A KALEIDOSCOPIC EXPERIENCE
A sharing from our delegation to St. Petersburg, Russia June 1998

Ben Nelson

hen the delegation from Grace traveled to St. Petersburg last summer, the highlight for me was entering our sister church, St. Petri, for the first time. In preparation for the trip, we studied what we could about St. Petersburg before leaving the United States.

We learned about the start of the city by Peter, the Winter Palace, the Hermitage, the Summer Palace at Pushkin, the start of the revolution with the firing of cannons from the cruiser, Aurora, in the city. We viewed videos, looked at pictures of places, pictures of treasures contained in them, and even took "tours" inside the Hermitage on the Internet!

We also learned about the 900-day siege of the city in World War II where multitudes of the inhabitants died, many by starvation. We knew that St. Petri was converted to a community swimming pool during the communist era, that it had been going through reconstruction the last year. We heard from people visiting St. Petri before us that the new floor of the sanctuary covered the pool that was once there.

After arriving in St. Petersburg by train from Helsinki, we were billeted at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. Shortly after lunch, Nadezhda Kolesnikova, who normally teaches at the monastery, led us on a tour of the city by bus. I felt that the city must still be going through a restoration phase after the World War 11 ravages, since there were pot-holes in the streets, street car tracks were in need of shoring up, the street cars themselves needed replacement, and the streets and buildings could have used a general cleanup. Coca-Cola signs were visible along the main street, Alexander Nevsky Prospect. There was a lot of traffic, both vehicular (including streetcar) and pedestrian. We saw familiar looking places that we had seen pictures of or had read about-St. Isaac's Cathedral, statue of Peter the Great, Church of the Spilled Blood, the Winter Palace, the cruiser Aurora, Peter and Paul Fortress, the Neva River and all its associated canals. We developed a good feel for the opulence the city had to offer. We knew that we were to see treasures within the Hermitage the next day. What a complex and contrasting environment!

That evening Nadezhda took us on a walking tour in the Tikhvin Cemetery adjacent to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery where we were staying. We gazed in awe at the stones and sites where such famous people as composers Peter Tchaikovsky (Swan Lake, 1812 Overture), Rimsky-Korsakov (Sheherazade), Borodin, and writer Dostoyevsky (The Brothers Karamazov) were buried. A dark area shaded by trees, hostas with plain green leaves lined the walkways. This was another example of a contrasting environment.

The next day (Thursday), we stopped in to see St. Petri before continuing on to the Hermitage. The church secretary took us up some steps before entering at the sanctuary floor level. As we learned later, rather than digging a hole in the floor of the sanctuary for the swimming pool, they built the pool walls up from the floor of the original sanctuary. Hence the new floor was higher in elevation than the original.

Upon entering the sanctuary, we climbed what would have been bleachers during the pool era. The bleachers now had plain white slatted backs and blue cushions much like the pews below on the sanctuary floor. The raised altar floor had a beautiful natural wood finish, as had the face of the organ. The vaulted ceiling and walls were painted an off-white. The cross was embroidered blue on an off-white cloth 14 feet high that was suspended above and behind the altar. Our group stared at this simplicity awe for 10 minutes without a word being spoken. Tears welled up in my eyes as I felt that this indeed was a call for Grace to connect with our sister St. Petri, that God had intended this connection to happen.

The trip was truly worth it!

SIMPLICITY OUT OF COMPLEXITY AT ST. PETERSBURG

TURN THE KALEIDOSCOPE. NEW IMAGES WILL APPEAR

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