View From the Hammock

 I knew from personal experience the painful and humiliating consequences of stepping out of line, even though it ended up being only a kind of flick on the nose. One November, when my daughter was a baby, my husband, Sergei, and I decided to participate in the annual celebration of the Great October Revolution. We joined the parade that marched through the streets of Sverdlovsk, to end up in the main city square, taking Julia in her stroller with us. But we soon fell out of step. It was unbearably cold, and not only was our little daughter getting cold, but we had overestimated our own endurance. We decided to find a shorter route to the central square, where loud music was playing and a voice kept shouting out cheerful words of greeting and salutation to all the marching columns with flags and banners. When we reached the central square, we tried to join another column that was marching toward the Lenin’s monument. But our attempt to re-join ...

I agree with Douglas Hall that the confession of the faith arises sometimes at a point when it is almost too late, and “the powerful of the world have gone too far.” He believes that when“the powerless are victimized then the faithful church resists.” [1] I see his point very well: Vladimir Lenin came up with a similar postulate, known as Principle of Power Balance   required for revolution: “Change is possible when the top (the powerful) cannot  rule in the new way, and the powerless refuse to  live in the old way.” Modern Russians reinvented the old postulate in a new way, “When the top doesn't want to  rule in the NEW way, and the mob (the powerless) WANTS  to  live  in the OLD way.” This new interpretation sounds scary if applied to the Methodist church. What if we are right whereRussians are: unable to live in a new way?!  There was another Soviet formula that had to be memorized by the nation: “We say ‘the Communist Party’ but we...