Tag Archives: Saints

Day 6 Silence as Sacrament

Reflections on silence and holy obedience

“Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord,” exclaims the prophet Zechariah (Zech 2:13).

Upon entrance, silence envelops me. Abruptly, I am separated from the tumult, noise, busyness and endless distractions of the outside world.

“Peace, be still!” Jesus orders the wind of noise, confusion and tumult to cease in the midst of our own storms and turmoil.

I feel separated from other people, all people, too! Is anybody here?! What a contrast to last night’s feast! There, at the vigil in St. Demetrios church, in Thessaloniki, an amazing Resurrectional experience unfolded in a packed church! So many holy chalices all around the Royal Doors! So many people receiving Holy Communion and then, at the dismissal of the holy liturgy, flooding the streets outside the church. Here, I am all alone — the silence of the heart! And what a deafening, thundering silence that is!

“When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.” (Rev. 8:1)

Yet, how can it be that a monastery of more than 50 sisters plus novices and postulants look and feel so uninhabited, so “desolate”! Am I really all alone here? ...

“Let us love silence till the world is made to die in our hearts.” St. Isaac of Syrian

Sister Elizabeth approaches and welcomes me. She gently inquires about my news. This sister was coordinating my endless faxes to Gerondas when I was at the UK and sending his replies. She knows everything about me! Her question: “Have you got a spiritual father now?”

This question will become a refrain during my brief stay here, asked by all sisters who spend some time with me. In fact, a refrain addressed not only to me, but to all pilgrims and visitors here. It is not that the sisters are not concerned with/about our problems and sorrows, but our obedience to a spiritual father seems of paramount importance and the key to everything. Even if with his guidance and help, our problems are eventually not “solved”. The mystery of holy obedience. “Obedience shows love for Christ. And Christ especially loves the obedient” (St. Porphyrios, Wounded by Love, p. 25).

Saint Simeon the New Theologian wrote the following to one of his spiritual children:  “We conceived you through teaching, we underwent labour pains through repentance, we delivered you with much patience and birth pangs and severe pain and daily tears”  (Epistle 3, 1-3).

Barsanuph’s soul-stirring prayer makes the immense love of a spiritual father for his spiritual children more palpable: «Behold, here am I and the children that You gave to me; protect them in Your Name, shelter them with Your right hand. Lead us to the harbor of Your Will and inscribe their names in Your book…  Lord, either include my children along with me in Your Kingdom, or erase me also from Your Book… » (Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, “Book of Barsanuph and John”, Response 99).

Reciprocally, in this mystery of Christ, the spiritual child should place everything at his Father’s feet, with humility and filial trust. Saint Basil the Great urges us to “not keep any movement of the soul secret, but to bare whatever is hidden in the heart”  (“Oroi Kata Platos” – Conditions breadthwise, 26, ΒΕΠΕΣ 53, 184). Nothing should be concealed from our spiritual father. That is the only way our sins are forgiven by God.  We are freed of the burden of guilt. We uproot our passions. And the spiritual father thereafter guides us safely through our spiritual life. There is simply no other way! Our goal is not simply to manage/ solve all our problems here on earth, but “receive the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls”. (1 Peter 1:9)

Other sisters soon join us for a minute to welcome me and hear the news about St Demetrios’ vigil in his church –it is after all his feast today– but they quickly disappear. Not a minute of idle or small talk. I am shown to my St Paisios, St Arsenios and St Porfyrios (!) cell, and there is still some free time until our common meal at 15:00 to take a quiet walk inside the monastery or … sit in my cell.

Inside my cell

“A brother came to Scetis to visit Abba Moses and asked him for a word. The old man said to him, ‘Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.’“

God calls each one of us in silence and invites us to go into our inner “room,” shut the door and pray to our Father in secret, assured that He will answer our prayer (Mt 6:6). It is only in this silence and stillness that we can listen to Him, hear His “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:11-13). The quiet water of Siloe flows without noise or sound, “goes softly’ (Is. 8:6).

