The Catalog of Good Deeds: Personal Stories

Showing posts with label Personal Stories. Show all posts

Everything came together in Alla Mescherova’s life seemingly as it should: auditing classes in the Repin Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, then learning iconography in the “School of Ecclesiastical Arts” in Tver—if it hadn’t been for one thing: Alfia (as her parents named her) grew up in a Muslim family, who held the traditions of their ancestors sacred. Nevertheless, her soul found its home in Orthodox Christianity.

—Few Muslims, especially Muslim women, resolve to change their religion against their family’s wishes. What happened to turn the wheel of your family history around so sharply?

—I was born to a Muslim family. Both of my grandmothers were believers and prayed the namaz. My father’s mother was particularly pious—she prayed several times a day according to the Muslim custom, and she taught me the Muslim prayers. Unfortunately the prayers did not touch me because I was repeating them in Arabic, which I did not understand. Grandmother did not know the translation. As I can remember I searched for a conscious faith, and that is why a trusting relationship with God never came together then.

Alla Mescherova

—When did it begin to come together?

—After completing school I continued with determination to search for the meaning of life, beginning with the entire Koran. But I did not find the answers to my questions in that wise book and so began reading various philosophers: Marxists, idealists, and then Soloviev, Berdyaev, and Rozanov. The last of these nudged me toward Christ. But my path to Him would be very thorny: At the end of the 1980s, against the background of a general interest in all things paranormal, certain “abilities” opened up in me and for several years I was stuck in the mire of esotericism, then acquiring a mass of various phobias. In my head then was, in the words of Fr. Andrei Kuryaev, the Russian intelligentsia’s favorite dish—a casserole of Buddhism, esotericism, and theosophy. It was all flavored with an Islamic sauce and peppered with a vague idea of Christianity. It was then that I began to read the Gospels, and I put them under my pillow at night, because only then could I sleep peacefully; without them I was wracked with nightmares. In 1987 my grandmother became sick with cancer and by autumn she was bedridden, worrying above all about how she would most likely die in winter and they would bury her in the cold ground. Then I had a purely coincidental conversation with my teacher while I was sketching on the banks of the Smolenka River, and told him how my grandmother has been near death for over two weeks, and the doctors said she would not live. He offered to take me to Blessed Xenia [of Petersburg], whose chapel was not far away in the Smolensk cemetery, because Xenia helps everyone. When we arrived he showed me where to buy a candle and where to place it. This was at about four o’clock. I prayed from the heart, asking Xenia to help my grandmother and ease her suffering. For some strange reason I had so much trust in an Orthodox saint whom I did not even know that when I came home that evening I wasn’t even surprised to see my grandmother walking around the apartment, and that she had begun to feel better at precisely four o’clock.

—After this you came to Orthodoxy without any doubts?

Icon of the Descent into hades

—It wasn’t all so simple. By that time I had read the Gospels and went to church regularly, but I did not have the resolve to be baptized. After all, it is a serious step to change your faith. I understood that this would be a blow to my parents, and I feared for their health. I only asked the Lord to give me a clear and comprehensible sign so that I could understand whether it was His will that I be baptized. And one day I came to church on the Smolenka. There were two hours yet before the beginning of services, not many people present, and I stood in the side church of St. Xenia of Petersburg, leaning on the column. Suddenly the space around me changed—everything disappeared. There was no floor, no ceiling, and nothing at all; however it was not emptiness but a thick dark blueness, almost blackness. It was the black that you see in the mandorla on the Novgorod icon, “Descent into hades.” For a long time I could not understand why the space was dark and only a few years later I read in the writings of Dionysios the Aeropagite that people see Divine uncreated light as darkness. Well, it was insanely beautiful, absolutely incomprehensible, and my feelings were like what a child must feel at his mother’s bosom—protection and love. Then out of the haze enshrouding the entire area a hand stretched toward me holding a cross on a chain. I reached out with the palm of my hand, and when they placed that cross in it, I immediately returned to reality. The next day I went to be baptized without any doubts.

The Holy Trinity. Icon by A. Meschereva

—Did iconography come as one of the facets of your profession?

