[Magdalen] From an old friend, Albion Land, a sort of general letter to those who remember him

[Sibyl Smirl]

10:07am
hi sib. i've just started sharing this today. if you're still in touch 
with the crowd over at anglicans online, do feel free to share with 
anyone who might remember me and possibly be interested.
At the beginning of July, six months into retirement, I began a new way 
of life, one that I had many times thought about doing but never had the 
opportunity to act on.

This ‘letter’ is an exercise to help me discern what it is I am doing 
and to get a sense of where I am being led. I am thinking out loud and 
sharing my thoughts with you and with other special people in my life.

It is a spiritual exercise, a specifically Christian one. Some of you 
are nominal, or even practicing, Christians, and will probably 
understand what I am doing; if you are ‘Catholic’ Christians, that is 
Orthodox, Roman or Anglican, you almost certainly will.

But others of you are agnostics, or even atheists. You may have 
difficulty understanding, or even respecting, what I am doing. I simply 
ask you to bear with me.

If you are of the praying sort, I ask your prayers for guidance; if you 
are not, I will be equally grateful for your kind thoughts, which 
themselves are a sort of prayer.

I have begun to live the life of what I call, for the lack of a better 
term, that of a semi-hermit, or contemplative. I say semi, because I am 
not completely withdrawing from the world but only partially.

My daily life is structured around formal monastic prayer, built on the 
Liturgy of Hours (http://www.orthodox.seasidehosting.st) and lectio 
divina (spiritual reading). I leave home during the daytime only for 
absolute necessities (shopping, doctor’s appointments, dog walking, 
etc.) but allow time in the evening for a glass or three of wine with 
friends, or even dinner.

It is a peaceful, tranquil way of life that I find myself drawn more and 
more into as I live it. And as the days pass, I find myself less and 
less interested in going out at all. (That carries with it potentially 
dangerous spiritual consequences, and I particularly ask your prayers 
for my clarity of mind and the virtue of discernment).

As I said at the beginning, I am trying to understand where this is 
leading, if anywhere. I am not doing it on my own, but under the 
guidance of my spiritual father in Cyprus and of priests here in Spain.

In the end, assuming I persevere and don’t throw in the towel, I might 
simply keep things as they are, aside from a bit of fine-tuning.

However, I might go one, or even two, steps further.

A first step would be to take vows as an idiorrythmic monk. Idiorrythmic 
in my case simply means someone who lives separately, holds property, 
supports himself and may or may not have a formal association with a 
monastery. The vows would be of simplicity (as opposed to poverty), 
chastity and obedience (either to my spiritual father or to the abbot of 
a monastery).

Among other things, that would entail an even fuller cycle of daily and 
weekly prayer, adopting a vegetarian diet and fasting more frequently. 
It might also involve my taking on some sort of public ministry in the 
Church.

While I think there is a possibility that I might eventually choose to 
go that route, it is much less likely that I would seek to go a final 
step and enter a monastery. Aside from what I consider to be a lack of 
workable choices, I wonder if, at my age, I would be able to adapt to 
the way of life in a community – starting the day at 3 or 4 in the 
morning and spending it under total regimentation.

However, I am giving thought to it, and am even discussing it with a 
senior member of the brotherhood of Holy Trinity monastery in 
Jordanville, New York, (http://www.jordanville.org), where even someone 
of my age would be welcome assuming my health is up to it.

So for now, I am undergoing a period of reflection. That began in 
Catalonia at the end of June after I was invited to meet Archpriest Joan 
Garcia, the vicar general of the Iglesia Ortodoxa Española, and to 
attend a liturgy to commemorate the Feast of Saint John the Baptist. It 
was to him that I expressed my thoughts about embarking on this new 
life, and it is he who has taken a lead in helping me to focus myself.

The Iglesia Ortodoxa Española (http://www.iglesiaortodoxa.es) is an 
autoctonous church in Spain but, for reasons of a historical anomaly, is 
under the authority of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

At the beginning of October, the parish in Barcelona will celebrate its 
patronal festival, that of the Protection of the Mother of God, and will 
be visited by the bishop for Western Europe, Monsignor Luka. I plan to 
attend the festivities, during which time I will have a meeting with the 
bishop to discuss my vocation, including the possibility of being made a 
lector (reader) in the Church.

A few weeks later, I will head for Cyprus on ‘holiday’ and hope to spend 
a few days on retreat at Machairas monastery 
(https://orthodoxwiki.org/Machairas_Monastery_(Cyprus)), to which I have 
had a close attachment since becoming Orthodox in 2009.

After all that, I hope to have a clearer and stronger sense of what I am 
doing, particularly whether it is something that will prove to be 
lasting. Afterwards, and assuming that I do feel a continuing 
commitment, we will see where this might take us.

You may have noticed that I have talked almost exclusively about the 
what but said virtually nothing about the why. That is not a simple 
question to answer; I’m not even sure I fully know why.

At the heart of it is a profound awareness, as I begin to approach the 
end of my life, of my own sinfulness and of a desire to live in closer 
union with God.

Some of you know, and others not, that the monastic life has always had 
a pull on me. As young man of about 20 I gave serious thought to 
entering that world, but decided not to because I wanted one day to have 
a family.

Over the years since, the fascination has continued. While still an 
Anglican and studying to become a reader in the Church of England, I 
became an oblate of Elmore Abbey, a Benedictine community. During those, 
and subsequent years, I also became a regular summer visitor at another 
Benedictine house, at Santo Domingo de Silos, in Spain.

Since entering Orthodoxy, I have visited or even stayed at Machairas on 
a number of occasions and was also blessed to spend a few days in Ayion 
Oros (Mount Athos).

After settling in to my new home in Spain over this past winter and 
spring, I began to give thought to ‘what to do with the rest of my 
life’, and the idea of a fuller life of prayer presented itself to me a 
as a logical extension to a long-followed rule of life that was far less 
encompassing and demanding.



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-- 
Sibyl Smirl
I will take no bull from your house!  Psalms 50:9a
mailto:polycarpa3 at ckt.net