A corner of central Moscow that is for ever England

On the corner of Ascension Lane, a few minutes walk from Red Square, there is a church that looks like it’s here as a holidaymaker from leafy English suburbia, and probably still has a few tins of beans in its luggage. It’s wearing a jaunty green roof as a bit of holiday jollity, but it draws the line at these flighty domes the locals go in for.

Only when you look closely do you see hints which stand as a reminder that this church is not a temporary interloper, but shares in the troubled history of the Church in Russia:

This bullet hole is from when the Bolsheviks occupied the tower and used it as a gun emplacement in 1917…

…and this interior was until recently split into different recording studios, used by the Soviet recording company Melodia. As you can see, the windows still have soundproof glass bricks instead of stained glass.

This is St Andrew’s, a little piece of the Church of England in Russia.

Yes, England (although the name and the saltire are a reminder that Scots were involved in its building). There is no separate Anglican province for Europe. Rather, in a way which neatly sums up a certain British attitude to “the continent”, Europe is a diocese of England. Same rules, same liturgy, same architecture… but at the same time completely the opposite. The Church of England is by definition the church by law established. But English law doesn’t apply here. So the Church of England outside England is, in a funny sense, not really the Church of England at all. We’re used to being the ‘default’ option, legally and culturally there for everybody whether they want us or not. Here in culturally-Orthodox Russia, we’re a chaplaincy, with a strictly limited remit: as the slogan puts it, “Serving the international community for Christ”.

Just as Moscow is full of international schools, offering an English curriculum to American and Russian pupils, so St Andrew’s is the international church. Here, a congregation from every continent can get their weekly dose of BCP, prayers for the Queen, and coffee-after-church. The great event whilst I was there was the Village Fete – for the church roof fund, of course – where Russians could learn the concept of ‘tombola’ and homesick English folk could eat a nostalgic cream tea. The Russian notion of a scone was sometimes rather approximate in terms of shape, content and consistency, and the cream was technically smetana (crème fraiche, roughly) but the whole thing was unmistakeably an English church fete – and, like pretty much everything else in Moscow, reminded me of my 1980s childhood. Although I doubt that many church fetes in England are opened by a deputy ambassador.

In one sense, St Andrews is the epitome of city centre ministry. The worshippers gather from up to three hours away, an educated and multicultural congregation of diplomats, foreign correspondents, business people and teachers. It is so diverse that it took me a little while to realise one group of people ubiquitous in English parishes was missing: pensioners. Expats come to Moscow to work, for a year or a few years, and then they go home or move on. Unless you marry a Russian and get permanent residence that way, this is literally no country for old men.

But in another way, the chaplaincy is very much the parish church – albeit that the ‘parish’ stretches from St Petersburg to Vladivostock, with occasional pastoral visiting in Kyrgyzstan. The chaplain has pastoral care of the Anglican community in Siberia (there is one – one Anglican, that is) and attends archdeaconry synod meetings as far afield as Athens. Just like the village church, this is the hub of a community – quite a number of people who brave the metro every weekend to get here didn’t bother much with church back home.

And there is even a certain type of worship that I always associate with village churches, a sort of broad central tradition, slightly patched together, with something for everyone and nothing too new-fangled or too catholic or too much of anything. It’s the worship that happens when there’s only one church in town and people of different traditions are thrown together.

Well, if you’re an Anglican in Moscow, ‘church shopping’ to the neighbouring parish would mean a 500-mile-plus journey to Kiev or Riga. I don’t think I have ever before heard the whole range of Anglican ‘languages’, from Evangelical to Anglo-Catholic, Canadian to Nigerian, being spoken within one congregation. And somehow, mostly, it works. For most of these people, this isn’t a permanent home, somewhere they feel they have a right over – but it is a home from home, and valued all the more for that. It is precious to them, but they aren’t precious about it. It was the whole Anglican communion in one room, and that gives me hope.

Moscow: the city that never sleeps (and has to wait a long time to eat, too)

Moscow is a city with many beautiful things in it, but it is not a beautiful city. The adjective which most immediately springs to mind is “big”. It’s the biggest city in Europe, and everything about it is built on a huge scale. Wide roads that can only be crossed by underpasses. Grand parks with imposing monuments. Huge apartment buildings with hundreds of residents. Nobody here lives in anything as quaint as a terrace or a semi. The chaplain told me he never saw sunrise or sunset in Moscow, because you just can’t see the horizon.

