HOLDING COURT, is a series by FoG Legal Counsel, Dave Courtney (get it?), where he plays both defense and prosecution, making airtight cases for the media he’s consuming; be it horrific, holy, or somewhere in the middle. Friends and FoGgers, all rise, because HOLDING COURT is now in session…

What’s In a Story: From Ukraine to Ireland With The Biblical Narrative in Tow (Part 1)

The idea for holding Court came about with the intention of creating a space where I, through the gracious invitation of our FoG hosts and as someone with a well established love for the creative arts in a variety of forms, could reflect on my current “whatcha”s (watching, reading, listening… cue the intro in your head), and more specifically the reads, listens, and watches that have proven to be meaningful for me, with the hope of course that this could offer something of worth to our online community of FoGgers. I have focused on singular works. I have also set two works in conversation together. In the case of this latest and admittedly long overdue piece (dang it, life!!) my thoughts happen to span multiple works. This is at least in part because of the ways my own sense of awareness has been impacted by what is going on in Ukraine, compelling me to remain attentive to the ways in which my present watches, reads and listens can help me to make better sense of such global realities and lead me towards greater participation in the necessary healing work.

As some of you will know, my personal connection to Ukraine stems from a year(s) long adoption process which required us to live in Ukraine for part of this time. Memories of walking the city streets, seeing the monuments, and visiting places now destroyed by senseless acts of war have been definite trigger points for our family. It is equally true to say that attempting to navigate the chaos and the uncertainty with our adopted son in mind has been equally eye opening given the reality that, had he still been in Ukraine today, he most likely would have been handed a gun and sent to the frontlines. As I’ve revisited these memories I also set out to dust off some old works and uncover some new ones as a way of immersing myself again in the country’s story and history. As I have been engaged in this, I have also found my spirit being drawn to two other stories- the story of Ireland (for reasons I hope will become clear) as a way of understanding my own personal heritage, and the biblical narrative as away of understanding the world in relationship to God. What I decided to do was break this piece into two parts; part one focusing on Ukraine and part 2 focusing on Ireland, with reflections on the Biblical narrative being interwoven along the way. If I am to make sense of this world as a Christian, and if I am to find echoes of God’s heart for the world in the world as it is, it felt to me like it was important to see these stories in relationship, attending for both the beauty and the tragedy as a a working tension in our shared longing for liberation. I see this tension woven into all three stories in the reality of the diaspora, famine, oppression, division, empire, politics, and religion. I also see it in the shared interest in preserving culture, language and tradition as matters of identity. Further yet, I also see it in the story of our adoption as we see our son continue to wrestle with the tension that exists between his identity as a Ukrainian and the life he is now building in a foreign land.

So, with that as an elongated intro, and as a way into some of what I’ve been watching, reading and listening to lately, which in large part I hope functions as a love letter to these three stories, I thought it might be helpful to frame this by way of our story:

Sowing The Seeds of New Beginnings

The year is 2014. A visible winter chill has settled in as the calendar turns a page to the month of December. The paperwork for our adoption has been finalized after a long year of meetings, appointments, and filling out documents, and we are now waiting for the official go ahead to book our tickets to Ukraine and begin the search for our child. We anticipate this call coming in the next two weeks. That’s when we get a knock on our door. After over 6 months of trying to sell our house in a small town housing market that had crashed, it was our real estate agent with news that thanks to a recent bidding war the housing market had suddenly shot back up. We would no longer have to take a loss we couldn’t afford in order to sell and move back to the city, something we had wanted to do before leaving for our adoption. So we make a last minute decision to sell our house (it sold less than a week after this announcement) and purchase a new one. The only problem? This meant having to restart a portion of the paperwork for our adoption process and delaying our potential departure date by an indefinite amount of time.

It is in the midst of all this crazy that we get another knock on the door, only this time in the form of a phone call alerting us to the news that war has broken out in Ukraine, and that this was going to set our adoption process back even further. Looking back at it now we know that had we stayed the course and not disrupted the process we would have been in Maidan Nezalexhnosti (Independence Square) when the war broke out, which is where the conflict was centralized at the time.

