. From there, we walked through an archway that was continuous with the buildings along the street. Almost as if we had passed through the back of C.S. Lewis' wardrobe, we seemed to enter a different world. The main street with the trolley-bus was clean and in good repair if somewhat old with its grey, soviet style, square construction.

    On the back side of the archway, the streets were rough, the buildings single-story and wooden. We passed St. George's Church (St. Georgi), the second oldest church in Vladimir dating from the 12th Century (although the present structure was built in 1784). The street we entered was muddy and puddled, the houses old, generally unpainted, and run-down. It had a neglected, 19th Century feel. One hundred yards or so along this street we turned into an alleyway that ran downhill. This was "old city" but not the part tourists usually saw.

    Clearly, this was a poor section of town, hidden behind the three and four story connected buildings that presented a respectable, clean, if dated, front on the central thoroughfare. Near St. George we could look across to another slope and see the gold domes of the Assumption Cathedral. Below on the slopes of the ravine were old shacks. That was the area we were heading into, St George rising in the background.

    A short way down this narrow mud street we turned in at a gate in an old wooden fence to the side of a very old, unmarked, nondescript house owned by the Artists Union. It was not hard to imagine that life for an artist under the Soviet regime required a willingness to work on the margins, in clandestine rooms. In 2004 it seemed to be a question of resources rather than government interference, but who was to know?

    We entered by a back door beyond a pile of rubble and a wooden outhouse. Dark entryway, dark stairs down to a basement, through a heavy metal door, down a corridor that spoke of age and ruin, through another heavy door, where we knocked on yet another door beyond.

    The master woodcarver -- Andrew's friend and teacher, both of them 43 years old -- opened the door. We went into his shop, an incredible little place, as clean, tidy, and compelling as the outside had been dark, dirty, and depressing. There were two rooms. One held a sink, a workbench, tools of a wood carver's trade, and a project in process. The other was a sitting room, with a small couch, shelves with books and spaces for finished carvings.

    Wood carving is often practiced as a craft-art, if I understand sufficiently. Andrew's friend, whose name is not in my notes, considered himself an artist, first and last, both in traditional Russian forms of wood artistry and in imaginative forms. According to Andrew, he had been working on icons when we arrived; these he had been commissioned to create for an Orthodox congregation in another city. I understood he made the icons principally as an act of spiritual devotion.

    Many of the imaginative pieces on the walls and shelves were made from "unusable" or leftover pieces of wood. He would study each piece of wood until he knew what it might become -- what it needed to become. And when he wasn't working in wood, he would use his sitting room for reading, for meditating, or for studying texts from his shelves. I wanted to know more, to ask questions. Translation, of course, can be a slow process and Andrew had a great deal to attend to; because there were 7 or 8 of us in the room, and because the master woodcarver spoke slowly, with great care, I was not able to ask as much as I had hoped.

    Nothing in the workshop was for sale, so we could not purchase anything. All these pieces were to be shown at a country-wide exhibition in Moscow in the near future. Our host was both excited and apprehensive about this show. These were all recent works made after several years of depression during which he could not work. The depression, as I understand the story, was occasioned by the loss of two fingers on his right hand to a band-saw, an accident that had occurred as he was teaching seventh graders at the local trade school.

    We could easily have spent the whole day in these rooms, asking questions, listening to the answers, and marveling at the creations on the walls. Or just marveling. For me in those underground rooms many things were beginning to come together in my understanding. I felt more than understood what that dark day before Easter held, what might be germinating, what the conviction of hope might look like.

    Too soon we had to thank our host and venture back through the dark corridor and heavy metal doors to the mud streets outside. Nineteen years on, I am struck anew with wonder at what we saw on that afternoon in those clean, bright rooms.

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.