Buzuluk bulletin

Reporting to you from the Old Windmill cafe in downtown Buzuluk. Our Internet options here in Buzuluk are limited. We'll have more time to catch up with our online life on the weekend, but in the meantime--these few words.

We're in the middle of an intensive visit to Samara, Buzuluk, and Sorochinsk--all places associated with the massive British-American Quaker relief effort in this region during and after the great famine of 1921. It is humbling to realize that, in the welcome and help we've been given in place after place, we're continuing to reap the harvest of goodwill that resulted from those events of ninety years ago.

Yesterday we visited a large farm not far from Sorochinsk. At the farm's machine station, one of our hosts explained to the workers that the "ancestors" of the tractors they were working on were brought to the region as part of the American Friends' relief work. Tractors were not unknown in pre-revolutionary Russia, but in the Volga region, almost all tasks now associated with machinery were then done with animals. But the famine killed or weakened almost all the work horses--and bringing in tractors seemed the only way to keep agricultural work going.

More soon!

Holy days

I never claimed to be consistent. I'm a non-liturgical Christian who absolutely loves Easter. Theoretically, we Friends don't promote or rely on holy days, but I'm sorry, I can't remember everything all at once, all the time. I need to focus at least annually on our Lord's agony and execution and resurrection in all of its raw reality. I don't need to understand it, I certainly don't want it made pretty for me--I just want to make that mental and spiritual Calvary walk yet again, and thank God with all my heart for the way it turned out.

Why were we so ready to lynch God?! What was it about Jesus son of Mary, about his unlicensed healings, his releasing people from the power of sin, the extraordinary freedom he claimed to cross lines, his constant confrontations with hypocrisy, and the fresh hope he kindled in so many (I know this fresh hope!!!) that seemingly required his elimination?

Jesus, you knew full well what we are capable of, but you didn't call your army of angels; you put yourself into our merciless hands and we tortured you to death. Though you forgave us, you died without any illusion that this sacrifice would make us magically into nice people. ("If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead." Luke 16:19-31.) And, indeed, we are not, as a species, all that nice--we're armed to the teeth, fond of trashing the planet, looking for every possible way to feel superior to others; even those of us who acknowledge you as our Lord and our Saviour often seem more concerned about one-upping each other than making your promises real to the rest of the world.

You asked us to take up our crosses and follow you. If you don't mind, I'd rather follow you without taking that first part too literally. Actually, maybe that's why looking at you and your cross at this time of year is so important to me--then I can't just leave the cross out of the picture. We sure know how to use it on others--even now, we're playing God in Libya and God knows where else. This is my desperate desire, for myself and for this humanity you love so much--each time a Christian takes up the cross, maybe he or she is removing it from the satanic stockpile of crosses intended for new victims. I can't possibly take up my cross alone--even if it would me look more admirable, more spiritually mature, more like the disciple I wish I were. I need your company. I need to see the holes in your hands, please--not because I don't believe you, but because I need to stop spiritualizing Easter and find the courage to experience it for myself.

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Speaking of one-upping, please permit me a curmudgeonly moment. Friends harping on our lack of holy days gets a bit old. It would be different if we Friends were noticeably more powerful in our discipleship than other Christians who are hopelessly stuck in their old ceremonial ways, who never think about the birth of faith at other times than Christmas or about the Resurrection at any other time than Easter.** We superior Friends think about all these things all the time, which is why we remain at a microscopic size globally, and see our best ideas improved upon by others while we remain so remarkably self-absorbed.

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OK, OK, so that last part was a bit negative! ... There is much going on in the Quaker world that is itself remarkable--for example, take a look at the amazing ministries of Friends House Moscow. (And send a donation!)

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** N.B. I don't actually believe this!

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Liturgical calendars and icons are channels used by many Christians to convey important teachings and disciplines in an accessible and reliable way. Without denying this, Friends rightly teach that no symbolic system can adequately communicate the immediacy of the Gospel, and in the absence of this immediacy, symbols can end up becoming the center of the religious life, instead of the Reality they're supposed to point to.

