An epiphany in Westminster Abbey. Can the Bible be a tool of propaganda? London, 2024.

I lived in London in the Pimlico district, which is considered the center, and it took me twenty minutes to walk to Westminster Abbey. One day I left home at seven in the morning to go to a sermon at Westminster Abbey. This is the only way to get there for free and become part of a very sacred event. I, as a person who once visited all the churches in Kyiv (Ukrainian and russian) and did not miss a single Sunday sermon in the Greek Catholic Church, wanted to go to the sermon in London. My sister advised me that I should go to the sermon in London because it was very beautiful and completely unlike anything I had seen before, even in other European countries. So, despite the early time and the pouring rain, I went to Westminster Abbey. At the entrance, two guards smiled at me and let me go inside without asking any questions. When I entered the Abbey, I could not help but say out loud: "WOW!". The priest came up to me and asked me with a smile on his face, "Are you here for the sermon?" "Yes," I answered confidently. "Then go to the left, go to the very end of the hall, you will be met there by another priest." I nodded my head and thanked him with my eyes, I didn't even want to say anything else out loud, I couldn't disturb the peace of the Abbey anymore, I didn't want to interfere with its history and distract from its greatness with my primitive words. Yes, Greatness! A beauty that cannot be described, it must be seen and felt to remain in memory for a lifetime. Literally, with my eyes and mouth wide open, I walked down a long hall that seemed to never end, managing to look at every nook of the architectural masterpiece. After a while, I almost reached my destination, and a priest in a Catholic cassock was waiting for me, smiling. Why do I constantly emphasize the word smiling, which radiates not only through their smile but also through their eyes? Because in the Orthodox Church, as well as in the Greek Catholic Church in the post-Soviet space, you rarely see smiling people, in the Greek Catholic Church, of course, more in comparison with the Orthodox Church, but still not many. The priest asked me again if I had come for the sermon, and when I said yes, he handed me a New Testament and a printout with a description of the entire ceremony and the lyrics of the songs. He gestured that I should now turn to the right. I did so, and as I turned to the right, I gripped the Bible with my fingers so tightly that my fingerprints would have been imprinted on it. I quickly looked around the room and thought: "Am I in the right place? Is this the place where the sermon is going to be?!?!?!" The priest looked at me and said: "I'll show you where you can sit. Here in this first row on the left, any seat." I stealthily looked at the other people sitting there: "They look like ordinary people, like me. They also came to the sermon." When I am given the right to choose, I always doubt which place to choose, where to sit, where is the best - my brain turns on with doubts that terrorize me. But this time it didn't happen, I just sat down humbly and quietly looked around the room, which on the one hand was like the main hall of the Abbey, but on the other hand, I had the feeling that it was a separate room, some kind of a secret place for the chosen ones.... It seemed to me that I was in a movie or that I had traveled back to the 12th and 13th centuries and became part of a closed secret order that had answers to any questions and knew things that others did not. We were sitting at large wooden benches in two tiers, which formed a separate room and a rectangle, I immediately imagined men in red and purple robes, I don't know why, maybe I remembered it from movies, some secret codes that fall directly from the sky and seep into the building, descending on us and grounding in our bodies....

And then the magic began.... Magic that brought crystal clarity to my consciousness and awakened me....

The priest sat down opposite me on the second tier and began the sermon. I looked around the room and realized that I had to take the piece of paper he handed me, it had everything written on it. After a while, I realized that now I had to take the Bible in my hands, it had a bookmark on the exact page where I needed to read. The priest read the texts, and we repeated after him. Then a nun started reading the texts, which was also unexpected for me. But the most important thing is the text itself in English! My head seemed to lighten and cramp up at the same time. I have read the New Testament in russian many times, and I have never read in a russian-language Bible what I heard and read in English that day in Westminster Abbey. "How is this possible? Could it be that the russian version of the Bible does not coincide with the English translation, or perhaps the German translation, or with the translation into any other language? Is it really possible that russians put into the russian translation what they need and benefit from to turn people into slaves deprived of their freedom, consciousness, and liberty? Is such a lie possible?" When I heard the texts in English again and again, I had more and more insight: "Yes, it is possible! I have read the Bible in russian many times, and I have never seen a single word in it that resembles what I have read and heard today! This finally gives me an answer to a fundamental question: "How can God want us to be slaves who suffer all the time and never smile?!?!?!" He doesn't really want that, he wants people to be free, and this fits clearly into my picture of the world and my understanding of the universe. God in the English version of the Bible is Lord, which gives this word a completely different color and shape, and it also coincides with my resonance and awareness of how things should be.

I sat there speechless and impressed by the process itself, and by the realization that we had been fooled for so many years, that we had been imbued with the narratives and ideas that someone needed and that would make it easy to control and manipulate us in the right place and at the right time. But on the other hand, I finally felt this relief: "He wants us to be free. What more could he want for his CHILDREN?" The questions that had been running through my head about the Bible and religion finally disappeared, and the anxiety, confrontation, and irritation that I had been carrying around all these years, disagreeing with the church (as an institution) in the post-Soviet space and their interpretation of the Bible, were calmed down.

The ceremony ended.... I got up, left the Bible on the table, and thanked the priest with my eyes. When I left the Abbey, I saw that it was still raining and it had gotten heavier, so I opened my umbrella and picked up my iPhone and wrote to my sister with thanks and gratitude, and then to my mom, asking her:

"Do you remember how Jeffrey (one of our spiritual teachers, although he doesn't call himself that one and doesn't like those labels) used to say '....'? Well, that's a direct quote from the Bible in English translation."

"It can't be. I've never seen anything like that in the Bible we read."

"Neither have I. But is it really the original version? Or was it transferred to a good tool for influencing and enslaving people by translation matters?!?!?"

April 4, 2024.