Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer

The Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer: A Pilgrimage to the Heart of an Ancient Spirituality explores sites sacred to Eastern Orthodox Churches where the Jesus Prayer that as been taught and shaped the spirituality of people across the centuries. The Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner,” has been universally used by these people and communities on the three continents visited in the journey.  I received an early release of the DVD, and I am excited to be reviewing it.

In one way, this video is a travelogue starting in Egypt with the earliest Christian monasteries, then going to Greece, Romania, Ukraine, and finally Russia. Churches where photography is forbidden to the usual tourist are not only videotaped, but selected parts of services are filmed. The producers provide an experience of places that are never opened to the everyday traveler.

They interview a wide range of monastic men and women, allowing an opportunity to understand their spirituality. Often speaking in their own language, with English subtitles, they explain their practice of unceasing prayer through the Jesus Prayer.

The travel begins in Egypt with the earliest monastery of St. Anthony and a visit to the cave where he lived for forty years. Then driving onto the Sinai Peninsula, they explore the treasures of St. Catherine’s monastery and show monks celebrating parts of the liturgy at dawn. Flying to Greece, they visit the Vatoped Monastery on Mount Athos, though only allowed to take still pictures and sound recordings of that 10th century complex. Driving back, Greek monasteries built in the 13-14th century on top of mountains to escape invading Turks are visited, although they are mostly museums.

The pilgrimage then turns north, following the paths of Christians fleeing Constantinople in 1453. Our guides explore several painted monasteries in Transylvania, closed during the communist rule of Romania. At the monastery of St. Ana in Rohia, we see some of the morning liturgy. At Voronets Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is the fresco of the Last Judgment and the first woman monastic is interviewed. At Agapia Monastery in Neamt County, Romania where one thousand nuns live, a women’s choir sings delightfully. At Varatec Monastery we are allowed to view the private home of one nun who explains her icons.

Continuing on to Ukraine, is Pecherskaya Laura, Kiev which was central in the development of the Jesus prayer. A new community was established in 1988 at the end of communist rule, as also in St. Jonas Monastery located within the city. At the nearby Zverinetsky Caves, there is a visit to 11-12th century relics which give off a perfumed oil, considered indicative of a holy saint and used for healing. The final place in Kiev is Pokrovsky Monastery which bakes the sacramental bread used by many churches.

In Moscow, the first visit is the Tretyakov Gallery to view important icons. The largest monastery in Russia with 300 monks is Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, in Posad. St. Sergius is the most beloved saint of Russia, similar to Saint Francis for the Western Church. The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia conducts the liturgy on Pentecost Sunday and parts of the three hour service are shown.

This video is so richly packed with art, music, and spiritual wisdom that it is overwhelming at times. In parts, one has to choose whether to focus on what is being said or seen or heard. In the sections with English subtitles, the reading of the words doesn’t allow time to view the icons, paintings or architecture.

The DVD I received does not include a menu or table of contents, so it is difficult to jump to a specific place or interview. This is a major flaw for me since I would like to use different sections for class or small study groups, but there is no quick way to find anything.

I know I will watch this many times, to learn as much as I can about a part of the world and a spirituality that are so unknown to me.

  

No Chocolate in Lent

Regular readers of the blog (I know there are at lest a few of you!) will notice a new website listed under my "favorite websites" list.  It is "No Chocolate in Lent," which is a blog I started for the Middleham and Saint Peter's Parish. 

There are several of us who will be writing articles during the 2011 season of Lent.  We want to explore our various experiences and perspectives about Lent.  We found that many come from backgrounds where they had little or no exposure, and those of us who had grown up with Lent had very different expectations.  So, if the blogging seems to be getting sporadic, check out No Chocolate.  But as I say in the first article, I don't think it is necessary to give up chocolate for Lent!   

Climbing Mount Horeb

One of three peaks in the Sinai mountains, Mount Horeb has been believed to be a place of significant biblical events for over seventeen centuries.  At its base is the well where Moses helped the daughters of the priest of Midian (Exodus 2:15-21).  The burning bush was encountered on its side (Exodus 3).  Later, when Moses brought the Israel tribes out of Egypt,  Moses climbed it to receive the Ten Commandments (Exodus 19-20).

