The dry air makes me drowsy. The sun sets late in the evening and rises early in the morning. Today is Victory Day and we see fireworks in the evening. I love it here.
How Russia Makes Me Feel
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Category Archives: Russia Trip
My Favorite Country
Moscow Metro
I love my mother’s homeland with surprising scenes. The beautiful metro with stained glass shows pictures, and the bright lights shine. The parks are full of flowers, trees and palaces. The sky has clouds that look like white smoke. The country sings many praises to God on high. Red Square is the heart of Moscow, and my favorite city is red top to bottom.
Our Home Away From Home
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Red Square in Moscow, by Fedor Alekseev, 1801
My father always commented after a long time away that he was going back to work so that he could rest from his vacation. While everyone wishes for a vacation to get away from it all, the work required for the planning and execution keeps many a person from ever leaving their predictable patterns of home, school, and job. Yet unmitigated stress and monotonous labor strains both body and soul and causes one to forget his/her true purpose in this life and in the one to come. Continue reading
A Declaration of Interdependence
Saints Lives Alongside the Daily News & Toys
As our time in Russia comes to a close, I think most about the day-to-day providences that surround us in this vast land of Third Rome. They are divine providences that even a whole century of atheist communism could not break or expunge from the people’s memory. And they are founded on an interdependence between church and state, between Christ and culture whose foundation extends a whole millenium to the very Baptism of the people in the 10th century. Continue reading
Talking Water Slides
Our family went to a water park. It was a big surprise for me. Continue reading
Pop Culture That’s Alive
In a previous post, I exaggerated a bit about our family’s lack of media consumption. We do watch a little bit of television in Russia, but it is the kind of programming that we don’t find in America. After breakfast around 10:00am, we watch a 20 minute segment of cultural news on a whole channel appropriately named Kultura which also features documentaries, interviews, classic films, fine art reviews, opera, ballet… you name it. It’s a bit like PBS on steroids.
Similarly, the children’s theatre here is on a whole different level. I went today with my children to the Old Moscow Circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard; it was the first time for me as well as for my children. Continue reading
Oases of Calm in a Desert of Noise
For a large family like ours to come from a small city like Boston and choose a much larger city like Moscow for a summer vacation seems strange. Most folks that live in cities during the year seek to escape them in the summer. But Moscow is no ordinary booming metropolis.
Begun over eight centuries ago as the central meeting point of several other cities that form a golden ring around her, the city of St. George bustles with the busyness of a thousand villages rolled into one. One of only 24 megacities, it is the largest inland and coldest megacity in the world. Nestled in this beehive of commerce and activity are the jewels established many centuries past, the spiritual heart of Russia’s modern and ancient capital, the oases of calm in this grand desert of noise: the Moscow Monasteries. Continue reading
How’s the Weather There?
Alluring Moscow Summer Sky
There’s a saying in Boston that if you don’t like the weather, just wait a few minutes. It is even more true of Moscow in the summertime where clouds constantly roll and change a bright sunlit sky into a big downpour. After a downpour there is a cool weather. The weather here like the people moves in strange and unpredictable ways and teaches all of us to lean not on our own understanding but in all things to discern the ways of providence.
Organic, Local Prayer Served 24/7
Street Chapel in Greece
I had a seminary professor who ridiculed the idea of a small private chapel. He reasoned that if Liturgy means “the work of the people”, would not a private chapel limit this work to mere self-service or just a small hand-picked elite? While I agree with the principle of opening divine services to as many as possible, I think he might be missing the purpose of these smaller chapels and by extension the small, local parish church.
In Russia, the small chapels which dot the roadside, stand guard at the cemeteries, and provide a wayside Inn of Salvation at the airports and train stations are called chasovnya which I presume is derived from the Russian chas for “hour”. They are placed everywhere for those who need to pray at odd hours and not just the scheduled times of morning Liturgies and evening vigils. Their presence invokes the universality of the faith, that prayer is not limited to certain times or important metropolitan centers, but extends to the farthest reaches of creation. Continue reading
When Things Don’t Work
I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)
An avid reader of this blog several years ago implored me to tell a few of the difficulties of living abroad with a large young family. While I do not wish to complain about our gracious host country, I also do not want to paint all of our experiences with an overly rosy outlook. Truth be told, it is often quite hard, especially when things don’t work out the way they are planned. And especially for us Americans who just expect everything as a rule to be safe, expedient, and convenient, a paradoxical place like Russia can become quite unnerving. Continue reading
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