Fast forward to August, 2015. The move was successful. Our paperwork once again is complete, and we have received word that we can now book our tickets to Ukraine. We eventually step foot in Kiev in the quiet of the early morning, a mix of sun and fog and an unfamiliar air interrupting our hazy and mostly sleepless stupor with the need to quickly orient ourselves. We locate our hired diver (I always wanted to get off a plane and find someone holding a sign with my name on it). He makes a quick stop at a grocery store informing us in Ukrainian (which we can’t understand) to grab some food (that we can’t pronounce) to tide us over for the next few days. We then head to our temporary apartment in Independence Square. As we do so I note the subtle signs of conflict still present in the form of burnt tires and large flags/banners covering the fronts of destroyed buildings, along with a lengthy memorial lining the upper half of the central square honoring the lives lost in the 2014 clash. Eventually unpacked and settled in our apartment but still unable to sleep, I decide to try and shake off the jet lag by going for a walk. This is when the first signs of life begin to emerge, with people showing up to stroll the popular boulevard dressed in traditional Ukrainian garbs, something I didn’t expect to see expressed so overtly. It definitely made me stand out as a foreigner.

That’s when something else happened; the army came to town. Rows of tanks and armored vehicles with massive missiles pointed upwards and soldiers in tow suddenly flooded into the square. Unbeknownst to me at the time, we had landed in Ukraine on the morning of Ukrainian Independence Day. Not only that, it was the first Independence Day since the war broke out just under a year prior. And here I was standing right in to the middle of it. This would be unlike anything I had experienced before, to say this least. An emotionally charged demonstration telling the story of a people caught between competing powers East and West and longing for a day of liberation. Of course this also explained the Traditional Ukrainian garb, which mostly disappeared the day after. Fun aside- it would be two days later when I would end up having to buy a whole new wardrobe. Turns out my schlubby Canadian attire, designed more for comfort than style, doesn’t get you very far in fashionable Ukraine.

We actually learned that for Ukrainians caring about how you dress is a sign that you care about those around you. Definite culture shock.

This whole experience would carry me forward into the remainder of our adoption process, helping me to understand how it is that our adopted son would eventually find himself caught between two countries, two stories, and two worlds. I’ll be honest, he hasn’t said much these days about how he feels about the war, and in fact has expressed frustration when people keep asking him about it. Yet we do get glimpses that something is going on underneath, that this tension still exists. Whether he wishes he was back there able to help or whether he is glad he is here not having to fight remains a mystery. What we do know is that whatever feelings he has are complicated ones, reminding us that there is great value still in the life and culture that informs his story as a Ukrainian and still much to learn about what it means to navigate this part of his story as a Canadian.

One film that is really special for me in terms of my ability to know the story of my son is the 2015 documentary by Steve Hoover called Almost Holy. What was exciting about this documentary, which follows a pastor as he is called to a deep sense of social responsibility for the neglected children of his Country, is that the city (Mariupol) the story takes place in is approximately 600 kilometers from our adopted sons home town, nestled along the same waters and sharing much in the way of cultural identity. More importantly, after an opening sequence that captures the fall of the Soviet Union and the establishment of Ukraine, the film’s timeline begins with the year of our sons conception and ends shortly after his eventual adoption and relocation to Canada. This documentary was able to give us a snapshot of the world our son was born into, the world he existed in through the first 12 years of his life, and the world we entered when we first met him.

The City of Writers and Romance

Fast forward again. It is nearing the end of October. The court process on the Ukrainian side is complete and I am free to begin my trek home so that I can resume working. Jen, who has decided to take an extended adoption leave from her job as a teacher, will stay behind to finish the process. I am flying out of Warsaw, Poland (cheap tickets and a non stop flight), so Jen decides to accompany me part way so as to take advantage of an opportunity to visit Western Ukraine and track down her family village. First stop is Odessa, the city that defines the region our son is from (Odessa Oblast). A wonderful recent episode of The History of Literature walks through the romance of Odessa’s landscape, known as the “pearl” of the Black Sea for its wealth of poets and writers. If you are looking for a good place to start Charles King’s Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams is a lovely look at the city’s history and character. As well, this 2013 article by Sally McGrane for the New Yorker titled Odessa: City of Writerly Love is a great read.