Gradually, the guests house starts to get filled: two young ladies, university students, in their early twenties, settle in, then another one arrives, this one still in high school, with fond memories of +Elder Gregorios treating her with candies and hugs, and finally a young engineer who attended at the nearby Ormylia monastery a service of monastic tonsure.

Gerondissa Euphemia’s grave (+15 April 2020, 88 years old). She was the first Abbess of the monastery and fell asleep in the Lord shortly after Gerondas Gregorios’ departure to Heaven (19 Νοεμβρίου 2019).

Bells ring and the common meal with the sisters begins, with a reading of Saint Gregory Palamas’ homily on St Demetrios. Our meal is a very ascetic one, as we are all preparing for Sunday Holy Communion.

We retire very early in our cells. The Sunday service will be a vigil from 23:00 to 03:00!

At the insistence of Sister Elisavet, I prepare a brief note for Abbess Mariam. Briefly, I share my news and ask her blessing. No questions or requests. Only her blessing to allow me to stay here longer and more often. –Which was one of the things +Gerondas Gregorios had always urged me to do, Sister Elisavet points out to me …

I give the note to the sister in charge of the guests’ house, pray and wait. After all, our vigil will begin very soon.

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“Do not be afraid that there will be no fruit when all dies down; there will be! Not everything will die down. Energy will appear; and what energy!” St. Symeon the New Theologian

“Silence is the sacrament of the world to come” — St Isaac the Syrian

Day 4 “Take off your shoes”

The Burning Bush

His holy presence is immediately felt upon entering the monastery gates! This Saint is St. Georgios’  Karslidis, the New Confessor of Drama, the founder and first spiritual father of the Ascension Monastery. A bit exhausted after the long drive, off we rush to kneel before his relics and venerate them. … Rush! Waste no more time! “The doors are not yet shut; the bridegroom hears you”. St. Basil the Great

“Take off your shoes”

Hundreds and thousands of the faithful, all these years, especially since his canonisation in 2008, have knelt before him, to seek comfort in life’s trials and tribulations. So many miracles are happening and are being recorded every day!

“Take off your shoes”

Next, we kneel at Gerondissa Akylina‘s grave. Saint Paisios characterized her as “Gerondissa of Gerondisses; ie. Abbess of Abbesses” and Saint Porphyrios of Kausokalyvite called her “Cherub with golden wings”. Her canonisation is expected to take place soon and her relics are now displayed inside the Ascension Church, next to those of St.George Karslides, for veneration too.

So many contemporary Saints and spiritual Fathers and Mothers have blessed her diaconate: Saint Paisios, +Gerondas Iosif Vatopedi, +Gerondas Gavriil Dionysiatis, +Gerondas Gerasimos Mikragiannanitis, +Gerondas Theofilos (Lydia), Elder Efraim of Arizona, establishing her prayer rule, +Elder Georgios Kapsanis Gregoriou, +Elder Aimilianos, Saint Porfyrios, Mother Nikodemi-Ormylia monastery, +Mother Fevronia-Dormition Panorama monastery, to name just a few.

(Mother Porfyria’s obedience for a decade was the exclusive care of the elderly and frail Gerondissa Akylina).

“Take off your shoes.” 

The nuns welcome us, show us to our rooms, offer us a meal, in the separate guests’ house, and leave us to rest before Vespers. Yet, what seems most urgent is the need to repent. Now, on the interpretation of the Greek Fathers of the Burning Bush, St. Gregory of Nyssa for example, shoes, made from the skins of dead animals, signify the deadness of repetition, boredom, inattentiveness. 

“And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. … And he [God] said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” (Exodus 3:2-5 KJV )

“Take off your shoes.” 

Start afresh, free yourself from what is lifeless, from enslavement to the trivial, the mechanical, the repetitive. Shake off the deadness of boredom. Wake up. Come to yourself. Open your spiritual eyes. Cleanse the doors of your perception. Look and see! Listen!

“Take off your shoes.”

