E-Book Overview
While walking on the beach with his Labrador, poet and literature professor Scott Cairns ran headlong into his midlife crisis. A fairly common experience among men nearing the age of fifty, midlife crises are usually manifested in the form of sports cars and younger women; not so for this Baptist turned Eastern Orthodox. Cairns had a realization that as the advancement of his spiritual life was moving at a snail's pace, time was running out, and his crisis emerged in the form of a desperate need to seek out prayer. Told with wit and exquisite prose, Slow Pilgrim is the story of Scott's spiritual journey to the mystical island of Mt. Athos. With twenty monasteries and thirteen sketes scattered across its sloping terrain, the Holy Mountain was the perfect place for Scott to seek out a prayer father and to discover the stillness of the true prayer life. His narrative takes the reader from a beach in Virginia to the most holy Orthodox monasteries in the world to a monastery in Arizona and back again as Scott struggles to find his prayer path. His story includes accounts of the relationships he forges with several different monks and priests along the way, as well as life–long friendships he makes with other pilgrims.
E-Book Content
Short Trip to the Edge Where Earth Meets Heaven—A Pilgrimage
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Scott Cairns
For Jackson Browne, whose songs during the seventies made me want to become a poet. For Annie Dillard, my teacher, whose prose during the seventies showed me how to be one. For Richard Howard, my friend, whose loving attention to the word I now recognize as true veneration. With gratitude to the University of Missouri Research Council, whose research leave afforded me time to travel and to write. With love to Marcia, Elizabeth, and Benjamin, whose patience and sacrifice allowed me to commence a long-desired journey.
S e t t i ng O u t In time, even the slowest pilgrim might articulate a turn. Given time enough, the slowest pilgrim—even he—might register some small measure of belated progress. The road was, more or less, less compelling than the hut, but as the benefit of time allowed the hut’s distractions to attain a vaguely musty scent, and all the novel knickknacks to acquire a fine veneer of bonewhite dust, the road became then somewhat more attractive; and as the weather made a timely if quite brief concession, the pilgrim took this all to be an open invitation to set out.
Contents PART ONE: The Far
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1 The boat is the Axion Estin, and I am finally…
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2 Before this, my only experiences with the Holy Mountain had…
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3 Along the way to Philotheou, the trail skirted a small…
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4 Our small room at Philotheou—holding but two narrow beds and…
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5 Our second Divine Liturgy at Philotheou continues to haunt me.
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6 Father Damianos is, I’m guessing, a man in his late…
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7 Alone again, I grinned to discover that much of the…
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8 Along the way to Saint Paul’s, the trail cut into…
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PART TWO: The Far and the Near
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9 I was glad to get home, glad to be back…
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10 Father Damianos was washing cups in the archondariki kitchen when…
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11 The hike took me, for the most part, along winding…
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12 Father Matthew caught up with me after trapeza to say…
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13 I had pretty much decided as early as September that,…
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PART THREE: The Near
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14 My son, Ben, agreed to join me on my third…
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15 Ben was quiet for most of the hour it took…
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16 The journey to prayer, so far as I can tell,…
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A Pilgrim’s Glossary
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About the Author