The more we learn, the less we know but still God bless our endevours
It’s really a time to be devoted to God. But as you can see it is also a time which God devotes to us. So we can make ourselves better sons and daughters of our Lord. Personally I really look forward to it; simply because my life becomes more and more miserable as I myself mess it up without any remorse. This is how I feel at least. So dunno about you, but for me - it is simply a Godsend time as it really is!
Sorry for me giving atheism a hard time, but we’ve just been talking about it with my Orthodox friend. She said - and I entrirely agree with her - that she cannot imagine what atheists do and, what’s more, what they THINK, when they are in a desperate situation. It’s been once said that faith can help a human being to stay a human being in inhumane situations. I’m with that statement. I myself can’t simply imagine what people do when their world is ruined, when they are left by everybody, friendless, alone, have lost their beloved ones or fighting a war. What do they do? What do they feel? How do they react? It’s stange but when I toy this idea of being an atheist in such circumstances it is as if an abyss - dark, carnivorous, ruthless abyss with horrible snakes and insects sufing its bottom - lays in front of me and I stand about to fall there. Ugh! That’s just the way you could think of. That’s just the most horrible thing you can imagine. Perhaps, a dark banya with spiders in its corners as Svidrigailov envisages it is more sophisticated - and probably even more horrifying - but still that’s how you can possibly feel if you are living without God.
It is a strange phenomenon methought when sometimes despair - a cold-blooded overwhelming despair which even has a smell of its own - can unintentionally open higher realities to you. I’ve just been getting through one of my little but nasty despairs a while ago when I realised something crucial. I’ve learnt how to distinguish between the unimportant and the important. The world around us is full of different exciting things - it is so full of them that hundreds and hundreds of extra lives added to your current life account when you die would not be enough to digest everything. People now know so much; moreover, people are able to learn so much that our ancestors probably did not even dream of such an incredible luxury of knowledge, understanding and concomitant action. But, wait a minute, yes, they never dreamt of it, but then did they actually care about such things? Did they actually value this knowledge? Or they sought something else? Something else which is higher than knowledge the ultimate entirety of which you can never get hold of anyway?
And I was suddenly stricken by this thought - if we cannot possibly get all of these beauties of the earth and of man which our God had given us, then logically we are created for something else.
One can just think of St.Paul’s extremelly powerful dictum (well, a little bit expressively barren in the way I put it out of my memory): “if I speak million languages, but I don’t have love I’m nothing”.
So, we are created for love; for love and God Who is Love. Not for knowledge - this unexhaustible engine feeding Faustian souls endlessly thirsty for scarce drops from its well - not for career or whatever you might think of. But for God. And this is the Truth. This is the most important thing to know.
There is hell a lot of going on in today’s world. If I were to bring up some figures or scientific findings I would certainly not hesitate doing this, but I think it’s a pretty commonsensish point to make - and I assume every sane person who reads papers and books will know it - that the world is getting more and more intelligent. I assure you, as I have read some of the authorities on this particular point, our brains are not larger or smaller than that of our predecessors. There is nothing to do with physique in this matter. As some historians would argue, this is because our prudent, hard-working and enduring but not always far-seeing ancestors have bequeathed to us the print, the transport and communications as well as stable Western economies and prosperity. In this respect I would agree with Arnold Toynbee - the only historians I think who had made this perceptive but overwhelmingly just and humane point which I’ve never managed to find in other more modern history books so explicitly stated, although Toynbee had been given so much of a hard time that his work is not regarded not only wrong, absolete or old-fashioned but - what’s more - a subject of anecdote and satire. The point is that we should be grateful to out ancestors. This is particularly humble and chastening I suppose for those - and myself included - who are - just a little bit - bogged down with criticising everything that they sometimes come to the point where it is hard to determine whether something had actually happened at all. So how do you go about this situation? If you’re atheist with a darwinian slant in your ideology - no advice for you, unfortunately. My mental Christmas presents bag doesn’t have anything for you. But if you believe in God - just think - do you feel cheated? By whom? By God? By our enduring human-loving Christ? Just think about it. Is it this your situation which troubles you and you feel deceived by God. But how this can be? Cheated by Christ? I don’t mind being ripped off by a Turkish market bargaining seller, but being cheated by Christ? How is this possible?
If you feel you are nothing in this world, because there are many people around who are more intelligent, more talented or more whatever than you, just imaginethat by thinking this kind of stuff you virtually saying to Christ, our Lord: “You are a nasty God, you have deceived me! I’d have fared better by doing or being so and so” . But - man, this is bullshit! Our God - the God of the Bible - is the most loving Person you can ever imagine! How can He - He who had given life to you, who is steering you away from death and pestilence all the tim - can deceive you?