Here, Ukraine’s bookish culture comes alive with the grand mythos of its literary identity captured in a national literary museum (Fun fact: Odessa birthed the first public library in Ukraine and accordingly is seen as the birthplace of “modern Jewish literature”), born from a melting pot of cultural expressions due to its positioning as one of the worlds great ports. One thing I still desperately miss about Ukraine, along with joining in the tradition of their daily walks to the open air Rynoks (market) to get fresh ingredients for the day (freezer food isn’t really a thing there), were the plethora of book sellers dotting the streets and inviting you over for conversation and a game of chess. The bookish culture really did come alive for us as we walked the well trodden heritage path from the historic train station up to the Potemic Steps, and down to the sea front. This demonstrated how rich and diverse the flavors of this wonderful Country are operating as a symbolic link between East and West (affectionately described as the Borderlands). If you want a really cool book idea that captures this sense of diversity try Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes Through Darkness and Light. It begins in Odessa and ends in Turkey and uses food/recipes as a way to build a travelogue. For the record, the abundance of Turkish coffee and Turkish food occupying this area of Ukraine was wonderful. And if you want a wonderful film about generations connecting across the Diaspora that takes place in the area, check out 2005’s Everything is Illuminated by Director Live Schreiber.

The City of Coffee, Chocolate and Ukranian Culture

Having arrived in Western Ukraine we step foot in the enchanting city of Lviv, a humble but vibrant Ukrainian center bursting with the sights and sounds of some of the great western European destinations, only remaining wildly overlooked through the years by tourists. What greeted me stepping off that train was the overwhelming flavors of and smells of chocolate and coffee emanating from somewhere inside the old city walls. Further exploration would reveal one of the oldest and most influential coffee houses (Lviv Coffee Manufacturer) in Europe, still operating in the same functional stone laden building occupying the heart of the old city’s central square (The Lviv Coffee Festival remains a life goal by the way). A real world Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Lviv Handmade Chocolate) sits just down the road telling much the same story about the cocoa bean. I might or might not have over indulged. If Kiev stands tall and feels bigger than life as the historical and political center of Ukraine, and if Odessa lends it that romantic fervor, Lviv sits humbly as the cultural heartbeat of the Country, a fact made aware by the prominence of the Ukrainian language and the vibrancy of its artistic and creative identity. John Czaplicka, author of the book Lviv: A City in the Crosscurrents of Culture, does a great job outlining the significance of this cities history given the push and pull of its constantly shifting borders. Tarik Cyril Amar’s The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv: A Borderland City Between Stalinists, Nazis, and Nationalists outlines the socio-political side of this equation. One thing I do know about the city today is that it is both beautiful in its diversity and distinctly and authentically Ukrainian in its expression. This unsuspecting delight would be the launching off point for tracking down Jen’s family village given its approximation just outside the Carpathian Mountains (if you want something a little different the 2019 film Hutsulka Ksenya from Director Olena Demianenko offers a fun and enchanting look at the Carpathian culture and region), an experience that would eventually leave me with some powerful lessons about what it means to exist as a people caught between a very real East-West divide.

First though, I need to backtrack to Kiev.

The Gates of Europe and The Other Points of History

During our first week in Kiev we actually met up with Jen’s cousin Maria as part of tracking down her family village. This was so neat as she took us on a tour of Kiev, which included taking us to the grand statue of Prince Vladimir the Great and what they call the Golden Gate, a partial wall reconstructed from the remains of the grand entrance way built by Yaroslav the Wise in 1037. It is a gateway built on the model of Constantinople, both to honor it but also symbolic of Kiev’s interest in once aspiring to be that great center of power, to be what Constantinople became before its fall. The gate symbolizes Yaroslav’s ability to unite a disparate Kievan region from among the ashes of their own family strife (the oldest brother killed his other three brothers). As she explained, and as outlined so wonderfully in Serhii Plokhy’s book The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, a book that draws out the history and origins of the old Kievan Rus as the true origins of Ukrainian identity, it would be here at this gate where the Mongols would decimate his endeavors, officially setting the stage for the eventual shift in power as Russia lays claim to being the center of Orthodox Christianity after the fall of Constantinople. This shapes the Great Schism between East and West in an even more complicated light with Catholicism and Protestantism on one side and Russian and Ukraine/Constantinople Orthodoxy on the other. With the fall of Constantinople went the fate of the Kievan-Rus people, a reality that translates readily to the Ukrainian fight for independence today.

