Grace with Batiushka Sergei (Father Sergei)

Living in the Life and Power: inviting, contemplating, enacting Grace

May it all be done heartily unto the Lord and through the assistance of his grace." Elizabeth Fry

1 Peter 4:10: As generous distributors of God’s manifold grace, put your gifts at the service of one another, each in the measure you have received.

“For me poetry relates to grace, and one of the major roles of the poet is to see and express grace, especially the grace of the ordinary. … On my good days I find grace in any number of places: a memory of my father playing Santa Claus, a lecture on Thomas Jefferson, the agony of a writing deadline, a noisy church service, being stuck in a river, losing a sock in the laundry, real and imaginary conversations and, of course, the relationships they represent. On bad days, I don’t find grace anywhere, but that usually means I’m not paying attention.” Nancy Thomas, preface, The Secret Colors of God: Poems by Nancy Thomas (Barclay Press, 2005), p. xiii.


This post is dedicated to Father Sergei from the blog post below, to my Deaf Muslim in-laws, to parallel fasts by chance lining up on the calendar, and to another country's rather different interfaith, interethnic theological stew.

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-sex-offenders-all-time.html

Ferrener Husband and I were visiting St. Petersburg during the Orthodox fast before Christmas. Father Sergei visited the couple we were staying with several times. Between the couple being comparatively well off and visitors bringing food instead of spending money at restaurants, we ate comparatively well, except for Father Sergei. Father Sergei was not eating meat, eggs, sour cream. It was completely unclear to me where he was getting protein until one night he and Ferrener Husband and I decided to pay a visit to the newest gay bar in St. Petersburg. Over pistachios and compote, the cloyingly sweet boiled fruit drink which for many Russian defines fruit in the wintertime, Father Sergei's soul needed to breathe.

It was a year when Ramadan also fell during the same period. I would later learn my Muslim in-laws had idiosyncratic standards of observance. First, it's easy to fast during daylight if there is only 5 hours of daylight in a day. Second, apparently vodka does not count. Third, whether or not the parents will eat anything including nuts or the lovely imported mandarins we found at the market, the exotic  severely jet-lagged perpetually miscaffeinated visitor was expected to eat pilmeny, home-made meat dumplings for breakfast--with vodka, while being interrogated about abortion!



I THINK Father Sergei probably was enacting more Grace than I was, but maybe he should not push his luck.

Father Sergei came from a long line of Orthodox priests. Father Sergei was the youngest son, by tradition expected to enter the priesthood. 

Father Sergei's family had been sent to Siberia in Soviet times so maintaining the family tradition was important.

Father Sergei is also gay. As he put it while we muched pistachios and people-watched, his phone number was on the wall of every men's room in Helsinki. Father Sergei did not really talk about what his faith said about being gay or about Orthodox priests being expected to marry. Then there was his week of eight funerals.

All I was doing, after listening to him dis my religion and dis my (Sometime to be Ex-Husband's religion was holding him in prayer / the Light / whatever upholding I could find! I expect it was not only me doing the holding.