The Tsar’s Car

Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 2013 by Mendicant Monk

July 4/17, 2013
Feast of the Royal Martyrs: Tsar-Martyr Nicholas, Tsaritsa-Martyr Alexandra, the Royal Crown Prince Alexis, the Grand-Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, and those martyred with them.

On this family feast day of ours, I thought it fitting to share a few words of what the Tsar-Martyr Nicholas has meant to me personally. His heavenly intercessions have brought me from spiritual rags to heavenly riches and now I owe every breath to his pleading for me and my family before the throne of God. Continue reading →

Learning a New Language and Culture

Posted on Monday, July 16, 2012 by Mendicant Monk

Some people have asked what it is like to learn another language or culture like the Russian language. I am not the best person to ask as I have only become assimilated enough to carry on a broken conversation for about 5-10 minutes by myself without my wife’s assistance. But still, I feel like there are a few good things to expect while planning to come to Russia.

The language is the first big challenge, but it is not as insurmountable as it might seem at first. Before considering any pilgrimage, a person has to reach deep within and ask, “Why am I going on this pilgrimage?” It is a question which ought not to be confused with the more selfish one, “What is in it for me?” since you are going on pilgrimage for others as much as for yourself, to intercede to the saints on their behalf.

When first learning the language, there are many helpful programs to listen to. Most recommend Rosetta Stone, but I personally like the Pimsleur Language Program, available in toto at the local library (I recommend the complete course in three parts, not the quick and easy versions). I listened to all 90 lessons one summer that we were in Russia for three months and it helped me break the sound barrier: that uncomfortable silence when someone asks a basic question in Russian and you don’t have anything to say for yourself.

At this point, someone might ask, “Why go to that trouble if you have someone to translate into English?” Certainly, this makes it easier for you the English speaker, but two things are lost in translation: 1) The directness of speaking to another person face to face, however faltering, without the help of an interpreter, and 2) The full attention of the person who agrees to translate. Just because someone knows how to speak two languages fluently does not necessarily mean they are good at translating from one into another; it is a skill all its own, and a worthwhile skill, but it requires work which the single-language speaker often takes for granted.

I remember the first time I met someone in Russia that I wanted desperately to speak to directly. Each one of the few words I knew were so pregnant with meaning. How surprised I am still by how much meaning can be packed into so few words. Like the apostle Paul who preferred to speak 5 intelligible words than 10,000 in an unknown, un-interpreted tongue, I think more is communicated by what is left unsaid than by what is said. The apostle John reminds us in his first epistle that people will know we are Christians by our love, not our words, and thankfully love is a universally understood language, spoken primarily through the eyes directly to the heart.

So, once you have mastered a battery of basic words and phrases, the second challenge is a much harder one and much more nuanced. It is the realization that everything you want to say and do in English doesn’t always translate well into Russian no matter what words you use. A good example is what we each consider the mark of highest praise for another person. For America, it might be a person’s sense of humor or that they know how to have a good time. For a Russian, someone who behaves like this at the outset of meeting him/her will make the other person conclude that he/she is a little crazy. For a Russian the highest note of praise is usually another person’s degree of seriousness, while the average American might want a very serious person to lighten up a bit before getting to know them better. In so many of these cultural comparisons, it is tempting to cast judgment in either direction, but I believe the Lord would have us be multi-cultural which means in this case refraining from judging the differences as better or worse. For us who are learning, they are just different; to make a right judgment, we really need more information or background.

Vive la difference as the French say. May our differences not only be allowed to exist, but may they teach us to suspend judgment until we expand the horizon of our understanding.

Arriving at Divyevo

Posted on Monday, July 16, 2012 by Mendicant Monk

Monday, July 3/16, 2012, M. Hyacinth

Today is our recovery day and a chance to catch up on emails and blog posts. Arrived early morning to Moscow and have been in the apartment ever since, just resting. The following is a first post of our trip to Divyevo:

Friday, June 30/July 13, 2012, Synaxis of the 12 Apostles

We arrive early morning (5:30am) by overnight train and take a bus to Divyevo. On the way, we take a triple dip in one of the four holy springs surrounding St. Seraphim’s village of Divyevo. When we check in at our hotel at 8am, it feels already like the day has been spent.