The monastic triptych of “prayer, study and work” (Abba Isaiah of Scetis ascetic discourses) is observed here too, but with a greater austerity than in other monasteries, probably because of the +Gerondas’ and +Gerondissa’s relics’ omnipresence and the specific typikon they follow, at the inspiration of +St. Efraim of Arizona. A variation of this salvific triptych is “prayer, attention and work”. This triptych offers balance, healing, consolation. There are 38 sisters in this monastery, and lots of young novices and postulants, pre-novices. Nuns come and go busy bees, novices and postulants race all round, pilgrims flock, beautiful gardens and fields surround us, yet everything fades before my eyes. My heart has been struck, smitten (Psalm 102:4)

“Take off your shoes.” 

In the evening, I text to Gerondissa Porfyria to plead for a meeting, even for 5 minutes, anytime, before we leave the next day. The day is coming to a close. We retire to our cells. I pray and wait …

Gerondissa Porfyria’s balcony is the one with the lanterns

St. Gregory of Nyssa

“Sandaled feet cannot ascend that height where the light of truth is seen, but the dead and earthly covering of skins, which was placed around our nature at the beginning … must be removed from the feet of the soul.”

St. George Karslides

“God cares for everyone. Despair is in effect a lack of faith.”

St Porfyrios’ unknown Father Confessor: Father Antonios Gikizas

The ‘hidden’ Fr Antonio’s Gikizas and his close relationship with St Porfyrios –he even knew St Nektarios! — was another mystery revealed to us during our recent pilgrimage to Athens and Aegina, another link in the chain of holiness to His Kingdom, another stepping-stone on the Way! Glory to God for all things! What a Joy on Heaven and earth when a new Saint reveals himself to the Church, when new “living stones of His Temple” are revealed. “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:5)

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Who would have imagined that on one of Athens’ busiest avenues, at 59 Alexandras Avenue, in the semi-basement of an apartment building, lived an elder like those we read in the Desert Fathers, with profound humility, compassion and great discernment! It was to this humble, ‘hidden’ priest, Saint Porfyrios would regularly go for Confession, a fact not widely known. One would lay hands on the other and they would confess. One wonders what it was that tied these two elders together.

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This venerable cleric, Father Antonio’s Gikizas, was born in Kranidi, Argolis, on January 7, 1910, and died in Athens, at the age of 89, on September 30, 1999. His academic knowledge was admirable not only for his time but also for ours with his four bachelor degrees and six foreign languages and many more. This academic excellence should normally separate him from the illiterate St Porphyrios, but Father Antonios, despite his great qualifications, always tried to avoid the high offices that were offered to him throughout his life. His humility was profound. When he was still a small child, he met Saint Nektarios, for whom he had a special reverence. And later in his life, he met St Porfyrios. His acquaintance with the elder – and later Saint of the Church – Porphyrios took place when he served for a short time as a preacher in Kymi of Evia.

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So, what was it that tied these two elders together? Fathers believe that it was their profound humility and their focus on repentance and the Sacrament of Confession throughout their lives. Father Antonios of blessed memory insisted that what we all need, more than anything else, is “repentance, this gift from God. … Repentance is the key for our entry into the heavenly world, in His Uncreated Church…”. Clearly this was the focus of Saint Porphyrios’ life too, as revealed in his Testament to his Spiritual children, six months before he fell asleep in the Lord: “From a small child I was in sins——But the world thought I was good and everyone shouts that I am a saint. As for me, I feel that I am the most sinful person in the world.——whatever I remembered, of course I have confessed —-But now I have a feeling that my spiritual sins are too many and I ask those of you who have known me to pray for me because I too humbly prayed for you while I lived!” I truly wonders why would such holy men feel that sinful and regularly go to Confession until old age… To confess what? And if they felt and acted thus, what about us?

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How inter-connected Holiness, Saints are in God’s Providence! Glory to God for all things! “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (John 17:21)

An Ineffable Fragrance

It is impossible to describe how exquisite and noble are the podvizhniki![1] These people—although they bear the traces of harsh struggles, although their bodies are so withered and emaciated—have a fragrance and grace imprinted on their wondrous souls.

