Wonders of Spiritual Unfoldment by John Butler

Author:John Butler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shepheard-Walwyn
Published: 2008-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

26

A Russian Pilgrimage

Solovki, August 2004

IT IS NOT unusual for those people who seek a deeper communion with God, to distance themselves from their fellows to pray, silent and alone. Who knows how many live and die that way? But some attract a few followers who, of necessity, develop some organisation. This process is well recognised in Orthodoxy, and certainly, most Russian monasteries have started this way. It is worth remembering that the communal living and elaborate church services familiar to pilgrims, are often the very conditions the founder figures sought to avoid.

Russia’s northern forests are indescribably beautiful when seen from a bus window, but surprisingly hostile once you step outside. Growth is often impenetrable; marsh, impassable, and countless insects eat you alive. It’s easy to see why early travellers preferred to float past on the many connecting rivers and lakes. Thus it was that in 1429, monks from Belozersk came to Solovki - a group of small islands in the White Sea, not far south of the Arctic Circle. What started as a simple hermitage developed into the greatest monastic fortress and administrative centre of Northwest Russia. However, following the Revolution of 1917, this was taken over by the Communists. It became the first of many “Gulag” slave labour camps, and a place for the extermination of priests. About a million prisoners were sent here to work and die. Many haunting reminders of those dreadful days remain - of plagues and executions, of mass graves, of every kind of horror inflictable by man on man, of desolation and distance from civilised life, and of passed souls known but to God. Now, again, monastic life is reappearing; one church functions, and many pilgrims come during the short summer, but conditions for them remain very primitive, and the overall atmosphere is - grim.

Having to face the facts of those men and women, starved, frozen, worked and tormented to death is a huge exercise in faith. In Spirit no one dies, we know - in God all live. But, Oh my God - my ears still echo with the groans; imagination sees; my heart still cries. Throughout all Russia, there’s hardly a family that was not affected.

But time has passed and life goes on. Whatever was it all? Some nightmare dream? One is forced back again and again to search for what is real. Some 200,000 priests, monks and nuns were killed. Why did it happen? Some years ago, when Patriarch Alexei II was asked this question, he replied, “To cure us of a monstrous pride.” It’s an answer to remember. I don’t suppose he referred only to the Church, but that’s where my mind became focused while on Solovki. Why was the Church so hated? What goes so wrong to arouse such anger in the people? Forgive me if I offend, but I feel compelled to look for reasons. They are etched with blood into the stones of Solovki - they are part of one’s experience there, and lessons for us to learn.

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