Kiev Temple

And now, to the point of our arduous journey to Kiev: the dedication of the newest temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The night before was a pre-temple-dedication cultural extravaganza, held at the largest concert hall in Kiev. There were dances and dramatizations from Ukraine, Russia, Armenia, and Khazakstan. President Monson was extremely relaxed and casual. As he entered, he greeted the piano player, and then sat down and played a little Chinese chopsticks. And after his short talk, he actually gave noogies to his interpreter.

The Ukrainian choir director, on the other hand, conducted furiously, passionately. It made me smile. There was a dramatization of the history of Kiev, including the baptism of Rus by Prince Vladimir, who, according to legend, investigated a series of religions before choosing Christianity for his people.

Russia’s section of the program was unabashedly passionate and over the top. The section presented by Ukraine had a distinctly Westernish, Mormonish feel to it, but when the Russians came out with their dramatic poses and a passionate love song to God, it was something completely different. And it really made me smile. In Russia, bigger is better, deeper is better, more passionate is better! It’s a little too much for us cool Westerners, but that’s kind of what I love about it. It’s 100% from the heart.

Yulia looked around at the hundreds of people in the audience, leaned over and commented that it was really warm in the room. Yeah, I said, it is kind of stuffy in here, but she said, no, I meant the feeling. It’s like family. And it really was.

After the actual dedication the next day, I started chatting with a woman who I thought was one of the American senior missionaries I knew from Moscow -- shoulder-length hair, lots of makeup, big eyes. It was only when she asked to interview us that I realized it was Carol Mikita of KSL in Utah. I knew she looked familiar!

So she talked to Julia, Alla and me about our trip to Kiev, and we might be on the worldwide newscast between conference sessions! Here's what I told her (more or less):

“I wasn’t sure whether I was going to come to the temple dedication. I spent the summer in Moscow and then traveled to my mission to visit people, and they said, we’ve chartered a bus to go to the temple dedication and there are extra seats -- come with us! And so I did. It’s so great to be here with them. I was on my mission twelve years ago when this temple was announced. It’s been a long time coming, and it’s so great to be able to share it with people who have waited so long and who it means so much for.”

(These three families from Rostov got sealed in the temple the day after it was dedicated -- and I got to see it. Neat.)

Perestroika, physical and spiritual

Perestroika: The literal translation is "rebuilding."

The word you really hear all the time is remont -- it means "repair" or "remodel."

And it's going on everywhere you look in Moscow. Including here:

Hram Hristos Cpasitel (Church of Christ the Savior) is the largest Orthodox church in the world.

It was built in Moscow in the 1800s and destroyed by Stalin in 1931 to make way for an enormous Soviet Palace topped by a colossal statue of Lenin, designed to be the tallest building in the world. But the palace was never built, and the foundation of the cathedral became a huge swimming pool. (Yes, everything is huge, colossal, enormous, mammoth – we’re in Russia, and bigger is always better!)

In 1994, after nearly five years of petitioning, the Russian Orthdox Church was granted permission to rebuild the cathedral on it’s original site, and in 2000 the new building -- an exact replica of the original church -- was consecrated.

From the guidebook I bought there:

A tragedy for Russian Christians, the attempt of the Communists to put up the Palace of Councils in place of the cathedral revealed the struggle between God who had become man to save humanity and man who was trying in vain to become God.

The gigantic “Babylon Tower” … was a symbolic antithesis of the Saviour cathedral, its anti-reflection. … Many elements of the palace were devised as antipodes of the cathedral’s elements -- the huge statue of Lenin instead of the cross crowning the cathedral, the representation of a five-pointed star on the ceiling of the Grand Hall, and articles of the Stalin Constitution carved on the walls of the foyer.

And then this symbolism of resurrection and repentance, which I found especially moving:

Many Muscovites who watched the [groundbreaking] ceremony [for the new building] on TV in 1994 could not believe their eyes: the miracle did occur. The main national sanctuary was being resurrected from its ashes, like a mythological bird Phoenix. ...

Today it is primarily a place of repentance, a personification of the country’s conversion from atheistic theories to the Law of God, to Christian doctrines of eternity and the City of God, to the traditional roots of the Russian Orthodox civilization. The cathedral, regarded as a martyr for Christ, has been resurrected on the site to show gratitude to God for saving Russia and overthrowing the utopian theory of the earthly paradise. It is a sort of memorial to Russia’s history, heroism and sufferings. It is the national Orthodox idea embodied in stone.

Freedom

All we have to do now
Is take these lies
And make them true somehow
--George Michael

Alla Vasilievna wears the same white shirt with the same beaded necklace every day. She has short, dyed blond hair that she pulls while she's talking. She's at once a cosmopolitan world traveler and a deeply nationalistic Russian (unconscious racist overtones and all). And she's a terrific Russian teacher.

Yesterday's topic of discussion was freedom.

Alla Vasilievna asked us all what freedom means to us. Lena, a Cornell student and daughter of Russian immigrants to the US, said freedom is the opportunity to make of your career and your life whatever you want to. Tamara, a history professor from Germany, pointed out that poor people aren’t free because they don’t have the same choices rich people have. Terry, a native of Trinidad-Tobago now living in Washington, DC, said that he has very little, but that he is freer than people who are in slavery to material items. And Pavel, a lawyer from the Czech Republic, said that he doesn’t feel free in Russia because he always has to carry papers with him and because someone refused to sell him beer when a policeman was nearby.

