#holy fool

some of my formative memories as a child were watching my mom cry to my grandma at my grandmother’s house. they’d huddle and pray that my dad would change. treat her better. treat us better. and that some day he’d marry her. she wanted to marry someone who treat us the way he treat us. I don’t know why. I just know I wasn’t supposed to be here, but she wanted a baby and didn’t think she could have one, which is probably why I’m here. my grandma would soothe her, or try, and they’d just do what they knew to do, which was pray about it. I remember being very angry. just leave. why don’t you just leave? get us out of there? and what are you praying for? what are you waiting for? it’s not gonna happen, it would have already. what’s God waiting for?

I can’t tell you why one day in 2018 I became devoutly religious. like my illness a few years later, and the pain one morning in March 2025, I just woke up one day and it was there. something fell out of the sky, and I had the very human impulse of reaching back into it. crying and calling into the sky, and I didn’t know if anyone was there, or if so who, all I knew is what I was taught, that is someone was there, it was God, and if there was a god, he was the Christian God.

I remember being in place I loved — St Petersburg, Russia. In a rented room in a communal apartment on Ligovskiyy Prospekt. Ligovskiyy was a busy street and saw commotion all through the night and I often couldn’t sleep. But it was a great location and a cute room in a cute apartment. There was a window. I remember one night looking out the window, down onto the street. I had heard a lot of noise. It was a mass bike ride, most people were naked. “That looks fun,” I thought. I probably would wear underwear, though. It was summer, and Petersburg was like a swamp, humid. The air didn’t move, it was thick to breathe. The room had been furnished. I slept on a soft couch, and I’d stay up all night, too hot to sleep. I’d be in my underwear with a sheet draped over me, window open. Ambient light coming in off the street, a little too bright, but kind of nice. Still dark. Eventually I’d fall asleep.

And one morning I woke up. There wasn’t much in that room, just my clothes and shoes and some electronics. I had a little electric kettle and packets of instant coffee. I’d fire up my little electric kettle and stir in the coffee. The window was always open, and the breeze would come in and blow around the translucent purple curtains.

The bathroom was communal, but there was no one ever in there. Don’t remember having to wait. The kitchen too. I remember making my little lunches in there. I don’t remember what I made, I just remember what the kitchen looked like. A little narrow strip of hallway almost, with a small, old burner, a refrigerator, some spices that belonged to one in particular. There was a window, and it looked onto the dvor’, the courtyard of the apartment. I never really had to wait for the kitchen, there was only two other women who lived there. One was rarely home —the owner— and one was an Uzkbek woman who worked all the time and was rarely home either. I just remember her knocking on my door one day and asking if I’d watch her manti (dumplings) on the stove while she went out. I said sure. She rewarded me with three giant manti. I don’t think I even knew her name. I don’t think she knew mine. Even if we talked now and then.

People who weren’t always there, weren’t always in my way, I wasn’t in their’s. But there sometimes. Sharing food now and then, words sometimes, sharing presence at night, from separate beds and separate rooms.

I was there doing research. I was a student at my dream school, on a full ride, funded by a grant to do research on a topic that interested me. My only job was to walk around, think through ideas, read, collect information. The writing would come later. I was just there to observe, read, think.

It was everything I wanted, and yet I felt so empty. It hit me — I could have everything I wanted, all of what I needed, could be where I wanted to be doing what I wanted to do, but there was still something missing. That made me cry, burst into tears. That made me not want to be here at all. Here, there, anywhere. If that’s how it felt at my version of the top of the world, I didn’t see a point if I felt so empty and alone.

So one morning I woke up, sat up. And I didn’t know what to do, how to carry on, carrying this emptiness, this ennui that I didn’t understand, this dissatisfaction, discontent, none of which should be there.

I just remember that me, a reluctant Catholic, then a militant atheist, then a humanist, then an agnostic, then not someone who thought about religion or God at all, I found myself saying, out loud,

“I don’t know if you’re there. But if you are, I need help.”

I don’t remember anything beyond that. Just that I needed help. I needed a reason to keep going. I needed help getting there.

The only thing I remember is that the first thing I really prayed for, after myself, was for someone. Someone I didn’t know, but wanted to.

“I pray for my future husband. He’s out there somewhere. I just pray that he isn’t too lonely, that he waits for me, and that we find each other soon.”

I just remember feeling profoundly at peace. And wanting to stay in that peace. I wasn’t alone anymore, and I wasn’t the only one looking out for me.

That was in summer 2018.

I met my ex-partner in Fall 2018.

“Is this him?”

I don’t know why I jumped to conclusions so fast. I wasn’t impatient. I was just tired of waiting.

I looked up some old Instagram stories a friend sent a while ago from my private Instagram I can’t access anymore. There were more than 3 manti. The curtains weren’t purple. They were light blue. The couch was purple.

It was a long-term Airbnb rental. The host’s review is still on my profile. 5 stars.

These tie into The scriptures I think about the most are from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians:

“For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.” - 1 Corinthians‬ ‭1‬:‭17‬ ‭ESV‬‬

And

“Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” - 1 Corinthians‬ ‭1‬:‭20‬-‭21‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Paul and Dostoevsky are introducing this intellectual tension, Augustine himself worded it in my favorite way:

“For just as that man who knows how to possess a tree, and give thanks to thee for the use of it--although he may not know how many feet high it is or how wide it spreads--is better than the man who can measure it and count all its branches, but neither owns it nor knows or loves its Creator: just so is a faithful man who possesses the world’s wealth as though he had nothing, and possesses all things through his union through thee, whom all things serve, even though he does not know the circlings of the Great Bear.” Confessions, book 5, chapter 4

I believe these words were written for this time, this time of an over intellectualized soul, that forgets the proper uses of reason. Where logic is praised more than wisdom, cynicism more than curiosity, traditions more than the a growing culture, and systems more than justice. When everything is categorized, the only thing that is left is to be the Panio key or join the underground.