Now that I’m back and (mostly) rested, I’d like to offer a few of my impressions from our recent pilgrimage to Russia.
I intend to write more later but the entire event was so overwhelming that I still have trouble wrapping my head around it. So let me offer a preliminary opinion having to do with the geopolitical situation.
Where to begin? How about here: Russia is a land of contradictions. Churchill said it best: “a riddle wrapped in an enigma, surrounded by mystery”. I for one, can’t simply explain Russia in any other way. As a civilization it is both part of Europe and not Europe –that much is true and because this is true it can’t be judged by modernist standards.
Because it stands so alone, we in the West would be foolish to see Russia in anything but its own light. In this sense it is a stunning success. Talk about GDP, mineral commodities, market capitalization and other such nonsense completely misses the point.
We should never forget how traumatized that land has been for almost the entire length of its existence: Sweden, the Teutonic Knights, the Tatars, Napoleon, Hitler and so on. And now our evil neocons foolishly provoke war. Someone once said that as a country it has PTSD. I could see that, if only briefly.
Anyway, enough of the politics. It won’t do any good to try and convince American Progressives of their folly, that Russia won’t bend to their will, no matter how many sanctions they impose. From my reading of history, I always suspected that, now that I have been there, I truly get that.
I can taste their defiance. It is second nature to them. And it is because of Orthodoxy that they have been able to rise from the ashes again and again throughout history. It is in this sense perhaps that Russia is “Holy Russia.” Our own Orthodox Progressives who have made their accommodation with the world and its god should reflect deeply on that.
In the meantime, I promise to offer a more detailed account of my pilgrimage soon enough. If anybody has Facebook, you could go to “2016 Orthodox Pilgrimage to Russia” to see literally thousands of photographs that were taken by those of us who were fortunate to attend.
Spiritual.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this – http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/95862.htm – and I don’t mean the headline of a provocateur homosexualist getting chucked out of Russia but the big story buried down in the article alleging the UAOC has been penetrated by active homosexuals? Is that true? Has anyone heard of this? Is there a chance this is being exaggerated in the ROC’s propaganda war against splinter Ukrainian churches? At the other extreme, could the UAOC be a vassal of Western cultural infiltration?
The so-called UAOC may be “a vassal of Western cultural infiltration” in Ukraine, but the Ukrainian government itself is on the verge of becoming the lord of secular progressive perversion:
http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/90345.htm
“Axios” and “many years” to Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev and All Ukraine (Moscow Patriarchate) for attempting to thwart the legalization of “marriages” between homosexuals in that overwhelmingly Orthodox country!
Looks like the Patriarch of Moscow is reading science too..
https://www.facebook.com/ochlophobist/posts/1154190061319192?comment_id=1154413967963468¬if_t=feed_comment_reply¬if_id=1470392578614411
Uh … Orthodox progressives? My how our age has forgotten its Categorical Imperatives as in, for example, the absolutely unavoidable reality that an animal with a flowing main, and hooves, and which, emitting an unmistakable neigh, races across its pasture, and the females of which, rather than reproducing its kind by giving live birth, lays eggs, absolutely cannot be a horse, since the attribute of reproduction by live birth is a categorical imperative of “horse-hood”.
An Orthodox neophyte once asked me whether I thought we Orthodox might ever have female priests. Quick as a wink, I replied that any faith community bearing all the attributes of an Orthodox church except for its priestly ordination of women absolutely would not be (because as matter of categorical imperative it could not be) Orthodox.
In the same way there absolutely cannot be an Orthodox Progressive … yes, as a matter of the conflicting Categorical Imperatives of both terms.
Very nice, George. I’m pleased you got to see that . . . glory.
I was deeply affected when I read this: ‘We should never forget how traumatized that land has been for almost the entire length of its existence: Sweden, the Teutonic Knights, the Tatars, Napoleon, Hitler and so on. And now our evil neocons foolishly provoke war. Someone once said that as a country it has PTSD. I could see that, if only briefly.’
God bless George Michalopulos for his insight here! But there’s more.
From people who were there, I heard the most remarkable account of an event in 1944 or 1945 Russia — I can’t remember. But I’m not the only one who heard this story, so I’m pretty sure that it’s true.
A great many german soldiers were captured and were being paraded for the public’s derision before being interned in a POW camp. The ragged, beaten. hungry men could barely keep in step. One old lady broke through the spectators’ barrier and pulled a rusk of bread from her pocket, probably a morsel she intended to keep for herself, and offered it to a young german soldier, loudly identifying herself as a mother and reminding everyone that those boys had mothers, too, worrying about them and praying for them.
In an instant, hundreds of other babas interrupted the parade to give what comfort they could, bread or something else. No one stopped them.
This, I think, is the most practical definition of ‘Holy Russia’ — a concept with which I’m not completely comfortable especially when I consider Russia’s rulers and their historically attestable (mis)treatment of both Russians and foreigners.
In spite of their own sufferings, the Russians’ love of life and their faith in Christ never died. Those women during WW2 — in a very Christ-like way — knew what it is to suffer and how to be compassionate, and they couldn’t stand to see other human beings suffer.
I think that this is probably still true, given my personal experience with Russians here in America.
Of course, I speak of the russian people, not their government.
Monk James, that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve read in a long time. I’ve said earlier that I didn’t believe in the concept of “Holy Russia” just “holier than Sodemerica,” but thanks to you, I’m going to reconsider. And that includes her leader as well, now that the Bolshevik tyranny has been buried.
I know Putin’s not perfect but we just saw our Glorious Leader give $400 million to the Iranians in cold hard cash (Euros and Swiss Francs mind you, not Dollars; hmmm, I wonder what they’re going to do with it). We’ve gone so far around the bend that banana republicanism would be a step up. Given all that we’re finding out about the last twenty years, anybody who tells me that the current regime is any better than Putin is delusional, clinically insane or a certified jackass.
“Given all that we’re finding out about the last twenty years, anybody who tells me that the current regime is any better than Putin is delusional, clinically insane or a certified jackass.”
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