Report of 5th week in Moscow

I start with a very literal, kitchen translation of an Afrikaans poem, and apologies to all of you who know the original.

First snow

The joy has overnight, like new snow,
transformed the foothills of my early sadness
into beauty, where every cry,
like a whip in the bright light of the gorges
sounds loud and clear. The round earth stands
chaliced white and pure as a flower

one glistening where the new waters go,
without expectation, for everything has come.
O heart, will bliss go higher, and you not die?
In me arises a quiet inkling
that all life obtains its fulness thus
and gloriously go into the peaceful death’s guard,
that you will be rinsed and broken and poured out
into this white wave of joy.

This poem, by N.P. Van Wyk Louw one of the greatest Afrikaans poets, is an appropriate commentary on this week’s stretch of the journey.
You will remember that last week I spoke about my pilgrimage getting lost. This ‘lostness’ deepened this week, like the earth under snow. During the week, we went on no excursions and nothing ‘interesting’ happened. And yet I felt I was progressing, although it remained a journey into the darkness, with no news of our ordination.
But some signposts. On Saturday night there was a record amount of snow. It was still snowing on Sunday morning as we stood waiting on the sidewalk for our lift to the Church where we have a Liturgy most mornings, and watched the cars pass by, dreamlike and soundless, like a procession of ghost machines. There was almost no wind and the air felt as crisp as the crack of the whip of which Van Wyk Louw tells.
Internally the snow had fallen and the air had grown sharp too. Every time I travel, I am surprised at how much time I spend waiting. You walk to a metro station and take 10 minutes doing so. You get there and wait for the metro train to arrive. You get into the train and wait for it to travel to its destination. From there you again walk to your destination, or wait for a bus. Frequently you travel with lifts or visit with people for whom you are not the only, or even the most important, person at the gathering. Your host sometimes has other business to attend to and you have to wait for that. Other times, like on this trip, you wait for yet another interminable talk shop at which you are the blandest African on display, to come to its utterly inconclusive end. And of course, the moment you travel with a group – especially of people on ‘Africa time’ – your waiting time increases steeply.
At home I almost never wait. My days are planned and filled to capacity, my time is managed strictly and I generally have the ability to execute my time planning with a high degree of efficiency.
So I am caught off guard every time I travel by the amount of ‘dead space’ and ‘thinking time’ I have, which fall on my soul like snow. My focussed thoughts about the things which constitute my life at home recede, leaving a jumble of disjointed ideas initially, much like the top layer of sea water when viewed from below. But gradually themes emerge and larger, deeper emotions and thoughts present themselves, almost like the snow on branches emphasise their form. I begin to see the outlines of my life in sharper relief than when I am ‘actually living’ it.
This process has intensified as my present journey lost its goal. The present became all I have, and confronted me with how to deal with the goalless and uncontrolled present, the uncontrolled and goalless life.
I can go on in this vein for a long time, but I sense I may be losing my readers’ interest. The point of the present sermon is this: I have truly discovered – I think for the first time in my life – that my perspective on the present determines how I live it, and by extension, how I life my life. And the truth of what Saint Kyrillos VI, the Coptic pope, said: ‘There are no bad days and good days, but there are days of prayer and days without prayer.’
To illustrate: I have spoken before about the interminable vigil services. For the non-Orthodox readers, they consist of three services in one, and if done properly they last between two and a half and three hours (depending on what day of the year it is). If they follow after a two hour Liturgy in the morning (before which you do not eat or drink) and a whole day of classes, they become marathons of endurance. If they are repeated five days a week and are accompanied by the broken sleep of a dormitory, they become sheer torture.
They are also entirely unpractical to execute in an African context, where we simply don’t have the choirs or the know how to conduct these services, or people who would be remotely interested to regularly attend them. In the context of training to become an African Orthodox priest therefore, enduring them night after night seems to me a monumental waste of time; time which could be better spent on a number of other pursuits which constitute infinitely more useful training.
By about the third time we finished such a service, I made my thoughts known in no uncertain terms to our study leader. I was asked to put in writing, so that it could be used to motivate a change in our program. I did so. And then? Nothing. Not even an acknowledgement of receipt. So you will appreciate that I feel somewhat ambivalent about these services, to put it mildly.
But here’s the kicker, as they say in the ads. Some evenings I surf through the service on the simple joy of the singing. Some evenings I simply try to sit as much as I can (have I mentioned that you stand for almost the entirety of Orthodox services?) and pray for my extended family and friends, one by one. I’m never finished before the service. Other evenings I simply read my increasingly beloved Afrikaans Psalter. And yes, some evenings – okay, okay, many evenings – I am like a bull in a bull ring, ready to have a go at whatever and whoever comes in my way.