—This was God’s will, and it has its prehistory. In about 1994 a global crisis happened in my life: first of all a creative one—I couldn’t paint pictures; second, the object of my love left me, slamming the door loudly; third, I nearly stopped breathing from asthma. But mainly I understood that this whole bouquet of misfortunes was the result of my former, stormy life. But the Lord never abandons us. Seeing that I could not get through this without God’s church, on February 6, the feast day of Blessed Xenia, I literally crawled to her chapel, stood through the services with great difficulty, and afterwards felt significantly better. When finally I stopped feeling like a half-dead invalid, and began to breathe more or less normally, the question came: How should I live from now on? Should I change my profession at age twenty-nine? But painting was not just a profession for me—for eleven years I had worked like one obsessed sixteen hours a day in order to become a painter. If I were to change professions it would mean that all my labors and sacrifices were in vain and my whole life up to that point was meaningless. Once I had heard about Diveyevo and St. Seraphim of Sarov, and I decided to go to him for the answer to my inner question, although I didn’t have any idea what a monastery was, or a pilgrimage. I went with a friend. We arrived at Nizhny Novgorod without complications but then… Instead of a pleasant three-hour ride in a comfortable bus we stood thirteen hours in a gigantic traffic jam due to a fierce snowstorm. No sooner had this torture on the road ceased than torture from snowdrifts began: For the first (and I hope, last) time in my life I tumbled into snow up to my neck.

I remember the first few days in the monastery like a nightmare. It was very hard. But it was there that I was born again. The woman we stayed with and with whom we formed a friendship within the two weeks we were in Diveyevo asked me one day: “Well, you are an artist. Perhaps you could paint me Blessed Xenia? This request turned out to be absolutely providential. Fr. Vladimir Shishkin came to me personally in the church when he saw my confusion. I explained my situation and he said that he did not bless me to paint an icon “just like that,” that this is something that must be studied, and therefore he blessed me to go to the iconographic work group of Andrei Zaprudny in Tver. He said it and then ran off on his business. I asked him as he ran away, “Batiushka, what about my parents?! After all, they are Muslims, they won’t understand, and won’t let me go to a strange city…” He just waved his hand as he walked and said, “The Lord will take care of it.” Fr. Vladimir turned out to be right: The Lord took care of it so that my parents calmly accepted the news that I was going to study in Tver. True, I didn’t tell them exactly that this was a school of ecclesiastical arts. Having stepped upon the path of Orthodoxy and a new profession, I always felt God’s help and Providence for me.

The Protection of Our Most Holy Lady the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary. Icon by A. Meschereva

—Did you ever think of yourself as an iconographer before this? As an artist you probably always admired the works of Theophan the Greek, or Andrei Rublev?

—Before I was even baptized, in probably 1991, I was at an exhibition from the Russian Museum: Kandinsky, Malevich, Goncharev, Chagall, Philonov… But these painting were not what amazed me—although at the time I also loved all of that—but rather the Russian icons from the collection of Nikodim Kondakov, a famous art historian. This was a feast, an untold feeling of paradise and wonder, and I walked around for a long time as if dumbstruck. I returned to this exhibition ten times just for these icons, because Chagall, as it turns out, is not interesting even the third or fourth time around. I was astounded by the mastery with which these icons were painted. I saw paradise on them. And this was a discovery for me, because during Soviet times it was customary to look at Russian icons condescendingly. Now Italian Renaissance, that’s something, but an icon—of course it’s nice, but… This admiration of icons lived in me all the years following and became something like a key that would one day open the door into the world of Orthodoxy. This is what probably determined my present festive style.

—When you started painting saints did temptations arise, or did it all go smoothly and blessedly?

—The first icon I painted was the “Flogging of St. George.” The work group was then painting two iconostases for a Belorussian church, and one altar was dedicated to St. George. Then I painted the Trinity for the iconostasis in Diveyevo. In general there were mostly temptations connected with icon painting. I don’t recall any miracles, but temptations—over the top. Especially when you paint an image to go behind the holy table, a cross, or an iconostasis. I painted my first icon for the altar in the early 2000s for the church of St. Sergius of Radonezh in Sertolov, Vsevolozhskovo region of Leningrad province. I had just barely started my work when I managed to crack my rib. I didn’t think to take painkillers, and the doctors didn’t mention it. The icon board was huge and heavy, and I had to lift it, turn it, take it from the easel, carry it to the table, and then return it again to the easel. Batiushka wanted this icon painted as soon as possible and didn’t consider that I needed sick leave at least for a time after the fracture. Due to constant physical pain I was constantly in a deadened state, and maybe that is why the icon turned out good and prayerful. Everyone said that. The first two icons for my first iconostasis were very hard to do—something was always happening, and then it got a little easier, although it never went smoothly. One of these icons later streamed myrrh. An icon depicts the higher world. We sometimes forget that Christ’s love is behind this phrase. We depict a world of complete, harmonious Love, which cannot be sad, sorrowful, or gloomy—all of that is human. Orthodoxy is the joy of communion with God. That is why we glorify God, for He brought us the good tidings of Love. This is reflected in icons.

Source: http://orthochristian.com/77156.html

In my years of experience as a priest I had one very interesting story. Once my relative, who lives in a remote village, asked me to come to her and help her build some form of crossing over a small river because the residents dismantled the old bridge and and scrapped the material that were left.

