The Innocence Method

If you had told me even three years ago that one day I would drive past the Kremlin on my way to work, I would have said you were completely out of your mind. And yet, that’s just what I did on the day the world ended. (Well, the world didn’t really end exactly, but perhaps we did enter a new era with the conclusion of the 13th B’aktun.)

And to be fair, I wasn’t driving, I was a passenger. Nonetheless, my wife and I, along with her business partner Anton, drove right by the Kremlin (and the nearby Red Square and St. Basil’s Cathedral) on Friday morning December 21st on our way to teaching day 3 of an Advanced PSYCH-K Workshop. I was the newcomer, as Lena and Anton had made this trip several times before. And with their having lived in Moscow for a number of years, this wasn’t quite such a remarkable event for them. I, on the other hand, having grown up in Cincinnati, Ohio (and living the last 8 + years in the Denver area) thought this was pretty amazing.

Mind you, it was something like 5 below zero (Fahrenheit) and — at 9:30 in the morning — the sun had not yet risen over the eastern horizon. It was starting to lighten a bit in the sky, but only just. Again, this seems entirely normal for the solstice if you’re a Muscovite, but for someone who was raised in a substantially more southern latitude, not to see the sun until nearly 10 in the morning is a tad surreal.