The Great Russian Adventure - Intro

Psalm 37 v 4: Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

The Great Russian Adventure

My ancestors are Scottish, German and English. I don’t believe there is a drop of Russian blood in my body. But since adolescence I have been fascinated with Russia. On my best friend’s sixteenth birthday, her dad took us to the premiere of Dr Zhivago in Hollywood. (We were so innocent; we didn’t even understand the concept of an affair and had to have an explanation during the intermission – poor Mr Eipper.)

So was it the dramatic opening of the wee boy gathered with others round his mother’s grave in the depths of a Russian winter? Was it the frightening image of Zhivago trekking through Siberia, his facial hair frozen and his lips frostbitten? Was it the scenes of revolution and hardship? The beauty of Lara or the exotic attraction of Omar Sharif? 

Or was it my high school years in orchestra, playing Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet? University years studying Dostoevsky and Tolstoy? Taking political science classes in Soviet foreign policy? 

Voraciously reading everything Solzhenitsyn wrote and championing him when he was arrested and then deported? They were the years of the Vietnam war and I wasn’t a Communist sympathiser in any way (though I opposed the war), and still am not. The horrors of the Stalin years and the deprivations and systematic dismantling of centuries of sincere faith are desecrations of the human spirit. 

But still, Russia – the vast steppes, the ‘trans-Siberian railway’, the fairytale onion domes and the red walls of the Kremlin – have always stirred my soul. Beautiful. Haunting.

So meeting Ivan and Ksenia was like a gift from God. Unexpected. Not even on my radar. For that meeting to grow into a deep and sincere friendship has been amazing, not least because of the different generations to which we belong. For them to suggest a plan that we visit Russia with them felt so right, so natural, such a blessing, and we immediately set to learning the Cyrillic alphabet and desperately trying to remember a few words.

And so began the Great Russian Adventure, one of the wonders of my life, one of the many gifts God has dropped into my lap. God – our loving heavenly Father – who doesn’t always answer my prayers the way I want but then lavishes some unexpected pleasure on me like this – how I love him. 

Perhaps many would think this was just a circumstantial situation, but I see God’s fingerprints all over it. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Amen.

Over the next weeks I will try to share some of the experiences, some of the thoughts and feelings from September in Moscow, Tver and St Petersburg, enjoying ‘Indian summer’ weather, fabulous culture and amazing cuisine. 

Gratitude to God. Gratitude to Ivan and Ksenia.

Was it a bear?

We had passed it before I could recognise what it might be. A ball of brown fur on the roadside. A dead ball of brown fur.

‘A bear!’ Don exclaimed. What? In the middle of a suburban part of a big city? I knew this was Russia but really? A bear?

We were in a taxi following our friends’ taxi on the way to the train station. When we told them, they dismissed it. No. It wasn’t a bear. It couldn’t have been a bear.

So, was it or wasn’t it? There are foxes in London and skunks and coyotes in Los Angeles. Why not a bear in Tver? 

We’ll never know. But it did make me think about how often we catch a glimpse of something and draw a conclusion which may not be correct. Then we become adamant about it.

One of our friends said that what he didn’t like about Christianity was the idea of slavery. The more people talk about being slaves, the more their mindset is conformed to that self-image and it just isn’t healthy.

I knew where he was coming from. Paul often starts his letters calling himself a slave of Christ. But the main message of the gospel is that Christ came to set us free. Free from the rules and regs which we could never keep. Free from fear. Free from judgment. Free from death. Free to live in the love of God without any hang-ups, knowing our worth in his sight. He felt we were worth his sacrificing a cushy life in heaven as part of the Trinity and coming to dwell in the body of a man, a poor man, at a brutal time (are there any times which aren’t brutal?). He entered fully into our lost-ness in order to rescue us from it and lift us to a place of freedom and joy.

Paul’s response is to be an enthusiastic servant of such a Lord. He has seen his amazing God submit to the degradations of crucifixion and he is willing to respond by submitting to the lovingkindness extended to him. Being enslaved to Jesus means being set free to live out who we are, loved children of God. A paradox, unlikely, but nevertheless, true.

Our dear friend had glimpsed a word as he heard it spoken in church, and had assumed he understood its meaning and context. But he has drawn the wrong conclusion. Jesus has set us free from the yoke of slavery, to live loved lives in cahoots with him. Hallelujah!

(So was it a bear? It does make a good story...)