So I responded to her call and came. But I could not get to work right away as my aunt decided to start my visit by showing me her chapel in a neighboring village, a partially destroyed church in the same neighborhood, and then she asked me to stop by the local store. We did all this, went around and looked around the said places. Having done all this it seemed to me that we could start repairing the bridge... but not so fast!

We were constantly detained and delayed: a widow came up to me in the chapel and asked to a panihida (memorial service) for her husband; in the store, talkative customers detained my aunt for another 15 minutes; on the way to the church - the principal of the local school stopped my aunt and began to reprimand her for her foster child who was reprimanded for being a disorderly student. With all this I was getting nervous because there was less and less time for me to do real work.

Finally we got into the car and it seemed as if we were ready to go to the river. At that very moment a strange young man appeared out of nowhere and knocked out on our car window.He was probably about 29, wearing glasses, all red, and quite breathless. He asked me:

— You're not from church by any chance?

I responded:

— From church.

— A clergyman?

— Yes.

— You know, I am about to go hang myself. I would like to confess to you before I do so.

His serious family problems, and his male self loathing and pride were hurt to the extreme. And as we know, one sin begets another, all the way to suicidal thoughts.

With me I had the book of needs, a gospel, and a cross. I went out got everything I needed, put on my epitrachelion, read the prayers before confession, settled in the ruined church bell tower which was covered in graffiti with a put out bonfire,where it looked like someone had recently cookedon. The confession of the young man was quite long. Yet time flew by very quickly, but we talked for a very long time. Eventually the changed his mind about killing himself …

By the Grace of God, he is alive to this day. Thought his life over, understood his mistakes. A life had been saved!

And I often think back and glorify the All-Merciful God, who brought a priest 400 km from his home, detained him for just the right amount of time, and at the right places. All this for a man in despair and spiritual agony to have the opportunity knock on the window of his car and subsequently correct his life. This young man gave that opportunity a chance. He deserves a level of honor and praise.

By Fr. Igor Fomin

Prepared by Foma.ru

Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

You wouldn’t suspect that the jovial Orthodox priest who carries the gold chalise with such reverence from behind the iconostasis of “Mother of Unexpected Joy” church was once a drug dealing, rambling hippie and coffee-house owner with his own underground band, not to mention an illegitimate descendent of Nathaniel Boone, the son of the legendary American hero Daniel Boone. Father Moses Berry, who is by now in his 60s, is still a rolling ball of fire, overflowing with spontaneous exuberance. He bounces from one story to another as he moves from one section of the Ozarks Afro-American Heritage Museum he founded in his native town of Ash Grove. He is a man who unravels a ball of tightly-wound stories, one knotted to another and yet another.

Father Berry’s story, in fact his entire existence, is rooted in the dark history of American slavery. The three-room museum he opened is jam-packed with heirlooms, objects and artifacts culled entirely from his family’s possession. Two faded sepia prints in oval frame reveal pictures of his great-grandmother, Maria Boone, mistress to Nathaniel, and her daughter, Caroline Boone Berry, his grandmother. They are wearing stiff, laced-up dresses with matching bonnets fashionable for ladies in the 19th century. He says that the child of a slave mistress is born between the dark and the daylight, raised in the shadowland, not of this world. They are children whose existence is denied, whose marked absence in the American consciousness is a mark of their presence.

A collage of black-and-white photos, yellowed historical documents, tools, and everyday objects align the walls of Father Berry’s personal museum revealing how the intimate personal facts of a family’s life create the historical impersonal account in a textbook. He points to a faded photo of a young Black girl in a white dress. “This is Fanny Murray at age 13 in 1866,” Berry explains. “Fanny saved a young man’s life just by doing his laundry for 10 cents a week. This is why every little thing you do is important. A simple act of loving kindness, a seemingly insignificant gesture can have an incredible impact.” The young man, who had gotten in trouble and whose family had consequently disowned him, eventually became a history professor. Underneath is another photo, color this time, of an old woman in a pink dress and a wide, flamboyant Sunday hat. “This is Ms. Olivia Murray, Fanny’s daughter, who died at 93 in 1991. She would walk down these streets in long dresses with a bonnet even after the 60s. She was an Aunt Jemmima figure and quite an embarrassment to the young people in the town. ‘Check her out,’ they would point and stare, but I would tell them you can’t dismiss people at a glance. We don’t know who the person is, who s/he really is.”

Through the personalized tour of his family’s history, Father Berry spins his own story.

