I’m a librarian and I read or skim a lot of things I wouldn’t necessarily recommend to my Orthodox friends. Vodka Neat by Anna Blundy is one of those. It had a few good things about it, though, including this passage (the voice is that of a young British woman in the Soviet Union):
…”We had gone through some wooden doors into heaven, or the stage just before it. It was so dark in here that all I could immediately see were thousands and thousands of flickering candles and walls of gold. The air was full of intoxicating incense and Dimitri fell to his knees. I almost have liked to cross myself but I didn’t know how. A choir was chanting Orthodox mysteries somewhere in the gloom and a bearded priest in black robes swung a censer at them, muttering divine truths … It was the first and probably the last time that I nearly believed in God. And He lived here.”
photo credit: izarbeltza