See my point? Same service, different perspectives, completely different experiences.
Now I should not be heard to say that I think that some spiritual genius has in his infinite love and wisdom decided that it would be a good thing to subject us to this torture because if we do so for long enough we will see the light; and because I always wanted to be a masochistic ascetic, I’m enjoying myself more and more and have come to realise that there is Some Higher Good behind this seeming idiocy. No. What I am saying is that perspective determines our reality in a very real way (a point also made, by the way, by the McGilchrist chap I mentioned previously).
And that a prayerful perspective is able to shape our world in wonderful, unexpected ways – even the parts thereof which have become as senseless as a pilgrimage of which the goal has become lost.
Another signpost was Father Stanislav, a priest from Karélia, a large tract of land filled with rivers, lakes and forests sandwiched between Finland and the White Sea. He has the distinctions of looking like a lead actor from a Jesus movie but with Viking blood; and going through life burdened with the surname ‘Rasputin’. (I kid you not.) He is a young, kind and interesting man who gave us very good practical lessons on subjects ranging from censing a Church to organising the life of a parish. He has invited me to visit him in Karélia in January. I sincerely hope it materialises.
If my Russian readers are like most Muscovites, the are without a doubt burning to know what I think of Russians. I get this question a lot and also got it from Father Stanislav, who framed it slightly obliquely: What stood out for me about my experience of Russia so far?
I answered that two things stood out for me: that Russia is a very complex society; and that, despite my being somewhat sceptical about the glories of Russian history which have been presented to us, you cannot deny that the Russians have created a Christian, Orthodox society which has proved resilient enough to withstand the onslaught of the Soviet era. That’s more than anyone in the West can say.
Is that the whole picture? Of course not. If you want that, you’ll have to ply me with something worthwhile – and I don’t mean vodka, for which I have yet to develop a taste.
Yet another signpost: a Divine Liturgy celebrated at midnight. We did so in the beautiful baptistry I mentioned in my first report. Previously it was a beautiful space. Now it became a space of beautiful prayer. For I was privileged to be part of the most wonderful choir: young people, very well trained and professionally conducted. The hour and a half passed in a dream of joy. It was sheer bliss.
Afterwards we took part in a feast with delectable salmon pie; a round pizza-like bread with cinnamon apple on it and covered again with a thin layer of dough and to finish; and a cherry pie. Then to bed.
Friday, a dog tired day after the midnightly carousing on Wednesday, at last brought some news of ordination: the first of our number was to be ordained as a deacon on Sunday. But no further news and in fact, a repeated caution that it did not mean that the rest of us would be ordained at all, or that this ordination was an indication of when the others would be ordained. And in the evening another excruciatingly long service. We were not amused.
But on Saturday, another blessing, no two. First we went to buy me a cassock. These are the black dresses you see a priest wear (for the Protestants: you don’t get a hat with that – that’s extra). They are usually worn by anyone doing service during Church services – whether they sing, carry candles, pass on incense – and by all clergy. When on a previous occasion the two of my colleagues who did not have cassocks went to purchase them on a Sunday afternoon, I was having my first walkabout around Moscow and so did not go along to buy one.
I walked the 15 minutes from the monastery to the vestments shop with the student who was to be my interpreter. The weather was miserable: Temperatures had hovered around freezing all week and the ground was covered by ice. It rained on the way there and the ice was very slippery; I was glad to at last enter the shop on my feet. At first there seemed to be no-one in the shop, then a seemingly disinterested man with a three day beard came out from its innards. But he eyed my physique professionally and then went to fetch a cassock from a rail. It proved to be too optimistic a choice: the buttons would not fasten – no surprises there! The next one fitted better but he did not like the way it hung about me. And so it went. Eventually we settled on a cassock made of a linen mixture which covered me in a slimming modesty.
But it was too long. When I asked him about shortening it, the student at first indicated that ‘we can do it ourselves’. ‘Yeah right,’ I thought, for I saw my room mate struggling with this task for three evenings in a row, and saw the end result. So I protested, or rather asked whether the shop could do it, and offered to pay for doing so. This offer was accepted (but not the payment part) and after the purchase we repaired to another building, and the working room of a matronly lady with an impressive array of icons on the wall, and ancient, Soviet looking sowing machines arranged around a large cutting table.
She started by asking me, through the interpreter, whether I wanted the cassock to be three or five centimetres above the ground, showing us a small block of wood to illustrate what the two measurements look like. I opted for five centimetres, seeing visions of my becassocked self tumbling headlong down stairs.
