Father John a Monk: letters

Schema Abbot Ioann (John)

Years ago I was told that it is 

this Abbot Ioann

who is Fr. John the Monk

who wrote the letters in the beloved book,

Christ is in our midst

that I have often written of here.

When I was told, I was given this picture...

*

I recently became aware of the photo archives of

Valaam Monastery 

and happily found this photo...

of which I have one in my copy of his letters,

plus one framed in my old bedroom at my parents house...

He has such a peaceful and kind face.

I am so glad for this photo and his letters.

If you have not read them,

you are in for a treat! 

Yarn Along ~ Baby Blanket, White Lily and a Beloved Book

Mr. Husband surprised me with an
after Catholic Easter Lily!
(Orthodox Easter/Pascha is late this year - May 5th!)
*
My baby blanket continues to come along!
I had great help with it at church this past Sunday ~
I am so new at this,
I did not realize that to knit the yarn has to be behind
and to purl the yarn has to be in front.
I learned other things as well,
it was great!
*
I have doubled it in size since last time I posted it.

Funny riding back from church story:
So after all the great help I got on Sunday
I knit more of the blanket on the way home.
I was tired but determined to get more done ~
I am eager to learn and have more things I want to make!
*
So I was telling Mr. Husband how I learned
more about how to keep the stockinette stitch going well
(I have been getting confused on what I just did,
whether knit or purl and would repeat a row instead of
doing the opposite of what I had just done).
*
Then I said,
since the blanket is rather spontaneous,
unstructured and creative,
a bit here-and-there/all-over-the-place,
at least it is true to who I am...
Mr. Husband,
who is much more structure and methodical than I am,
heartily agreed. :)
Later I told my Mom this conversation and she laughed ~
as she knows me full well and knows this to be true of me,
all she could say was 'poor Mr. Husband' :)

So the blanket is very much one of my
creations.
I may eventually learn to do this better,
but for now I am enjoying the process and not
worrying about keeping perfectly to a pattern...

I am rather liking it!
And I am getting a bit better at it
and I think of the instruction I was given on Sunday
all the time; it really was helpful...
*
And it is exciting to be on my third section already ~
I am back to the mix of blue bonnet and pear yarn ~
the next section after this will be all pear
and then mixed again.
Then we will see how long it is getting. :)
Mr. Husband assured me that my nephew,
who is the cutest ever
and who I saw with a darling family picture
with him wearing a baby-bow tie for Easter!
Too Cute.
Anyway, Mr. Husband says the cute nephew will not
mind the imperfections and creativity
in the blanket.
And it's made with love,
and that's the best part.

I am loving the sunshine and Easter Lily.

I suggested that when this one is done flowering,
that we plant it downstairs in the little garden patch
in the courtyard.
So we hope to do that.

Of course I had to include a new picture of my Cleo Cat!
*
So, since Novice K. died and I wrote on how
his copy of Christ is in our Midst
impacted my life so greatly back in 2007 or so,
I thankfully found the book,
with Novice K. handwriting in it...

 

and I have started reading it again;
I have come back to this book so many times;
the pages in the front are falling out and need to be reglued.
*
As I said in 2008:
Fr. John is a monk who lived in the Valamo monastery and then New Valamo in Finland; he died in 1958. This book is a compilation of letters he wrote to his spiritual children. It is very accessible and has deep wisdom. 
*
This book is so wonderful ~ full of love, of light, of a deep simplicity ~
it can really show us how to live on a new level
and at the same time consoles us in our times of
struggle and weakness.
*
I truly could never recommend this book enough! 
*
What are you creating, crafting and reading?
Yarn along with us!

Memory Eternal ~ Christ is in our midst ~ Books, blessing and prayers for the departed

Years ago my spiritual father
and I were talking in our church hall,
near to our church library
and I asked what book I should read;
I remember my spiritual father getting me a book
Christ is in our midst;
I blogged about it, with the cover of the book,
years ago.
*
He gave it to me to read with a sense of
love and that he was giving me a book
that was specifically for me
and that would be a great discovery.
And so it was ~ this book is the first place
I read and was captured by the Orthodox
understanding of humility.
It is real treasure of a book.
*
I still love this book and I gave a copy
of it to Mr. Husband when he was still my
newly loved Orthoman.
*
The copy I read was donated by Novice K. of our parish.
*
Novice K. was,
by the time I came,
an older man, large boned, needing a walker to walk.
He had a very deep voice, white hair
and pale blue eyes.
He was sick a lot in later years,
even being in a coma for a long while,
from which he recovered.
*
This afternoon I got an email from a good friend
from my Ottawa Parish that
Novice K,
who my friend visited faithfully at the nursing home,
had passed away.
*
I remember talking in person with my friend
last time I was there that Novice K. was declining.
*
Grief and loss ~ always different and always the same.
The shock, the sudden tears,
the awareness of Mr. Husband's love
as I emailed him the news.
We had just been talking about Novice K. the other day;
it was his book on St. Luke that my friend who visited
Novice K. had borrowed and then later lent to me to read
some years ago.
*
As I have been re-reading the book,
in it's second edition,
I have been telling Mr. Husband about it and Novice K.
And about the first time I read it,
when I newly in a job that I lost,
the first one I lost that I loved and so many people
in my blog community rallied around me...
so it was quite a shock to learn of Novice K. passing
after just talking about him to Mr. Husband.


I immediately took one of my
special monastery candles,
a thicker one,
that I knew would burn for some time
for Novice K.

I emailed people, prayed and
thought of the newly departed Novice K.

