by Scott Cairns
Osvaldo said no, he was Catholic.
The priest said, “Signómi,” shaking his head. He put the golden spoon back in the chalice, then made a sign of blessing across Osvaldo’s brow.
This was actually a kinder response than it could have been, and I was relieved that so little fuss was made. Still, the look on Osvaldo’s face as he turned and left the nave uncommuned made me wince. He looked heartbroken.
I received the Mysteries myself—also having to answer the pop quiz along the way, but doing so successfully—and turned to retrieve a piece of antídoron from the plate on the readers’ stand. Antídoron is the remaining bread from a blessed loaf of leavened bread that has been used for communion; a small square—the Lamb—is removed and consecrated for the Holy Mysteries, and what remains is then cut into small pieces for communicants to receive following their partaking of the cup.
I lifted a piece and placed it in my mouth. I took another and cupped it in my hand. Ten minutes later, I found Osvaldo in our room packing his things. He looked as though he had been crying. When I took his hand and set the small square of bread in it, he kissed me on both cheeks, saying, “Thank you, Zacco,” the only English I had yet heard him speak. He stood facing the icon in the room and placed the antídoron in his mouth, eyes closed. I left him to his prayers.
Grigoríou proved to be a very good last stop. Father Damianós—by his genuine warmth, his genuine interest, and his serious questions, as well as a fairly nonstop supply of hot tea—helped me, over the course of these final days, to articulate the growing conflict that was complicating my impressions of the Holy Mountain.
Would I find a spiritual father, a confessor, a spiritual guide? Would I find him here on the Holy Mountain? In Arizona? Was I kidding myself?
At the very least, Father Damianós was able to let me know that I was not alone.
As we parted in the courtyard after trápeza that Sunday morning, Father Damianós loaded me up with copies of the abbot’s books, some incense for my wife, and a small wooden icon of the Theotókos for our home. He also returned my copy of Saint Isaac of Syria’s “second part,” asking if I might send him a copy when I had the chance.
At the pier, there were six of us waiting for the boat, including Paolo and Osvaldo. The boat was running late, so we all milled about, strolling back and forth across the concrete landing over the course of half an hour.
Once as I was strolling past Paolo for the umpteenth time, he offered a bit of Italian-inflected English; when he was just passing by my ear, he said, “Hello, meester.”
On the boat, Osvaldo brought me a coffee, and one more kiss on the cheek.
PART TWO
The Far and the Near
9
…without a parable, spake he not unto them.
I was glad to get home, glad to be back with my wife, our daughter Liz, and our son Ben, especially glad to get home in time for my daughter’s nineteenth birthday, which also marked the sixth anniversary of my oily welcome—my chrismation—into Orthodoxy, my embracing the fullness of the faith.
I was very happy, as well, to be greeted by Mona (my dog and my conscience), whose yelps of joy at my arrival home contained, I’d say, a soupçon of indignation at my having been gone so long. We now have three huge Labradors—Mona and two of her onetime pups, Rita and Leo, who these days weigh in at 95 pounds and 110 pounds, respectively. All three dogs are huge, and any homecoming, whether it’s after an hour away or thirty days, is also something of a gauntlet.
I was just beginning a year’s leave from teaching at Missouri, so I settled into a routine of reading and writing, visiting and revisiting novels, poems, and a wide array of writings from early fathers and mothers of the church. I kept to my morning and evening rule of prayer, and I wore a prayer rope on my wrist to help remind me to continue the Jesus Prayer during the day.
Mostly, I worked on poems and prayer.
Increasingly, I’ve suspected and have tried to articulate a relationship between poetry and prayer—a relationship, even, between what I think of as genuinely poetic language and sacrament. Part of my failure, so far, has to do with my sense that the comparison has often led to sentimental reductions of both.
For starters, for about a decade now I’ve been trying to come to terms with what it is that distinguishes poetry from the other genres. The attempt has, itself, been instructive, mostly because this attitude of coming to terms—approaching words attentively, patiently, and without predetermination—is precisely the disposition required for anything approaching success in making a poem.