After I put on the cassock, she asked me to stand still and started putting in pins where the seam would eventually go. Then she indicated that the shortening would take about twenty minutes and went to work. The student went to the passage and his cell phone’s screen. I stayed and watched. It was a wonder to see her work: silently, peacefully but with an smooth assurance born from many years of plying her craft. It was like watching someone pray.
In the afternoon I went to the Tretyakov gallery, my first visit to a Moscow art gallery where I actually got through the door. It was utter joy and gladness. I have three icon prints in my icon corner: the Vladimirskaya, the Trinity icon of Rublev, and a strange, medieval icon of St. John the Baptist with wings indicating that he was a messenger of God. All three are in the Tretyakov.
I will not overburden this report with a detailed description of my reactions to these icons, apart from saying that there was an evening service in progress in the Church where the Vladimirskaya icon – probably the most famous icon of the Virgin Mary – is kept. Listening to the choir sing whilst returning the penetrating gaze of the Virgin was an indescribable experience.
And the remainder of the gallery was a three hour long overload of impressions, thoughts and emotions – nothing short of glorious. As I walked home through the cold night air, I felt like someone who had pigged out at a Christmas party. I bought a takeaway at the local Spar and went to bed happily.
On Sunday there were two events. In the morning we attended the ordaining of the deacon from Nigeria. Ordainings are always special events, and this one especially so, for obvious reasons. The altar area behind the iconostasis was small and because Metropolitan Leonid was there, everyone in the cramped space were on their best behaviour during the fairly complex service. But everything went smoothly, by and large.
At the end of the service I had to hold a tray on which the deacons put the Metropolitan’s vestments as they took it off. (My Protestant friends will be relieved to hear that this process stops at his cassock, which he wears underneath his vestments.) As I held it facing him, he asked me how things were in South Africa. It’s one of those difficult questions which cannot be really sensibly answered in such a setting, but I tried my best. To which he responded that he had spoken to the Patriarch about the need for an Afrikaans priest, but that it was in God’s hands. ‘And when God is for us, who can be against us?’ he concluded.
Afterwards, we had tea and eats together with the Metropolitan – this time a somewhat more relaxed affair than the first, stilted meeting. Also at this opportunity, the Metropolitan made conversation with me. First he opined that the best thing to be eaten in South Africa is ‘bleetong’. Then he asked me about the possibility of exporting produce from South Africa to Russia, as a way of financing the Church activities in Cape Town.
And after the Metropolitan had left, Father Georgi Maximov, the head of the missionary department, told us that the newly ordained deacon will quite likely be ordained as a priest on the next Saturday, and that other ordinations will probably follow.
So at least there is some movement. But no clarity.
In the afternoon I visited one of the most senior monks at Sretenskiy monastery, where I stay. I had great difficulty eventually getting an appointment with someone who could help. For the purpose of this meeting was to get some guidance on how I should go about balancing all the energy sapping, time consuming vocations in my life, especially if an ordained position was to be added to my plate.
But also here there was no clarity. The interview, conducted through a young monk with excellent English, soon made evident that this monk also did not have answers, or even a method for arriving at answers. He did however give me a relic of Saint Hilarion Verei, a brilliant modern day saint who was probably poisoned by the Soviet authorities and died whilst incarcerated.
I came away from the meeting with the realisation – no, conviction – that despite my best efforts I was to remain lost also in respect of the larger direction and scope of my life.
On Monday morning, I read the following sermon by St. Theophan the Recluse:
“The Lord and the disciples sailed to the other side of the sea. The disciples had forgotten to bring bread; they had with them only one loaf, and were beginning to wonder what they should do. Knowing their thoughts, the Lord reminded them about the filling of the four thousand, and then five thousand people, thus uplifting them to the firm hope that with Him, they will not die of hunger, though they have not a single loaf of bread. How much anxiety people get from thoughts about an unknown future! There is only one relief from this anxiety—hope in the Lord; a sensible examination of what has already occurred with us and with others enlivens and strengthens. There is not a single person to be found who has never in his life experienced some unexpected deliverance from misfortune, or unexpected turns of his life for the better. Revive your soul with remembrance about these instances when gloomy thoughts begin to weary it about what to do. God will arrange everything for the better now, as before. Rely upon Him. He will send you good humour even before your deliverance, and you will not even notice your misfortune. Mercy shall encircle him that hopeth in the Lord (Ps. 31:10) Examine experiences of this in holy Scripture, in the lives of saints, in your own life, and in the lives of your acquaintances, and you will see, like in a mirror, how The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him (Ps. 144:19). Then fears about your fate will not trouble your soul.”
What am I to make of this? Is it simply a consolation, or a suggestion of a direction? Time will tell. ‘As of now,’ as my Malawian friends say, I have only the present. But as of now, that is more than enough.