The Dangers of Travel Lust - A Trip to the Old Country

More than a few American guys really wanting to get married have made a trip to one of the Orthodox Old Countries. If you go to a country with a developing or depressed economy, expect to find some gorgeous, flirty young Orthodox women who would love to go to America. Uh… there’s more to it than that, though.

Two things are likely to complicate your efforts: travel lust and the piety paradox.

Travel lust is the desire to get the heck out of your homeland and move someplace where there’s an actual economy. Some women are willing to get into less-than-ideal marriages for this purpose. I don’t dare guess what percentage of marriageable women in the Old Countries are after this kind of escape, but I will guarantee you this: If you are an American male “on the make” in a country with a depressed economy, several women with this set of priorities will find you.

The piety paradox is this: You go to the Old Country to find a pious woman, and there are many. However, a woman with a vibrant spiritual life is unlikely to want to leave her homeland, where she can go on pilgrimages to places such as Optina, Pochaev or the Holy Sepulchre. You might fall in love, but good luck in convincing her to come home with you!

I spent two years in the Peace Corps in Ukraine from 2001 to 2003. The Ukrainians were the warmest, most hospitable people I have ever known. The recovery of their society after the debilitating experience of the militant atheist Communists is real testament to their Christian roots that cannot be killed.

However, economic conditions kind of stunk there. Starting pay for a teacher was $40 a month, and you weren’t likely to get paid on time. (This has since gone up to $80 a month.) A lot of people wanted to leave Dneprordny, where I was living. Large numbers of men were absent as they were in Moscow, Germany and Italy working illegally and sending money home. A young woman wanting to get married and provide for her family had quite a challenge ahead of her. For the young women, travel lust is a huge temptation, especially as it is possible for them to see as much as they wanted about America on television and on the Internet, but it was impossible to have it.

I don’t want to ramble on too much about the women I met in Ukraine, (and also my wife and in-laws read this blog) but allow me to tell two stories that illustrate these two contrasting stories that show features of the experience an Americanets can have over there.

Ludmila

I met Ludmila her when I happened to wander in to the beautiful old Holy Dormition Cathedral in Zhytomyr, a city about 100 miles west of Kiev, one day. As I spoke with the candle stand lady, she heard my accent, and told the priest-monk in charge of the cathedral about me, and he was astonished to hear that there are Orthodox in America. He urged me to come back that afternoon to meet the choir.

I did, and the choir director, or “regent” as she was called, was a beautiful young woman named Ludmila. I told her and her choir members about Orthodox churches in America, and how the churches are similar, but not as old, and how we have a multitude of Orthodox ethnicities all coming together to make a church.

Then the priest-monk, Fr. Seraphim, decided that I absolutely had to see the Pochaev Monastery in Western Ukraine, a large monastery that the monks had managed to keep under their control during the entire Communist period. It is called the spiritual center of Ukraine, and there’s a Miracle-Working icon of the Theotokos there that is probably the most revered icon in Ukraine. The feast day for that icon usually brings 50,000 pilgrims to the monastery.

I was a little reluctant to go touring the country with these strangers, but eventually they talked me in to it. I made arrangements to come back to Zhytomyr, which was a day’s travel from Dneprorudny, where I was actually living, and I got back and then Fr. Seraphim told me that he was too busy, but Ludmila, the cute choir regent, would be happy to take me around.

Not only did Ludmila take me to Pochaev, first she took me to the Caves Monastery for St. Vladimir’s Day, which included a liturgy of 34 bishops, three choirs that sounded angelic, and the Metropolitan (whose name happened to be Vladimir). We visited the complete relics of at least two dozen saints who are resting in the caves of the monastery, and she took me to the Monastery of the Entry of Christ to the Temple, where there is the Miracle-Working icon “He had regarded the low estate of his handmaiden,” which caused the glass pane to take on its image. And, she took me to the Holy Protection Monastery, which has a fresco of the Protection of the Mother of God which I swear must be the size of a tennis court.

