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

[Marilyn Cepeda]

I will as well.....

On Sunday, September 4, 2016, Marion Thompson <marionwhitevale at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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>

-- 
Marilyn (Owens, Palmero) Cepeda