Childish Things

 

The mind is a strange and wondrous thing in how it makes associations and connects what at first blush does not seem to be connected.

***

I have recently returned from visiting the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida, aka “Disney World”.  I was there with my 13 year old daughter during one of the coldest days in recent memory per the locals.  It drizzled rain the entire day which drained some of the “magic” from it for us, but we made the best of it.

At 13 she was able to ask some insightful questions about how the park was constructed to give it that old or classic feel, especially when it came to the iconic castle at its heart.  She knew those were not large cut stones but a superficial façade meant to create a feeling.  It is an illusion used to elicit a sense of wonder from a small child,   though she is not a small child anymore.  She is at an age where the illusion flickers, for better or for worse,  which is to say we tried to ignore the “man behind the curtain” as best we could so we could allow ourselves to get caught up in the silliness of it all.

***

Tonight in my warm and dry basement my eye fell upon a small water color painting of The Holy Trinity - St. Sergius Lavra (large monastery) in Russia.  I obtained it at a silent auction that was organized in our parish hall at St. Gregory of Nyssa Orthodox Church here in Columbus, Ohio several years ago.  I bid on it because it was beautifully painted by a Russian artist, but also because I’d visited that Lavra in the summer of 1998 between my first and second years of medical school.

I was in Russia visiting a friend who had an apartment in Moscow and I spent those first two weeks galavanting all around the city while he was in classes at the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory.  He took me to a performance of Donizetti’s “The Elixir of Love” at the Bolshoi Theater where a well dressed elderly lady in the row behind us had a spell prior to the beginning of the opera and the proverbial “Is there a doctor in the house?” call went out.  During the actual performance the Tenor sang a section that was so astonishing and well received that rhythmic clapping broke out and cries of “Encore!” resulted in him repeating the section like hitting a live replay button.  My friend had a kind of bewildered grin on his face as he told me this sometimes happens in Italy but he’d never heard of it happening in Russia.

All of that was well and good, but then in a kind of serendipitous quasi-miraculous turn of events he introduced me to his friend Denis who was a seminarian at the Lavra.  Denis spoke English quite well and had a humorous bent that immediately bonded us as fast friends.  He was in town for the run up to a two week pilgrimage into the wilds of northern Russia with two fellow seminarians - Kyril & Demetrius.  He convinced me to join them though very little convincing was needed.  This included a train ride to St. Petersburg, then on to the Pskov Caves Holy Dormition Monastery on the Estonian border for a week’s stay with a day trip by bus to the ancient and crumbling fortress of Izborsk  followed a few days later by an overnight boat ride to the ancient monastery on Valaam Island in the middle of Europe’s largest lake, ie, Lake Ladoga.

But I have gotten ahead of myself.  

Before I’d joined those seminarians on that pilgrimage Denis and I visited the Lavra which was their home base and a few hour train ride east of Moscow.  We entered it through a gate in the wall of what for all intents and purposes was a large fortress.  This monastery had been besieged off and on throughout its history since its founding in 1337.  It was full of beautiful churches with the distinctive gold and blue flame-shaped onion domes of the Russian Orthodox Church.  We made a beeline to the centrally-placed holy well to take several gulps of cold water and pour some of it over our overheated heads.

From there we entered the Assumption Cathedral to participate in the ongoing service.  On the outside it is a white building with four blue onion domes at its four corners with golden stars on them.  In the middle and sitting higher perched on its cupola is a larger golden dome, all of them topped by ornate golden crosses.  We climbed those stone steps and went through the tall wooden doors into the nave.  Inside the church the images of the Saints and scenes from the history of the Christian Faith covered the walls, ceilings, pillars, and recessed areas.  In the back of the church and in front of each pillar were coffin-sized ornate boxes on stands that held the remains of Saints who had reposed in the recent and past centuries.

Denis was elsewhere in the church as I stood about 5 feet in front of one of those Saints who was bodily present while I listened to the unfolding liturgy in a language I could not understand but could follow because I was familiar with the rhythms and structure of the Divine Liturgy.  While I was deep in thought (and hopefully prayer) Denis appeared at my elbow.

He whispered to me “You know this Saint?  He was in America.”

I didn’t catch on right away until he said the name “Innokenty” and I suddenly realized I was standing in front of the earthly remains of St. Innocent of Alaska, Enlightener of North America.  I don’t really know how to describe what happened next.  I felt flushed and tears started to flow from my eyes.  It was a moment of unexpected grace and portent that pushed me down to my knees on that stone floor in the heart of Russia.  When I was able to pull myself together I approached the glass-topped coffin and kissed where his head was in veneration and whispered in his ear as it were.

When I’d come into the Orthodox Church two years prior to that it had put a wedge between me and my parents.  I asked St. Innocent to pray for me and my parents, to bridge the gulf between us.  Fifteen years later my parents found their way into the Orthodox Church and I’ll always believe this was the moment that made it possible with the help of St. Innocent’s prayers.

While still reeling from this revelation, Denis wove back through the worshipers and asked me to quickly follow him to a large door on the side of the nave.  He tried to explain to me in his broken English that something special was happening.  He and his fellow seminarians had convinced the caretaker monk to allow them into the side rooms of the church protected by lock & key which housed hundreds of sacred artifacts and relics from the past two millennia.  It was a rare enough occurrence that he was moving me along with a sense of urgency as if any hesitancy might end with the large door being unopened and the opportunity lost.  The door was swiftly shut and re-locked behind us and we descended some stairs into rooms with rows of glass display cases full of labeled relics, ornamented objects housing various body parts of the Saints, and other sacred items.  As we moved through those rooms I felt like Bilbo Baggins traversing the treasure trove of Smaug the Terrible, except Smaug had been ousted leaving our merry band to roam freely among the riches.

***

And with that image of the Hobbit with his dwarf companions in mind I am brought back (hi-ho, hi-ho) to the Magic Kingdom in Disney World.  It seems to me that what I encountered in the Holy Trinity - St. Sergius Lavra and other such places was the experience of a numinous reality that is only crudely caricatured by places like Disney World with its secondhand and superficial “magic”.  The Lavra was built stone by stone and maintained by the blood, sweat, tears, and prayers of countless people through the centuries.  I am reminded of Paul’s words in Holy Scripture: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”