So, while not officially on a pilgrimage, the group of Episcopal priests, deacons and family touring Egypt shifted into pilgrim mode upon arrival at the base of Mount Horeb. As many thousands do each year, we intended to climb or ride a camel up the lower portion of the trail, then continue up the "steps" to the top.  It was not going to be easy, and the bus arrived much later than planned.  The sun was already low behind the mountain we were climbing.  We probably should have chosen to start the climb in the middle of the night to watch the sunrise.  But we didn't.

I chose to walk the broad, rocky, steadily rising trail, rather than ride a camel.  I have climbed many mountains over my life, and enjoy the challenge.  This time was different, because we were racing against the clock, the quickly arriving sunset.  I focused on climbing, not looking around to experience the bare granite mountainside or views out across to other ranges. I held onto the hope that I would be able to see the sun drop behind adjacent peaks.  So I did not pace myself, but kept pushing hard to keep moving.

The few times I did stop to look around and take pictures, the view was awesome.  The bare granite mountains were as alive with colors as they were devoid of any plant life.  They continue as far as the eye can see, with no plants to soften their edges  There is no protection from the heat during the day or the cold at night.  The Bedouin people lived along the trail in low buildings with rock sides and flat wood roofs.  The camels slept on the bare ground where they were tied up.

After passing the final stop for the camels, I started the steep section referred to as "the steps."  There was nothing regular, level or consistent about them.  Many places it was hard to see a good place to put your foot down.  My legs were sore and no longer solid under me.  Forty feet or so up the trail, I stopped to rest, and turned around to look. This is what I saw:

The last of the sun was at the tops of the peaks behind me, and the guide said it was another 30 minutes to the top.  Even with the flashlight in my pocket, it would be difficult to know how to climb down section I had just come up.  Once the sun was gone, night and dark would be arrive in minutes.  I turned around, disappointed but clear it was the right choice.  There would be no pictures from the top.  I joined a group at the Bedouin hut at the base of the steps waiting for the rest of the group to return.

After waiting over an hour in freezing temperatures, the five of us started down, without the group climbing to the top. We tried to join another group going down, but they were much younger and faster.  Soon, we were on our own.  David was the scout in front, calling out loose rocks or tricky spots.  I was in back, shining my flashlight forward, to highlight the roughness of the trail.  Two of the group were walking slowly, tentatively, setting the pace for the whole.  We knew we needed to travel together.  I invented silly lyrics to familiar tunes, so we could laugh.  Twice we stopped to turn off the flashlight to look up at the half-full moon and stars in the sky.  Over those two plus hours walking down, we became a community with a common purpose - caring for each other, being aware of the dark rocky desert around us, and walking safely down the mountain of Moses. 

I could not know when I started that afternoon that the place I would encounter God upon his mountain in the Sinai desert would not be on the mountaintop.  God joined the five of us, loving and journeying together in the pale light of the guardian of the night, a pilgrimage of grace I will never forget.  Thank you Susan, Hyacinth, Masud and David.

Christ Pantocrator

Last month I was visiting Cyprus and Egypt, a trip completed days before the popular revolt that is sweeping across Northern Africa.  One highlight was a far-too-short time at St. Catherine's Monastery at the foot of the traditional Mountain of Moses.  The monastery, protected by its remote location and a letter of protection by Mohammed, holds many treasures.

This icon of Christ Pantocrator stopped me in my tracks when I first saw it on the wall of the museum.  "Painted" with wax on flat boards, it is full size and hung on the wall so you can look straight into his eyes.  One of the few icons to survive the iconoclast period, this Christ is more human than divine.  You can see the hollow below his cheekbones with a rough beard on his cheeks.  My immediate thought was, "here is a real person," not the idealized, flattened image of the multiple icons I have seen in Russia, Bulgaria and Cyprus.  I felt like I was in the presence of a person who I know, but who I have not known quite so well as I would like to know Him.

Before that encounter, it has taken a lot of time to understand icons, to really look long enough to see what was being proclaimed.  With their stylized format, rigidly applied rules for how they are "written," I have always felt distance, not presence, effect not affect.