Over forty years ago, an African-American teenager, Karl, leaves home at 15 after hearing that in California young people were shooting flowers instead of bullets. “California, man,” he recalls in his black rassa, blacker than his glistening skin in the hot May sun, “Once I heard about California, about flower power, and how people were living together in love, I had to go.” He hitched his way west from his native town of Ash Grove, Mo. In California, he lived in a commune, learned how to roll hashish, and to tie-dye t-shirts. He returned to his native state of Missouri where he settled in Columbia, Mo. There he “hustled” by selling leather goods, Latigo of London in particular, out of a small store front on the corner of 8th Street and Broadway, “The Strow Away.” At night he jammed jazz rock with his group “Honey Chile,” which even had a hit single in the area. He was active in the Stony Brook commune that convened by a creek in the granite hills of the area. His fortune changed when he opened an underground coffee shop, the Rainbow Bread Company. While it fronted as a “coffee shop,” as was the case with most coffee shops of the period, it made a bigger profit selling hashish and marijuana. It would have continued as a lucrative underground establishment had the Columbia police department not set it on fire. As it could not secure a search warrant, the police forced a raid. During that forced break in by the police, which resulted in almost total devastation of the coffee house, Karl and his partners were forcibly arrested and taken into custody.

Without representation, Karl was placed in solitary confinement. “It was a cell literally 5 feet by 3 feet by 7 feet. No windows. Just a chink where they could throw you a piece of stale bread.” Karl could not say for how long he was confined in the dark pit. But he feared the worst. Under the statutes, his sentence could stretch for up to 15 years in a penitentiary. “I had hit a low point. This was the end,” Father Berry remembers puncturing the somberness of the event with his full, guttural laugh that reaches down through his heart and soul to the bottom of his shoe soles. “I remember the day before I was supposed to get my sentence. I got down on my knees in that dark, narrow cell and prayed for the first time in my life. I prayed and called out to God as I had never done before. I said, ‘Lord, get me out of this one, and if you do, I promise to serve you.’”

The next morning Moses heard a key turn in the cell door. At first he did not want to come out. He had heard how the guards would periodically beat prisoners and then return them to their cells. Haunted by the visions of the brutal beatings the prisoners received at the hands of the guards he witnessed before he was placed in solitary confinement, he refused to exit. The guards had to drag him out into the light while they shouted, “You’ve been released! Get out!”

“He repented,” Father Berry muses. “The police officer who had pressed charges against me had repented. He had come to the precinct before midnight and dropped all charges. He must have come just about the same time as my prayer.” From that day forth, Moses Berry’s life changed completely. His soul had heard the call of the divine.

It would be several years, however, before Moses’s course led him to Orthodoxy. Upon his release, Moses traveled to New York City, where he became a teacher in Harlem. It was there where he met his wife, a liberal, Jewish teacher. “I remember walking down the streets of Harlem, arm in arm, singing Beatles’ songs. People must have thought we were crazy,” Father Berry reminisces. On a spontaneous whim they accepted an invitation of a friend to visit in Richmond, Virginia. After driving eight hours, they were prodded by this same friend who was Orthodox to visit an Orthodox chapel another two hours away. While the reluctance was strong, they did find the chapel; it was on the second floor of someone’s Colonial house. “This wasn’t a church; this was somebody’s living room,” Berry says. But upon entering, even with the makeshift choir of three or four women, never had he heard a service like this. “I heard things like ‘Rejoice, Laver purifying conscience. Rejoice, Wine-bowl over-filled with joy. Rejoice, sweet-scented Fragrance of Christ. Rejoice, Life of mystic festival.’ This was poetry. This was beauty and peace and love. There was incense. There was reverence. Nowhere had I heard liturgy like this. I became Orthodox from that point on.”

Since that time, Berry has striven to live out his promise to God. He has worked with at-risk youth, prisoners, and drug addicts. One of his many accomplishments included starting up a 7-step drug rehabilitation program in Detroit based on the principles of salvation in Orthodox theology.

His two most recent achievements include founding a museum and church in Ash Grove, MO. Father Berry and his family have returned to his roots. They moved out of a comfortable three-story Victorian house in suburban St. Louis into a 150-year old unmarked farmhouse, the same farmhouse in which his great-grandmother was born. “Most of the Blacks moved out of Ash Grove. My family stayed. When they heard I was going to open up a museum in that little town, ‘Be careful’ they told me, white people are not going to like it.” The museum, however, has been successful and has become a point of pride for the town.

The Ozark African-American museum houses a uniquely personal assortment of historical objects tied intimately to the “dark side” of the Boone family. Some are quilts his great-grandmother and grandmother collaborated on. One quilt, a 1790 piece, featured prominently in the Underground Railroad. The quilt in triangular green, brown, and yellow patterns would be draped over the porches of “safe houses” a signal that welcomed entry for runaway slaves. Over the doorway to the second room is a “two-lady saw,” another object the two women would use. It is smaller, thinner, and shorter, at least by a foot, than a regular saw.

