Coming from Another Side Before I first came to this Church I always felt that something was missing in my life; I knew that I needed something MORE, but I didn't know what it was. This Church helps a lot in my search for meaning and I am grateful for that. After two years of regularly attending services I decide to become a member of this Church. By "coming from another side" I mean that I didn't come here from some traditional religion like many others, but from a non-religious background. Just imagine: for more than 40 years of my "previous" life I lived in a society (Soviet Union) where religion was in fact almost forbidden - it definitely was forbidden for members of the Communist Party, or Komsomol and Pioneer organisations (organisations to which practically all children and young people under the age of 27 belonged). For attending Church you could be named, shamed, and excluded, and your future career and life ruined. Soon after the Great October Revolution in 1917, religion in my country (Russia) was separated from the state, most of the churches were closed or destroyed, and priests were sent to Siberian camps. Religion or God were never mentioned at school or at home. Only at the university, where in the early seventies I studied Applied Mathematics - we had a one-semester course, “scientific atheism”, which very briefly described the history of different world religions with the single purpose of demonstrating their contradiction with science. But it was not so easy to change people’s way of thinking (we all know that it’s impossible to control somebody else's thinking and feeling and sometimes it is not easy to control our own!) Traditionally Russia was an Orthodox Christian country, and only one generation separated us from those times. We were raised by our parents, who had been raised by their parents - very religious Orthodox Christians, so even without mentioning religion we all had these ideas of sin and guilt, which are so strong in Orthodox Christianity. I remember that my grandmother, instead of telling me fairy tales at bed time, secretly told me stories from the Bible and I loved these stories and I loved Jesus Christ, but I did not know that this was religion! All classical Russian literature, maybe especially Dostoevsky, is very religious by its nature, and we all read a lot and were influenced by his ideas without even realising. Unfortunately, the main ideas we got from Dostoevsky were about suffering, guilt, and punishment, which gave young people a very tragic image of life. To be absolutely honest, when I was a child I loved Joseph Stalin too, because everybody around loved him. At that time believing in Stalin was official Soviet "religion" (or as they said later - a Cult of Personality) and his portraits were our icons. My only excuse – I was just 3 years old when he died and I forgot about him very quickly! Nowadays in my country, when belief in communism has failed, Russian churches are being restored, and young people are returning to church - at least for weddings and christenings. It doesn't mean I would become an Orthodox Christian, I certainly wouldn't. I'm very happy finding my own way which led me here, to the Dublin Unitarian Church on St. Stephen’s Green. Tanya Trusova October 2007 Cover