My Meditation Shack introduction

I just finished reading a book about 1917 Russia. . .I find myself grappling with history, wondering about the sometimes horrific incidents of history. Of course that includes the terrible story of Putin’s rise to power.

So, I ask myself how to respond, philosophically. And so far I’m only faced with The Now- and how to live today. I can’t fix the past. I can however find a sense of reverence, and maybe the devout would say that’s the right direction. And I owe a debt of activism too.

It’s the ages-old question: how could God allow some things to happen? I just read Helen Rappaport’s book about the Romanov sisters: totally devout, worshiping their icons of orthodox faithfulness, completely hermetically sealed in a life of nearly zero misbehavior. Daughters of the tzar. A horrific death. I know the tzar was a terrible leader. The family murdered in captivity. Awful beyond imagining: How could’ve their god allowed that?

It was recently the centennial of the First World War and the murder of the Romanovs in 1918. It’s a moment/point of reflection.

I keep thinking too of the shallowness on display in political demonstrations by the MAGA hats, in the here-and-now, the lack of a sense of history. Maybe that’s how kids like me looked, back in the 1970s- but the anti-war movement had a huge impact in my time.

The lack of a sense of history vs the horror of a true sense of it.

I realize I’m leaning in favor of quiet introspection, even if perhaps mistaken or sentimental or misguided, as opposed to the in-your- face behavior of the street demonstrators for Trump.

Of course when I try and imagine alternative histories I can’t devise one without a million unintended consequences. The tzar staying in power would not have averted bloodshed and figuring out World War One is an exercise in futility. It’s just silly.

But today I come to some larger realizations, that perhaps those deaths in 1918 I read about have resulted in a sense of reverence in some people today that really resonates with me. Of course I’m looking into the deep well of a lost time. And yet today the Romanov sisters are revered saints now in the Orthodox Church of Russia. I ask of history and I’m answered with a symbol of the sacred. While captive, one of the sisters wrote from her father, the doomed former tzar, an appeal, to the world at large, a message of forgiveness, of captors and country. Peace.

Helen Rappaport only found a connection to the past she researched, not in the pristine sites which she called ”a disneyland version of history”, but when she came upon lillies planted on the site of the tragedy. Then, she said, she felt a living connection to her subjects. It was the fragrance- Perhaps they were really there, the sisters, reaching out to her. No one could prove otherwise.

In any case, the answer to questions of history is only to be found in the present moment. Reverence, maybe, respect for the wisdom of an elder, perhaps, and yes, sometimes anger and sorrow.

No MAGA hats here today. And I’ll pick a lighthearted book next time.