1863: Sailors from Russia died to save San Francisco; beautiful Russian hymn; spiritual reading: what is underneath your bad habit?

……Mare Island, California honors Russian sailors who died fighting the great 1863 fire in San Francisco

 

130 years after S.F. blaze, a memorial service points out new era of friendship 

[This was a 1994 article, back when almost all Americans except the jews hoped for peace and friendship between the US and a no longer Soviet-communist Russia, and Russia had withdrawn from all of Eastern Europe on the US plege to NOT expand NATO eastward.]

 

By Tanya Schevitz Wills

SPECIAL TO THE SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

MARE ISLAND – Two men dressed in Russian naval uniforms stood at attention and solemnly faced a bouquet of flowers adorned with red, white and blue ribbons during a memorial service at a Mare Island cemetery.

The two images taken together seemed to illustrate the era of friendship and cooperation between the United States and Russia, as sailors and diplomats gathered for a memorial service at the cemetery Tuesday to honor six Russian sailors buried there after they died fighting a fire in San Francisco.

“It is very important for the USA. It is a good sign of the partnership of our countries,” said Vladimir Golubkov, deputy consul general of the Russian Federation.

The memorial service came more than 130 years after the sailors were buried in the Mare Island cemetery. During the American Civil War, U.S. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles invited the Russian naval fleets to dock in Union ports. While the Czarist Pacific Squadron was stationed at Mare Island between September 1863 and April 1864, the Russian warship Norvick was shipwrecked at Point Reyes.

All but one man from the crew of 160 sailors were saved, but when a large fire broke out in the Financial District of San Francisco on Oct. 23, 1863, six of the Russian sailors died fighting the fire and were buried in the Mare Island cemetery.

It wasn’t until this year that the Russian navy discovered that the sailors were buried in the historical cemetery. After Leonid Lysenko, captain of the Admiral Nevelskoi — currently berthed in San Francisco on the first leg of a global circum-navigational tour — found out from historians in Monterey that the graves were here, he asked the Russian Consulate to arrange a memorial because the sailors are an important part of Russia’s history, he said.

“It is really amazing for us that even in the Cold War years, the people (at Mare Island) recognized that the Russians did something and they maintained the graves in such beautiful condition here,” said Sergei Gritsai, vice consul of the Russian Federation, speaking as Lysenko’s translator.

The Russian graves, reading simply “Russian Sailor,” were interspersed among those of U.S. sailors.

With smoke from an incense burner filling the air, a Russian priest knelt in front of one grave and wiped away leaves and dirt from its face. Rain dripped off the Rev. Fr. Alexander Karpenko’s beard as he chanted a Russian memorial song and lit a candle for each of the soldiers.

As the sky released a torrent of rain on the mourners, marking the somber mood of the ceremony, Karpenko said: “For 130 years their names were not known. But their deeds were not forgotten. They died protecting the citizens of San Francisco . … For us today, when the relations between the United States of America and the new democratic Russia are wonderfully improving, this is one more chance for us to recall what it is like for us … to be together in things that are essential.”

— San Francisco Examiner, Wednesday, January 26, 1994.

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………Uplifting, mystical Russian chant

“Lamentation of the Most Holy Theotokos” (from Old Believer notes of the 19th century)

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…….spiritual reading for May 25

We have some potentially interesting delving to suggest today. We want to direct your attention to something you wish was not as it is for you. There is something about you or the way you live your life that you wish you could change. And that seems as if you ought to be able to change. Yet that change eludes you.

Maybe you procrastinate and end up in a panic when a deadline looms. Perhaps you routinely drink or eat more than you’d like, especially when you are nervous or anxious. Possibly you have a habit of being late for appointments, or a habit of biting your fingernails. None of these would seem to require monumental strength to vanquish. And, after all, you are incredibly strong and able; you have demonstrated that to yourself and others again and again.

But there is at least one thing that you can’t seem to control. In fact, it feels as if that thing sometimes controls you.

Now, if you have indeed been grappling with this issue, you know some of the reasons why you have it. You understand that there are benefits; whatever you do works for you, on your behalf, in some manner or another. Otherwise it would be easy to change and you would have done so long since.

Changing habits is often complex. A lot goes into the making of many of them, so the disassembly can be equally as time-consuming. Your habit was a creative response to something in your life. You are creative. Now you may be ready to create something different and more timely in its place.

So thinking about this issue in your life, we want to ask you to go even deeper than you already have, and to look for the benefit you get from being flummoxed, from being disempowered. The habit itself, let’s say nail-biting (we’ll use a relatively simple example), serves to assuage some kind of anxiety or loss.

It gives you something to do when you feel out of control. It might speak to elements of self-loathing and disgust: you rip away at yourself as if you deserve to be wounded. We are sure that you can take your particular issue and dissect it in this manner if you have not done so already.

Going to the next step, at some point you find that bitten nails are unattractive, they hurt, and further, telegraph a message about your self-esteem and self-control that isn’t very flattering. You’d really like to stop doing it, but it is a habit.

Well, habits can be broken, and you clearly have the ability to do that. Just so long as you are working with yourself on it. If, on the other hand, you are working against yourself, you will simply try and fail, try and fail, try and fail. Or, if you succeed, it will be temporary and will require an undue amount of effort to sustain.

And then there will come a moment when you feel completely crazy. Why can’t I accomplish this simple thing? Why has this relative molehill become a mountain in my life?

Ok, maybe you all won’t have had to go through so much to get here, but you may recognize the map.

What we want to ask you to do today is to look at where and how you are working against yourself. For if this issue has not been easy to resolve, you are indeed in conflict with yourself.

And that means that there is an approximate balance between the payoff you get for having nice, well-tended nails and the payoff you get for being out of control. Or unable to control. It is a simple matter to think of the good you get from biting, but that is not where the culprit lies. That is not, in fact, the other side of the equation. Instead, your opposition to nice nails is coming from a commitment to being unable to solve this.

Whatever “it” is. It has to do with ceding your power and creating a bulwark against the possibility that you are limitless. See…you can’t even stop biting your nails. Clear-cut and undeniable “evidence” of your “flawed nature.”

Today, please send some time investigating your issue and how specifically you write this story for yourself. Are you weak? Are you stupid? Are you lazy? Are you simply bad? What is it that you like to tell yourself, that your issue illustrates and embodies for you?

(We want to note that even if you have your issue temporarily under control, if you have exerted will to stop the behavior, you can still reap a great reward from looking at what lies beneath the surface. Even if you are in control, even if that aspect of yourself is currently winning, maintaining the advantage can tie up a huge amount of energy that could be going elsewhere. Wouldn’t it be nice to reach a point where the issue was no longer an issue?)

There isn’t anything else to do about it. As is often the case, bringing light deepens the process of healing and so that is what you can do today. Allow yourself to know what you know and to feel what you feel.

Do it with great compassion and be conscious of your body and its responses to your investigation. It will add to your understanding if you pay attention. In the end, you know that you are whole and beautiful and divine.

Keep that in your mind as you delve into this place, for it is one where you have hidden some harsh judgments.

Thank and honor yourself for your courage and for the love that always guides you when you let it. We are honored to witness that courage and blessed to see your love for yourself.

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