Easter in Turkmenistan

Our first year in Turkmenistan, I spent Lent banging out a chapter of my dissertation. I wrote forty pages in a week and then revised it so it would be ready present. Then Holy Thursday came and I escaped to walk around the compound and pray the rosary. The poppies were in bloom, so I came to associate the flowers with Christ's passion. Easter was this late this year so I thought we'd missed the poppies. It turns out that they thrive not by time but weather. Easter week it rained and the poppies have been out in force.

This year was the most moving and life-changing Easter that I've had since I was baptized. This is partially because I was graced with much devoted prayer (to the detriment of dissertation progress I'm afraid). Yet even without this extra preparation the Easter Vigil service in Ashgabat was amazing this year.

Eight adults were received into the Catholic Church in the little chapel at the Apostolic Nunciature. Joe and I were seated on a riser to the side of the alter so were able to look into the neophytes faces as they were baptized, confirmed and received their first communion, to see their smiles and tears.

Both priests and the deacon read the gospel - one in Russian, one in English and one in Turkmen. I feel as blessed as Simeon to have heard the gospel proclaimed in Turkmen. It is wonderful to see freedom of worship begin to penetrate the imaginative post-Soviet bureaucracy and it is wonderful to see the root of our faith thrive in the Turkmen culture which has survived that bureaucracy.

The responsorial psalms were also in all three languages. Two of the women being received into the church sung the Turkmen psalms. They were dressed like Turkmen brides with scarves draped over metal headdresses. After their baptisms, they put white dresses on over the layers of colored fabric and white scarves. The metal headdresses stayed in place.

I'd first seen one of these women at the Midnight mass our first Christmas in Turkmenistan. That night like at Easter the chapel and adjoining library had been packed with chairs and people spilled out into the foyer. Children run around in this front room and observers chat. At one point I had retreated to the foyer because Ruth Anne was fussing. I didn't know where I could nurse amid all these strangers. I remember praying to Mary as I tried to balance Ruth Anne when this woman stepped by and opened a door into another room. I followed her and she unzipped a slit in her dress and proceeded to nurse her toddler. Hallelujah! Thank you, Mary!

I have wanted to write about that moment for a long time but when I first tried I became caught up in trying to describe all the details. I want to describe every thread in the church on these holiest of nights. I cannot. I can only live them and trust that next year we'll do it all it again and it will be magical in its own way.

These pictures are actually from the week after Easter...

On Easter Sunday the alter was surrounded by lilies, especially the open tomb.

This is Ruth Anne with her friend Becka. Father Andrew calls these girls the "living pillars" of the cathedral in Ashgabat. Someday they'll build a real church shaped like a yurt with the cornerstone blessed by Pope John Paul II. (See the May Madness post to come).