Among the other objects on display is a minted coin commemorating the lynching of three Black men on Good Friday 1906 in the Ozarks and an authentic 1858 AG Brock slave tag that was used during slave auctions at the houses of that company around the South. Father demonstrates a “screw lock” which looks like a menacing wrought-iron horseshoe with a long screw transversing it at the edge of which a bolt slowly tightens over a slave’s ankles. According to Berry, it is the origin of our slang expression for “screw” as slaves would report among themselves “so-and-so got screwed.” A leather-bound, yellowing volume of The Remarkable Advancement of the Afro-American by Lancaster Water, 1898 edition, and behind that, in a glass case, the same title but the original binding from 1852. The painting and photos in the museum tell the stories of slaves who fought in the Union army and were later freed for their service, of 12-year-old runaways who were frozen to death, married couples who started churches, of rebel slaves who saw visions and organized services in the forest eventually founding the African Methodist Episcopalian church.

Another curiosity is the hand-crocheted African Mammy doll, a caricature of the Caribbean slave trade figure. The doll stands alone on a green draped coffee table at the exit of the museum. Hand-made with double lacing, the doll’s woolen face exaggerates lips nose and eyes. She is wearing a green and yellow headdress from under which protrudes black woolen cornrows. “Mammie is a West African matriarch,” Father Berry explains the subtle shadings of cultural history in everyday objects as he turns the doll upside down. “She is a Josephine Baker fruit dancer underneath,” he says as the doll transforms into a bare-bellied, buxomous exotic dancer bearing the typical platter of bananas and pineapples on her head. The doll provides a casual metaphor for the transformation of a people, a subtle symbolism for the complexities of the soul at its surface and at its depths.

Father Berry ends with one final story that underlines the importance of relationship, the one thing that can transcend the impersonality of history, the division of race, the misunderstanding of class. Several yards from the Berry-Boone farmhouse is the family cemetery. Gray stones mark the resting place of slaves who never reached their final destination on the Underground Railroad. One of Harriet Tubman’s porters is there. So are the graves of Maria Boone and Caroline Boone Berry. “It was maybe three months after we had moved into the farmhouse, so things were still messy. I drive back from the church and all of a sudden, I see this red Corvette with California plates parked by the gate blocking the way to the cemetery. I see these three blonde kids in the back. ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask them. ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ they say all polite and all. ‘We didn’t know anyone lived here.’ (He puts on a high-pitched voice mimicking all too many “white boys”). Now, I call back to them all gruff and all, ‘I am here to tell you I live here, and you are on my property. What are you doing here?’ It turns out these kids had been raised by a Black nanny who was buried in this field. ‘Mammie raised us from when we were seven years old when our own mother died,’ they said. So, these kids had been coming to her grave every year on the anniversary of her death to put flowers on her grave.’” He ends his story like a sermon. “A simple act of kindness can reach into eternity; it can save your soul besides another’s.”

“Orthodoxy is the truth. It is the one true path to salvation,” Father Berry confesses. “Once you understand what it is all about, there is no hiding from the truth.” Once Orthodox, he confesses the greatest challenge for staying Orthodox is hopelessness. “The hardest thing to do in Orthodoxy is to learn how to have hope.”

Father Moses Berry now serves hope from a golden chalise every Sunday at 10 a.m. in a small, white and red barn church with a golden onion dome in the middle of a cornfield in rural Missouri. “There is no other hope than in our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ,” he smiles. “I am a living example of the immanent love of God for His children, even those who have gone far astray, of despair turning into hope. We must never lose hope.”

Source: https://greekamericangirl.com/father-moses-berry-from-hippie-bad-boy-cool-cat-to-humble-rassaphore-orthodox-priest/

What can make a pretty and successful girl at the peak of her career and health leave everything behind and take the veil? This story is for all who are sad for some reason and who have forgotten how our Heavenly Father loves and cherishes his mischievous kids. She was hearing God’s voice and his calling since early childhood but then broke up with him after her mother’s death and locked the door of her heart to God for a decade… She was close to death but did not fear it… She almost married a guy but then abruptly ended her relationship with him… Novice Helena (Yudina) told a reporter of our website about her journey to St Elisabeth Convent.

A Child Talking with God

I have been talking with God since I was a child. I talked with him simply and sincerely. I didn’t know anything about him but I believed in him for some reason. We never talked about God in my family. My parents belonged to Soviet intelligentsia: my mum, Natallia Yudina, was a piano teacher. My father, Vladimir Yudin, was an army officer. I was born in Siberia, in Zheleznogorsk, Krasnoyarsk Territory. Zheleznogorsk is a restricted-access town. It is surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. Entry is allowed only via a checkpoint, where every inhabitant of the town has to present his or her individual permit. There is a huge nuclear plant right inside a mountain.

