Category: Moscow Churches

I quite like the adverb “religiously”: it illustrates the practice that is not unknown to me. I used to religiously go to the library, to town, I watched films religiously, like, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Captain Grant’s Children, The Poirot series, The Life of Klim Samgin, etc. I religiously attended a few film festivals, a couple of film seasons (including the one on Pornography in Cinema), and one or two retrospectives, e.g. of Roman Polanski’s work. It may all have to do with “lay” activities, as opposed to something to do with the church, but I certainly can exercise a degree of religious fervour and even piety when it comes to a person or object that I cherish.

The same never applied to church. Even if my mother or grandmother had visited the church, they rarely told me and certainly never took me there. Even more certainly, they provided me with no “religious education”. Before I read the Bible, I have read a classical Soviet book “The Bible for the Believers and Non-believers” (Библия для верующих и неверующих), so I had a very good idea of all the logical incongruities of this great book. Further training at the University provided me with an insight into the Bible as an historical text, one of many, so it has always been a divine book in the same sense as may be applied to any inspired work of art and culture.

Curiously, I have always had more interest in “revisionist” stories of Christ. Jesus Christ Superstar the rock opera, Judas Iscariot story by the Russian writer Leonid Andreev (the link takes you to the Russian text), The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis, they all somehow seemed to tell a story that was “truer” than the one peddled by the “official” church propaganda. In addition, until I went to England I have always felt uncomfortable in the Russian Orthodox church: the pious seemed to be too pious, and I was more aloof and absolutely not compliant with the religious rites.

But at the same time, whenever I wrote something “anti-God” in the past, I never published it. It may sound mystical, but something has always stopped me. It is as if something outside of me knew that I was really barking up the wrong tree, and kindly wanted to save me from making a mistake.

It was in England that I began to photograph chapels, churches, and cathedrals, and that I started going inside and spending time there, and even taking photographs. The church was gradually changing from an alien and almost hostile environment into the space where solitude was encouraged, and where one could find peace. I came to see it as a meditation space, and what is the prayer if not a form of meditation? Experiencing the loss, as well as the gratitude for having sometimes unknown but ultimately benevolent force in my life, also made me step out of my comfort zone and start lighting the candles and ordering prayers for the health of my close people and friends.

And ultimately I came to understand that, while I may have had issues with the doctrinal side of things, as well as with the church’s attempt to encroach on just about every area of my life, I have not had real issues with the idea of God, or with the possibility that my prayers may come true. After all, the teachers of success tell us that we get what we wish for, that we attract that we focus on. ‘God’ is merely a word that signifies the force that has and has not the presence in people and things at the same time. I am not God, but I certainly carry within me the transcendental element, which source has to be God. And so do you.

I was asked once if I was an agnostic or an atheist, and I cannot call myself either. My faith is mystical at best, although I do describe myself as a philosopher in these matters. I like the Gothic idea of building and decorating the church as the extension of the divine grace and beauty; and I do agree with Erich Fromm’s explanation of the importance of Church as the projection of matriarchal ideas in the otherwise patriarchal religion that centres upon God the Father. Above all – and this is another indication of my mysticism in the matters of faith – out of all Bible books I have always loved The Song of Songs. Those who are interested in the subject may already know that the poetic imagery of this book has been widely used throughout the Middle Ages, and idea of the marriage of Church and Christ owes its origin to the story of Solomon and Shulamite, highly erotic and deeply intimate.

I guess the reason I love this part of the Bible is because this is what I cannot imagine the life without: the all-embracing Love that spreads from one’s own self to the beloved and to everything within one’s reach. I find it really sad that church and religion sometimes instruct how to love God but that they rarely teach to love people.

So, these days when I write about Moscow churches and take photographs outside and sometimes inside the religious space, I do so with two thoughts in mind. First, having seen how spiritual grace and beauty were translated in architecture, sculpture and decor of the church, I want to show how the same happens in Russia. After all, the Orthodox church is not altogether different from the rest of religious denominations. And secondly, I want to show how this space functions in creating the atmosphere for meditation. The church, either in Russia or elsewhere, needs to open up to the fact that it is first and foremost the house of God which is always the one, regardless whether we are in a Christian church, or a mosque, or a synagogue. This is the only way we will protect churches as relics of our human past, by re-establishing their cultural and spiritual value.