Where Two Rivers Meet

Russian Windows on the Gospel

Nicola Vidamour

• Publisher: Sacristy Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781789592283
• eBook ISBN: 9781789592306
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Nicola Vidamour is a British Methodist minister who served in Pskov, Russia for six years. When she was feeling homesick, she would either go to the place in the city where two rivers meet or visit her favourite icons in the local museum.

Nicola enables us to look through the windows of these icons and discover more about life in Russia and the way in which the gospel can be read though Russian eyes. Excerpts from Russian literature enter into dialogue with biblical texts.

Through a mixture of memoir, theological reflection and spiritual insights, Nicola also invites us to think about where two rives meet in our own lives and shares some of the paired streams which flow within her. These include Russian and English, Orthodoxy and Methodism, heaven and earth, poetry and prose, body and soul.

In the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Where Two Rivers Meet provides a helpful foreigner's guide to life in a Russian provincial town and offers much-needed assurance that the "other" can become a friend.

Little Window 1

The little windows (okoshki) through which business is normally conducted in Russia—purchasing train tickets, submitting documents, changing money, posting letters—often close for a “technical break”. The times of these breaks are indicated on each window, but it is not always easy to tell when you join the queue if you will be served before the next break comes. This is the first of two little windows in this book. Please feel free to take a tea break!

Registering in your hometown

December 2004

Every Christmas the opening verses of the second chapter of Luke’s Gospel are read in church, and we are reminded that Joseph had to travel to his hometown of Bethlehem to register for the census and that Mary, in the late stages of her pregnancy, went with him. Before coming to live and work as a mission partner in Russia I had never seriously considered what that registration process might involve. What follows is an account of what Mary and Joseph would have had to go through if Bethlehem had been a Russian town!

Firstly, they would have to gather numerous documents. These would have to be original copies with official signatures and stamps. At least two of each would be required. If the wording was not acceptable, they would be sent back to Nazareth to start all over again.

Secondly, they would have to carry with them a large amount of cash in order to pay all the fees, bribes and the cost of travel, food and accommodation along the way. If none of this cash was stolen by pickpockets en route, it could still be rejected by the cashier as being too crumpled and creased.

Thirdly, they would have to converse with bureaucrats not only in bureaucratic language but in a language which was not their native tongue. This would be tiring, confusing and stressful.

Fourthly, there would be queues everywhere, with people constantly trying to push in and long hours spent standing and waiting with no toilet or refreshment facilities.

All of this has been my experience recently whilst trying to register my visa in my hometown of Pskov. I now have a deeper empathy for Mary and Joseph, and I am left wondering whether they managed to complete all the paperwork before Jesus was born. Presumably, they would then have been required to fill in countless forms to register his birth and perhaps even go through the whole process again to include this newborn child in the census!

5

A parent’s sacrifice

A prayer written by Mollie Priest (my mother) for the Methodist Prayer Handbook 2005–6:

Generous God, my daughter responded to an invitation,

in your name, to journey to Russia.

This fills me with pride at her deep faith,

boundless courage and linguistic skills.

Yet, her absence, Lord, is a thief to my joy.

I am wrapped in moments of emptiness

as I miss her laughter, visits and shared outings.

Her journey has a purpose.

Fill her with an attitude of mission.

Fill me with gentleness of spirit.

Her journey has obstacles.

Fill her with strength and patience for each crisis.

Fill me with grace to support her in the struggle.

She journeys with the greatest friend of all.

Fill all families, separated by barriers of distance,

with your calming, constant presence in our lives. Amen.1

I should probably have asked my mother to write this chapter. Fewer than three years had passed since the death of my father when I got on a plane and flew to live in Russia. That felt like another bereavement for my mum—another empty place at the table for Christmas and other family gatherings. She can no doubt identify profoundly with Mary in this icon. The sacrifice being made here is not only the two turtle doves or pigeons which Joseph has brought but the sacrifice which Mary makes in letting go of her child. In handing him over to Simeon, she is, in a sense, handing him over to death. This is the place where birth and death meet. The old man looks into the eyes of the newborn baby and knows that he can now depart in peace. Mary goes home, knowing that her love for this child will bring her piercing pain as well as overwhelming joy (Luke 2:28–35).

This icon reminds me of an episode in the BBC hospital drama Casualty when a new mother is told that there is a 50 per cent chance of her baby developing Huntingdon’s disease—a fatal genetic disorder. The child cannot be tested until he is eighteen years old, and so this mother is faced with living with that uncertain knowledge for a long time. That news—to borrow some words from my mother’s prayer—is a thief to her joy.

One of the most famous icons of Mary is the Vladimir Virgin of Tenderness which is housed in the church at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. It depicts Mary holding an adult-looking Christ child. His head is resting against her cheek, and his arm is wrapped around her neck. Mary’s face is turned towards the viewer, and she looks desperately sad.

Friends who visited me in Russia would often ask in the first day or two whether Russians ever smile. Behind closed doors, with friends around the kitchen table, there is plenty of joy and laughter—but it is rare to see happy faces on icons or on the street. An American friend, who came to Pskov regularly, made it his mission every day to try to get a smile from a shop assistant or a bus conductor.

I think I was drawn to Russian and Russia partly because of the depth of suffering which I associated with the people and the place. My most profound experiences of God have come at times of pain and loss. My spirituality is rooted in a crucified God, and I can be quite dismissive of those who seem to focus on the triumph of Easter Day without having plumbed the depths of Good Friday. That does not mean that I do not believe in the resurrection. It does mean that, like Thomas, I need to see the wounds of Christ before I can find healing and hope (John 20:25).