Traveling as pilgrims with two young girls is a bit of an experiment for us. The hotel we are staying at for the next couple of nights is comfortable enough, but we travel all in one suitcase without the usual toys and games. One whole bag is dedicated to food and provisions for tea, as you never know on pilgrimage where and when to eat the next meal. So far our little pilgrims are doing well with an afternoon nap that we finally talked them into.

Almost finished with the St. Seraphim life, but I have not really been here long enough for a strong impression to form. We heard one general introduction to the monastery and its life, how St. Seraphim was invited by the Abbess Alexandra to be their father confessor and protector. Also, there is lots of talk about how Divyevo was chosen as the 4^th place on earth especially dear to the Mother of God, the Virgin Mary (the other three are Iberia (Georgia), Mount Athos, and Kiev). It makes me wonder why Jerusalem was not included, but perhaps it is because the Holy Land is a given, in a category all its own.

Still, it seems significant that two of the four places are in Mother Rus (Ukraine was originally part of the ancient kingdom). Questions still linger for me about why she chose Divyevo and why St. Seraphim is so special especially for Russians. I have my ideas, but we will see how the pilgrimage unfolds.

Eating Manna at the Monastery

Posted on Sunday, July 15, 2012 by Mendicant Monk

July 2/15, 2012, Placing of the Honorable Robe of the Most Holy Theotokos at Blachernae (5^th cent.)

I always feel uncomfortable when someone asks about my favorite food in Russia, for like the Israelites in the desert, it is not so much about what’s on the menu as the relationship with the Provider. Manna, what the Israelites ate in the desert, literally means “What is it?” But a better question than this is, “Who gave it?” For in both cases of manna and monastery food, they clearly come from heaven.

At the Divyevo trapeza, the free one offered to all pilgrims, the menu never really changes: soup, bread, tea, and that ever useful, multi-purpose, everywhere present KASHA. True confession that I have never really liked kasha, probably because of its plainness. I probably have asked the disdainful question of the Israelites about it as well, “Just what exactly is it?” In America, its humility places it on the bottom of the breakfast menu. We really only know one kind of kasha, oatmeal, and no one but a health nut ever really orders it. Yet there is something about kasha which makes Russians love it, for among other things, it is ordinary food which gives strength and endurance to pilgrims.

Food, reminds the apostle Paul, does not bring us near to God. We are no better if we do not eat, or if we do eat (I Cor. 8:8). It is rather the setting or context that can help us in our salvation. Our family has never had a meal in a monastery that did not taste delicious because of how it was consecrated by love for God and prayer. The lives of the desert fathers and the record of the deplorable things they consumed testifies that God can indeed turn stones into bread.

While we in America obsess over the right restaurant or the perfect gourmet experience, we miss the point. Kasha, like the ancient Manna, directs our attention away from gourmet obsessions toward thankfulness for whatever God provides.

Toasting the Company of the Saints

Posted on Friday, July 6, 2012 by Mendicant Monk

Icon of All Saints

Thursday, June 22/July 5, 2012 HM Eusebius

We arrived yesterday evening on the 4^th of July at Domodedova Airport to the other great “land of the free and home of the brave”, this thousand-year-plus old home of saints and those aspiring to be so, Mother Russia. I have decided to launch this blog instead of merely emailing our travel reflections. It worked last summer to post my trip to Greece and Turkey as a series of emails and then finally compile them into one Pilgrimage Memory Book, available here. But email is limited in the sense that the text and pictures cannot live close enough to one another, and so much of what I write is illustrated in particular photographs. God has gifted our family so greatly with these summer trips to Russia (this is my forth, and our family’s fifth); it would be selfish to keep all of these blessings to ourselves.

