By Nun Juliania (Denisova)
I came to the Convent
with a great but probably naïve desire to turn from a boss into a subordinate
and obey someone at last.
When we stay in the
world, our “obedience” to our spiritual father is deformed sometimes and boils
down to us making the priest choose between two options of our choosing,
“Father, please tell me what to do: this or that? Really, this option is great,
isn’t it? Isn’t it?” The poor priest has nothing else but to agree with you.
Or, “Should I get married or become a nun?”
Do we think we have
the right to transfer responsibility from ourselves onto the spiritual father’s
shoulders, so that he could be blamed for your failure in marriage or in the
monastery? It looks like some kind of deception, albeit inarticulate. When I
was making my mind to go to the Convent, I also asked my spiritual father…
Well, how does one know what life in a convent is like? It’s like going to war:
you’ve read books and watched films about it but you’ll never really know what
it is like until you hear a missile explode near you, and you’ll be lucky if it
doesn’t hit you. Our Father Andrew Lemeshonok had been my spiritual father
since 1993. I had reached the decision to become a novice already, and the
abbess with the sisters had approved it, and Father Andrew had blessed me
already, “Please come, Sister Irina.”
And so we were
sitting on a bench in Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral after a service, and I said,
“I think I should go consult an elder, perhaps?” And he replies, “Of course,
you can… But anyway, you’ve got to decide it for yourself.” His words “You’ve
got to decide for yourself anyway” left an indelible mark on my memory for the
rest of my life. Nothing can make up for absence of a vocation inside: either
you have it — this God’s voice telling you the right thing to do — or you
don’t. You can run from one spiritual advisor to another to have your problem
sorted out the way you want it. And voilá — you’ve got someone to blame your
failure on. Let’s be honest, does it never happen? It happens all the time.
Some people don’t realise it but some do insist on their own solutions. We
can’t even imagine how much trouble one can find himself in due to his
wilfulness!
So when I came to the
Convent, I wanted to start obeying someone first (that was my stated goal) and
humble myself down, so that people could order me around and not say “please”.
Naturally, no one likes it by definition. I’m a regular person, not a masochist.
No one wants to get hurt and be treated rudely, for instance; in principle, no
one wants to feel any kind of pain. However, when you go to the Convent, the
other part of your self — the spiritual one — becomes a little bigger. It is an
act of God, of course. Because no one would become a monk or a nun without God.
No one would fall in love, either, because the feeling of love is a bonus that
God gives us, it’s just that we often don’t realise it.
I was instantly
appointed to do the job that I had been doing my whole life. That is, I do what
I have learned to do. There are few people in our Convent who have an obedience
related to their past occupation. At first, they sent me to the choir, where I
had to learn to sing, strange though it may sound. Singing in the Convent is
totally different. Right now, I’ve got used to it but then… Sure, I heard how
the sisters sang and even participated in the shaping of their worship
repertoire. I helped Mother Martha and trained the sisters a little but it was,
so to say, like someone looking out of the window of a train hurrying past the
station. You’ve got to get off the train and spend several years on that
station to know how people really live there. That was how I was learning to
sing. I was often criticised: I knew it well that I was making many mistakes.
It was a serious school.
I believe I managed
to learn everything in half a year. I met with our abbess and she told me that
I was to be in charge of the choir. The choir was in some kind of a crisis at
that time because Mother Martha (Guskova) who was the chief precentor of the
Convent was appointed to supervise the Rehabilitation Centre. The
Rehabilitation Centre is a huge part of the life of the Convent but it’s
located too far, so she couldn’t be in two places at the same time. Mother
Maria (Derzhanovich) is a wonderful precentor, too, but she is the Convent’s
treasurer and cannot pay a lot of attention to the choir. That was why they
appointed me. Perhaps, due to my age, or because they thought that I was a
well-trained precentor, “widely known in narrow circles.” In fact, I have a
long way to go before I reach the level of Mother Martha and Mother Maria. They
appointed me the chief precentor in order to have someone responsible for the
choir, to have a person who can organise things and lay out the choir
timetable. That was when I began to conduct the choir more often: I conducted
the choir during all Sunday All-Night Vigils and weekday services.
That was what the
situation was like until Mother Anfissa became the precentor of the Monastic
Choir. Currently, it is her who is the chief precentor of the Monastic Choir,
and I simply help her sometimes. Yes, it was difficult for me at first, with
regard to choir singing. I had an alternative point of view on lots of things:
what to sing and how to sing. Everything is different here… Gradually, I got
used to it and came to realise that it was not accidental that this choir was like
that. It doesn’t have to be similar to a female choir at all. The definition
“female choir” doesn’t match the sound of our Monastic Choir. It doesn’t sound
like any other female choir with trained voices. It’s impossible because no one
has the time or opportunity to train voices. We invited a vocal teacher to do
it but it didn’t help because we have a different spirit. It doesn’t mean that
the secular choirs are bad, it’s just that we’re different. I fully agree with
it, and this is what our two choirs — the Monastic Choir and the Festive Choir,
although it’s a professional choir — have in common. Or even three choirs — we
can mention the Brothers’ Choir in this respect, too. The sound and the voices
are simple, straightforward, and open. Needless to say, there are amazing
voices in all three choirs! However, the three choirs are united by the
“natural” voice sound. There is another thing that they have in common, and it
is znamenny (and Valamo as part of it) chant, which dominates our soundscape
here in the Convent.
The choir taught me
so much. It is a place where you’ll learn to obey even if you don’t want to. It
is extremely hard to sing in the choir. All singers know it. People allow themselves
more in non-monastic church choirs, unfortunately. Some singers are far from
the church, judging by their outfits and their gossip, newspapers, and
smartphones during rehearsals. The Monastic Choir is free from it, and I like
it…
Almost instantly, one or two months after I came to the Convent, Father Andrew blessed the Festive Choir to become part of our community.
It was called The
First Choir of Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral at that time. Our Father Andrew is
tuned in to all suggestions, like a God’s radar. He always evaluates if this or
that object or thing is what God needs. So he decided that yes, that was what
Good needed, and that the new choir was a great idea. Indeed, it was really
helpful because the Convent began to grow very fast. A new dormitory, a school,
the House of Love of Labour, the Pilgrims’ House, and rehabilitation centres…
There are so many new projects now that we have eighteen liturgies a week — sometimes
even more, when we have liturgies in our educational facilities. We are in need
of singers to provide the singing during all those liturgies. That was why new
choirs started to emerge. There were only two choirs at first: the Monastic
Choir and the Brothers’ Choir. Today, there are also the Festive Choir, two
choirs of lay sisters, a children’s choir, the Department of External Relations
Choir, and this isn’t the limit, I guess.
August 23, 2018
St. Elisabeth Convent
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