The Monastery of Simonopetra, Mt. Athos. Photo: Travis Dove / travisdove.comThe Monastery of Simonopetra, Mt. Athos. Photo: Travis Dove / travisdove.com

1976. The month of August—July 22 Old Style. The Altar Feast (Panegyr) of St. Mary Magdalene in Simonopetra. How they love this saint in her monastery! Her left hand is kept here—her wrist, palm, and fingers—with the skin and tendons. Its temperature holds steadily at 98.6 °F/37° C—proof that this is the hand of a living witness of the Resurrected Christ, living proof of the fact that “death hath no more dominion over” her, either (Rom. 6:9).

At the All-Night Vigil[2], they showed me a stasidion[3] practically in the center. Next to me there was a grey-haired little starets.[4] He stood as straight as a candle, without stirring. During the course of the service he weakened—he was obviously tired. Most likely, he was sleeping. But not relaxed as people usually sleep. His state was distinct and interesting: his head was leaning on his hand, his eyes almost shut. From time to time you could hear him snore a little, gently and peacefully. But every time the singers would make a mistake, he would come into action and without delay correct it. And then return to … his rest. “The body sleeps out of nature’s need, but his heart keeps awake out of its great love.” And truly, his mind keeps vigil. This man, it seems, lives in another world.

We came to the exapostilarion.[5] All the fathers stood, took off their skufias,[6] and bowed low when the serving priest performed the litany over the relics of the great saint and protectress of the monastery, which were lying on a silver tray. Soon the veneration began—I was stunned… I watched what the others did, and I felt that I wasn’t with them. I tried to understand what to do and how to do it correctly, but I couldn’t touch the secret. Everyone around me, I felt, was experiencing an event that I had no idea about. The choir intensified the celebration. The monks showed by their whole appearance that they were experiencing something the likes of which I could not perceive. The only thing that I was able to do was to follow what was going on—superficially and with curiosity. Soon the starets standing next to me left his place and goes in his turn up to the relics. Making three prostrations, he kissed them, was anointed by the priest, and with deep emotion he returned to his stasidion.

“You go, too,” he says to me, “don’t be shy—today the Saint is fragrant. Receive some of her grace.”

I did what he said and went up to the relics. This is what, apart from everything else, the others had done, too. But my doubts stayed with me. I didn’t particularly believe in all this. I went up in a reverie. And I was astonished by the fragrance. I had an insatiable desire to confirm the statement of this fact from an investigative point of view and to venerate the relics again. But I felt awkward—it was an inappropriate time for experiments! I returned to my place—physically—but mentally I stayed with the Saint. My questions multiplied, but my faith did not increase. It was the “sign” that I had been asking for, but it wasn’t the “sign” that I needed. I couldn’t believe in it, but again, I couldn’t imagine that the monks were lying. They had such pure countenances, and they experienced what was going on without reasoning or arguments. I had no reason to suspect them of lying.

[Picture of hieromonk in light-filled church] Photo: Travis Dove / travisdove.com[Picture of hieromonk in light-filled church] Photo: Travis Dove / travisdove.com

“Geronda[7], how does this happen?” I asked. “Maybe out of piety the fathers sprinkled a little perfume? Or are the relics themselves fragrant?”

“Here reverence is ruined as soon as you sprinkle perfume. Reverence is increased when you receive the ineffable fragrance in simplicity. The Holy Mountain is full of such occurrences.”

“What does ‘ineffable fragrance’ mean?”

“If we sprinkled a little perfume from a perfume store, then it would be “fragrance.” Now, when we don’t sprinkle anything but the fragrance pours out all by itself, that is called ‘ineffable fragrance’.

I bowed and kissed his hand. He himself also was fragrant, as if he had been handling incense. The all-night vigil continued—it lasted twelve hours.

A monk whom I knew came up to me:

“Did you get a blessing from Elder Arsenios?”

“Who is that?” I asked, not having any idea who he was referring to.

“The little old man who was standing next to you.”

“The little old man who was sleeping next to me,” I said to myself.

“He has the ‘gift of not washing’, added the monk. “It has already been ten years since he has washed his face and he is fragrant all over. He is as pure as a tear. He lives in Kalamitse, in a cell alone, an hour and a half walk from here. Run, before he leaves!”