The Exodus, The Diaspora, and the Great Tension In-between

For me, visiting these sites was like, once upon a day standing in the epicenter of the Roman ruins, touching the reconstructed Coliseum and coming to terms with the humbling realization that I am standing in a place that holds so much of our human history in its hands, particularly as it speaks to this still present East-West divide. Eventually getting to track down Jen’s family village and see her “Ukrainian” roots first hand offered us a snapshot into something particular but also universal about their struggle. For them this history manifested itself through family strife- a daughter attending school in the big city and being pulled in the direction of modernization; a family striving to uphold what it means to be Ukrainian in a place where the old Cossack history still holds great meaning. This while all around them the forced diaspora continues to scatter Ukrainian peoples around the world, leaving them all struggling with the very real question- where does Ukraine go from here.

All of this called to mind for me the mixed multitude of the Exodus story, a story that remains on my mind every since finishing Walter Brueggemann’s wonderful book Delivered Out of Empire: Pivotal Moments in the Book of Exodus. They found themselves bound together in Egypt through a singular experience of displacement and oppression, caught in the successive princely rule of the Pharaohs of their day. Established as a liberated people, they then find themselves divided and struggling with the challenges of the Diaspora. This left them balancing the tension that exists between the call to preserve (remember) their identity as the people of God by keeping their traditions alive in foreign lands, especially as new powers rise and borders continue to shift both east and west.

If the image of Babylon is raised up in the biblical narrative as the defining pattern of Empire, it is in the Exodus story that we find the pattern for a different way of being in the world, a pattern Christ would take on Himself in his death and resurrection. A recent book I read called Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankinds Greatest Invention by Ben Wilson demonstrates to me how these same patterns find their way into the whole of human civilization as part of that working tension. Another recent book by Brian Zahnd, When Everything’s on Fire: Faith Forged From the Ashes, also reminds me of how these same pattern plays out in the inner life of faith. Deconstruction often proceeds from oppressive realities, and from the ashes of deconstruction then comes the potential for reconstruction, renewal and recreation. From the ashes of tragedy comes the potential for beauty. From the marginalization of the Kievan Rus came the potential for a Ukrainian identity. As Zahnd points out, the difficult part of any such process is knowing what to preserve and what to allow to be reshaped on the other side of the promised liberation, which is what the Gospel breathes into the reconstruction process. This is because deconstruction also often follows displacement.

This is a picture of the diaspora. As outsiders looking in then the challenge becomes two fold- enabling that preservation of identity while attending to the need for liberation at the same time. This is one thing I learned from getting to know Ukrainians during my time residing in their country and participating in their culture. They don’t want to simply become the West. They want to be Ukrainian. They want to be empowered by appeals to democracy to ask questions relevant to Ukrainian history. This brings with it a very real tension though, as it’s easy to equate liberation with assimilation when the problems they face are economical. And yet even though the first questions they often asked me were about my job and my wage, I found myself consistently cautioning them not to idealize my country based on presumptions about prosperity. After all, so much of what I cherished about my time in Ukraine brought to light things I lament about life in Canada. Truth to be told, this proved true for our son. There are positives he gained from moving to Canada. There is also much that he grieves and that leaves him frustrated. It has always been our job as parents to be attentive to that tension. This is equally true when thinking about Ukraine.

One final portrait here. To understand how it is that a mixed multitude, a diverse group of cultures unified through a shared struggle, was raised up to be a light to the world, a light that opposes the way of Empire by representing a more beautiful way, we must understand what it means for a people to truly be free, free to become who they are as God’s children. This gave new meaning for me to some of the final images in the wonderful documentary about the Maidan Revolution called Winter on Fire. If you see it, the final images of the candlelight vigil is unforgettable. It’s this picture that then carries me into the subject of Ireland, which I will talk about in Part 2.