The other word would be “loud”. It really is a city that never sleeps – not because everyone is out partying, in a buzzing, neon-lit, New York or Hong Kong sort of way, but just because the traffic noise at three in the morning is keeping everyone awake.

People told me that Moscow would feel alien and scary. In fact the most alarming thing was how familiar it felt. It reminded me of the 1980s Britain I grew up in – crumbling pavements, dilapidated blocks of flats, homelessness, and menus with photos of the food. Aspirational 30-somethings go to McDonalds without a trace of irony. The difference is that it is all like that; I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of pre-20th C houses I saw, and one of those was Tolstoy’s. And surprisingly, many of the slightly stained concrete buildings date from the last ten years – the authorities are still putting up the kind of buildings we’ve started pulling down.

Perhaps in a way Moscow is precisely going through its own 1980s. The consumerist economy is thriving, and ‘Moscow City’ – a deliberate reference to the City of London – is under construction, but efficient customer service is still a thing of the future. Moscow waiters deliver food according to their own convenience, heedless to the fact that you are still eating your starter and your companion hasn’t even got theirs yet.

As for ‘ethical’ consumerism, that modern fashion is only just starting to penetrate. The same is true for volunteering; this is, after all, a society in which all forms of welfare were until recently the state’s responsibility. Churches are expected, indeed required, to have several paid members of staff; I am told that even the courtesy of standing up on the train for elderly people and pregnant women was once regulated and enforced.

[Fur coats: still big business in Russia]

Moscow is outwardly so much like any other European city, except for the red stars still on many public buildings (there has been no visible attempt to expunge the past) – it’s remarkable to think this whole society has been through a complete change in its fundamental system of life.

But behind the scenes, the mentality of bureaucratic control is still alive and well. During the time I was there, there was a cold snap – but the heating couldn’t be turned on. No: the correct day to turn on the heating cannot be determined by the mere whim of individual households. If the temperature drops below a certain level for three days running, the city authorities make the appropriate announcement, and all the heating goes on. And then it stays on, at a level which allows you to wear summer clothes indoors all year round, until the authorities decree that it is warm enough for people to live without the heating on. There is also a correct season to sit outside in parks. As of 1 October each year, all park benches are removed into storage. If anybody thinks it would be pleasant to sit outside later than that… well, he is lucky that the state is there to correct his foolish opinions.

[A nice place to sit? Not after 1 October you don’t]

The authorities do not appear to have any interest in making the city attractive to shoppers or tourists. The riverside, which in any other European city would be lined with waterfront cafes and couples strolling under the streetlamps, is almost inaccessible. And if you want to somewhere off the beaten tourist track – like, let’s say, the Kremlin – then you must expect to have to hunt around a bit for the ticket office (it’s not, as you might expect, the enormous brand new glass entrance hall. It’s the thing like a double-glazing salesman’s portable conservatory with three of what in Russia passes for a queue, and no change for a 1000-rouble note) and don’t expect any gratuitous luxuries like a café when you get in there.

But for all that, there is something rather charming about this 80s-retro city. Compared with the UK, the pace of life still feels slower. In the metro station, people stand on the escalators, rather than run up them. Everyone asks for directions, if only because the signage is so poor. Service in shops is courteous and pleasantly old-fashioned – albeit, for the novice Russian speaker, somewhat fraught. Whereas your modern Brit just wants to pick something up and pay for it in sullen silence (I did once have to go to the Co-op during a silent retreat and nobody in the shop noticed), your Russian cashier will not be satisfied until you have answered at least two supplementary questions about your purchase.

[Moscow Metro: slow down and enjoy the decor]

Oh, and I did get this as my walk to work 🙂 :

The Colour of Melancholy: a post for World Mental Health Day

So, today is World Mental Health Day and I’m going to be spending it with a local university welfare team. Which is kind of appropriate, since it was this time of year eleven years ago, when I was an undergraduate myself, that I was first diagnosed with depression.

