HOW TO UNDERSTAND RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CONTEMPLATION

Contemplation is obligatory part of Christian experience in any culture; moreover, it seems to be obligatory part of any religious experience. Russian Orthodox tradition associates contemplation primarily with hermits. The favorable reading of Russian Orthodox people are "paterics," stories about the great monks of the Egyptian and Syrian deserts of IV-VI centuries. Many of these monks are the main Doctors of the Church in Russian Orthodox view; Isaac Sirian is more important than St. Augustine.

Russian Orthodox tradition itself has a millenium-old tradition of contemplation in desert. Certainly, Russian deserts are different from Egyptian. Desert in Russia is associated primarily with the forest--a place uninhabited, isolated, dangerous materially and spiritually. A forest where some lonely anchorite lives is called in Russian "poustinia," the anchorite himself is called "poustinnik."

Western people have a good opportunity to read about this phenomena in the book written by a person who belongs by origin and upbringing to Russian Orthodox tradition, and tried to preserved this tradition even after she became a Westerner and Roman Catholic. Ekaterina Kolyshkina, a daughter of the wealthy Russian Orthodox family, shortly before the Revolution became a wife of Baron Boris de Hueck. She emigrated, became a lecturer, in 1943 became a wife of famous newspaperman Eddie Doherty, now a priest.

In 1947 Catherine de Hueck Doherty founded a House dedicated to Madonna and aimed to help Roman Catholics priests in mission. It is situated in Canada, in the village Combermere 200 miles north of Toronto. This house numbers 100 people. Hundred members of the Madonna house are working in 22 houses in States, Canada, England etc.

In her Madonna house Doherty created a kind of a desert for spiritual training. She calls it in Russian mode "poustinia." In 1974 she published a book:

Catherine de Hueck Doherty.

Poustinia: Christian Spirituality of the East for Western Man. Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556. 216 pp.

In 1983 the book had ninth print, 110,000 copies in print since 1974.

Doherty's spiritual experience as Russian Orthodox was short enough and limited. Her attempt to explain to the West some basics about Russian Orthodox contemplation is interesting both when she correctly transmits Russian Orthodox experience in Western terms and when she is mistaken, because she mistakes as Westerner; she lived to long in the West in isolation from the genuine Russian Orthodox tradition.

The most typical and funny mistake made by Doherty in her book is a naive confidence to the representatives of the official, communist-controlled part of the Russian Orthodox Church. She writes:

"For when I was in Rome in 1967 for the International Lay Congress, A had occasion to translate for four Russian theologians. ... I asked them: "Are the Russians still pilgrimaging?" They just looked at me and said, "Do you think communism can stop pilgrimaging in Russia?" I felt like falling through the floor! Nevertheless, A asked another question along the same lines: "And what about the poustinniki?" They answered that the forests were still full of poustinias and poustinniki, and that even the communists were known to go into the forests to look for the poustinniki--and somehow or other remain there! But, they added, these were unconfirmed reports (P.36.)"

This was a desperate conscious lie in 1967, it is untrue now. In a totalitarian state hermits were repressed with great success. Even now they are absent. People with eagerness to contemplative life usually go to monasteries, which are now broadly revived, not to the forests.

Most precise in the Doherty's book is the following characteristic of Russian contemplative vocation:

"I think that this is what God calls the poustinnik to: a total purgation, a total self-emptying. In the gospel of the Passion we see how Christ is silent before the authorities. Imagine, God is silent! He asks for nothing, and he gives himself. If you want to see what a "contribution" really is, look at the Man on the Cross, that is a contribution. When you are hanging on a cross you can't do anything because you are crucified (P.69)."

"Self-emptying" is really a part of the famous Russian Orthodox passivity, and Doherty marks this:

"The English word "zeal" usually means intensity of action. A person is zealous about his farming or some crusade. But real zeal is standing still and letting God be a bonfire in you (P.70)."

"This attitude must be one of the most excruciating things for a Westerner, to be, in a sense, so seemingly passive. It is not so easy to be sensitive to the delicate action of the Spirit in this way. The Spirit moves so very highly, lighter than the breeze, lighter that the air (P.68)."