Even if we do nothing more than stay in Moscow, there is so much benefit gained by living for a while in another culture. It forces us out of our comfortable patterns and presses us to rely more readily on help from God as we seek to cope with the adjustment. Crossing that airport checkpoint means crossing into another world in which more than just the language is different. To open, I will try to focus on what is pleasantly different and leave the un-pleasantries to hopefully transform me into a better man.

One pleasant cultural difference in Russia is the ease with which people visit one another. In our first 24 hours, we have been greeted by not less than three unexpected guests on two separate occasions. Of course, each occasion warranted the pulling out of several courses: always first a toast after the prayer to the meeting or whatever the occasion, then soup, then salad, an assortment of nuts, salted fish, potatoes, more soup, more salad; then savory things are withdrawn to make room for the dainties that accompany the tea: crispy, donut-like lee-pyoshki, different kinds of jam, fresh peaches and cherries, and a bowl full of hard candy. It’s no wonder Russians in America are unimpressed by our Thanksgiving holiday. For a guest in Russia, every meal is like a Thanksgiving meal, even the ones offered during a fasting period (the Orthodox Church is now in the middle of the Apostle’s Fast in which the faithful abstain from all meat except fish and all dairy and eggs).

But I digress on food which Russians don’t really discuss much at the table like we Americans. No, the point of the meal is the company gathered, and though the Russians have borrowed the English word (companiye in Russian) to describe the experience, I am convinced they have a much deeper understanding of its meaning. The battery of toasts offered during the course of each meal makes this point plain. The first toast will always be for the reason of gathering: If it is a birthday, congratulations to the person celebrating it; if it is an anniversary, congratulations to the couple celebrating it, etc. If there is nothing special anyone gathered can think of, then the first toast za fstreture (“to the meeting”) offers thanks to God for the providential opportunity of just sitting across the table from one another, face to face, and talking.

What follows during the meal varies, but it is usually based on the course of conversation. For instance, at a birthday, it is natural after congratulating the birthday boy/girl to start talking about the couple whose love brought this little one/big one into the world. So, a follow-up toast will be to the parents and/or grandparents. Toasts following this tend to be for other relatives and friends that have figured prominently in the honored guest’s life, and it is only toward the end of the meal when more abstract, general toasts are made for brotherhood, peace and love. I remember when I first learned enough Russian to offer a meager something of my own at the table. I was tempted to rhapsodize eloquently on one of my favorite philosophical subjects when my wife would inevitably nudge me (or refuse to translate my English ramblings) because my toast was not directed to a person or to the company gathered.

This brings me to our beautiful Orthodox theology, as all good culture engenders good theology. “My neighbor [company] is my salvation,” says many noted, contemporary elders of the Church. We cannot find Jesus Christ completely on our own, in pursuit of some idle curiosity, or once we have found Him, sustain his company without others. Rather, the Lord prays, “Make them one, Father, as you and I are one.” (John 17) As we strive for unity in Him, we also grow closer one to another in a company of sanctity that stretches beyond the present in both directions— past and future. The great apostle Paul reflects on this mystery in a passage we read on the Sunday of All Saints, Hebrews 11:33-12:2, in which we commemorate all the vast company of martyrs, confessors, and every righteous man or woman made perfect in faith. But the conclusion of this amazing commemoration is the most humbling, and it speaks to the future direction of the Lord’s plan of salvation: That as great as this company of saints is, they received not the promise. God having provided some better thing for us [in the present], that they without us should not be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:39, 40)

Really? Something better or greater than being sawn asunder and yet alive? Greater than living through a furnace heated seven times hotter than usual? Greater than all these things performed by men and women of whom the world was not worthy? Yes. The Lord intends that with the example and active intercession of these saints who have gone before, we might do even greater things than these. O Lord, may we immerse ourselves in the lives of the saints, so that we not look in judgment and isolation at the lives of those around us. In their great company, may we not take for granted the neighbor you have given to accompany us in our path of salvation. Unto Thee be glory, forever and ever, AMEN.