Then we left Kiev and went to the actual destination of the trip, Pochaev, 400 km to the west. We visited the cell of St. Job of Pochaev, beneath Holy Dormition Cathedral. Saint Job prayed and struggled as a recluse for years in this tiny natural cave. A chapel has been built around the cave, and his relics repose outside of the cell. Ludmila took me to the cave, which had a long line of people waiting to enter it, but she exclaimed, “This is an American Orthodox pilgrim! Let him go first!” All the other pilgrims nodded, and assented. A child called out, “What is your name?” in English. I looked at the opening to the cave, which is about the size of two toasters, and I immediately told Ludmila, “I won’t fit in there! I won’t go!”

“Pray to the Bogoroditsa and anything is possible,” called out a woman from among the lined-up pilgrims.

“Yes, but I am not small,” I protested.

“I will go first,” said Luda, who slid through the cave entrance with no problem.

“Easy for you to say,” I thought. Although I had lost some weight, I was still kind of thick around the middle. I was also 6’9” in height. She came back out and told me how wonderful it was to be able to venerate the icon of St. Job and stand there just like he had... go, we’ll help you...

I had visions of going down in Church history as the pilgrim who got stuck and required a fire crew to remove him, but Ludmila was still pushing me on — “the icon of your patron saint is around the corner, doubting Thomas. He didn’t think it was truly the Lord until he could touch His side. Now, you don’t have to doubt.”

I began to shimmy forward through the cave entrance, head first. I got my head all the way in to find a priest who took my hand and began pulling me in. “Pray to the Bogoroditsa!” he said cheerfully.

“Presviataia Bogoroditsa, spasi nas!” I exclaimed and made it another few centimeters.

“Why don’t you say it in English?” asked Olga, a 10-year-old girl who was also in the cave. I hadn’t known she was in there. Oh, dear, I thought. I’m going to get myself stuck, and these two are going to starve to death as a result!

“Most Holy Theotokos, save us!”

With a little more dragging, I did eventually get into the awkward cave, and I said to the priest, “St. Job wasn’t a tall man, was he?” I found the icon, and said a prayer to St. Job that I’m sure he’d heard many times before, “St. Job, intercede before God for me, and get me out of this cave in one piece!”

Well, I figured, if I don’t get out of the cave, I can stay here and fast for 40 days. School won’t start for a while...

With the priest and Olga pushing on me, and Ludmila and another woman I’d never met pulling on me, I did pop out of the cave, feeling reborn in a spiritual and literal sense, having re-enacted my own birth as an adult. A doubter no more!

Ludmila took me on the most amazing trip of my life, showing me more cathedrals, icons, relics, shrines and other holy sites I could have ever found by myself. I thought this was the greatest first date ever.

We took a break to have ice cream on a street near one of the monasteries. I asked her, “Why not become a nun and have this kind of experience every day?”

She said, “Because I love little children.”

“Have you got a fiancé waiting?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“I love little children, too. I love to teach and see them improve, but I don’t know if I should become a monk or have a family, or...”

“As the Bogoroditsa wills it,” she said.

My euphoria eventually ended when she realized that she had to go back home to direct the choir, but she told me to stay at Pochaev for the upcoming feast day.

I told her that I was worried I wouldn’t get to see her again. She responded, “As the Bogoroditsa wills it. If you ask her to help you and have mercy on you, she will.”

I knew that, I thought, but to say, “I want to see you again, too,” wouldn’t exactly have been heresy. She got on the bus and I swallowed hard.

A few months after that, she married a fellow named Vasilii, and they had a daughter named Anastasia. I got to see them again three years after my Peace Corps service ended when I flew back to visit friends. They welcomed me into their home, and I showed them a picture of Miri, whom I had been seeing for a whole week before I took the trip.

(I had not planned to fly away a week after starting a new relationship, but it happened that way. But, let me offer a couple of quick tips if you do it this way: One, wedding crowns are much more reasonably priced over there. Two, if your future father-in-law is a priest, see if you can buy a hand-held wooden candle holder for him. They’re not very expensive, but difficult to find in the U.S.)

Elizaveta

Liza was a girl who lived in Dneprorudny, where I lived and worked during my service. She has this radiant magazine-cover kind of beauty about her. And, she was always really, really glad to see me whenever I walked past her ice-cream stand. She wanted to talk to me, a lot. She was also 15 years old.