Vladimir Yudin and Natalia Yudina

My parents had been in the same class at school. After they finished school, they went to colleges (a music college and a military college, respectively), graduated from them, and got married. Our family had to travel a lot across our vast country. My mother humbly acquiesced to the numerous transfers. All children in our family were born in various parts of Russia. I was their fifth and last child.

We all received good education, including music education. I have always been attracted to music. When I was just a toddler, I tried to reach out to the piano and play. In spite of that, when I first came to the music school, the examiner passed her verdict, “Violin! Why would you waste your daughter’s ear on the silly piano? You’ve got real talent. Learn to play the violin!” Her words came as a shock for me. My mum was an excellent teacher and found a way to persuade me. “Lena, you will learn to play both the violin and the piano.” I loved my mum and trusted her. Indeed, they laid big hopes on me: I performed at concerts and won awards at music contests.

The most difficult part for me is motivation. When I find out how to motivate myself, I can do whatever it takes to achieve my goal. Unfortunately, that’s the hardest part. It was entirely thanks to my mother that I finished the music school and achieved a lot. I dreamed of singing, too, but they didn’t let me sing solo or in a choir because I had to spend a lot of time practising my violin. That’s how I was surrounded with music since my earliest days.

Loving Family Living in a Tent

We grew up in a loving family. My parents never quarrelled. Of course, now I guess they might have had some tensions and misunderstandings but we children never heard any rude word from them.

Parental love and support make a reliable foundation for one’s personality. I’m grateful to my parents!

My dad was a patriot and taught us to love our homeland. He had chosen his job out of love for Russia and especially Siberia. Our father succeeded in implanting his love for Russia into our hearts, too. I recall how my brother and I drove around in his car, listened to LUBE band at full volume, and sobbed because their lyrics really touched us. Unfortunately, my only and dear brother Vladimir died in May 2017. We were close and like-minded. Of course, all live unto God. Generally, God makes surviving the death of a loved person easier.

Living in a family with many children teaches you to appreciate simple things. You figure out how to share, find a compromise, and care for others. It really helps me here in the Convent when there are three absolutely dissimilar people living in the same cell, like three astronauts, each from a different planet.

Our father always kept saying that we have to stay together, help and support one another. Our parents would constantly remind us of the broom story: One twig is easy to break but if you try to break all twigs together at once, you won’t be able to break them. Naturally, we fought and screamed and quarrelled… I can’t call myself a good-natured girl, you know. But I do my best to improve. Our parents have taught us to value what we’ve got.

The law in our family was: If you want to eat, eat. If you don’t want, don’t eat. As simple as that.

At the weekends, when we stayed together, we would cook a meal for the entire family. For instance, we would make pelmeni and then eat them together. After lunch, we would climb the big parents’ bed and read books. I preferred having fun instead of reading. Yet, when everyone was busy reading, you had to do the same. That’s precisely what it’s like in the Convent. It is hard to stand during the entire service but everyone does, and it empowers you. Little by little, you grow accustomed to it.

Little Lena with her sisters

I have always loved nature. I recall how I dreamed of escaping into the forest, building a hut, and living in unity with the nature. Before I went to bed, I would fantasise about living in the forest, finding something to eat and something to spend my days on. I even drew up blueprints. Sometimes I would skip school because I wanted to go outdoors and chill out. Our Siberian forests are absolutely stunning and incredibly beautiful. I would lie on the ground watching… The nature is so lively, you know…

It was my own decision to come to church when I was five

I wouldn’t call my parents atheists but apparently the Soviet dictatorship had taught them to be cautious of looking in the direction of God. Although my family was totally non-religious, I had the unconquerable drive towards God since I was a child. I talked with him since my earliest childhood. Let me illustrate it with a story.

I was five. It was time for Easter. Of course, I didn’t know anything about Easter. Orthodox Christians in our town gathered in a small cabin made into a church. They would summon the flock by ringing a beater — actually, a hanging piece of a steel rail. I was walking to my grandmother’s house and doing what I liked to do, that is crushing the ice on frozen puddles. I was so excited to stand on thin and fragile ice and watch it crush and give way to water.

Lena, 4 years

Suddenly, I heard the beater ringing. I was so excited and eager to go to church! My heart started pounding. I can’t explain… I don’t know why but I had a clear understanding that one had to wear a cross in order to set foot in a church. Returning to the town from a dacha, we would always show our permits on the checkpoint. It was a very important and meaningful ritual for us children. That was possibly where I got that association from: a christcross is a permit to church. I didn’t have a christcross. So they won’t let me in, will they?

