Customer Reviews

Short Trip to the Edge: Where Earth Meets Heaven--A Pilgrimage

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Since I am a woman, I cannot personally reap the spiritual benefits of a pilgrimage to Mt. Athos. However, Scott Cairns' account of his visits to the Holy Mountain during his sabbatical year as a professor at the Univ. of Missouri allowed me to vicariously experience what it must be like for an Orthodox convert to go there. He describes the good, the bad, and the ineffably divine of what it is like for a modern-day pilgrim to pay a visit to the heart of Orthodox monasticism. The focus of his pilgrimage is his endeavor to find a spiritual father who can guide him in how to grow closer to God, specifically through the Jesus Prayer.
Cairns deftly interweaves the physical realities and legalities ("Let that be a lesson for somebody") of getting there and getting around while, at the same time, describing his impressions and feelings about finally arriving at The Mountain. His gifts as a poet allow him to find the perfect word to capture his experience or the description of his environment.
There are humorous but instructive moments, such as when he and his friend Nick decide to walk to a monastery rather than ride in a vehicle, or when he describes a pilgrim he calls "the sheriff" who demands that everyone follow the rules while eating. There are also glimpses of the meeting of Heaven and Earth on Mt. Athos as Cairns describes kissing the warm left hand of St. Mary Magdalene, the spice-scented foot of St. Anne (accompanied by "a curious sweetness, a warming of the heart") and the fragrant brow of the skull of St. Andrew.
I was helped in my own spiritual journey by Cairns' complete honesty. He describes the time when he was finally able to have a moment with an elder and feels like he made a mistake by asking the wrong question. He also writes of other situations that an Orthodox convert might find embarrassing when centuries-old protocol has been breached. I could relate.
Cairns finds much guidance towards what he is seeking, and his journey is instructive for anyone who is also trying to draw closer to God. (A similar account is "The Mountain of Silence" by Kyriacos C. Markides," another contemporary writer.) My only disappointment is that this book was not twice as long. Maybe more visits by Cairns to the Holy Mountain will produce a sequel?

In his book, A Short Trip to the Edge, Scott Cairns takes the reader through a series of journeys to the Orthodox holy site and monastic sanctuary Mt. Athos (with a brief side trip to a monastary in Arizona also detailed). The book is a record of Dr. Cairns' journey on two levels. One aspect of the book describes his travels on a purely physical level; the places he goes, the people he encounters, the things he sees and the obstacles he overcomes. Intertwined within this narrative is also the spiritual journey he takes in order to discover how to live a life of prayer and how this is different than having a prayer life. In both attempts the author sets out to record his authentic journey and his honesty and candor are refreshing as is the simplicity with which he tells his story. Unlike many works on Athonite spiritual life or prayer life in the Orthodox tradition, this book tries to keep things on a level that is accessable to someone who is not a monastic.

The first aspect of the book is relatively successful in conveying the author's experience of gong to a place as different from the rest of the world as Mt. Athos while dealing with the intrusions the world inevitably makes on a place it deems has having something it values, even if it keeps that thing at arm's distance. I found the simply humanity of this part of the narrative refreshing enjoyed Cairn's stories of meeting with other pilgrams on the roads and with sharing coffee and tea with the monks of the mountains. Both brought home the theme that this is a place where heaven and earth intersect in very real and powerful ways.

In weaving in the second aspect, Dr. Cairns attempts to introduce us to the traditions and ideas of Eastern prayer and spirituality. It is here that I found that Cairns' ran into difficulty. The author tries very hard to bring out the important ideas and practices of the Eastern Orthodox church in a way that someone who isn't Orthodox might understand. Unfortunately, he is trying to do it in writing about a culture that is anything but understandable in modern North American terms (especially if one is used to the hyper-rationalistic tendancies found in many expressions of the Christian faith today). He does an admirable job explaining the ideas of nous and hesychia but without some background in Orthodoxy, these explanations are likely confusing and imcomplete. Additionally, there is much assumed of the reader regarding an understanding and acceptance of Orthodox worship and monastic practice. Finally, I hate to say it as I expect it will make me sound too parochial, but there's a point where there is just a bit too much Greek. Perhaps those who are used to worshipping in a Greek Orthodox context will not find the language a bit overwhelming.