Many years ago, in St. Petersburg and Moscow, then later in Sophia, Bulgaria, I learned about why they were painted with such a flat appearance, what role they played in the practices of the faithful.  I began to distinguish some differences between Greek and Russian styles.  Taken out of churches, seen individually in museums, they were easier to approach without all of the elaborate frames or gathered in overwhelming  large groups.  

Just a few days earlier in Cyprus, I had seen an icon of the Archangel Michael. It was in the Byzantine Museum and Art Galleries of Lefkosia, in a display of dozens of icons.  As I had wandered around looking at them, I was wondering if one would "speak" to me.  Michael did, creating a sense of sadness that surprised yet also comforted me. I was pleased to be able to buy from the shop a large, high quality print which is currently at the frame shop.   I thought to myself, "Finally, I am beginning to understand what all the hype is about."

None of my previous experience and exposure to icons prepared me for what happened when I turned the corner at the museum at St. Catherine's.  For the second time that day, I had tears on my face absorbed by an image of Christ over 1,500 years old.  I looked at friends around me who were also astonished by it, one saying it is a very famous image.  I count myself fortunate to never have known it before that moment of seeing it in person.

I don't believe that somehow Christ was in or behind or through the physical composition of wood and wax of that icon.  But I also have a strong sense of knowing something about Christ through that image.  The monastery shop had an excellent photographic print, which is also being framed.  I look forward to living with this unique perspective into the person whom I call my Savior.

Reluctant Mystic

Kerry Walters notes in Soul Wilderness: A Desert Spirituality that a “Mystic yearns for an immediate encounter with the Divine, for an unfiltered experience of the replete nothingness of God.” This deep sense of an intimate need to know God without all of the layers and protections that shield our frail humanity from the dangers of direct encounter with God are both a gift and a curse. One’s yearning cannot be completely banished out of mind once its epiphany has been noted. Nor can it be put away without the soul noting its removal and recording its hiddenness. The yearning waits quietly and patiently, looking for the next opportunity to become known and to be acted upon.

When starting down the spiritual path, no one can provide a map that outlines the upcoming choices that must be faced. But the yearning keeps driving the seeker down the path, searching for a sense of God even though that sense is never found by one’s own volition. Yet, there is the continued hope for something will lead to deeper answers.

There is the need to understand more even as that which is being understood becomes incredibly more complex. As more is learned and comprehended by the soul, the difficulty of describing or explaining becomes logarithmically complex. One turns to poetry, paradox, and absurdity because language and description inevitably reduce the clarity of what is being described.

This sense of the inexpressible confronts an intellect that is trained to be articulate, to know and use the right words. If only that which is yearned for, that which is of God, were of this world. Then it would permit a clear, even scientific description of who and what it is. But the yearning pushes into the clouded, fog filled areas of seeing and understanding. The groping to understand cannot be gained through the five body senses. Those senses may begin to note some of the shape of that terrain, but it is unable to be described by sight, sound, taste, smell and touch.

In admitting that yearning, confessing the desire to be in a much deeper relationship with God, I must admit that I am becoming such a mystic. Yet I am reluctant both in allowing others to see it and in fully owning that label. What good is a mystic, so separated from the world with a head in the fog, with more questions than answers? Or, perhaps my feet are solidly standing on the ground and I am just seeing the world in a new way?

Wounded Men and the Spirit

Often when men gather to tell their stories, and when trust is developed, the conversation moves below the surface and wounds are uncovered. This certainly occurred during the Men’s Institute at the recent Spiritual Directors International conference in Houston.

Through one journal writing exercise the men were invited to review their lives and identify eight to a dozen different steppingstones in which their spiritual journey changed direction. The steppingstones exercise, first developed by Ira Progoff, allowed each of the men to look back over his life and see those points that lead to the present situation.

Many recalled experiences of a deep wound. At some time later, there was a search for the meaning of the wound and how to integrate it into a future. As one man noted, we are healers of wounded men and are ourselves wounded men needing healing. There was a strong sense among the men of the connection between being wounded and significant spiritual awareness and/or growth.

