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

[Grace Cangialosi]

I do remember Albion, and I love that he is asking his wider community to pray for him in his discernment.
I'd like to send him a note, but his email address wasn't included in the post. Sibyl, could you post it here?
Thanks,
Grace

> On Sep 4, 2016, at 2:51 PM, Sibyl Smirl <polycarpa3 at ckt.net> wrote:
> 
> 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