I was just doing a little bit of cultural proselytising by sending A.Kuprin’s celebrated “Yama” (actually have just found out that it was enacted on the blue screen and, amazingly, featuring Evgeny Evstigneev) to my supervisor. Far from everything - which was created during the Soviet era - this includes movies, music and literature - was tainted by stiff-upper-lipped uncompromising (and, from a simple Briton’s point of view intrinsicly disgusting and false) ideology of communism and “moving to the bright future”. What we actually have is far cry from communism. I shouldn’t really talk about it to you, because you, good people, already know about it. Just recap “Kalina krasnaya” in your mind. Or “The tale of wanderings”. Or Andrei Tarkovsky’s films. Or Solzhenicyn (though not of the Soviet mould, but still - Russian!) . I still enjoy all these movies and many others, not because I’m a nationalist of a particularly nasty sort, but because I - and many other modern, progressive, ultra-modern, ultra-advanced (adjectives not applicable to my persona) young and middle-aged people - find so much stuff in these films, which we can’t simply find in any movies of any other countries! So however critical we are of the Russian past, we - I speak for myself - still find these products (a nasty, but useful word) of the Soviet culture extremely high-brow, profound, of absolute, highest aesthetic value. They exist independently of the politics of the age and of the encroaching inroads of command economy and coercive state or whatever. They are above all of these. They are timeless. And they are - still Soviet! and soviet they are simply because post-Soviet russian movie industry has not yet achieved anything approaching this. It simply cannot even dare to loosen laces of the Soviet directors’ shoes 
Примечание. Перевод не стремился быть поэтическим
The wrong love (not wronged). Also could be called the egoistic love, but protagonists of the poem are not aware of this.
Foreword
Often when we befriend a person of the opposite sex it seems to us we might have a genuine love for them (even if it does not extend to more intimate relationships (meeting every day, etc.)). but in fact having inspected these relationships and ourselves closely, we suddenly discover that all what we deemed about it is a fake.
As if in a Middle Ages disease
We fret the nights and days,
In biting our lips and gnawing our nails,
And loosing fatty flesh
in waiting charmed time
when evening comes afresh,
and mystically prime.
I’d love to call you idiot;
you’d love to call me fool –
Oh, what a great love, you see!
Oh, dear, I shall swoon.
My witty flirty talk
is moulding your response
You make me caring sweet,
when troubled by your boss.
Your habits me disgust,
My perfume makes you sick,
But I might be in love -
With you, you jealous freak.
I cannot tell, indeed afraid to ask
Until has broke the fight
In our brains and hearts,
Is not the love we deem to have
A lesbian’s delight*
Who stares at looking glass?
И перевод
Как будто в какой-то средневековой чуме,
Мы дрожим и день и ночь,
Кусая губы и теряя вес,
В ожидании зачарованного времени,
Когда приходит вечер снова
Такой мистически свежий.
Мне б хотелось тебя назвать идиотом,
Ты хотел бы меня наречь дурой,
О, какая великая любовь у нас, ты видишь?
Я сейчас упаду в обморок.
Я так остроумно говорю,
Предугадывая твой ответ;
И какой я становлюсь сострадательной паинькой,
Когда ты рассказываешь о своих проблемах.
Просто удивительно!
Твои привычки мне омерзительны,
Мой парфюм вызывает у тебя рвотный рефлекс,
Но возможно я тебя люблю
Тебя, такого завистливого придурка.
Не знаю, не могу сказать,
Пока идет эта борьба в наших сердцах и душах,
Как ты думаешь, может наша любовь,
Которую мы имеем -
Просто самолюбование лесбиянки?
И попоэтичнее последнее, потому что оно наиболее отражает это противоречивое состояние
Я вдруг пойму – от уважения изветрились останки
И вместо чувств сплошное “я” упруго.
Любовь, нам кажется имеем друг для друга,
Не есть ли самолюбование лесбиянки? (нарциссизм, короче)
I’ve just recently realised that all my Orthodox people - the English, the Dutch, Russians, Hungarians and Romanians - are from Darwin College! Well, not all of them, but a fair number I should say. Also it’s funny because all the interesting things regarding Orthodox Christianity I’ve managed to grapple with so far have been going on at Darwin as not at any other college at Cambridge. I remember we had a truly superb lecture by an American professor, the lecture called “the Heart and the Soul”. It was basically about Patristic theology and how the Holy Fathers understood the connection and intimate relationships between our hearts, our bodies and souls. Although I didn’t quite understood many things (well, I sat at the far end of the room which was quite stupid of me, and the professor spoke quitely - he is an Orthodox Christian by the way), I thoroughly enjoyed it. Personally, I’ve always thought that what happens in our souls must be indirectly replicated or reflected of the processes in our bodies (not sure really how I’m going to get deeper to the level of heart-mind relationships, but I think soul-body is the easiest to pin down) and vice versa. Well, to give one hopefully successful example as you may remember the Russian proverb “the full belly is incapable of learning” if I translate it well. This is a very good example of these intimate inherent relationships. There are a lot more of things I think to say about it, but they are intensly personal so spot them yourselves if you wish. I suppose if you do that you will be able to control your emotions and your body more tightly which is of real help in this world.
