I am going to spend this afternoon at the Kiev Caves Lavra today - I feel so fortunate that I have been able to visit this place fairly regularly over the past 3 years.

Visit their site to see what it is about: http://www.lavra.kiev.ua/en/index.php

Earlier this year, I brought one of my best friends here. He is not Orthodox - he is into even particularly religious, and he was very skeptical of what he saw. I have always thought of faith as a very personal thing because it has always been so for me. I often enjoy the company of like minded people who share the same faith that I do, but I shy away from the 'camaraderie' of the faithful, inside jokes and group church life in general. It is pretty easy to do this in Russia where one can blend in with the crowd so much easier. I used to think I was missing the point but now I see I am just a loner. Anyway, I really identify with individuals who struggling with faith. I have been preachy in my life, but now I am more of an observer and when I brought my friend to the Caves, I didn't explain much except the basics, which are amazing enough. He was more curious about the architecture than the mass of 1,000 year old relics. He had a few questions, mostly comments on how it was probably all 'faked' some how or explainable by some as yet unknown natural phenomenon. In the past I would have argued, but I didn't. Nowadays I am weary of fighting about stuff like this. I see it as a personal issue, for me as well as for others. I am content to let others make their own conclusions. I have found this perspective has enabled me to pray better (without furious pleas for someone's conversion) and to let the miraculous speak for itself - which it can and always will do better than I can.

We visited the caves, saw and touched the bodies of the Saints. He was very polite and reverent, for which I was extremely grateful. Many come and gawk and the monks can do nothing to prevent this as the site is a State Historical Monument and they can't refuse entrance to anyone. 

It has always amazed me that two people can witness the same thing and come away from the experience with totally different impressions. Here are bones of the Saints, people who really lived hundreds of years ago, some still wrapped in leathery flesh, their skulls and joints oozing sweet smelling myrrh. I am overwhelmed each time I visit. Yet others remain unconvinced. I am almost more sympathetic with people with hostile reactions - the 'great deniers' who struggle to show how the faithful have been duped. At least these people have been touched somehow, their inner world disturbed enough to provoke outrage of some kind. I feel there is more hope for these, because whatever they ultimately conclude, their world has been challenged, their complacency has been penetrated. Those, like my friend, who shrug and brush it off as a curious but irrelevant anomaly - these are the ones I wonder about. The latter seem to be the majority.

Anyway, my friend went back to the US and our friendship went on as usual until he recently had a very unexpected near death experience. He has been in touch with me and told me about his experience in some detail, although he says there is more he is not ready to speak about yet.