Among my students—among even the brightest of them—many start out by supposing that poetry is a species of denotative art, a laboriously embroidered species of that genus perhaps, but a primarily expressive, referential undertaking. Most imagine that the role of the poet is to express her unique feelings, or to share his comprehensive and world-correcting understandings. Some few still imagine that their job is to seek out vivid experiences that they can then document.
My sense of actual poetry writing is that, before it can so much as begin, it must be recognized as a way by which we concurrently construct and discern experience; it is not a means by which we transmit ideas or narrative events we think we already understand, but a way we might discover more sustaining versions of them.
Like most endeavors of the spirit, poetry itself is a pilgrim’s journey. We gather our gear, and we start out—alert to where the path will lead.
So back home again I worked on new poems, I puzzled over poetic texts, I fussed over what makes a poem a poem, and I continued in my pursuit of prayer. I also made plans for a return visit to Mount Athos during the winter when, presumably, there would be fewer pilgrims and, maybe, a greater opportunity to visit with the fathers there. In particular, I wanted to spend more time with Father Iákovos at Simonópetra, Father Cheruvím at Saint Anne’s Skete, and, of course, my friend Father Damianós at Grigoríou. I wrote to each of these fathers, asking if they might pass along to their respective guest masters my request for lodging.
On the morning of December 7, I was once again aboard the Áxion Estín with a boatload—a far lighter load this time—of monks, pilgrims, and day laborers en route to the Holy Mountain. The wind was brisk and, off and on, rain-bearing as I stood on the deck scribbling notes while the boat bounded, rocking and plowing, toward Dáfni. As we thrummed along, the occasional scarf of dark cloud passed overhead, so quickly as to appear like a time-lapse film, releasing fat drops of rain before disappearing over the Athonite ridge. Off to the west, a broader, darker band of cloud hung brooding. Through scattered sections of that cloud, thick shafts of golden sunlight angled to the sea. Gulls were wheeling in every direction—affecting wheels within wheels, here between the heavenly city and the Holy Mountain.
Dáfni looked all but deserted as we rocked to the pier, but a good fifty or sixty of us clambered ashore over the iron gangway. I grabbed a coffee—éna Nescafé me gála, parakaló—in the café and waited to board the Agía Ánna, which would take me to the arsanás at Grigoríou.
As I sat sipping the piping hot coffee, I noticed a few familiar faces. For one, a tall Bulgarian monk I’d first seen months earlier scraping a lottery ticket in Thessaloníki was here, standing alone at the seawall and looking out at the rain clouds and the shafts of sunlight; he didn’t have a lottery ticket this time but was instead thumbing the knots of a chotki.
The entire affect of the place had softened, slowed down a good bit. Frankly, it seemed more like I’d imagined it would be during the months preceding my first trip. The crowds were gone, and with them the harried pace, the short tempers, and most of the shoving.
When the crew of the Agía Ánna lowered the gangway for the dozen or so of us boarding the boat, we strolled aboard slowly, and the crewman selling tickets was actually polite, smiling as he yawned.
A total of four of us disembarked at Grigoríou—compared to about forty who had done so in September. I wasn’t planning to stay t
he night—I was on my way to Simonópetra—but I hurried up the cobbled path to say hello to Father Damianós before trekking up the cliff in the other direction.
I had gotten only as far as the gate when I saw him walking to meet me. He had chanced to see me from his window high above the boat landing and had come to welcome me—as he put it—“home.” We visited for a few hours, going over, among other things, the new translation of the abbot’s book on theosis. I also spoke with him about various goings-on, our mutual friends, and my slow journey to prayer. In familiar form, he listened, said little, let me express my hopes and my anxieties without criticism. “You know,” he said, “once you’ve begun, you need only continue. Prayer will come.”
The look on my face must have entertained him. He grinned. Then he smiled broadly, clapping his hands together, adding, “How you feel about it—successful or not successful—really doesn’t matter.”
