Christ is risen

To church today, Easter having come to the orthodox world. The church is full, mainly with old women in head scarves.

A long trestle table is laid out and covered with a white cloth, the devout bring their Kulich, which is a type of dry cake

and they lay it on the table with henna dyed eggs and sweet whey. When all is set up and candles are placed in the cakes and lit

the priest arrives. The devout cross themselves as he begins to chant in a voice half bored half ecstatic. He is a youngish man, tall and fine looking, two years ago he Christened my daughter, then he was nervous and trembling with the burden of responsibility his task laid on him: he seemed to me to be a character from a Dostoevsky novel. Now he has grown fatter and more self assured, soon perhaps he will be rotund and with a superior air, as are most priests in the increasingly wealthy city churches.

After the mumbling is done he takes a chalice and a large floppy paintbrush and walks around the table flicking holy water over the cakes and eggs, the candles splutter out and the devout jump back as the spray scatters, one circuit and he's done. A couple of women approach him as he heads back to his sanctuary and persuade him to bestow absent minded blessings on them: a casually waved hand for their husband's cancer or their child's disability. The desperation never leaves their eyes.

My son, six, is rather taken with the church, all that gold and incense, the hushed atmosphere and the beautiful paintings. His grandmother has taught him to cross himself after the Russian fashion and he does it constantly in the church. He walks up to the gold framed, glass fronted collection box full of high denomination notes and crosses himself in front of that as though it were an icon. An old woman shoos him away, but I catch myself thinking he got it about right.

Tonight the TV will feature the service from the Cathedral of Christ our saviour, where the ex KGB man who is president will once again ignore protocol and fail to bow before the other ex KGB man who is the Patriarch of the Russian church. At midnight we will eat the cake.

2009