With these issues in mind, I still found the book to be lively, engaging and challenging. The prose is lovely and wry and it carries the story lightly when it needs to while never trivializing the struggles the author is undergoing on his journeys both spiritually and logistically. The subject matter asked me to examine my own thoughts about prayer, spiritual mentorship and living my faith in powerful ways. Additionally, I found the authenticity of this travelogue, especially where Cairns' shares his last journey to Mt. Athos with his son, truly moving. I would recommend this book without reservation to those with some background in or understanding of Orthodox spirituality. For those who lack such a background, much of the book will seem strange and unfamiliar and the material may require a good bit more work to access. That having been said , the ideas regarding prayer being something we live are well worth the effort should the reader be willing to undertake the journey.

Scott Cairns is an accomplished poet and an English professor at Mizzou, where he teaches modern and contemporary American literature and creative writing. He's also an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and he writes about his faith. His "Love's Immensity," in fact, is a collection of translations and adaptations of writings of various Christian apostles, disciples and saints on faith and prayer, from Saint Paul to St. Therese of Lisieux, and written as poems.

"Short Trip to the Edge" is the account of four pilgrimages Cairns made with the hope of finding a spiritual father to guide him in a life of prayer - two to the monasteries and "sketes" of Mount Athos, one to an Orthodox monastery in Arizona, and the fourth back to Mount Athos, this time with his teenage son. To join Cairns on his journey is to discover some of the most revered places in the Orthodox church, to see how seekers and others undertake a pilgrimage, and to watch as they and the monks and priests leading them participate in worship.

It's a very different kind of Christian faith from what I've experienced. It's a tribute to Cairns' writing that I found myself sitting alongside him, in my own "stall," listening to the chants of the monks and standing in line with the other pilgrims to receive the Eucharist, and then afterward to join in venerating the icons. (And veneration of the icons is something almost alien to this evangelical Presbyterian.)

And during his pilgrimages, he also writes about poetry, because, as he says, poetry itself is a pilgrim's journey: "My sense of actual poetry writing is that, before it can so much as begin, it must be recognized as a way by which we concurrently construct and discern experience; it is not a means by which we transmit ideas or narrative events we think we already understand. But a way we might discover more sustaining versions of them."

I like the concept of poetry as a pilgrim's journey, a journey where the destination is not precisely known.

"Short Trip to the Edge" has a lot to say about poetry, about prayer, and life being the idea of living a prayer.

Several months ago, shortly after my tonsure into the Orthodox Monastic Life, a very good priest friend of mine gave me a book about a poet who went on a search to Mount Athos, the Holy Island off the coast of Greece.

Scott Cairns takes his readers on the journey with him as he seeks to find a spiritual father on the Holy Mountain to help him with the Jesus Prayer. Short Trip to the Edge is the book he wrote and the book my priest friend gave me.

If you are unfamiliar with the Holy Mountain this would be a great book to start with. Professor Cairns describes the monasteries, some of which have existed since the early days of Christianity, so explicitly it makes you feel like to are trekking the mountain roads with him. You can almost smell the incense during the Orthros Services and if you listen close you can hear the monks chanting.

This book is not a theological work or a work on the necessity of prayer but is one man's search of enlightenment on the Holy Mountain. The monks and lay people he meets take him on his own journey as he takes the reader on his. The realization is that the search continues on and never really comes to an end. ones does not need to travel to the Holy Mountain to find a spiritual father but it is a good place to start.

The book is an easy read and is responsible for many sleepless nights as I could not put this book down as each page I turned was another step on the paths of the Holy Mountain. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is in search of anything.

My son loaned Short Trip to the Edge to my wife, who read it and passed it on to me. We now have our own copy which has been unashamedly illuminated with post-it notes, underlining, marginal exclamation points and asterisks.