I did not catch up with him. He had withdrawn to his cell before the beginning of the festive trapeza. He was filled with the Divine service. He didn’t need food or words in order to fill his soul. He stood, sat, drifted off for twelve hours, and still every second breathed in the sweetness of the all-night vigil. He hath chosen the good part, which will not be taken awayfrom him (Luke 10:42).

From: A Still Small Voice by Metropolitan Nicholas of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki, Phoni avras leptis, Athens 2006, pp. 139–144. Translated from the Russian version on Pravoslavie.ru.

Metropolitan Nikolaos of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki
Translation by Dimitra Dwelley

[1] Podvizhnik: a “spiritual athlete,” one who struggles spiritually, takes on podvigs. Podvig – a difficult spiritual task taken on voluntarily.—Trans.

[2] Agrypnia: the very long Divine service celebrated with great solemnity on Athos on Sundays, great feasts and feasts of the saints in whose honor churches are named, and likewise on days commemorating particularly revered saints.

[3] Stasidion: in Orthodox monasteries, a special wooden chair with high armrests and a seat that can be lifted up out of the way, so that a monk can stand up during the long vigils while being able to rest his arms on the armrests. When it is allowed or necessary out of weakness, the seat may be folded down so he may sit. —Trans.

[4] starets (here, “starchik”, an affectionate form): an elder, usually monastic, who through long experience, obedience, spiritual struggles, love and humility is given special spiritual gifts and to whom others come for spiritual guidance. —Trans.

[5] The Dismissal Hymn, the troparion that follows the Canon at Matins, near the end of the service. Sometimes called svetilen/photogogikon, because it sings of Christ the Light of the world. It is connected with the Matins Gospel.

[6] Skufia: priest’s or monastic’s hat.

[7] Geronda: Greek for “elder” or “starets.”

Simonopetra_Aug2006.jpg

Who is Metropolitan Nikolaos?
The Metropolitan of Messogea and Lavreotiki, Nikolaos, was born on April 13th 1954 in Thessaloniki, Greece. He studied physics at the University of Thessaloniki. He continued his studies at Harvard and MIT (USA) where he obtained postgraduate degrees and doctorates. He worked as a researcher and research assistant in the laboratory of angiology of the New England Deaconess Hospital (U.S.). At the same time he was a scientific associate of the United States Company NASA and the company Arthur D. Little.
He taught courses at Harvard and M.I.T, the Medical School of University of Crete and the Medical School of Athens University. He studied theology at the Theological School of the Holy Cross in Boston in the United States and was named honorary student of the Theological School of the University. He was the director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics and the President of the Synodical Bioethics Committee of the Church of Greece. He spent two years on Mount Athos, after which he became a monk on March 18, 1989 at the Holy Stomiou Konitsis Monastery, and the next day he was ordained deacon and then priest on September 10th of that year. Later he entered into the Holy Monastery of Simonopetra. Between 1990 and 2004 he served as a parish priest to the Athonite dependency (Metohion) of the Saviour’s Ascension (Simonopetra Monastery) in Byrona, a suburb of Athens. He was elected Metropolitan of Mesogaias and Lavreotikis on April 26th 2004. Listen to him at a recent Symposium at Madingley Hall, Cambridge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POCEGvMRGeA

 

The ‘Trash Can’ Rescue

trash can

The Trash Can Rescue was the code name for an undercover operation aimed at smuggling out Jewish children headed for the death camps in Paris. “The story occurs after Mother Maria had established the house with the blessing and help of her bishop, Metropolitan Evlogy Georgievsky, on rue de Lourmel.  Word got out that something was happening at the stadium, not far from the house. “. . .There was a mass arrest of Jews — 12,884, of whom 6,900 (two-thirds of them children) were brought to the Velodrome d’Hiver  . . . Held there for five days, the captives in the stadium received water only from a single hydrant, while ten latrines were supposed to serve them all. From there the captives were to be sent via Drancy to Auschwitz.”

Mother Maria of Paris wrote both poetry and religious essays in addition to running a soup kitchen and community center in a ghetto of Paris

Mother Maria of Paris wrote both poetry and religious essays in addition to running a soup kitchen and community center in a ghetto of Paris.

Because Mother Maria was well-known to the police and sanitation crews as she would scour the back alleys of Paris and the central market gathering day old food and recyclables for the poor of her community, she was granted access into the stadium.  She quickly sized up the situation.  The stadium had become a central transfer and processing hub for the thousands of Jews of Paris.

She prayed for assistance.  The idea came to her.  By employing the confidence of the local sanitation workers in charge of hauling the garbage from the stadium, Mother Maria perpetrated a plot that would at least save the children from the gas chambers: stuff them into the garbage bins, haul them out on the trucks from the stadium, and then under the cover of night, sneak the children to the house on rue de Lourmel where she then could orchestrate their continued passage to the south of France, an area outside of Nazi control, and to safety. The chronicle of the Trash Can Rescue has been memorialised in the children’s book Silent as Stone written by Jim Forest and beautifully illustrated by Dasha Pancheshnaya (St Vladimir’s Press: http://www.svspress.com/silent-as-a-stone/ )“It would have been possible for her to leave Paris when the Germans were advancing toward the city, or even to leave the country to go to America. Her decision was not to budge. “If the Germans take Paris, I shall stay here with my old women. Where else could I send them?” http://incommunion.org/2004/10/18/saint-of-the-open-door

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No one is sure how many children Mother Maria and her garbage crew saved.  But what is certain is that she eventually was found out by the Nazis. (When Nazis interrogated her about whether she had seen any Jews, she would point to an icon of the Mother of God or else point to the body of Christ on her crucifix.)  The priest, Father Dimitri Klepinin who had served alongside her in the “monasticism in the world” and her son Yuri were arrested.  They had been guilty of forging fake baptismal certificates for Jews who came begging for help.  Yuri and Father Dimitri eventually died in Buchenwald camp while Mother Maria was sent to Ravensbruck. … It was Good Friday, March 30th, on the eve of the liberation of Paris, 1945, that Mother Maria was one of those chosen for death. According to other accounts, she took the place of another prisoner who was marked for the gas chamber that day. …

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For the rest of the article go to http://greekamericangirl.com/mother-maria-of-paris-says-oxi-to-the-nazi-mass-murder-machine/

For more information about Maria’s activism, inspiration, grace, heroism, and hope-filled commitment, so needed in our world today, go to my earlier posts “Like a Russian Novel” at https://orthodoxcityhermit.com/2015/09/23/mother-maria-of-paris-saint-of-the-open-door/ and “Solitary and Naked Before God” at https://orthodoxcityhermit.com/2015/09/23/taking-up-the-cross/

Remove The Sandals From Your Feet

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Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees.

— Revelation 7:3

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The saints embrace the whole world with their love.

— St. Silouan the Athonite

On the Holy Mountain of Athos, the monks sometimes put up beside the forest paths special signposts, offering encouragement or warning to the pilgrim as he passes. One such notice used to give me particular pleasure. Its message was brief and clear: “Love the trees.”

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Fr. Amphilochios, the geronta or “elder” on the island of Patmos when I first stayed there, would have been in full agreement. “Do you know,” he said, “that God gave us one more commandment, which is not recorded in Scripture? It is the commandment “love the trees.” Whoever does not love trees, so he believed, does not love God. “When you plant a tree,” he insisted, “you plant hope, you plant peace, you plant love, and you will receive God’s blessing.” An ecologist long before ecology had become fashionable, when hearing confessions of the local farmers he used to assign to them a penance, the task of planting a tree. During the long summer drought, he himself went round the island watering the young trees. …

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Fr. Amphilochios was by no means the first spiritual teacher in the modern Greek tradition to recognize the importance of trees. Two centuries earlier, the Athonite monk St. Kosmas the Aetolian, martyred in 1779, used to plant trees as he traveled around Greece on his missionary journeys, and in one of his “prophecies” he stated, “People will remain poor, because they have no love for trees.” We can see that prophecy fulfilled today in all too many parts of the world. …

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“Love the trees.” Why should we do so? Is there indeed a connection between love of trees and love of God? How far is it true that a failure to reverence and honor our natural environment — animals, trees, earth, fire, air, and water — is also, in an immediate and soul-destroying way, a failure to reverence and honor the living God?

