St Petersburg, Russia
I did not have a childhood that anyone would wish to emulate. It was drab, unhappy, and quite devoid of people except for a raging alcoholic who insisted I call her “mother”. “Mom” was not acceptable; it was too familiar in her tormented mind. We never had vacations or any seasons of equanimity out from under the influence of an intense admixture of alcohol and primitive but dangerous psychotropic drugs. Yet, there were those occasional specks of life that washed ashore for me and my brothers.
One of those flecks of paradise that the great English theologian GK Chesterton often spoke of washed ashore in my life at about age twelve when Mother, in a rare lucid moment, decided to haul us to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the newly built Los Angeles Music Center to see a performance of Tchaikovsky’s ballet “Swan Lake”. For unknown reasons, the sounds and visual imagery of that performance have stayed vivid in my memory for forty-five years. Perhaps seeing performers and musicians doing things they loved to do and doing them really well spoke into the recesses of my unsettled soul. Perhaps the fairy tale imagery told my young mind that there could be something more for me than my gypsy life through the drab stucco apartments of Los Angeles with an alcoholic mother who could not stay still.
Tonight I find myself reflecting on “Swan Lake” once again. I have just experienced an entire performance of it by Russian dancers and Russian musicians in the gilded Baroque interiors of the Palace Theater in St. Petersburg. There could hardly be a more quintessential experience of the great Russian composer Tchaikovsky that to see his best known work performed by the Russian Ballet and his countrymen in his beloved Baltic city. While viewing the magic of fine staging and dance, the forty-five years between the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Palace Theater melted away. The surreal costuming and staging accompanied by the fluid magic of fine dance carried me away to a mythical land where there is no gnashing of teeth or angst in the night. The depictions of autumn in the great northern Baltic forests and the tranquility of winter carried me far away to a cognitive place I have not visited in a long time.
It is often said in the therapeutic world that one needs to close loops, tie up loose ends, ad infinitum, in order to gain closure and healing. I can’t but wonder if some healing actually was taking place for me while watching the luminous winter scenes of the third act of this grand performance. During the intermissions I roamed around the public rooms of this gilded dance shrine and admittedly took on the role of gawking tourist and photographed all of the public rooms. No one would believe my descriptions of the mirrored halls without some tangible evidence. Yet, while wandering about, even when going out to the plaza to stare into the white sky of Russian night, I wondered what God might be doing in the trivial affairs of my life.
I have heard it said that the queen of emotions is gratitude. Perhaps the lesson here is very simple. Despite what tortured detours I might have taken through life, I can safely say that God has allowed me to come to a defining moment of experience for which I can be grateful. I can be and am grateful that my journey has brought me into gilded halls where anything is possible. Gratitude is perhaps the most potent elixir to be found, the one true antidote that will relieve virtually all of our affective griefs.
It is so true. We get God’s best when we let him do the choosing.
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