I realized that I’d need to set out for Simonópetra or risk being late for vespers. Once again, Father Damianós allowed me to leave behind those belongings I wouldn’t need during the next couple of days at the monastery above, saving me from hauling them up and back down the rugged trail. With a warm embrace, he wished me well and handed me an apple.
I made good time up the slope but was fairly winded and, despite the cool weather, dripping wet when, about an hour later, I entered the courtyard beneath the archondaríki. No one was around, but I found a note (printed in Greek and English) saying that vespers was underway in the katholikón and inviting me to sit tight or to come on up.
I dug out a dry shirt, tried to clean up some, and hurried up the covered causeway to the church.
On Mount Athos, as you must have gathered by now, there is no shortage of beauty; but I have to confess that of all the beauties I have tasted and seen on the Holy Mountain, the beauty of worship at Simonópetra cuts most directly to my heart. This was my first time inside the newly restored katholikón, and so it was my first taste of what I’d call genuine Simonópetra-style worship.
When my friend Nick Kalaitzandonakes and I had visited earlier in the year, the vesper service we attended had been in a small chapel deep in Simon’s rock—beautiful, to be sure, but fairly dark and subdued. And at that point I hadn’t yet experienced enough of the various monasteries to have come to anything like a sense of their distinct characters, what might be considered their individual expressions of the common life. This katholikón—bright, airy, marvelously lit, with an array of portable icons fixed to radiant white walls before a brightly polished, golden iconostasis—said a great deal about the character of monastic life at Simonópetra. Some monasteries—I only now began to notice—may emphasize the dark, the severe, and one can’t help but feel a certain heaviness in their worship; others take care to emphasize the light, the joyful, and one apprehends an undercurrent of elation in the midst of even their gravest, most austere services.
Both, of course, are beautiful, and meet. Both are powerful. Both are true worship. And as for the fear of God and the love of God, both are palpably present in both sorts of monasteries, but I began, here and now, to suspect a certain…what?…an emphasis, a prevailing disposition?
Most monasteries, no doubt, lie somewhere near the middle of that spectrum, but Simonópetra is clearly one that foregrounds the love of God, cherishes the joy of religious community, emphasizes the light as they worship the Light.
As vespers continued, the chanting—probably the most beautiful, certainly the most exuberant on the Holy Mountain—filled that lighted vault with soaring melodies and deep and shifting isons, those long-held low notes that add a heart-stirring vibration throughout the chant. From my stall in the rear of the nave, I glanced over to the choir on the right-hand side and found the familiar face of Father Iákovos smiling in my direction.
At the dismissal, he came directly over to embrace me. Like Father Damianós at Grigoríou, Father Iákovos began by welcoming me “home.” We walked to trápeza together, and, along the way, he grabbed another man’s arm, tugged him over, and introduced me to “Dr. Nick,” Nick Constas, yet another of Father Iákovos’s past classmates from seminary but one who was spending a sabbatical year—on leave from Harvard Divinity School—here at Simonópetra.
We parted at the trápeza entryway—Father Iákovos joining the monks at their tables, Dr. Nick joining the novices at theirs, and I being led to a table in the middle of the room with a half dozen men who appeared to be monks and visiting clergy. This was the first time I’d ever been seated anywhere but among the other pilgrims, and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. I supposed that Father Iákovos had sought to make me feel welcome and “at home.” I did.
During the meal, I enjoyed my homecoming and studied the iconography along the opposite wall. I pretty much inhaled my roasted potatoes, olives, and feta.
From trápeza we returned to the katholikón to venerate the relics. Once again I venerated each, and once again was fully aware that the hand of Mary Magdalene—warm, fragrant, soft—was very like a living hand. Despite its famous dearth of women, I’d have to say that the Holy Mountain occasions a very powerful sense of their presence; the Theotókos, Saint Anna (her mother), and Saint Mary Magdalene (apostle to the apostles, as we say) all seem very much here, and very much with us whenever their names are invoked in prayer, wherever their relics are venerated. I handed the priest a thick wad of prayer ropes—my own and several others I’d picked up in Dáfni for friends back home—so that he might bless them with the relics. When the few pilgrims—maybe seven of us total—had venerated the saints, we were led back to our rooms in the guest house.
