Journey

Someone wrote,`Every journey has a purpose that the traveler is not aware of.' When I was anticipating traveling to St.Petersburg, I planned especially to visit the art museums and historical sites like the Cruiser Aurora and the Peter and Paul Fortress. The Aurora was part of the Baltic fleet that sailed around Africa to do battle with the Japanese Navy in 1905. The Russian fleet was destroyed and the mighty Russian Empire humiliated. As one of the few ships to survive, the Aurora returned to be anchored in the Neva River, which flows through Petersburg. The Bolsheviks won control of the soviet, the sailor's committee, on the Aurora in 1917; that control hastened the downfall of the Provisional Government. Walking the deck of the Aurora and looking across the river to the Winter Palace is to live among ghosts of war and revolution.

I think about religion and God and spiritual experience alot. I planned to visit some churches certainly. My hotel window opened onto a vista that included the cupolas of the Church of the Spilt Blood. I discovered that in Petersburg fairly recently a museum called the Museum of the History of Religion had opened. That museum featured incredible, life sized modern icons. I was so fascinated that I stepped forward for a closer look and set off the security alarm, which was designed to keep visitors at least a foot away from the icons. Musuem was sparsely visited--very quiet.I am sure that was more excitement than the staff had experienced in weeks.

In retrospect, what surprises me about my whole journey is how many worship services I ended up wandering into. I visited the Kazan Cathedral on my first evening in Russia and stood for a while with maybe 40 people as the priest chanted the service. The Nevsky Monastery complex includes Dostoevsky's grave. I went on pilgrimage to the grave site and visited the monastery chapel. I found myself in worhsip. When I arrived in Moscow, with a friend we visited and then worshiped at the Novedichny Monastery.

My heart has always been stirred by the questions of who are we, before God, and how does God dwell among us and how has religion blessed us and cursed us.

My Russian is limited. But the liturgy's carried me back to high school days, when our Russian teacher invited us to attend the Russian Orthodox Church where he was the music director. The Monastery reminded me that in those same high school years, we had visited an Orthodox monastery somewhere in upstate New York. Of course too, my thoughts turned to Father Zossima and Alyosha and the monastery of Brothers Karamazov.

Amused at myself, I thought well I have retired as a full-time minister, but I am and always will be a person on spiritual journey, pondering some and praying some.

One of the few parts of the Orhtodox liturgy that I could understand was Godpodie Pomelie. Periodically, the people would chant this phrase meaning God have mercy.I wondered how this phrase chanted over the centuries has shaped the souls of believers. Is God some kind of absolute monarch,like the tsar, and we God's humble people can only approach with an attitude of servility, pleading for mercy?

I'm sure me understanding is too simplistic. But the question of how is God really in our lives torments and blesses me and i hope it does the same for you.

Nikos Kazantzakis tells a story of an old Greek soldier coming to the gates of heaven,slinging his musket off his should and firring a shot. An angel says `Do you think God is going to open the gate, just because you fired a shot." No, says the old man,but I want God to know that I have returned from fighting the wars.

Where is god when we fight the wars? When we are on journey? When we are lonely? When we are ecstatic?