Some men seek spiritual direction because of a crisis that has radically shifted the course of their life. Others may have been receiving spiritual direction for other reasons, but when a crisis occurs, seeing a spiritual director provides a different perspective upon the situation than other helping professions. For men, the crisis challenges our sense of control, the belief that we can protect ourselves and those we love from pain or turmoil, and the intellectual defenses that we have built up.

One man noted that in a situation where the director and the directee are men, just being in the presence of another man has a mutuality that cannot be replicated. While others noted that their directors have been women who effectively challenged and encouraged us in our growth as men. We all noted the difference in being men with men that we do not have the language to describe, at least not at this time, even though the difference feels significant.

At the same time, men are much less likely to intentionally seek out a formal relationship. One minister noted that he watches for men who arrive early for a meeting and hang nearby waiting to talk. Or, a man may be around the water cooler or any similar place where a casual conversation may be started. Once the conversation is started and a trust begins, a more private and separate time can be scheduled, and a deeper conversation begins.

As Kent Ira Groff wrote:

Ah! How is it stumbling stones
along our path
morph into steppingstones? Ah!

Masculine Spirituality: A New Beginning

In a recent publicity stunt, a snack food company declared Nashville the Most Macho City. Points were awarded for the number of sports teams, hardware stores, and monster truck rallies. Also adding to the score was the popularity of hunting and fishing, NASCAR and other “masculine” interests. Cities lost points for high numbers of home furnishing stores and minivans. While it is silly, don’t those descriptions fit all of our stereotypes for men?

Yet, at a recent meeting of men during the recent Spiritual Director’s International gathering revealed a different side of masculinity. The group included men who make ourselves available as guides to others on a journey to know God. We asked each other two simple questions focused on our understanding of ourselves a spiritual men: “what values do you hold sacred?” and “how do you live the sacred in your life?”

Many of the values generated by the group were what you would expect from a self-identified group of religious people. The most common value was “presence,” often in a phrase such as “attending presence” or “practice presence.” Other values describe an intentionality about prayer, such as sacred listening, stillness, silence, discipline of devotion and reverence. Yet, these are not common descriptions of men in the popular culture of our time.

Another group of values reflects our relationships, with love and being loved as a foundation of who we are. Different aspects of relationship are treasured such as honesty, truth, trust, humor and intimacy. As one person described, we desire the ability to see the universe in the other. While men are often portrayed as wanting to be Casanova, that is not the kind of love reflected in those values.

But as I reviewed the remaining values, the ones that stand out are those that stand in dramatic contrast to the Macho City award. Those values include gentleness, mutual mentoring, vulnerability, acceptance, humility and availability. Our gathering of men claimed values that are often assumed to belong to women, and are culturally seen as alien to men.

I have various memories that confirm those values as deeply masculine. I know that whenever I visit my father, we hug each other closely both when I arrive and again when I leave. It was a ritual that I initiated as I left for college and that Dad has joyfully joined. Even in times of difficulty, we know that hug conveys our deep love, our acceptance and our commitment to each other.

I remember when David’s son Jeremy was rocking Sam, just 10 days old in his lap. As gentle father he was willing to give up sleep so Ann could get much needed rest. It is an image of love from one generation of men to the next that I will treasure the rest of my life.

I remember David holding my hand tightly as I was waiting to be wheeled to have my inflamed appendix removed, his face reflecting my own sense of fear. He stayed available to me so I would not be alone, even as he felt vulnerable to his own fear.

While some of us learned those values through our own father or other males in our lives, often the opposite was true. One man in the group described how he was raised by a macho father who believed in the stereotype male role. That man learned about the other values of love, relationship and spirituality much later in life through his engagement in a church community. Others in the group described how their fathers had failed them in becoming a mature man, stories of pain, loss and abandonment. They were difficult stories to hear, yet needed to be told in a group of men for healing to occur.

Whether through positive or negative life experiences, we have claimed our values as spiritual men and try to live them in our lives as well as our ministry. We told our stories to each other, beginning to heal ourselves while also committing to the healing of those men who come to us as guides. It is a new beginning.