From there, I hurried back to the archondaríki for a visit with Father Iákovos and Nick. They were waiting for me at the entryway and led me back to the guest library, where we settled in for tea, a few sweets, and unhurried conversation. Nick, I learned, was an associate professor specializing in patristic theology and, as it happens, poetics. He had taught a course called “Toward a Trinitarian Poetics.” I am working, off and on, on a windy essay called “Towards a Sacramental Poetics,” and have worked that model into my teaching for the past several years. Our interests seemed to overlap a good bit.
The evening visit was illuminating in a number of other ways, as well. For one, I learned how Simonópetra—suffering from attrition and neglect—had been reestablished in 1973, when the abbot of Great Meteora on mainland Greece arrived with his brotherhood to assist the relative handful of aging and ailing monks who remained there.
This beloved abbot, Yéronda Aimilianós, led his brotherhood to Simonópetra, in part, to escape what had become a bustling tourist destination; they came to the Holy Mountain, that is, to recover their lives of prayer. In the interim, Simonópetra has flourished, remaining relatively small but developing an astonishing core of highly accomplished monks. As newcomers arrived, Yéronda Aimilianós insisted, as he always had, that his brothers (and the sisters of the several convents he has served on the mainland) complete their educations before coming to the monastery to stay. The direct result of that foresight has been a family of scholars, engineers, agriculturalists, and so on, who have brought virtually unprecedented levels of professional expertise to the Holy Mountain.
Indirectly, the openhearted, open-armed, international character of the monastery—and, I’m guessing, the deep, bass note of joy and love that resounds throughout this tower of rock—is another result of the yéronda’s insistence upon an educated brotherhood.
The evening’s conversation, was, as I say, enlightening. As I was asking Nick about his own scholarship, I couldn’t help but notice a suddenly guarded tone, and I couldn’t help but notice that, on the subject of his duties at Harvard Divinity School, Nick seemed downright evasive; on occasion, as we talked about his courses there, it seemed as if he and Father Iákovos were keeping something from me.
As they moved to change the subject, a curious thought occurred to me: Nick Constas was here to stay.
We turned to ot
her matters. Regarding life on Mount Athos, Nick said that one of the fathers had told him when he arrived, “We can’t promise you a place with no problems; we can only promise you a place without sin.”
Father Iákovos nodded and added, “If we find sin here, it’s because we have brought it with us.”
It was getting late by Athonite standards, nearly 10:00 p.m., and because I knew the fathers would be rising for their prayers about 2:00 a.m., I excused myself, taking with me a book from the visitors’ bookshelf, Elder Joseph the Hésychast.
When I left them, they were still talking about life on Athos, and I wondered if they would ever get any rest that night.
With the tálanton at 2:30 a.m., I found myself being drawn again into the rhythm of the Holy Mountain: midnight hours, orthros, the Divine Liturgy culminating in the Holy Mysteries—all of them cohering now as one continuous prayer. The immediacy of that sensation gave me to imagine that this really was something of a homecoming. This first liturgy made me wish I could lift the whole katholikón and set it down in Columbia, Missouri. Throughout the worship, I kept thinking of my family back home, aching with the desire that they could be there with me. When it came time to partake of the Holy Mysteries, I had a very strong sense that they were with me.
Unlike what I’d experienced at other monasteries in the fall, trápeza did not immediately follow the morning liturgy. Instead, Dr. Nick caught me as I left the katholikón and led me out onto a narrow wooden balcony, one of several hugging the sheer face of Simonópetra’s ancient structure. We leaned on the railing over a drop of about seven hundred feet, peering through the morning dark to the faint lines of whitecaps in the sea, visiting in the darkness as the first glimmer of daylight silhouetted the eastern sky to the left of our perch.