My Life and Thoughts

Patient readers! In explanation for the long silence, let me tell you that I have been researching and writing a really time-consuming article, the precise subject of which should remain a wonderful surprise to those of you to whom I am not always personally unburdening myself about it, but, it involves the Russian Orthodox church. This is how I found my way to the Interfax Religion site: a resource which I cannot recommend warmly enough to my dear readers.  It is, unlike my blog, updated many times a day, with important stories such as, “Three Bronze Angels to Carry the First Monument to Enema in Zheleznovodsk“:

Stavropol, June 16, Interfax – The monument to one of the most wide-spread medical treatments will open in health resort town of Zheleznovodsk.

“Medical enema is one of the most frequent treatments in medical institutions in the resorts of the Caucasus Mineral Waters, it is used for treating and preventing diseases of the digestive tract. Only our sanatorium makes over hundred cleansing enemas, micro enemas and siphonages every day. The monument to the enema should have been set long ago,” director of the Mashuk AquaTerm sanatorium Alexander Kharchenko thinks.

According to him, two working names of the monument were discussed: “Triumph of the Main Medical Set” and “Triumph of the Main Medical Procedure,” but the administration wasn’t happy about both of them.

“An enema is an enema,” the interviewee of the agency said.

Sculptors from Pyatigorsk and Rostov-on-Don worked at the bronze composition which weighs 350 kg and is 1,5 meter height.

There are so many interesting things we could talk about here, but I’m just going to mention one: what is the connection to religion? Is it a subtle Foucauldian commentary on how medical stewardship over the body has supplanted religious stewardship over the soul? Or maybe the editors have in mind some particular theological issues raised by a 770-lb representation of “angel-children… carrying over their head a large pear-shaped enema”?

As an example of a story with a more unambiguous connection to the Orthodox Church, however, I could direct you to “Chukotka Bishop Considers Cell Phones to be Inadmissible for Orthodox Believers“:

Anadyr, June 19, Interfax – Bishop Diomid of Anadyr and Chukotka spoke against Orthodox believers using mobile phones.

“I don’t recognize the cell phone. I consider it a chip that people carry with them voluntarily,” he told an Interfax-Religion correspondent on Thursday.

Last year Bishop Diomid urged Orthodox believers not to use the new Russian passport—he believes that the “number of the beast” is encoded in its pages… “This passport didn’t make it through the third Duma hearing-it’s illegal, while the old (Soviet “IF”) passport is legal,” Bishop Diomid told the agency today.

Nonetheless, he admitted that he himself has a new Russian passport. “I live near the border! Here you can’t take a step without a passport-you’ll be arrested and sent to lockup,” explained the bishop.

Here’s what I’m wondering: does Bishop Diomid also use a cell phone? I’m not calling him a hypocrite, but isn’t it conceivable that he’s been using a cell phone for years, unbeknownst even to himself (”Oh, you mean that portable miniature telephone? I thought it was some kind of chip!”) ?

Here is what else I am wondering: does Bishop Diomid think it is OK for Orthodox believers to visit the enema monument?  Returning to which, I was just searching online for a photo, and you know who really gave the event the coverage it deserves, is Komsomol’skaia Pravda:

There is even a video of the unveiling of the bronze cherubs, with banners proclaiming what appears to be a rousing yet euphemistic slogan (”УДАРИМ КЛИЗМОЙ ПО РАЗГИЛЬДЯЙСТВУ И ЗАТОРАМ”), plus interviews about the transformative power of enema on human experience. Now that’s what I call journalism. Keep up the good work, KP!

Tags: current events, enemas, glands—diseases, monuments, religion, Russian literature

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 21st, 2008 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.