To Transform All Ruin With Patience

God helps us to transform all ruin with patience and for this will make us heirs of the Heavenly Father. - Grigorii Rasputin

Seven o'clock. Most of St. Petersburg should still be asleep, I thought. It seemed like the perfect time to discreetly explore the area around 64 Gorokhovaya Street, the former dwelling of one of Russia's most controversial figures.

Ninety years after his death, Grigorii Rasputin's name still evokes the widest possible variety of reactions, from veneration to repulsion. Ninety years later, the life of the Siberian peasant who was invited to the imperial court to pray for the sick Romanov heir is still shrouded in mystery.

I found Gorokhovaya Street nearly deserted, but when I took out my camera to snap a picture of the aging apartment complex, a tall, bearded man appeared out of nowhere, indicated the building across the street, and enthusiastically announced in Russian, "That's Rasputin's house!"

"Yes, I know."

I tried to act casual even though my nerves were jangled due to a sleepless all-night train ride from Moscow. (In retrospect, I'm very glad that my would-be guide didn't look like Rasputin. That would have been just plain creepy.) The man began to tell me more about Rasputin's house and I let him know that I speak Russian very poorly.

"That's RAS-PU-TIN'S house!" he said again, emphatically.

"Yes, I know!"

The man dismissed me with a wave of his hand and walked away muttering under his breath. Like the man I met on Gorokhovaya Street, Rasputin himself has been unable to speak to the West because his writings have never been translated into English, with the exception of very brief excerpts. I returned from Russia determined to remedy that.

The whole idea of Rasputin as a writer is an apparent contradiction. After all, he had no formal schooling and was functionally illiterate. He did, however, learn to write simple texts with his own hand and also attracted admirers who were willing to take dictation for him. Despite all the filth that has attached itself to Rasputin's name over the years, his writings - his awkard, disconnected little texts - have a very honest ring to them and suggest that he must have engaged in a genuine search for God at some point in his life.

One theme that runs through all of Rasputin's writings is creation as a reflection of the goodness of the Creator. For example, in Life of An Experienced Wanderer, he says:

I walked on the shores, found comfort in nature and frequently thought about the Saviour Himself, as He walked along the shores. Nature taught me to love God and the converse with Him. I imagined in the eyes an image of the Saviour Himself, walking with his own disciples. It was necessary to think about the Queen of Heaven often, for She came to high places and asked God - " Will I soon be ready for you?" Nature can teach much about all wisdom and any tree about spring. Spring points to great celebration for any spiritual person ...

In the same text he expressed his confidence that all things are possible with God:

If you will not seek your own self-interest anywhere and try as if to console, you will call sincerely on the Lord, then demons will tremble before you, and the sick will recover, if only all is not done out of infamous self-interest. But if you will search for opportunities for the stomach, for glory, for greed, then you will obtain it neither here nor there, that is neither in heaven nor on earth, but, if you will be diligent, then indeed the Lord will give what you require and you will obtain what you need.

While Life of An Experienced Wanderer deals with Rasputin's experiences as a strannik, or pilgrim-wanderer, in Russia, My Thoughts and Reflections is a record of his journey to the Holy Land. He left from St. Petersburg and made his way to the Black Sea via Kiev:

What can I say about its tranquility? As soon as I set off from Odessa along the Black Sea – a calm is on the sea and the soul rejoices and sleeps quietly with the sea; the little waves gleam prominently like gold and there is no need to search further. Here is an example of God: how much is a person's soul a precious jewel, truly a pearl? And what is the sea to it? Without any effort the sea consoles. When you rise in the morning the waves talk and splash, and they rejoice ... Christ's sea. On you there are wonderful miracles. God himself visits you and creates you by miracles. Coasts appear and saplings shine forth – how not to rejoice? Where there was apparently neither bush nor leaf, suddenly the shoreline appears and we come to look on God's nature and praise the Lord for His Creation and the beauty of nature, which is not to be described by means of the human mind and philosophy.

Rasputin then arrived in the Holy Land by way of Constantinople (Istanbul), and eventually came to Christ's tomb:

Thus I felt, what a tomb – the tomb of love; there was a feeling in me that I was completely ready to love people, that people seem like saints because love sees no defects in people. Here in the tomb you see all people with a spiritual heart, and all the people you love joyfully shelter themselves.

He also visited the site where the Trinity appeared to Abraham:

The oak of Mamre! There is great kindness and love under the oak of Mamre. Here Abraham greeted the Lord, who appeared in the form of three wanderers, with bread and salt, and now this Trinity is famous and is depicted. And Sara and Abraham serve as an example by their kindness. How lovely it is to share a pint with a wanderer. Here the Wisdom consists in that the Lord Himself appeared in the Trinity to affectionately greet Abraham and Sara and their entire family.

Perhaps the most remarkable but least known of Rasputin's writings has the rather improbable title Great Days of Celebration in Kiev! Visit of the Supreme Family! Angelic Greetings! This text describes an official visit of Tsar Nicholas II and his family to Kiev, an event which causes Rasputin to see all the people and places involved simply dripping with the Spirit of God:

How comforting and edifying is the arrival of the Master of the Land! And in the Little Mother Monastery of Kiev what anticipation! God! What joy! - such a river of peace flows, and something else - there are great thousands in the forest like birds! Lord! And the service goes on constantly; everywhere it is overflowing! Lord! ... And the soldiers play a march and float like swans, and the whole delegation knelt and sang "God Save the Tsar." The soldiers simply are not humans, but are like angels; without a doubt they forget all humanity due to the music, and the music pulls them away from the earth into a heavenly state, and they have the strength of knights.

I left Gorokhovaya Street without knowing exactly what went on in that apartment nearly a century ago, but my later encounters with Rasputin as a writer undoubtedly deepened my faith in a victorious, risen Christ. And I think Rasputin, whatever his sins may have been, would have wanted it that way.

If you're curious about Rasputin as a writer, visit my Rasputin Texts Project: http://rasputin.cabspace.com