I stepped into a puddle. The ice cracked and I saw something shining inside the puddle. I bent to look at it, and it was an icon of the Mother of God with a cross on the reverse side. That’s my permit!

I happily ran to the church. The church was separated by two busy roads. I don’t know how I managed to move past all those cars. I ran into the church. There were many people consecrating the kulich Easter cakes. A woman turned to me and gave me an egg: “Christ is Risen!” “No thanks, I can’t —” I had been taught not to accept anything from strangers, you know. She said, “Take the egg, you have to.” I did. The woman asked me, “Whose kid are you?” I thought, “Well, time to show my permit.” I took out the icon, lifted it up as high as I could (like a permit) and blurted out: “Look! That’s what I’ve got!”

Later that day, I told my mum, “Mum, you know, you should baptise me.” My mother was amazed, “Lena, where do you get that from? What are you talking about?” Remember, we lived in the Soviet Union. I was upset. I was attempting to get a christcross somewhere. I even tried to get the cross from other children in my nursery school in exchange for something else, but they wouldn’t go for it (laughs).

I felt God’s presence and my connection to him since my earliest childhood. I can’t explain how this kind of childish and sincere faith was ignited in my heart. Naturally, it seems to me now that it happened thanks to the prayers of some deceased relative of mine.

I have a photo album titled Our Baby where my parents recorded all details of my life as a baby. First tooth, first steps, first words. The section titled Favourite Holidays is filled in with my mother’s handwriting: Birthday, New Year, the 8th of March, the sister’s birthday. I wrote “Christmas” and “Easter” next to it — my older sisters had taught me how to write. Where did that come from? We never celebrated Christmas and Easter.

By the way, I would always feel sad because I liked that holiday. One Easter, I took raw eggs (mum didn’t let us boil eggs during the poverty-stricken 1990s), dyed them with gouache, put them in a plastic bag, and went to church to have them consecrated.

My sisters laughed at me and called me a holier-than-thou. All the same, I was absolutely certain that I was doing the right thing.

Here is another story from my childhood. I came to my best friend Zhenya (we went to music school together). Although children who study music, just like children who do other “not-so-children-friendly” jobs, tend to compete with each other, Zhenya and I loved one another with a genuine Christian love and never envied one another.

Lena and Zhenya

Zhenya’s family celebrated Easter. Their house teeming with guests, Easter cakes, dyed eggs, exclamations “Christ is risen!” She felt really tense in the presence of so many people. On the contrary, I was looking cheerfully at what was happening, and kept saying, “Zhenya, look! It’s so much fun, isn’t it!” I was genuinely thrilled.

I wanted to share my Easter joy with my favourite music teacher, Valentina Iosifovna. I had several ballpoint pens, one of which was half-empty, in my pocket. I shouted right at the door, “Christ is risen!” and gave her the pens. I wanted to give something to her as a gift for Easter. She replied with a smile: “He is risen, indeed!” Then she added, “You know, I’m a Catholic. We don’t celebrate Easter today.” I thought to myself, “Their faith is so boring, I’ll never go there. They don’t even have Easter!”

I Was Offended by God and Spent a Decade Without Him

When I was twelve, my mum died. She was 47, too young to die. I felt hurt and blamed God. I was seriously offended. I demanded that He bring her back and take me instead. I lay down waiting for my death. But I didn’t die. I felt really furious: “If so, I don’t need you any longer.” That was how I broke my connection to God. I closed the door of my heart to him.

It was painful. You keep moving around and Good keeps acting in your life. He continues to help and guide you. The Mother of God keeps loving you, too. Bit by bit, you come to realise that God has been taking care of you wherever you went. In spite of that, you turn away from him obstinately.

I spent ten years without God. I was adamant in not letting him back into my heart although I wanted to go to church and participate in worship. I had to have this moment of rejection because I was left longing for God during all that time.

“Are You Alive? It’s a Miracle!”

I was baptised when I was 16 for fear of death. It happened in hospital. I was brought to a hospital bed by a serious illness: I had suppurated bones in my head. I couldn’t walk. I stayed in various hospitals, the last being the Russian Children’s Hospital in Moscow. My aunt, who was my dad’s sister, sent for a priest. I was in conflict with God at that time already so I reluctantly agreed to be baptised. Surely, I feel very sorry for my attitude now. Baptism is such a happy occasion! That was when I took communion for the first time.

My second communion was before a serious surgery. A boy named Kolya, who was the same age as me and had a horrible genetic disease (lupus erythematosus), was in the same hospital with his grandmother (his mother had died). He drove me in a wheelchair to a nocturnal Easter liturgy where we spent a couple of hours.