My wife and I met as students at Moody Bible Institute. Although we were restless children of the sixties, our fundamentalist roots held firm and we had little exposure to the rest of Christendom. Consequently, I mistook liturgy for cold formalism, viewed iconography as bordering on idolatry, and wondered aloud, "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?"

As my wife and I now approach the end of our sixth decade, we have come, wizened and worn, to a new place in our spiritual lives. It is from that place that I silently, and un-noticed, stepped onto the Axion Estin and joined Scott Cairnes on A Pilgrimage to "Where Earth Meets Heaven".

From the first sentence I was his captive companion. I smelled the incense, was engulfed in the chanting, shuttered at the cold rain on my face and labored along the steep, breathtaking inclines. I began to pray the Jesus Prayer, fingering the knots of the prayer rope. Pages marked my progress.

I inhaled the aroma of "more than a hundred thick beeswax candles" at Saint Andrew's Skete, and was moved to tears when the "wheels within wheels" began to spin and "the gold-layered iconostasis and the hundreds of golden stands and fixtures throughout the abysmally enormous nave caught that golden light and flickered as if aflame. The air seemed filled with light." I saw a new vision of Glory, longing to be in a state of perpetual worship.

Cairnes' poet's heart and mastery of the language have greatly enriched my spiritual experience. He has shared the wealth of his soul, reflecting God's light.

I love the ability the author shows with the written word, being able to feel almost like I am there with him, both in a spiritual and physical manor. He describes a pilgrimage in a way that is both practical and lyrical. Having bought this book with a long standing interest in visiting Mt. Athos, I was thrilled by his experiences, but in the end was saddened by my own realization that I am not yet ready for Mt. Athos. This learning, about myself,is one of the greatest gifts an author can give a reader.

Since we began to get a huge influx of converts to Eastern Orthodoxy, a couple of decades ago, there has been a lot very wrongheaded and cringeworthy stuff written about the Church by people who haven't quite made it all the way from Descartes and Calvin to their ostensible destination in Orthodoxy. A few years ago I came to the conclusion that no convert should be allowed to publish anything on an Orthodox topic for the first twenty or so after he/she is received into the Church and I generally avoid books and podcasts by more recent converts. Scott Cairns is a happy exception!

I would like to see more of his books available on Kindle.

I finished the book rather quickly. I could not help smiling because Scott reflects the views of many new converts to Orthodoxy, including myself. I hope I am over that stage by now. May the Lord help me leave the childish things behind!
Scott's style is a little stuffy in the beginning but throughout the rest of the book I agree with Bishop Kallistos's view. The story runs smoothly and seamlessly and I got the feeling that I was traveling with Scott.
Those experienced as spiritual guides strongly discourage the kind of introspection that the author indulged in, concerning his progress in prayer. Scott realizes that he needs a spiritual father.
Among the things that a spiritual father can do for Mr. Cairns is to provide a more accurate assessment of where he is and also how to get to the next spiritual stage (as well as what the real stages are!).
Obviously Scott has read St Isaac the Syrian. St Isaac has some very pious and lofty opinions about Gehenna and eternity including the opinion that God will find a way to reconcile every creature (including Satan and the demons) with Himself. I should mention here that St Isaac's view is not the same as Origen's. But it is also a fact, that St Isaac's view is expressed as an opinion, and it is not the dogmatic teaching of the Church. Today is the day of salvation and Hell and Gehenna are very real possibilities depending on the choice we make now. If Gehenna will end because it its a consequence of sin, we do not know for sure.
I feel the most moving passage of this book is in page 136, where a monk, in his conversation with Scott, gives him the
meaning of the struggle of the Patriarch Jacob with the Angel. I literally gasped when I read this. This was a very holy moment in the story that actually captured the process of paradosis, Holy Tradition and Orthodox life being passed on.
And Scott spoiled the moment with his question. He knew it too. Mount Athos is a place where spiritual knowledge is communicated through silence. This was a moment to listen prayerfully.
The claim of the Orthodox Church is absolute and very politically incorrect. In this the Councils, the Fathers and the saints are very precise and rather severe. Ecumenism is the heresy of the 21st century. The Orthodox Church will eventually triumph over it just as She triumphed over Arianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism, Iconoclasm and Barlaamism with its modern expression as Scholasticism.
The most tragic moment of the book is Scott's broad and very judgmental criticism of the community surrounding St Anthony's Monastery in Florence, Arizona. He concedes that the practice of moving near monasteries dates from antiquity. I know many of these people personally and I can tell you that they are just people trying very hard to overcome secularism and their personal sin. I have some very dear and loving friends among them. Scott is absolutely wrong in his presumption, as a new convert to Orthodoxy, to think that he is in the position to discern the state of the heart of those around him!
The teaching about the essential unity of all mankind is very Orthodox. When the saints grasp this reality they pray with tears for the salvation of all. When we understand this, we will be eager to forgive everyone anything and everything. Each one of us most make the choice between Light or darkness. And God will respect that choice.

