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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Worth reading and re-reading.,
This review is from: Wisdom for the Journey: Conversations With Spiritual Fathers of the Christian East (Paperback)
I hope my experience with "Wisdom for the Journey" by Serge Bolshakoff may be helpful to someone searching to deepen their spiritual life. By way of background, I am a Latin-rite Catholic in my early 50s. For many years (about age 20-36) I was an evangelical Anglican with strong loyalty to the teachings of Luther and the 39 Articles of the Church of England. I returned to the Catholic Church of my youth in 1997. One day I was browsing in a Catholic bookstore and the cover of this book caught my eye. I was quite taken by the sheer 'northerness' of the photograph of the Russian Orthodox Monastery of Uusi Valaamo in Finland. I quickly browsed through the book and was only mildly interested--but the photograph gripped me and for some reason I purchased the book. It sat on my shelf for about 4 years. In early 2006, looking for something different to recharge my spiritual life, I decided to give this book a serious read. I'm glad I did. Serge Bolshakoff was a Russian Orthodox from a wealthy family; he fled Russia as a young man due to the communist takeover of his country. He spent much of the rest of his life visiting monasteries and monks, questioning them about the spiritual life and recording on paper his conversations with them. This book opened me up to a world I hardly knew existed. The monks with whom Mr. Bolshakoff spoke taught a great deal about humility and the Jesus prayer. The monks speak of the need for quiet, for humility, for detachment. They believe that this monastic spirituality can be lived--at least to some degree--in the world. I've learned from eastern Catholics and Orthodox that the monastic way is in some sense the Christian way--that no matter what my station in life I can learn the Christian life from the monks. Mr. Bolshakoff is an excellent writer and his conversations with the monks come alive in the retelling. I also appreciate Mr. Bolshakoff's irenic spirit. He is Orthodox--there is no question of his loyalty to the doctrine and discipline of the faith of his youth. But he respects the insights of the Catholic tradition as well--indeed he lived his last few years--still Orthodox--in a Swiss Monastery. There is an afterword by Basil Pennington, a Catholic monk (Cistercian I think) who spent about 5 months living in the Monastieries of Mount Athos in Greece. Take this book slowly and enjoy it. For some western Christians (it was for me anyway) it will be something like discovering a new world.
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