The main problem that I have with symbolic systems is NOT their communication function. All faith communities need to communicate their core beliefs, and they need a range of vocabularies and channels to reach all kinds of personalities. We Friends sometimes seem peculiarly addicted to vagueness, but we too must communicate! Here's my problem: we humans are so often tempted to give the symbol systems, and, more particularly, the people authorized to manage those systems, more power than they deserve. For example, communion is an extraordinarily beautiful and powerful channel--but once we put all our emotional eggs into that basket, the power to take the basket away from us, to exclude us from that channel because we don't measure up to the management's standards, is not always a Godly power.

It's the old story of "turtles all the way down" (a story I first heard from John Yungblut), but my version has "politics all the way down." Christ came to make us free!!--you may freely partake of calendars and symbols to help bring you closer to God, but don't let the symbol-managers get in the way. God has already done the crucial work to come close to you, very close: Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

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This doesn't mean that the community has no authority at all--it simply doesn't have the right to use the power of religious language to satisfy political agendas, and we must have the freedom to discern when that illegitimate jump is happening. For example, my part of the Quaker world esteems the Richmond Declaration of Faith. We are right to ask you to study and consider that document seriously if you want to be a member of our community. We would be going too far if we made you memorize every doctrine in that document and accept it without question, upon pain of being rejected. The life of faith in community is a dialogue based on mutual respect--and without power-plays.

During my years with Friends World Committee for Consultation, I observed a couple of different yearly meetings as they tried to put together new books of Christian discipline. Their Faith and Practice revision committees, in the process of submitting drafts to the larger community, kept running into an interesting phenomenon: any "advice" that made someone in the body uncomfortable was likely to be vetoed. These new books of discipline were in constant danger of becoming books of history and Quaker platitudes rather than genuine calls to a higher standard of discipleship. But truth compels me to ask an awkward question about the Faith and Practice books of previous generations: were their readers better able to submit to the authority of the group, or were some of them simply able to tolerate a larger gap between the written principles and their private behavior?

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Chris Heuertz makes some important connections: "The war, the wall, and the well"--three interconnected sins, or to put it another way, three large crosses.

Nancy Thomas, "Toward a Quaker Missiology." "A hour’s reflection on George Fox’s advice to colonizing farmers in the 17th century, corroborated by many other documents, yields the following Quakerly missiological principles...." (Go read them!)

Don Miller: "How Christ built an army without weapons."

"Why I pray we [Americans] don't have a Christian candidate for 2012."

"Carolyn Arends contemplates her own death, and yours."

As an American who has experienced evangelical culture on both sides of the U.S./Canada border, I found this article very interesting: "Cross-border evangelicals: Americans and Canadians."

Two Russia-related links this week: "Alaska-Chukotka: when cousins reunite" and "2012: The apocalyptic return of Russian political humor."

Friday P.S. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on critics and defenders of Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea).

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"Dark was the night, cold was the ground"--

The Madonna of the Metro

Proof that spring is advancing on Radio Street: View from my classroom window on April 1, and April 8.

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A member of Moscow Meeting sent me a link to an article, "A note to those who give alms" (in Russian here among other places). Her cover note said, "Please read this article for a deeper understanding of our life."

Briefly, the writer, who says he is an accredited journalist, describes a scene in a Moscow subway station passageway. For a whole month, every time he goes by this particular place, he sees a woman of indeterminate age sitting and panhandling right there near the stores and kiosks, with a small child in a dirty cap lying asleep in front of her. Many kind-hearted passers-by drop coins into a nearby bag. The writer already suspects that the beggar gets little more than food and drink from these earnings--the rest likely goes to build a palatial abode for whomever employs her for this trade.

But after a while, something else arouses his concern: he notices that the child never seems to be awake, in stark contrast to the normal liveliness of a child that age. When he asks, "Why is the child sleeping"?, he is pointedly ignored by the woman, and eventually pulled away from her by a passer-by who rebukes him for his heartlessness. Another time, a policeman treats him the same way.