 

I had not personally seen Novice K. in quite a while,
though I remember the years past when he
was able to come.
How slow he would walk,
how he had to depend on others for everything,
how he always sat at the same table at coffee hour
and I would say hi to him there.
The book that he donated changed the way
I saw life and gave me my first glimpses of what
having a spiritual life means.
The book on St. Luke that I read that was his
was a great blessing to me in a time of great trial.
And so Novice K. really had a deep impact on my life
though he never knew it.
*
It is the first funeral that I will not be able to go to
in my Ottawa-home parish.
That is hard.
But I remember how when my Oma died and
how Mr. Husband and I prayed for her.
Knowing that I have Mr. Husband to pray
 with for Novice K. is a great comfort.
*
In the end the title of the first book I read that
Novice K. donated is the greatest comfort of all:
Christ is in our midst. 
*
Memory Eternal!
Memory Eternal!
Memory Eternal!

Okay... Thank God

Over all things are OK.

My new job is quite overwhelming; lots to do; I am praying for a part time person to help. I have found work clothes on sale and ironed others. Where I work has a dress code... Not that I did not dress up for work before; I started wearing work clothes when finishing my Honours BA years ago... I find it helpful to have clothes just for work and then, when I am home, to change. I guess in someways it is like acting - different props for different roles.

My work has a paid for by work cookie tin. Chocolate. This is wonderful. Of course now my Dormition fast is about to begin... :)

Read a wonderful line today about someone working in church... that people pray for those who work and those who work work for those who pray... reminded me of the monastery I go to when I am at my parent's home...

so I thank God.

Christ is in Our Midst - by Fr. John, a Monk

I could never say enough about this book. It was recommended to me last year by my spiritual father.

Fr. John is a monk who lived in the Valamo monastery and then New Valamo in Finland; he died in 1958. This book is a compilation of letters he wrote to his spiritual children. It is very accessible and has deep wisdom. In many ways, this book has and still is showing me what it means to be a Christian, specifically as an Orthodox Christian.

I wish I could explain what this book has meant to me, but I find words rather absent. Suffice to say that this book opened itself to me, but that will take the rest of my life to go towards what it teaches.

Here is one quotation:

No, we must not trust ourselves before we are lying in our graves, and whether we persevere in virtue depends not on us, but on the grace of God. The Lord preserves the humble; in so far as a man humbles himself, he flourishes in the spiritual life....
-from letter 79

It is published by Saint Vladimir's Seminary Press and is still in print, with a slightly changed cover.

A question I have been thinking about

What is better, answers of no answers in the light of tragedy and human suffering?

I like answers that give freedom – like when I was in the throes of grief, years ago and someone told me that grief impacts everyone different and there is no ‘right way’ to grieve.

Or I like it when I am feeling sad and a good friend just sits with me and is quiet.

Or when someone says that the suffering is hard and thus acknowledges it as such.

I wonder if it is merely a misguided human inclination that wants to give another person answers when faced with another person’s suffering.

But yet again I have had words thoughtfully, prayerfully given that have brought comfort to me in sorrow; much comfort.

I talked to my spiritual father yesterday about suffering in the world, citing some examples that I have seen. He taught me about corruption that is in the world, that it comes on the good and bad alike, like rain. And he quoted a Romanian theologian who said that all of these answers are found in the Cross.

Years ago I was at my parent’s house and read an older essay by Philip Yancy. He was describing, if I remember correctly, prisoners in Africa. And there was a Crucifix or an icon of the Crucifixion there, which gave these men great comfort.

Perhaps there needs to be sensitivity to timing to when to speak, when to be silent. I read in Fr. John’s book, Christ is in our Midst, of a saint who commented that he never had to repent of silence.

Sometimes, when I am feeling okay and more peaceful or at least more happy, I feel bubbling with words; I have so much to learn about what it means to be still, peaceful and silent.

I have learned a little about this: it is not just the absence of sound that creates silence. It is learning to have interior silence that is needed. And I have read and seen that the Theotokos (the Birth-giver of God -- Christ, the Virgin Mary) is taught as our example of what it means to be a Christian, and what it means to have this silence.

How do I know? Simple. I am beginning to see what I do not yet have. How do I begin to learn to see what I do not yet have? By being in Church and struggling to attend to the prayers of the church and looking at icons in church. I tell you, though, that I know it because I am only beginning to wake up and see glimpses of my own inner poverty and all those things that want to be noise and crowd my life, my vision, my ability to hear and to attend.

In the end is the crucifixion, the resurrection, the promise in 2 Peter of Christ, the morning star, rising in our hearts.

Nothing Really New to Report

i am doing well -- for the most part quite happy - more than i have been in a while. i've been cooking again and wanting to cook (this had been diminishing steadily before; a sign of not doing as well). i am so happy that i have lived in my place for over 8 months -it has been 2 years since i have lived somewhere for a year; i have not lived somewhere for over 2 years without a break of at least 2 months for 14 years (i started working at camps for whole summers at age 16).

i am enjoying the mixture of new job and same apartment.

and that i am still here and still going to my church is the biggest thing of all.

i read a quote from _Christ in our midst, letters from a Russian monk_ by fr. john (SVP published it a while ago) about not being afraid of the future and not to think that bad things will happen (i am paraphrasing a bit). this is one of my challenges (of course i have others but i agree with Stacy, a blog is not akin to confession!) right now - to live in the present. to not worry about the future. to trust God.

i am so thankful; i think of a prayer i read years ago - about God protecting the joyful - i am surprised to realize i need this prayer. ... at the same time i know life can change in an instant.

Readings for this week emphasized the Lord's will - (at least the old calendar readings; they can be different it seems). to this end i feel i am still to do what i was learning before: to wait on God and to submit to His will in all things.