When relaxed, at table, new friends acquaintancing, while storminess abated outside wide windows, sipping vodka, sharing past adventures, the value of the now, the free, the aboveground, the opulence, contrasted vividly in the mind with the story being shared.
New parents, in Russia, in what was, meeting the challenge of a system doomed. No opulence. No basics (as I consider basic, anyway). Cloth diapers. (Well, I did that, pride insists.) But no washer, no dryer, no Mr. Appliance, no laundromat. A husband’s nightly chore, washing for the baby for the next day.
The gift of city life: the underground. Before the baby, at university, acquiring a contraband Bible. Curiosity turns to immersion turns to joy. Belief. In America, years later, there would be laundry appliances aplenty and the house of God. But beneath the strongholds of the U.S.S.R. the one thing necessary blesses the soul, contains in meekness the beauty of the universe.
Dear Deanna,
I had to read this post twice to begin to understand what was happening. The first reading drew me in so that I wanted to read again. Am I understanding it correctly? That is a posting about your parents or grandparents living in the U.S.S.R. and having a baby and discovering a Bible through the underground and then coming to the United States? I’m not sure what the “one thing necessary” is that blesses the soul. Would you expand on that?
Peace.
Hi Dee, thanks for reading (twice!) and for patience. Obscurity and art were kind of a theme; it was also sort of stream-of-consciousness. Not about my parents but some new friends of ours who actually lived in the Soviet Union without modern appliances and without religious freedom in the 1980s. I get blown away by such stories — I’d like to think I’ll write more about them one day. My take on the one thing necessary is that it is Christ. In the final verses of Luke 10, Jesus said that his friend Mary had chosen that one good thing which would not be taken away from her. For years I considered the one thing to be Christ’s gospel message, and I still think that’s firmly involved, but I’m seeing it now as the God Man, himself. Hope that helps.
Dear Deanna,
Thank you for explaining/expanding. I encourage you to write the stories your friends have shared with you. You write well and could do them justice.
Peace.