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

[Marion Thompson]

I do remember Albion and I will lift him up in prayer.

Marion, a pilgrim


On 9/4/2016 2:51 PM, Sibyl Smirl 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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