Back in April, Katharine Welby (++Justin’s daughter) wrote this excellent post about her experience of depression. I felt an enormous gratitude to Ms Welby for being brave enough to share something so personal, and for raising questions about the church’s attitude to mental ill health. I can’t claim to have had the same intensity or duration of mental illness that she has – thankfully, I’ve not needed any medical treatment for depression apart from a few months in my second year of university. But I can certainly relate to the descriptions she gives. Being aware of the happiness of her life but unable to feel it. Feeling that her mind is blank or frankly boring. Getting so overloaded with things to think about (as she describes here) that the tiniest new item causes the analogue equivalent of a computer crash, as the brain fails to allocate enough emotional processing power.

I first got a name to give to all this when I was at university. In that, I was very lucky. The proportion of students who suffer some kind of crisis or mental distress during their course is high, and my university was extremely well set-up to spot and address mental health problems. I had a sensitive doctor, immediate free access to counselling, and the full support of staff – for whom this kind of thing was par for the course.

So I wasn’t prepared for the very different reaction I’d encounter after I graduated. Like the time my manager – not knowing anything about my history – expressed his opinion that people with a history of depression shouldn’t be in jobs where they have to make important decisions. I met people who were afraid of seeking help for suspected mental health problems, or who were going outside the NHS for treatment, because of the impact a diagnosis in their medical records might have on their job prospects.

In theory, the Church of England as an employer is better at this. Certainly I know clergy who are quite open about their mental health problems. But my experience at BAP was a shock. Eight years after I took my last anti-depressant tablet, having never taken time off work for depression in my life, and with no input from anyone medically qualified, I was told that it was still too recent and the risks of a similar episode recurring were too high. In retrospect, I was too honest. I could have blamed my depressive episode on a bad reaction to the Pill, being nineteen, and a boy with an irresistible penchant for cravats (and who is now an Ordinariate priest… yeah, I really know how to pick them). All of that would have been true. But instead I admitted that it was statistically quite likely but that I would handle it much better. The church opted to stay on the safe side.

The word that’s always used is ‘robust’. A priest needs to be robust. On the one hand, this is common sense – ordained ministry is demanding and the emotional risks to priest and parishioners alike are high. On the other hand, where does this leave our relationship with the one whose “strength is made perfect in weakness”? There is a lot of talk in the church about valuing vulnerability and weakness, but how much do we actually live that out? My perception is that there is a big disparity here between physical and mental illness. Those who overcome the limitations of physical illness are characterised as heroic; physical weakness becomes a proof of mental strength. But there seems to be a world of difference, in terms of perception, between the person with arthritis who can’t cope with stairs and the person with depression who can’t cope with mornings. Sometimes I feel the message the world has for me is the opposite it has for people who face physical challenges: not “don’t let it beat you! Live your life!” but “It’s okay, don’t push yourself, we can manage without you”.

***

Like Katharine Welby, I struggled with the idea that depression might be evidence of a lack of faith. Unlike her, I wasn’t getting this message from anyone except myself. For me, depression really did seem to be a feature of my pre-Christian life, and also my pre-married life. Realising that I was loved and accepted – first by my husband and subsequently (in my realisation) by God – really was a liberation from the negative thoughts of guilt and low self-esteem I’d suffered all my life.

So it took me time to accept that I was still the same person, and that my predisposition towards depression was here to stay. I still have ‘bad days’, though I have more resources to cope with them. And those bad days are not days when for some reason I suffer a lapse in faith! But I don’t want to exclude the spiritual dimension either. I have come to suspect that dissatisfaction is a human universal. Because of our fallenness, we are unable to find true joy in the good things that God has given us. That’s not just depressed people, that’s everyone. We suffer from a disorder called sin, which stops us from receiving the love that God is giving. Mental illness is not a sin, but sin may be a mental illness – just one that we all have.

Mental illness is a particularly slippery thing to get a handle on. Modern people often have a basically dualistic approach to the self: there’s ‘me’, i.e. my brain, and then there’s the rest of my body. It’s easier for people to separate themselves from a broken leg or an upset stomach. This is me, and that’s something that’s happening to me. But what about when it’s the mind that seems to be broken? Perhaps depression and anxiety are particularly problematic from this point of view. I had tablets but I also had counselling; where does my personality end and my illness begin?

