the light around us
Dear friend,
The Jiu Valley is cloaked in white and fresh snow keeps falling on the old, and when the skies are blue the whole world absolutely shimmers with light. Even the gray apartment blocs and the old smokestacks don’t feel quite as glum when the sun is out like that, reflected in a thousand different directions by the ice and the snow and the cold.
I just got a package delivered to me yesterday and before I share its contents I must first explain the sender. Back in the beginning of December, I was invited by some acquaintances-soon-to-be-friends to visit a monastery with them in Maramures, nearly 400 kilometers north of the valley. We were there for little over 24 hours, but it was one of those stretches of time when the hours seem to deepen and hold more than they normally might. (Of course, experiences like these do not actually alter the capacity of our hours, but rather reveal or remind us of their true and constant potential.)
We arrived at night, parking our cars in a bare, cold-looking forest, and one of the three monks who permanently reside at the monastery led us out of the woods and across a clearing to a traditional-looking two-story house whose lower windows glowed with candlelight. The monks had no electricity or running water here, but they did have cell phones and internet, which made for a sort of charming contrast of worlds and eras.
This was not, I think, a typical monastery visit. Those I was visiting with knew the monks personally, and in the end it felt more like an evening spent in the comfort of a good friend’s living room. I felt immediately at ease and at home. Part of it was the atmosphere—all of us sitting together in that room, either at the tall wooden table or on the tall simple bed or on a stool in front of the wood-burning soba, thin beeswax tapers burning on various surfaces around the room, casting warm light and peaceful shadows around us. But the feeling of “home” was also in large part thanks to the people, especially the monks who made me so immediately feel held in their friendship and indeed their Christian love.
One of them in particular, hearing that I was an enquirer into the Orthodox faith, invited me to speak with him about the spiritual, and so as we ate our dinner of fried fish and bread and wine, I listened to him speak about prayer, and trust, and the all-encompassing love that we can cultivate in our hearts if only we can recognize and understand that in some mysterious but important way, every one of us contains the whole of humanity within ourselves. “This,” I thought, “this is what I have been looking for.”
There is much more that I could write of that weekend, and perhaps one day I will, but what I will say for now is that this monk has been kind enough to keep in contact with me, answering the questions that I have about Orthodoxy and life in general, sending me prayers and youtube videos and book recommendations, and even sending me packages—like the one I received yesterday. The first package I received weeks ago—a box with a handful of small hand carved wooden crosses to be worn around the neck and one large cross, also hand-carved into dark wood, to hang on my wall. The package I received yesterday contained a beautiful red hardbound book: “Cuviosul Siluan Athonitul” by Arhimandritul Sofronie.
This book was among those that he highly recommended, but he was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get ahold of it. He had planned to send me his personal copy so that I could read it at least once and handwrite out certain passages to keep, but then he discovered that on his bookshelf next to his old copy was a brand new one that he hadn’t remembered having. I offered to send it back to him after I finished but he said no, it was a gift, and he was so happy to be able to give it to me. He has spoken much to me of this more recently canonized Saint Sophrony (the author of the book) and Sophrony’s duhovnic or spiritual father St. Silouan the Athonite. He has also sent me several videos from conferences given by Father Rafail Noica, whose spiritual father was in turn Saint Sophrony, and who translated this work by his duhovnic from Russian to Romanian.
From the little that I have experienced of their writings and teaching so far, it seems that the most urgent message of this succession of spirit-led teachers—from Siluan to Sofronie to Rafail—is nothing other than the all-encompassing, ever-gentle, insatiable love of God. And though perhaps that seems simple on the surface, I am slowly learning that it is a subject whose depths may never be fully understood by any of us. Just this week I was stopped on the street by a stranger, a man who asked me with a certain tragic urgency: “Does He love us up there? Does God love us?” And I caught my breath because I felt it then, as something tangible between us, and looking into his eyes felt like looking into my own in a way, and I knew, if only for that brief moment, that nothing was more important than this answer: yes. You and me, yes. All of us, yes. And then we parted, but even that cloudy day felt saturated with light.
Sometimes, or rather often, I don’t feel worthy of these moments. Why would a stranger ask me to assure him (and in the process, to assure myself) of the love of God? Why would a monk in Maramures send me hand carved crosses and this beautiful book? I have no good answer. But what can I do other than accept what comes before me? All of this reflecting light—well, I hope that it’s reaching you too, wherever you may be.
May we all be blessed.
Jenna