I've been reading this booklet at this time every year
for the past 30+ years. A new pdf-format edition
is available through this link.

An acquaintance with underworld connections clues him in: the mother is a participant/victim in a syndicate, the child (who may have been kidnapped for the purpose) is dosed with heroin or vodka. They will get very little for their role; most of the money goes to the bosses. Moreover, according to this acquaintance, different ethnically-based syndicates specialize in different forms of begging--the "madonnas," the injured veterans, and so on.

Children used as bait, drugged to keep them quiet--the very idea is incredibly repulsive. Sometimes, according to the writer's informant, the child even dies while on duty--and the supposed mother is forced to continue to the end of her shift as if nothing happened.

Indeed, toward the end of his story, the writer again visits the woman's station, and stops in shock: there's a different child! What happened to the other one, he asks. Another beggar and nearby venders let him know that he'd better stop asking questions and leave. A policeman asks him for his ID papers, but then agrees to investigate and goes for help. Before he returns, the whole tableau has vanished.

The journalist ends his article with a punch: if everyone stopped giving to beggars, the industry would not survive, but perhaps some children, now condemned to serve as alms-bait, would survive.

I'm properly shocked by the article, but after a few minutes of Internet follow-up, I can't help noticing that the article has been circulating for about four years, with at least 104 Google entries. The name of the article varies; often it is called "Why does the child sleep?" The oldest entry claims that the person posting the text had received it in an unsolicited e-mail that she dismissed as spam at first, but then found it interesting enough to post.

I've no doubt that there are substantial truths in the article--for one thing, it strains credulity that prime Metro begging spots are "first come first served." And beggars' syndicates operate in many parts of the world; why not in Russia? Also, perhaps this article's wide circulation has reduced the number of children used as bait; I can't remember the last time I saw one. (No, that's not quite true--I saw a young boy accompanying a beggar on a local suburban train not long ago, but he was wide awake and looked relatively healthy.) But I wish the article had a few more substantiating details, especially a specific location and date. And I can't help wondering about the reasons for its circulation--a legitimate expose or yet another boost for cynicism at the expense of compassion?

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Robin Parry engages with another round of the Augustinian/universalist conversation.

Meanwhile, Jamie asks for your help in defining "grace." Just a few hours until her Friday deadline. (Maybe you should ask her for a grace period.)

More on the Gagarin anniversary: "The Enigmatic Vostok 1" and "Yuri Gagarin's private passions."

"Can books still genuinely change the world?" and "Revolutions and resurrections: How has Russian literature changed?"

Thanks to Tom Engelhardt, here's a fascinating and moving intellectual biography of the late Chalmers Johnson by his wife Sheila Johnson.

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"... that's all I know about politics," says Super Chikan, as he sings in support of Bill Luckett for Mississippi state governor. Take a look at his guitar!


Super Chikan sings "Get It Done" for the Bill Luckett for Governor Campaign from Andrew Shipley on Vimeo.

Time

Sberbank branch at Tevosyan Sq., where I read Pasternak.

The day before yesterday I went to the bank for a routine transaction, arriving about forty minutes before my appointment at the nearby hair cutting place.

I brought a book with me, knowing there might be a wait. As I entered, I took a number and glanced at the electronic signboard showing which number was being served. Number 37 was at window 6; I was number 83. Well, there was a chance, I thought.

Half an hour later, they were still twenty places away from serving me, and I knew I had to face reality. Off to the haircutter without finishing my banking. I took another number (117) on my way out, although I figured that, with my luck, they'd get to that number long before I was able to get back to the bank.

Well, no, they hadn't. They'd simply gone a little past my first number. So, no longer having a close deadline, I settled in for a wait. All the seats along the wall facing the bank tellers were taken; I folded myself into a child's seat next to the ATM. 