Um, before this story goes any further, let me say that it never got any further than vanilla ice cream. But, this experience does illustrate an important concept about marriage over there:

Russian (and I don’t know about Greek or Arabic) has no word for “jailbait.” Nor, does it have an expression meaning “robbing the cradle.” I tried explaining these words to the Ukrainians. It took 5 minutes to explain the literal meaning of the word, and another 10 to explain the concept of an underage woman being considered untouchable. This idea made no sense, especially to the women – why would you want to keep a girl from enjoying her best years? As a 23-year-old male teacher, I did have more than a few female students aged 13 or 14 making googly eyes at me. I suppose that’s nothing too odd – lots of American girls get crushes on their algebra teachers, but this was different for two reasons – over there, girls that age really are supposed to be looking at men my age for husbands, and the school administration was encouraging it.

I’m not exaggerating. The vice principal of the school told a group of 11th grade girls studying journalism that they ought to ask me to help them practice their interviewing skills since I am a journalist. And, she said, “Mr. Ruthford is young, American, and has a college degree. He would make an excellent bridegroom.”

So, Liza the magazine-model-beautiful 15-year-old ice cream girl really wanted me to ask her out. One hot summer day, she came into the Internet club where I was typing an e-mail to my family. This Internet club was really cramped. Directly to my left was a fan blowing at me and into the room. Liza came in and wanted to talk to me. There really was only one place she could stand, directly to my right.

She was wearing a summer dress that accentuated her curves and was, um, very summery. (By which I mean fabric-minimal.) I turned to look at her, and she was so close that my eyes could not focus on her, um, well, the part of her that was directly to my right. I looked up at her face. The wind from the fan was causing her hair, which was hanging freely, to blow. Nearby, one of the kids on another computer was loudly playing a CD of some heavy electronic music.

I turned back to face my computer monitor, suppressed the urge to snort (here I was, in a real live music video) and thought, “That settles that. Now I know the devil has a sense of humor.”

In Russian, I said to Liza, “I’m writing my Mom. You want to say hi?”


(Three years later, I visited Dneprorudny again and ran into Liza at the main open market. She was happily pushing a stroller.)

Oh yeah, maybe you’re wondering how Liza got into a blog about Orthodox romance. Liza is Orthodox. Was baptized as a baby. My point in including her is that you might find a pretty Orthodox girl, but what does this mean, really?

The Russian language has two different words to describe your religious commitments: Pravoslavnie, which means “Orthodox,” and Verushii, which means “faithful” or “believing.” A person who is Pravoslavnie has been baptized Orthodox. However, whether this Orthodox person has been seen at church since the baptism is an open question. I don’t know if the Greek, Arabic or Georgian languages have similar words to express this division, but you need to know the principle.

Metropolitan Kyrill, the foreign minister of the Moscow Patriarchate, said in an interview recently that fewer than 10 percent of Russians are attending church weekly. I believe that’s a good estimate from my experience. The minimum to stay a Pravoslavnie is that you don’t join another religion, and that you come out to the church yard on Pascha night to get your food basket blessed. A Verushii is a person who goes to church and likes it well enough to keep going. They’re kind of hard to find. In the town of 20,000 where I lived, there was one church, and it got about 150 people each Sunday. I went to church most Sundays, and there were no women my age who attended church regularly.

The Ukrainians take it as a matter of pride that their girls are the prettiest in the world. A number of Ukrainians whom I knew also took it as an insult that I hadn’t found one to marry. I didn’t plan on marrying one and forcing her to go to church with me, so I went home a bachelor. I knew lots of Pravoslavnie, I wanted a Verushii.

Anyway, that’s my advice about a trip to the Old Country. Be careful. But, you never know, it might work. I am acquainted with one married couple who made it work. An American man went to Ukraine to meet a Russian woman he’d found on the Internet and then they moved to the United States. He converted to Orthodoxy, they have a good marriage, they go to church regularly and really enjoy it. But, they’re the only Russian-American couple I know who are happy, functional, etc.

My goodness, I have written a lot about this. I think I’ll close with three things you might say to your foreign sweetie to find out if it’s true love or travel lust:

· I love this country. My Mom and Dad are thinking of retiring here. Why don’t we all live here together?
· No dear, my “outstanding warrants” are not community service awards.
· Did I mention that I’m a writer and I have no steady income? But that’s okay. I’m sure that you’re employable.