And then, animatedly pulling at her hair, Alla Vasilievna explained that to the Russian psyche, freedom is not an obviously and inherently good construct in the same way that it is to people from some other countries. There is a fear, she said, of unchecked freedom, of anarchy. The idea of the “will” is an ancient one in Russian culture, but the word for “freedom” entered the language more recently and is not understood to have a necessarily positive connotation.

Alla Vasilievna also drew a distinction between personal freedom and political freedom. Personal freedom, she said, is the freedom to choose what you do, where you go, who you marry, etc. Political freedom includes things like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, etc. According to Alla Vasilievna, personal freedom is important to Russians, but political freedom is "not as interesting." When I pressed her, saying the line is not very clear and using freedom of speech as an example, she even went so far as to say that as a Russian, she felt just as free under Communism as she does now, because she still had personal choices about her career, her family, and the rest of her personal life, and government is another realm altogether.

Now, I'm not a Russian, and I get that I can probably never completely overcome my own cultural upbringing and fully grasp another culture. But is this a bit of a stretch in defense of the Russian people? Alla Vasilievna added that Russians feel free because their country is so large and they have myriad options for travel or living within their own country, unlike smaller countries with close boundaries. And then she capped off her defense by asking each of us what we do when the sign says "don't walk" but there are no cars in sight? Apparently Russians tend to walk, but people from other European countries wait for the light to change. "Who is more free," she asked?

Today we talked about religion (that's a topic for another post ... or hundred posts). Alla Vasilievna mentioned that she is Russian Orthodox, and I asked her about practicing under Communism. She said that she went to church secretly because she knew that if she was caught, she could lose her job at the university or compromise opportunities for advancement. Which sounds to me, with my American predispositions about freedom of religion, like an infringement of personal freedom.

And yet, I believe Alla Vasilievna. I don't know to what extent she represents the rest of her country, but I believe that she secretly attended church and felt somehow personally free at the same time. And I'm fascinated by the idea that in this country, the lines between church and state, between personal and political freedom may not necessarily be drawn more thinly or thickly than in a place like America, but rather on another plane altogether.

My dad and the untold story of black mormons

I saw a moving film (for the second time) on Saturday night called "Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons."

It does a beautiful job of covering, as one of the producers, Darius Gray, put it afterwards, both the the bitter and the sweet. I felt somehow healed by it, not just in terms of racial reconciliation but also in terms of reconciling my faith. I highly recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity to see it -- whatever your race or religion. Check out some extended clips from it here.

Coincidentally, I also received a short memoir from my dad this week on the same topic. I was excited to get this piece of family history -- I'd never heard all the details before. Like my dad, I am proud of the progress my country and my church have made over the past several decades. Thanks, Dad, for recording and sending this!

"In light of the recent inauguration of President Obama, our first black president, I thought it would be fun to share a set of cultural experiences I had in South Georgia.

"In 1979, I was living with my growing family in South Georgia. Just one year after the revelation on blacks receiving the priesthood, our small branch of the Church, in Americus, Georgia, was the only integrated church in the County, with 50% black population. I was a counselor in the branch presidency, and we were having trouble getting white members to accept black members attending church with whites, refusing to sit anywhere near them, and certainly not on the same pew!

"I had a black home teaching companion named Willie, and after home teaching the relief society president, I learned from the elder’s quorum president that I was never to bring Willie with me to her house again. Not letting us in the house the first time, she had let us visit with her on her old southern porch. Next time, I was informed, she would not be so kind.

"At work, I was teaching multi-cultural training, with a 50% black and 50% woman workforce. The white men didn’t like us “HR black lovers” too much, because of this training, and said it was totally unnecessary, since they had been raised by black mammies, and therefore got along with their black brothers quite well.

"On the home front, the white man who built my house came by one night, under the cloak of darkness, to tell me that if I sold my house to a black man, which I was considering doing, he, the builder would be run out of town and it would destroy his business.

"One day, Sister Stevenson, a black member of our branch asked my wife Vicki and me to sing at her son’s funeral. Her son had been killed in a drive-by shooting. So Vicki and I went to the funeral at a small, one-room church out in the country. The church looked like an isolated wooden shack, with a red dirt parking lot, and a single picture of Martin Luther King hung from the white walls inside.

"When it was our turn to sing, there was no piano for the accompanist we had brought, so we proceeded to sing Oh My Father “acapella.” In the middle of the first verse we realized the crowd of black family members was beginning to sing with us, clapping and swaying to the beat. So, yes, you guessed it, we went the distance with all the verses with black choir accompaniment. Vicki and I adapted to the southern singen style, and found ourselves exhilarated by the spiritual experience we were having together.

"After the funeral, and at the luncheon, most of those black family members and friends hugged us and told us how much they liked the song, accepting us as members and friends of the family. I was deeply moved by this experience as our hearts were touched by their kindness and love. I have often wondered since then, when and how we might begin to be as loving and Christian as this community of black people. 30 years later, I take great joy in seeing how much progress the Church and our nation have made."