"It's a good thing to bring a book," said a woman a little older than me, sitting on the other side of the children's table and looking at my thick paperback of Pasternak's family correspondence. "Yes," I agreed, "and it's a good thing that this seat will hold 83 kilograms." A little further away, I heard a typical exchange among the elderly pensioners who make up the majority of the bank's midday customers. "What kind of transaction could be taking 45 minutes over at window 7?" "I have no idea. But that teller has been sitting at window 2 for most of the morning without taking any customers."

Meanwhile, an elderly man was trying to figure out the number system--another customer was patiently explaining that he had to push the machine's button for a number and then watch the signboard to know which window would be serving that number when it came up. Not every arriving person even bothered to find out the system--occasionally someone would walk into the branch and assertively step up to a window, standing just to the right of the customer being served. They were almost always noticed and reprimanded by other customers: "Wait a minute. You have to wait in line just like the rest of us."

On the other hand, those same customers, as I've seen more than once, might rise to the defense of an elderly man who's already been sitting a while, and who shuffles over unsteadily to a window and quietly asks whether the wait would be much longer. The crowd knows when to bend the rules and demand that someone be allowed to slip in.

Source.  

I was interested that, while I waited for the signboard to creep from number 88 to number 117,  I came across this passage in the Pasternak book, in a letter to Boris Pasternak's parents and sister Lydia:

The house doesn't terrorize me, and I'm not scared of work or bother, although I have enough and to spare of all that. The reason I have no time is something entirely different.  As with money, and with objects I don't know how to value and am always glad to give away, I would probably be glad to share the most precious treasure that I know, which is: free time (perhaps that's the very thing that all religions have deified under the name of God). I mean the pure interval in which one can see the boundless fullness of real life, as real as the life of trees and animals. And incredible as it may seem, I would be able to find enough free time to share with anyone you like, because everyone always manages to get hold of and store up the thing he values most highly. But, more than anything else in the world, this is something reserved for the connoisseur. An understanding of art, however rare it may be, is much more widely distributed than a feeling for and understanding of free time. I'm talking about something that's far greater than mere 'leisure'. I'm talking about living time, in freedom.

This is something that I would be willing to share (as I have done on occasion), but only with someone who knew the meaning of the word 'an instant'. Why is there so much beauty in a thunderstorm?--Because it piles space upon space, making them flash, in other words it shows how fathomless the instant is, and what immense distances it can absorb and give forth again. But since there aren't many who know how inexhaustible and capacious an instant is, there's almost no-one to share it with--yet an instant is all that free time is. It's in this sense that I never have time--I don't have time for those who don't know what time is. [pp. 113-114]

There is beauty in a thunderstorm, and immense beauty in the moment people stick up for an elderly client, even though they will be "delayed" as a result.

On the one hand, I've never been bored at the bank.

On the other hand, I see on the bank's Web site that--contrary to what I was told when I opened my account--debit cards, usable at ATMs, are available to foreigners. I think I'll check into it again.

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Having just observed another birthday, I was caught short by this passage to Pasternak's sister Josephine, written in 1927, more than thirty years before his death:

I haven't aged, and yet I've more than aged. I don't think I'm going to live as long as I should like. But there are other reasons too--I'll explain them below--why I've started behaving and feeling--in my consciousness, in my spiritual being, without reference to my biological self--as if I were in the final stage of my life. The main reason is this: that it's the only way to live in Russia at the present time without being a hypocrite, or wasting effort to no purpose,--or worse, provoking horrible catastrophes while achieving nothing whatsoever--wasting the explosively personal creative fire of mature middle age, these years so utterly and deservedly devoted to the love of freedom. I don't want to let myself go on this subject. I'll leave it at that. [p. 82]

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Jerry Butler--doesn't the name sound familiar?

Twenty years of Linux, no longer defined as not Microsoft.

Two Menno Simons books for free.

First Orbit: On April 12, celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's adventure here.

Grigory Pasco on Russia's brain drain.

Should Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter be the next big Christian film?

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Studebaker John and the Hawks: