Owing to a road trip down to Tahoe where my friend Charley after having a difficult acid trip wanted to discuss with an Eastern Orthodox monk, I found myself in a monastery and Christian (in spirit) shortly after. Good lede? But where do these things start really. Let me over.
Four years ago the number one Quora user in terms of total questions asked randomly added me on fb was in town and invited himself to my place, I said hell why not, he brought like 5 others whom he’d also never met over one of whom was Charley a very spiritually serious person even then who two weeks later flew off to South East Asia backpacked for a year did some very Adventurous things including some eighty days at a Burmese monastery meditating, once he returned we hit off again and the rest is history.
Last summer he spent a month in Arizona at St. Anthony’s monastery a very different religion, while I, checks journal... farmed kimchi? Anyway his ex a real spiritual prodigy and would be soulmate became a nun there and one tends as you know to revisit the scene of the crime or trauma source ones whole life long
Psychedelics, yes, intensification, exploration, yes? travel to the ends of the earth and the mind to find what is, what really really Is, what is Truth for ten thousand Mr. Jennings: Charleys Ziel. And get this we’re heading to J-Tree in a couple of weeks, see, to do it again, him and a bunch of boys to trip and me to sit as I did then. When he saw Hell, yes?
This wasn’t Charley’s first visit to St. Herman’s; he stopped there briefly last year post-Arizona to deliver some basil he was tasked with delivering (Orthodox monks retain the practice of quest giving), but mine it was, and why should I be interested well. How ought one to live, how ought one be, on this earth, has in some form been my central occupation since I can recall, and observing other ways of being, how various others live, remains my best idea of taking steps towards a personal answer. Naturally enough I’d oblige Charley’s invitation to visit a monastery.
We arrived the afternoon on June 30 and left the following day. Weatherwise it was high 70s, no easy comfort for me wearing thick cotton sweatpants and a button down I’d bought in Reno, apropos Charley, in good-effort respect of Orthodox apparel codes; the monks wear heavy black cassocks and mantles year round, and the more senior don cowls.
The monk’s life is one of regularity and ritual, complex in its specificities of practice but simple in the rhythm of its seasons. Our first observance was Vespers, a daily prayer held in the evening, here in the main chapel. From there we proceeded to dinner in the refectory:
We filed inside, stood along the tables, and pulled out the benches. After food was served but before dining was permitted a prayer was spoken, during which I kept swatting this one insistent fly away from my fare: lentil soup with peas and carrots in chicken stock. Sliced wheat bread was also available, along with honey, olive oil, and actual olives (with pits). In the back, at a high pulpit atop a flight of stairs, stood a Father Ignatius reading a tale of Jude the Apostle. He was difficult to hear. When we finished eating, a tall (they are all rather tall) bearded (they’re all bearded) monk with his silver hair tied in a neat knot gave the group an update, a sort of monastic news report; I remember him wishing with sympathy and humor one of their brothers well, who was then traveling in a locale reminiscent of “Hell” what with its oppressive heat and humidity, it wasn’t Florida was it? “End of report,“ he concluded, no comments from anyone. We got up and reentered the chapel for Compline, the day’s last prayer.
It’s not clear to me whether monks have more free time than contemporary indentured servants (we’re always serving something yes) who it’s said have four hours a weekday in which to “live”, but they do spend theirs with more conscience and unity of purpose than can be said of most outside the cloister. Shortly after Compline we met with Brother Pavel, originally from Serbia, who showed us the woodworking and printmaking shed where he’d been decorating some King James in the style of Cyrillic calligraphy:
Brother Pavel, of serious temperament, who himself had spent months in Tibet and southeast Asia in Buddhist monasteries soul searching but unlike Charley found his there, one dark anxious dungeon night saying the Jesus Prayer and suddenly the religion of his youth was real and True as never before and he knew, knew he was Orthodox then; owing to their background similarity it was he in particular Charley had come to consult with. We went on the rest of the evening discussing various topics
the indeterminacy of salvation until one’s final hour
emphasis against judgment of others
depression as a sin
death
a parable similar to ‘the old man lost his horse’
while walking the grounds and sitting by lamplight at the grave of St. (well, not yet) Seraphim Rose, where he dropped his favorite old Casio through a slim crack in the floorboards; it got stuck in a pile of leaves and our retrieval attempts only nudged it in deeper. But Charley decided against surfacing his acid trip, primarily because the monk had dismissively conflated Buddhism and Daoism (surprising given his experience) at one point in our talks, and perhaps also because he felt it would reflect poorly, to be confessing such things, to such a one, in such a place..
St. Herman’s sits atop a small mountain in Platina. Driving there takes you on a winding ascent on a dirt road shaded by viridian canopy, which clears out as you approach the grounds. And you could be convinced, standing there overlooking the vales, the forestry and sunset peaks, of God. Because to reduce all this to mere material, yes even to Nature’s Majesty (which it undoubtedly is), would be to deny your experience (believe me); and you would feel this denial; and you would feel it to be wrong.
After Brother Pavel bid us goodnight, we walked back out to see the stars: