Layers of contradictions

Late afternoon sunlight has hit the sweet-spot in the ornate windows high above me and is now streaming purposely through the cathedral, brushing some things with luminous significance and leaving others heavy and solemn in areas of deep shadows. A line of Russian christians snakes through these puddles of light and shadow. As they move from one to another, they seem alternately enlightened and scholarly. In the centre of the church the line reaches its destination - a glassed-in icon of the risen Jesus. An elderly lady dressed entirely in black (apart from the bright florals of her headscarf) reaches the front and steps forward. She kneels and presses her lips to the glass. She is visibly moved, although the clergy is evidently not. A young priest in rich white robes has appeared to usher her roughly (and shockingly) away. But it is Good Friday after all, and there are a lot of people waiting.
I have been rooted to this spot in St Christ the Saviour’s Cathedral for the past two hours. Unable to move. Enchanted. I could be inside a faberge egg. Delicate metals and vibrant colours stretch across the ceiling and run down the walls. I am surrounded by the most incredible icon paintings - figures draped in deep blue cloth suspended in a sea of dazzling gold; forlorn-faced Mary on a bed of pearls; bearded, glowing men gesturing wisely. I am not a religious person, and so it is for the first time ever that i find myself overcome with a bursting sense of spirituality. It’s surprising and highly confusing. I would like to cry. Or sing. Or gesture wildly. And I am simultaneously struck by two (not unrelated) feelings. The first is an intense sadness; a deep aching knowledge that my secular life is fundamentally lacking. The second is an urgent desire to buy something. Anything. To possess a part of this scene.
I will eventually wrench myself from this spot and go to the crowded gift shop, where i will pay too much for a small, beautiful, useless trinket. And as i do, i will think ‘How strange!’ that i should have travelled from my towering Soviet apartment block (where I live in bland co-habitation with an 80 year old woman whose husband’s Red Army uniform still looms from the linen cupboard), past its identical concrete neighbours and the local communist monument, to arrive here - in this decadent cathedral - and be swept away by a flood of overwhelming spirituality and consumerism. Moscow is made of layers of contradictions.