Back in the Classroom

This fall I am lecturing at five universities in the cities of Lviv and Chernivtsi, including Lviv National University. Here I am with a few of this year's students. It is a continuing delight to associate with brilliant and personable young people, especially in this amazing land. Returning to the classroom always inspires me to dig deeper in my own studies and attempts to learn new things. Even at age 53 I feel the need to get back in the classroom, over and over, for the rest of my life.

An Apartment Which Elevates Thought

I am staying in a beautifully decorated and maintained apartment in a nineteenth century building in the city center of Lviv. The owner of the apartment is a Canadian artist who has filled the rooms with paintings and other works of art, as well as many fine old pieces of furniture. In fact, this room reminds me of the inner vision I have always had of the characters of Tolstoy's War and Peace, which I first read as a fifteen year old and have read many times since. Whenever I walk into this fine sitting room at No. 2 Lysenka Street, I can almost imagine the Rostov's and the Bolkonskys at dinner or conversing. This is where I get to serve my own little solitary breakfast or dinner each deay! It is a delight to hang my hat here for the next two weeks.

The apartment is emblematic of this fine old city, which is one of the great treasures of the old Hapbsburg and Austro-Hungarian Empires. The city center is on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and contains a wealth of significant churches, museums, squares and among the finest late Renaissance architecture found anywhere in Europe. I haven't had a chance to do any exploring yet, but am looking forward to taking many solitary walks and excursions over the next weekend.

This all gets me to pondering how places often have the capacity to elevate one's very thoughts. I find that I think best in my home library, surrounded by books and the peaceful surroundings of my unique and idiosyncratic home camp. The same is true with great churches and temples, which invite the thoughts to soar beneath their vast domes.

Kyiv in Shirtsleeves

My previous trips to Ukraine have all occurred between the beginning of November and early March, so it was an amazing experience to walk around downtown Kyiv in shirtsleeves on a hot early fall Sunday afternoon. I walked through the district around St. Sophia's, visited St. Volodymyr's Cathedral, strolled down the long aisle of trees in the center of Taras Shevchenko Blvd., passed through Shevchenko Park south of the Red University, and then to Lva Tolstovo and into my old haunts from my first trip to Kyiv in 2007.

In the park there were children riding on ponies, many families picknicking on the park benches and a throng of men standing around the stone chess boards watching chess games and smoking.

I had on my suitcoat, white shirt and tie, as I was visiting several churches on this Sunday morning, including the little Mormon congregation at the Ukrainian speaking ward on Shota Rustavelli, but even though it is late September I had to remove my jacket in the warmth of the autumn sun.

It is fascinating to see a familiar place during a different season. There is a mountain near my home in Salt Lake City which I run past every day, which changes dramatically with the seasons, wearing deep green in the spring, browns and rust colors in the summer, brilliant oranges, yellows and reds in the fall, and finally brilliant white in the snows of winter. It is always the same mountain, of course, but it is endlessly fascinating to watch it change under the procession of the seasons, almost as if it were a living thing. The same is true with any special place, like Kyiv. I have barely begun to know this city, and to see it in a new season and temperature makes me see it almost as if for the first time.

This phenomenon--of getting to know something more deeply with the passage of time and with the change of fortune--is especially true of people. You may think you know people well in their youth, but your appreciation of them changes and shifts and deepens as the years pass.

My wife and I just celebrated our thirtieth wedding anniversary three weeks ago. We thought we knew each other then, but my love for her has ripened as the spring and summer have passed. May it be an even richer connection as autumn turns and the snows of winter fall.