I too was eager to read this account of Cairn's trip to Mount Athos. The Mountain of Silence by Kyriacos C. Markides had given me a hunger for more. A trip to Mount Athos was exactly what I was looking for. As one of the 'weaker' halves of the human species there was no immediate trip looming in my future, but a vicarious trip, cozily esconced by my wood stove sounded like a great way to pass a few winter evenings. Neurotically self-absorbed is the most accurate description I can find. Since Cairn's is Professor of the English language I was deeply disappointed in use of language and his descriptive phrasing. I suppose he felt that it would establish him as a fellow seeker if he were to use common words though out the text, but I found the descriptions of his daily life, interspersed with words like crap simply pulled the narrative down. I really was looking for a description of the Inner world, both his own, and that of the Monks of Mount Athos. I have been to vigils at Orthodox monastery and know of the beauty of the worship. I was pleased to hear descriptions of the beauty of Mount Athos, but how scarce they were. What I really was looking for in this book was how his inner life was enhanced by the grace and Presence of God he found on the Mountain. To my dismay, this was most noticeable by it's absence.

Scott Cairns is a poet, apparently, and certainly his writing is clear and sparse, and to the point. But the simple beauty of his visual descriptions doesn't quite make up for his story's curious lack of heart. Ironically, given the subject of pilgrimage, Cairn isn't very successful at conveying why he's on this particular journey - a series of trips to the various monasteries of Mt. Athos, in Greece. He goes on (quite frequently) about prayer and how often he prays and how he's searching for a spiritual father to guide him, but, apart from a short attempt that uses an episode with his dog on a beach, we never get a real sense of what specifically is driving him, what is fueling this need to switch churches (several times, apparently), join the Greek Orthodox church, and then go off on these pilgrimages. Because we never get a real grounding in his motivations, and don't quite understand what he's looking for, his experiences at different monasteries come across as fairly unmoving and repetitious. He does a good job at capturing the personalities of some of the monks and priests he encounters, but even there, one gets the notion that they are just as confused about his pilgrimage as are we. After finishing this book, I couldn't help but get the feeling Cairns is spending so much time praying (and telling people that he's spending so much time praying) that he's missing the point of it all: if god, (or jesus) is everwhere and in everything, then no one phrase or prayer is capable of summarizing him, and in fact by focusing so intently on this prayer the pilgrim is missing out on the divinity that is all around him. A couple of times in his book, most notably when he returns to Mt. Athos with his young son, Cairn describes a scene in which they are standing outside at night, looking up at the stars shining in the jet black skies above Athos. Cairns notes how he feels joy and a sense of peace...but then goes right back to his obsessive praying and the joy is replaced with a feeling of inadequacy because his prayer isn't delivering the same sense of calm as those beautiful stars. The reader gets the impression Cairns could travel back to Mt. Athos a hundred times and still not find what he's looking for (whatever that might be) on his pilgrimage...despite the fact it's probably right there in front of him.