The Lord cherished and loved me so tenderly, in spite of everything! It’s unspeakable! My doctor’s colleagues were warning her against the surgery. They predicted a 1/100 chance of my surviving it. I had literally no chance to remain a healthy person.

A bone in my head which contained the internal carotid artery had been rotten, just 3 mm were left to go before you cut into that artery, and if you do, it’d cause immediate death. However, my doctor Valentina Ryszardovna wasn’t scared. She was a professor and a famous surgeon. She came into my ward and told me everything candidly, waiting for my decision. “1/100 chance is still a chance. Let’s try.”

The surgery took a while. Several medical crews took turns in performing that surgery. It was a success. I woke up in an intensive therapy room. I opened my eyes and saw several doctors towering over me. “Are you alive?” I nodded. Valentina Ryszardovna burst into the room, fell down on her knees and kissed my hands crying, “Lena, you see, we’ve made it! It’s a miracle!” It was during the Bright Easter Week.

O Lord Let Me Come Back!

Speaking in a layperson’s terms, everything was great: I managed to recover after the surgery, I received an excellent education and a decent job that paid well. I did it on my own. God had endowed me with many gifts, such as independence and sharp wit. I would always get out unharmed from any situation and not be overpowered by anything. I’d simply regain my focus and move on. I possessed some inner strength. However, I was far from God.

When I was 22, ten years after I broke with God, I came to a tipping point in my life. A dead-end. Loss of meaning. I was on the verge of a breakdown. My soul cried out in despair, “Lord, how long will You torture me? Please make me come back to You!”

I stopped eating. I spent my days lying in bed and watching Soyuz TV channel. One day, I got up and somehow went to a church. As far as I recall, someone had told me that I had to receive a blessing for driving my car. The Lord was guiding my steps and sent me certain people at certain points. I went to my parish church and asked the rector, “Please bless me to drive my car.” “Did the GAI (the agency that does the same in Russia that DMV does in the US and DVLA does in the UK — translator’s note) bless you? If yes, then I bless you, too.” I was hooked by his simple and easygoing attitude. I caught myself thinking that I had to come back to God at last.

I didn’t know how to return to God, though. It was exactly like the prodigal son: he ate pig food and knew that he had to go back but he was too afraid because he had fallen and he didn’t know what to do about it? Lord have mercy, it was incredibly difficult to overcome that nagging fear. How can I return? What will happen? What should I do?

The Lord can see one’s heart, and He will always answer one’s prayer. A woman from my job gave me a book by John Krestiankin, “Constructing Your Confession”. The book sat unread on my shelf until I… Until I decided to get married.

St Matrona of Moscow Rescues Me From Marriage

I decided to get married. Preparations for the ceremony were underway. Suddenly, I started having really weird feelings. I felt aversion when I thought about family life. I just couldn’t force myself into it! I had to go and choose my wedding gown, and I did it with tears in my eyes. All girls dream about marriage but I couldn’t help crying when looking at myself in a wedding gown.

It was incomprehensible and hard to explain. On the one hand, I wanted to have a family and kids but I felt that something inside me protested against it. I didn’t have anyone to seek advice from. My dad would tell me, “Decide for yourself, you are old enough now.” But I simply couldn’t make up my mind…

I came across a book with the biography of St Matrona of Moscow, an Akathist to her, some prayers and stories about her miraculous help. I didn’t go to church yet, and I didn’t know any of the saints. I don’t know why I read that book. I was so impressed that I prayed before sleep, “Matrona, I’m very lonely. Please help me and tell me what to do.” Saint Matrona answered to my prayer that very night.

I saw a dream where St Matrona hugged me. She hugged me, and I felt so calm, so peaceful, as if she were my mum. I saw my bridegroom standing at a distance and yelling at me. I was so upset… “Listen, stop talking, can’t you see who she is. You’ve got to be reverent…” All of a sudden, he disappeared. St Matrona pointed at something. It was a church with black star-spotted domes.

I got up thinking that I had to go to Moscow. I could only understand that the church I had seen in my dream was a monastery or a convent of some kind, and that she had ordered me to go there. Of course, my wedding didn’t happen. My brother, my friends, and I went on a holiday to Italy for a month. However, the Lord had already touched my heart. Something was breaking apart inside me. Everything seemed useless, alien, and empty. Even if you try to stop thinking about it and block the outcry of your soul, your soul keeps crying louder and louder. When we finally got back home, I immediately opened the book by John Krestiankin.

To be continued…

Recorded by Sister Maria Kotova

March 27, 2018

St. Elisabeth Convent

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