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Let us begin with two visions of a tree. Edward Carpenter, in Pagan and Christian Creeds [records] a partial vision of a tree. “It was a beech, standing somewhat isolated, and still leafless in quite early Spring. Suddenly, I was aware of its skyward-reaching arms and up-turned finger-tips, as if some vivid life (or electricity) was streaming through them far into the spaces of heaven, and of its roots plunged in the earth and drawing the same energies from below. The day was quite still and there was no movement in the branches, but in that moment the tree was no longer a separate or separable organism, but a vast being ramifying far into space, sharing and uniting the life of Earth and Sky, and full of amazement.”

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… Two things above all are noteworthy in Edward Carpenter’s “partial vision.” First, the tree is alive, vibrant with what he calls “energies” or “electricity”; it is “full of most amazing activity.” Second, the tree is cosmic in its dimensions: it is not “a separate or separable organism” but is “vast” and all-embracing in its scope, “ramifying far into space … uniting the life of Earth and Sky.” Here is a vision of joyful wonder, inspired by an underlying sense of mystery. The tree has become a symbol pointing beyond itself, a sacrament that embodies some deep secret at the heart of the universe. The same sense of wonder and mystery — of the symbolic and sacramental character of the world — is strikingly manifest in Peaks and Llamas , the master-work of that spiritual mountaineer, Marco Pallis.

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Yet there are at the same time certain limitations in Carpenter’s tree-vision. The mystery to which the tree points is not spelt out by him in specifically personal terms. He makes no attempt to ascend through the creation to the Creator. …

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Let us turn to a second tree-vision, which is by contrast explicitly personal and theophanic: “Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then He said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your Father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.”  (Ex 3:1-6)

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Comparing the experience of Moses with that of Carpenter, we observe three things: in the first place, the vision described in Exodus reaches out beyond the realm of the impersonal. The burning bush at Horeb acts as the locus of an interpersonal encounter, of a meeting face-to-face, of a dialogue between two subjects. God calls out to Moses by name, “Moses, Moses!” and Moses responds, “Here I am.” “Through the creation to the Creator”: in and through the tree he beholds, Moses enters into communion with the living God.

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In the second place, God does not only appear to Moses but also issues a practical command to him: “Remove the sandals from your feet.” According to Greek Fathers such as St. Gregory of Nyssa, sandals or shoes — being made from the skins of dead animals — are something lifeless, inert, dead and earthly, and so they symbolize the heaviness, weariness, and mortality that assail our human nature as a result of the Fall.

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“Remove your sandals,” then, may be understood to signify: Strip off from yourself the deadness of familiarity and boredom; free yourself from the lifelessness of the trivial, the mechanical, the repetitive; wake up, open your eyes, cleanse the doors of your perception, look and see! And what, in the third place, happens to us when in this manner we strip off the dead skins of boredom and triviality? At once we realize the truth of God’s next words to Moses: “The place on which you are standing is holy ground.” Set free from spiritual deadness, awakening from sleep, opening our eyes both outwardly and inwardly, we look upon the world around us in a different way.

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So we enter the dimensions of sacred space and sacred time. We discern the great within the small, the extraordinary within the ordinary, “a world in a grain of sand … and eternity in an hour,” to quote Blake once more. This place where I am, this tree, this animal, this person to whom I am speaking, this moment of time through which I am living: each is holy, each is unique and unrepeatable, and each is therefore infinite in value.

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Combining Edward Carpenter’s living tree, uniting earth and heaven and the burning bush of Moses, we can see emerging a precise and distinctive conception of the universe. Nature is sacred. The world is a sacrament of the divine presence, a means of communion with God. The environment consists not in dead matter but in living relationship. The entire cosmos is one vast burning bush, permeated by the fire of divine power and glory. …

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For more Orthodox ecology of Transfiguration, theophanic transparency, pellucid double vision and Zen ‘haeccitas’, read the full article THROUGH CREATION TO THE CREATOR by Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia

 at http://incommunion.org/2004/12/11/through-creation-to-the-creator/