Galya, my flatmate in Pskov, used to get frustrated when I wanted to spend the evening watching a gloomy dramatization of a Dostoevsky novel and she wanted to watch a comedy show. “We Russians don’t need any more Dostoevsky,” she said. “We have had enough pain and suffering. We need to laugh now.” I was interested to discover that there is a Russian word (khokhotun—masculine, khokhotushka—feminine) for someone who laughs a lot which, as far as I know, has no direct equivalent in English. I suppose we would call someone a giggler, but the Russian word could be translated as a giggle-box—the laughing version of a chatterbox!

I think that Anna—the other woman in the icon—was probably both a giggle-box and a chatterbox. She had had her share of sorrow. Her husband had died after only seven years of marriage (Luke 2:36–8), but she seems full of life and enthusiasm in the temple. Simeon and Mary have this deep, intense conversation (as you might find in a Dostoevsky novel!) whilst Anna goes around bubbling with infectious joy and telling everyone about Jesus.

I have to confess that Anna also reminds me of some of the women you can find today in Russian Orthodox churches—cleaning the candle stands and keeping a close eye on everyone who comes through the door. I was once told off by one such woman because she felt the split in the back of my skirt was an attempt to seduce the priest. I also frequently observed older women like Anna telling young parents in the street, whom they had never met before, that their child was either overdressed or underdressed for the weather. I remember getting rebuked myself for sitting on a wall in the summer, because, this woman insisted, my ovaries would get frozen.

This icon is where two rivers meet: laughter and tears, age and youth, birth and death. The Russian title of the icon—Sreteniye—is an archaic word which means “meeting” or “encounter”. Rather like the icon of the Old Testament Trinity, there is also a space for us in this meeting place. We can perhaps imagine ourselves stepping forward and stretching out our arms to receive Jesus from Mary.

The structures behind the people remind us that this encounter is taking place in the temple—a place where one expects to meet with God. The temple plays a significant role in Luke’s Gospel—the only Gospel to include this particular episode in Jesus’ life. Luke both begins and ends his Gospel in the temple (Luke 1:8–9; 24:53).

For me, this icon suggests that our life—like Luke’s Gospel—is framed and held by our place of worship. I was carried into church for baptism at the beginning of my life, and I will be carried into church for my funeral when my earthly life has come to an end. In between those two significant events, I keep returning to this meeting place with God in order to present to God what I am carrying—as Mary and Joseph presented Jesus.

As I look at this icon, I wonder what I need to offer today, what I need to let go of, what I need to receive. It seems to me that there is a longing and an ache in all four adults in the icon both to give and to receive. They are all leaning forward with arms outstretched—some with hands empty, others with hands full. Such posture and intent also remind me of the sacrament of Holy Communion. Simeon has stretched out his hands to receive the body of Christ, and I see Mary here as the priest, offering Christ to him.

There is a physicality in this encounter which goes beyond the physical structure of the temple. It is a physicality which goes beyond our bodies and pierces our souls. That is what worship—especially sacramental worship—can do. The ordinary gifts of the earth—water, bread, wine—touch us both physically and spiritually. What we feel in our bodies, we also feel in our souls.

Body and soul appeared in the list I gave in Chapter 2 of the various pairings of rivers which find a meeting place within me. I am aware of the intimate relationship between spirituality and sexuality. Making love is another experience where what we feel in our bodies, we also feel in our souls. And yet the Church has often tried to keep body and soul apart. One of the reasons why Mary had come to the temple was for the rites of purification. She would have been seen as unclean for forty days after childbirth, and the sacrifice of the two turtle doves or pigeons would have enabled her to be pronounced clean again (Leviticus 12:1–8). That is just one example of a religious viewpoint which sees the body as sinful whilst the soul is pure.

This meeting in the temple affirms for me that when body and soul meet, we are on holy ground. As Simeon physically holds the baby in his arms, he has a spiritual experience; he sees salvation. In the previous icon of the Annunciation, Mary had a spiritual experience which affected her body. She was penetrated by the Holy Spirit and went on to experience the visceral physicality of pregnancy and childbirth. Body and soul are deeply connected. These two rivers need to meet.

I am writing this book during a sabbatical which I had hoped to spend in Pskov. The COVID-19 pandemic made that impossible. I have appreciated being able to connect with my friends in Russia through internet video calls, but this is not the same as being physically present. This virtual world we have been living in has made the incarnation even more important to me. The Word became flesh (John 1:14). That is what I try to live out and model in my ministry—and I think this is particularly important for mission partners. Mission partners embody the partnership and relationship between different churches, cultures and countries.

I once heard an amusing anecdote about someone who asked a computer to translate the biblical quote “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41) into Russian. This was the result: “The vodka is strong, but the meat is rotten”! We can laugh about that, but it does also remind us that the call to follow Christ can be costly and demanding on our bodies.

In the Richmond Room at Methodist Church House in London, there are four boards listing the name, place of service, year of entry and year of death of the 125 missionaries who trained at Richmond College between 1840 and 1950. Almost half of them died within ten years of entering college—mostly from some form of fever. I am not sure if I would have offered to serve overseas if the risk of premature death was still so high. I knew that I could come back to Britain quickly and easily if I did develop any health problems.

I developed bronchitis during my fir...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• In the beginning
• Where two rivers meet
• Put the kettle on
• Mary gets evangelized
• Little Window 1
• A parent’s sacrifice
• The Passion of Pushkin
• Little Window 2
• Entering the city
• Clean Thursday
• The Women Myrrh-Bearers
• To hell and back
• Lost in translation
• Homecoming
• Postscript