Also, man, I forgot to tell you (sandbagged you with serious things though should have really started with a light snack) - there are the salsa classes at Darwin which our Orthodox friends are most happy to frequent!
See you soon
Dasha
I think the curious incident I will be talking about worths a book in its own right or at least an intelligible discussion in atheists’ and, above all, theologians’ circles. Somewhere in close vicinity to Richard Dawkins, perhaps, though he’s done enough I suppose to make us think of Christianity as not something to be taken for granted, but to be constantly discovered, wondered about, meticulously studied and lovingly discussed (i mean “lovingly”, because our God gave us brains, and we are manifestly not primates, though some might want us to believe in our chimpanzee ascendancy).
Anyway, I went to the Bible studies some time ago and happened to meet a friend from my Faculty, who went down there to enjoy a free sandwich (that’s a great incentive for permanently-malnourished students). At the studies we were talking about the Fall of Man and he told me I think an incredibly ingenious story, which we might ponder about from theological point of view as well as from different others. His mum came to England from Communist China, where she’s never heard about our Saviour and the Bible. She happened to run into the Jehovah’s Witnesses, well… they happened (or this is not the best word to use - they deliberately came about, well you know like them do stuff) to come to her house and were telling her the story of the Fall of Man (I suppose citing and clutching the Old Testament as if it were some kind of authority to this woman). As I understood they thought they would impress her, revolutionise her ways (they are often quite labourious in their attempts, though it works in Russia I think better than in Britain) or at least instil some admiration and pious tremble into her soul. When they had finished she just said: “Oh, man, the serpent was the most progressive person up there - he managed to overthrow God’s oppressive rule and liberate mankind!” They were rather miffed. Poor lads!
I think this reply alone - rather unintended, spontaneous like all replies of a genius’ kind - can make us think more deeply about sin. That’s the whole point. I hope to expatiate on this later.
Hi, everybody!
I hope I’ve not been tiring to you with my countless writings - there are actually quite a few compared to how much others wrote! So don’t worry, mates!
I was thinking about my last visit to Russia. I’ve not been there for quite a while, in winter at least when our town is buldging with people. Lots of students, young people etc. Well there are not many of them in absolute terms, but there are none in summer (when I usually come to Russia). So I’ve been quite lucky to spot some changes and make some invaluable observations.
Well, guys, I was quite disappointed frankly. The language, it seems has experienced some change: people talk faster, less thoughtful, sentences seem to get shorter and shorter there are lots of words what we call “parasytes”, such as “hm”, “vot”, lots of swearing going on. I was appalled upon hearing some kids swearing quite boldly on the street when I took a walk one day. Ok, kids always experiment when they are not supervised. But, man, how come? I wondered what happened to the language - is it too much smsing looming large? Is it too much of mindless, empty-brained, obscene TV? Well, it is a mish-mash of factors, bluntly speaking. I don’t think we can really do something about it rather embrace a “radical individualism” as I remember one guy saying.
Another appalling thing is the fact that the culture of conversation has changed. I mean people have ceased to talk about high culture, poetry, literature, etc. (well apart from politics - that’s our Russians’ lot) - instead they always talk about vodka and how it is wonderful to be drunk!
Not all of them of course - don’t get me wrong. Hopefully, the great majority of young and old people in Russia are very well educated. I mean on our mainstream TV which used to be quite good. Now all but a minority of jokes are about vodka, etc. Well you’d say I shouldn’t really have watched all this, but, frankly, it has crept into the culture of everyday conversation.
Russian people are extremely lucky to have a very rich culture. But they don’t know what to do with it.
Today has been the day of snow! I had a terribly poetic mood, not just because I had to write up my essay fairly quickly (and was half an hour late as usual - smarty me ;)). The snow has been falling on the ground in soft crystall-pure white flakes, students were trudging to their lectures complaining that they had to find warmer clothes (some of them obviously failed) - so unexpectedly the snow has befallen us. Actually nobody was grumpy, there were some troubles with traffic as I’ve been informed by an email, but I think people were happy. I’ve seen some guys and girls playing snowballs outside - magic! I didn’t get a chance to come out though, just stepped outside for a couple of minutes in the morning to touch it and to clutch it It reminds me of Russia, my mothercountry, my sweet homeland which I’ve left not in vain, but as God wished. Thy will be done.
maryqueenofscots
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