Through Cotton Wool

For my grandfather

Below are the notes about the relationship between my buried-in-cotton-wool consciousness and the Holy Spirit, that Holy Spirit which descended upon the apostles in the first century. By cotton wool I mean my self-induced stupidity and numbness as a response to my personal life and the life in the USSR in general. I read anything I could, listened to the music of all kinds, drew and painted, and tried to deal with the reality outside of my mind as little as possible, often pretending to be an idiot. Because of that, I am unable now to remember much of the factual canvas of my life in the USSR. On the contrary, the memories of the intermittent pecking of the Holy Spirit are very clear, contrasting with the amorphous fog. These pecks or specks and what came out of them show that anyone who truly wants to can find God and His Church in any circumstances whether s/he is screwed up inside or lives in a screwed up country or both.

 

Contents

The background
Climbing the walls
Baptism
Nowhere
Aum Shinrikyo and the fools
More fools
The meeting
Two years of grace
Inside the Church
Miracle
The End
Trousers: Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR)
Trousers: Serbian Orthodox Church
Trousers: Greek Orthodox Church
In the desert
Eucharist
Breaks
In the world
Unbending
Evaporation
Two Churches
Now

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