I’ve been re-reading Sergei Hackel’s biography of Mother (now Saint) Maria Skobtsova, Pearl of Great Price: The Life of Mother Maria Skobtsova, 1891-1945. I may write again on some of her perspectives on monasticism (which evoke somewhat conflicting responses in me). But for now I note something that has also struck me in other books I have read in the last year or two, notably in Gillian Crow’s biography of Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh, This Holy Man: Impressions of Metropolitan Anthony, namely the really desperate situation of the Russian émigrés in France in the period between the first and second world wars. It is easy to wax lyrical about the theological fruitfulness of the theological renewal associated with the emigration – and it certainly was fruitful – and yet, certainly for me as a westerner reading books in translation, it is all-too-easy to forget both that it was Russian and that occurred against the backdrop of appalling social dislocation and need.
This connects with something I was sometimes conscious of in the Netherlands, namely, the strange combination of proximity and distance between the past and the present. I lived for years in a building that had been occupied by the Hitler’s troops during the Second World War, and in a community that had lost two of its sisters to the Nazi camps. On many days I walked past a memorial to them. And yet that past somehow seemed very remote and I was sometimes struck between the contrast between it, and the affluence and apparent security of the present. Not only did the past seem remote, but I had to consciously remind myself that there are also people today in similarly desperate situations. We can somehow domesticate both the past and those aspects of the present that would otherwise be threatening to us, keeping it at a distance, whether by interpretive strategies, border controls and the way society is organised, or simply by self-centredness.
Being back in South Africa it is in some ways more difficult to escape this as one cannot go very far without being aware of desperate social need. But we too – or let me speak only for myself, and say I too – can too-easily forget the horrors of the past and find ways of trying to escape the challenge of the present. And in that context it may be reassuring, if challenging, to realise that the theological fruitfulness of the Russian emigration also occurred against a similarly challenging background.
October 18, 2010 at 5:32 am
Thanks for this post, Macrina – it connects with a number of things I’ve been thinking about, and gets me thinking about other things as well.
I hope that you will post some reflections on Mother Maria’s perspectives on monasticism – a book with some of her writings has been sitting on my bedside table for the last several months, but I’ve yet to read it; hopefully I’ll open its covers soon.
October 18, 2010 at 7:05 pm
Thanks, Joe. Is that the Essential Writings book, published by Orbis? I was given a copy just before I left the Netherlands, and dipping into it made me realised that I really do want to read it properly.
I’ll try and write more on her take on monasticism, the trouble is that that touches on so many things and does evoke rather complex responses in me.
October 20, 2010 at 12:29 am
Yes, it’s the Orbis edition with the intro by Jim Forest (whom you probably know from Orthodox circles in the Netherlands – he’s someone I’d love to meet, though I haven’t had the opportunity yet).
October 20, 2010 at 6:15 am
Yes, indeed, it was Jim who gave me the book. He and Nancy were very good to me and have become good friends. If you’re passing through the Netherlands it would be worth looking them up.
October 19, 2010 at 5:53 am
I remember visiting St Sergius in Paris in 1968, when the seminarians slept in the crypt of the church, with a drain in a channel running down the centre of the floor, and cloth partitions between their beds. The poverty was palpable, and seminaries in South Africa were generally much better equipped.
October 19, 2010 at 6:37 am
Actually, one of the things that struck me about visiting Orthodox monasteries in western Europe is that they are decidedly poorer than Catholic ones.
I was only at St Sergius once, and was rather distracted by other things, but I couldn’t help noticing that some of the buildings looked very dilapidated. It made me realise that the extra collections for a building fund that I’d seen being taking up in parishes were definitely needed.
This, and other things, keep making me aware the poverty of Orthodoxy – and of that quote from Father Lev Gillet on the Orthodox Church that I must look up and post – a poverty that is multi-faceted and that may involve limitations and frustrations but that also has its positive sides.