Comtemplativeness in "poustinia" reaches a degree, when it is stops to be just a part of the Christian devotion and becomes a self-oriented and self-sufficient business. As such it is opposed to the usual forms of religiosity:

"A poustinnik is detached from all things--even holy things. Because it's "holy" to have directees, because it's "holy" to have people come and talk, it's all the more difficult to be detached from them. It's hard just stand there or to be there in the poustinia like an idiot, not "doing" anything (P.68)".

Such contemplation revives the ancient juxtaposition of the desert life as the only true way of salvation to the life of Christians in the wicked towns of the late Roman empire. Church hierarchy in IV-VI cc. looked with suspicion toward anachorets, and this suspicion revived always when a pure contemplativness revived, be it in Spain of the XVI c. or in Russia in XIX c. One of the best examples is St. Seraphim of Sarov, "poustinnik" who was always alienated from the traditional monastic environment. The mere orientation toward desert life seemed to depreciate discipline and worship in their collective forms.

There can be obvious misunderstandings toward any contemplative life, whether in Russian Orthodox tradition or Catholic or Hindu or Islam. The main of the possible accusations is egoism of contemplativeness. No, answers Doherty, "when a Russian goes into a poustinia, he goes for others as well as for himself--but predominantly for others (P. 146)." It is curious that in the next phrase she gives a completely untrue fact: "Upon returning, he should tell members of his family or community what he has received during his stay in the poustinia (P.146)." That is absolutely wrong! Hermit never "returns." Desert if lifelong. The concrete fact is wrong, memory of childhood mistaken. But the sense is true: contemplation is work for the common salvation, invisible, but real to the eyes of faith as every prayer.

Another mistake can be marked as specifically Western, and Doherty makes it so:

"Westerners in a poustinia may feel guilty because they are not "part of the community." ... In Russia built a poustinia next to the village, he automatically knows that he is part of that village. ... Being part of the community is not a matter of geography. ... Wherever you are on obedience, you are part of the community (P. 67)".

Doherty makes an insignificant mistake. Anachorete certainly stops being a part of the community, of the village. Some hermits have been killed by peasants. Hermit becomes a member of the invisible, religious community, he becomes a citizen of the Heaven Jerusalem. So the difference is between visible and invisible collective. Though mistaken in this detail, Doherty continues with genuine brightness:

"One of the main causes of this feeling of guilt for being "separated from the community" stems, I think, from the Western notion of production. The West values itself for its ability to produce things. Priests, nuns and lay people tend to evaluate themselves interiorly by what they can produce. Priests especially do not realize that their presence is enough. ...There is an inability to realize that the presence of a person who is in love with God is enough, and that nothing else is needed. ... One should be perfectly at peace even (should I say especially?) when one hasn't got "something to do (P.67)."

Here again it can be added that to understand contemplativeness properly you must remember about the difference between visible and invisible worlds. The "presence" which is so meaningful and about which Doherty writes can be only a spiritual, invisible presence. A man can be in the desert, praying, and yet he is more important to the world that active or visibly loving and perfect heroes.

The weakest point in the Doherty's analyses of Russian Orthodox contemplativeness is anti-intellectualism. She writes:

"For those of you who go into the poustinia for a day or two, this is the essence of it: to hold the wings of your intellect. In this civilization of the West everything is shifted through your heads (P. 73)."

Certainly, intellectualism can be a vice. It is really a widespread vice, not peculiarly Christian. Here lies the danger. The antiintellectualism very often is non-Christian mode. Many new cults stands on the antiintellectualism, calls to contemplativeness, calls it "transcendental meditation". But they are not Christian. In the Russian Orthodoxy antiintellectualism was not very strong, because intellectualism was not very strong in Russia before XIX century. Even now it is weak enough. So the accent on antiintellectualism marks most not the Russian Orthodox tradition itself, but the reception of this tradition by Russian intellectuals, whether they sympathize to Russian Orthodoxy or not. More important and genuine is the accent which Russian Orthodoxy gives to apophatic ("negative") theology, using silence as one of the ways for knowing God and life with Him.

***

Too peculiar accents of the Russian Orthodox tradition are present in Doherty's interpretation: one consciously, one unconsciously. First, the combination of contemplativeness with passivity, non-productivity and defencelessness:

"What does a Russian mean by offering himself? It means a kenosis, an emptying of myself in order to be filled with the other (P.105)."

"One of the fruits of the poustinia is a defenselessness which flows from his freedom. Is someone walks over you with hobnailed boots on, you kiss his feet and say, "Thank you very much for treating me like this, for I am a sinner (P.107)."

Such humility leads to sanctity by the complete and enforced denying of person's sanctity. The door to the world of mysticism is opened on condition that a person will never think that he entered any world of mysticism:

"There is a difference between what the East means by mystical and what the West means. I think the East would call normal many things that the West might term mystical. If you are in the poustinia and God knocks on your floor and speaks to you, that doesn't sound mystical to me; it sounds quite normal. He said he would speak to us, Many Westerners may believe that they are not worthy that God should speak to them thus. Of course we are not worthy! If for a minute you think that you are worthy that God should speak to you in the poustinia, you should get out of the poustinia! ... everybody is unworthy--but still God speaks to us (P.147)."

Doherty makes in her analyses only one, slight, but highly characteristic for a Western mind mistake. She writes:

"We Russians tend to identify ourselves especially with the poor, and so to be cold, to be homeless (P.36)."

The real problem is that "we Russians" don't need "to identify ourselves with the poor". We are really poor! Most Russian Orthodox are deprived of the distance between poverty and cold that they can overcome on their free will. Humility is most precious when you are not humiliated, when you really victimize something to God freely, and not simply make a lemonade out from lemon. It is more difficult and more precious in the eyes of God when a rich man tries to be poor in Spirit, not when poor man tries to do so. In Russia poverty is reigning, that is why all Russian Orthodox preaching on spiritual povertyness are dubious, difficult, and double-sensed even in Russian Orthodox minds.

Second peculiarity of the modern Russian Orthodoxy as percepted by intellectuals is a constant attempt to eliminate the difference between "desert" and "usual life." Doherty writes:

"You should always remember that the goal of the poustinia is to interiorize it. You must not think that the poustinia is the only place where you can be a poustinik. The Eastern tradition talks about "monasticism interiorized," which means that everyone is to be love the life of the Trinity wherever they might be. Monasticism, in this sense, is for everyone (P.98)".

Doherty invents the term "poustinia in the marketplace" (P.89). She compares the ability to be anachorete in the marketplace with pregnancy, when a person still continue cooking for husband, but new life is inside her. "Applying this example to the mystery of being pregnant with God (and it applies to both men and women), you have, as it were, a poustinia within you" (P.90)."

All this is very nice. But, certainly, the idea of "poustinia in the marketplace" is not characteristic to the Russian Orthodoxy "classic" tradition. It marks the development of Russian Orthodoxy mostly amidst intellectuals in XX century. Moreover, such a development of attitude toward contemplativeness is characteristic not only for Russian Orthodoxy. In the West, in Roman Catholicism it also took place, and the best evidence of this is the foundation of Doherty herself. It seems that Doherty came to this idea independently of Russian Orthodoxy, or else she will use the term "monastery in the world" ("monastyr v miru") that is a trademark of this trend in modern Russian Orthodoxy. At any case, it is dangerous to write as she does:

"The contemplative and active life cannot be separated. This is difficult for the West to understand. Its Roman, juridical attitude tends to label and classify and categorize everything. The active and contemplative life of the Christian is one life (P.92)".

The West can understand this, the West tries to, although some secondary differences between Western and Russian Orthodox Christianity, differences of lesser importance an accents, in details will remain for always. It is enough to say that practical embodiment of "poustinia" in Doherty's Madonna house is infinitely far from the real Russian Orthodox idea. The desert became just a room for a specific kind of spiritual exercises, a retreat to priests. May be, that is because Doherty remembered mostly the form of "poustinia", and had no chance to know with what the life of "poustinniki" was filled. It was filled not simply with contemplation, but with constant repentance, and this is the most peculiar feature of Russian Orthodox mentality, worth a special issue.

Adress of Doherty's foundation:

Madonna house apostolate, Combermere, Ontario, Canada Koj 1L0

ph - 613/756-371

1993