Katharine Welby came to the conclusion that “it’s not who you are but an add on”. I’ve come to the opposite conclusion – that I need to love those same parts of my personality which make me vulnerable to depression. I still remember the impression made by the priest in one gloriously eccentric Catholic parish, who handled the words of the liturgy as gently as if he might bruise them with his lips, and preached about being miserable at Christmas. The transparency of his vulnerability was a transparency to the raw reality of God. Over time, I’ve started to accept a similar vulnerability in myself. No matter how bright the colours of my life’s rich tapestry, they’ll always be worked on the bittersweet blush-grey ground of melancholy. And maybe that too can be beautiful.

007: Licence to Officiate

There is a reason why my ‘live’ Russia blog is somewhat less than live: this blog can’t be accessed in Russia.

When I first decided I wanted to visit Moscow, I little realised I would be stepping into a minefield of international and ecumenical diplomacy. When I booked my flights (alarmingly advertised as ‘subject to government approval’), Russia’s relationship with the West seemed to be getting pricklier by the week. I was just relieved that Snowden was stuck in the other airport.

But, placements are meant to be a challenge! The college is used to sending students to Zimbabwe and even Iraq. By comparison, my risk of ending up sharing a cell with Pussy Riot was relatively negligible. Ordination training is not for woosses!

To make contact with Our Man in Moscow, I was given the address of a PO Box in London. From thence my letter would be transferred into the diplomatic bag – along with last week’s Church Times and emergency supplies of Marmite for the expat community – airlifted to Russia, and deposited at Her Majesty’s Embassy in Moscow for collection by the chaplain. This would avoid the risk of an email being waylaid, whether by Russian intelligence services or (as it may be) good old-fashioned Anglican technophobia. It was all very old school and thrilling.

I was amused at the idea that the Russian state might see an Anglican ordinand as a potential agent of western intrigue. But the close relationship between Putin’s government and the Orthodox church is well known, and the established Church of England has the disadvantage of being rather obviously associated with a foreign power: the clue’s in the name. And I guess the post-communist government has inherited a pretty big payroll of people whose job is to be suspicious, so they need something to keep them busy. As ludicrously inaccurate stereotypes go, at least cyanide capsules in my BCP makes a change from tea and croquet on the village green.

[International Anglican of Mystery? Maybe not]

So it was up to me to legally obtain a visa. Luckily I had the inestimable assistance of the lovely Maksim at the visa agency in London, who assured me that all I needed was the right paperwork. Of course to get the right piece of paper I first needed to have another piece of paper, and then I needed to submit that one in London and this one when I got to Moscow, and of course pay up at each stage…

By the time I’d submitted an entire CV, checked the date stamps of old digital photos to find out exactly when I’d been abroad in the past ten years, and poured numerous pound coins into a photo booth whilst trying to make my head look exactly 3cm high (resulting in a photo that made me look absolutely like a spy) I was starting to get the feeling that I’d missed the point of this game and was trying altogether too hard. Even Maksim got a little exasperated with me when I asked what to put in the box marked ‘membership of voluntary organisations’ since the answer was so clearly “nothing”. Yet in spite of knowing everything about me, the Russian government still saw fit to give me a visa.

Nevertheless, it still seemed vanishingly unlikely that I would actually make it into the country. My researches with guide book and Google were the opposite of reassuring – and, quite often, the opposite of accurate. I was variously told that it was impossible to order roubles in an English bank, that I could be imprisoned for having GPS on my phone, that customs would steal my computer, that I would be unable to travel outside Moscow, and that I would be constantly stopped by policemen hoping for bribes. All of this turned out to be complete nonsense. (In fact I was slightly disappointed. I’ve always wondered how people solicit bribes in real life, and whether they really say “your passport is missing a page”. Alas, I am still no wiser.) By the time I set off for the airport, my one and only aim for this placement was to make it to Moscow. If I got out of the airport, that was a bonus.

Well… I made it!

This is the airport shuttle, full of Russians gagging for a cigarette. Also where I had my first sighting of a Russian Orthodox priest.

The taxi took me right past the Kremlin. It looked so much like the photos in the guide book, it felt unreal, like I was looking at a reconstruction for tourists.

St Basil’s Cathedral, looking like an oversized souvenir model of itself.

And this was my room, the best room in possibly the worst hotel in Moscow. The light switch was outside the door. And to get to the bathroom I had to walk through a room where other people were sleeping. Luckily for most of the night they weren’t actually asleep but were watching TV…

But what do I care? I’m in Russia!!