The Catalog of Good Deeds

Explaining the icon of St. George slaying the dragon to a 4 year old is amazing. Explaining the icon of St. George to a 10 year old is excruciating — “Yeah, but dragons don’t exist, do they?”.

Do they?

When someone tells you that dragons don’t exist or that monsters don’t exist, what is it they are saying? When gazing at the icon of St. George, which intuitively has to be one of the most satisfying icons to gaze upon, it reveals a truth so profound that despite the fact that “dragons don’t exist”, it is still one of the most popular icons and St. George is one of the most popular saints.

When we say “dragons don’t exist”, usually what is meant by “exist” is some kind of measurable, reproducible phenomena. “Dragon” then becomes a zoological specie, like a dog or a cat that could be separated into sub-species, bred and genetically modified. But to believe that such measurable categories in the world are the only ones that “exist” is not only untrue to the highest degree, but it is also an image of the mental tyranny of our scientific age that anyone could be so blind to believe this as they live out their lives.

What if dragons or else monsters in general are simply not the same type of “thing” as dogs or cats or apples? What if the way a dragon exists has less to do with the difference between a tiger and a rabbit and more to do with the difference between a friend and a stranger? The difference between a friend and a stranger is not a measurable, reproducible phenomenon, yet it is one of the most real experiences a human being has. A friend is a real category of existence, but there is no “zoological” friend, that is I cannot point to someone that would quantify “friend” for all the world in the way a cat is a cat for everyone. Friend is a category of human engagement. And in a similar vein, encountering a stranger is encountering an undefined person, we could say the undecided in human form. I would like to suggest that a dragon and more generally a monster, is the category of the unknown itself in animal form. Ultimately a dragon is an image of chaos, the place where knowledge and categories reach their limits.

That a dragon is an image of chaos is not a new idea, it has been proposed by thinkers from extremely diverse areas, including Orthodox ones. But usually it is implied in saying things like “dragons are an image of chaos” that dragons are a kind of fable, a kind of metaphor. I am saying dragons exist, or rather almost exist. They are as real as a stranger is real, as an alien is real, real in ways that show us the very limits of existence itself. It is silly, for example, to say that UFOs do not exist. Of course UFOs exist, they are unidentified flying objects. Now the way we portray, imagine and project certain cultural forms and narratives into these UFOs is another matter, an important one which shows us how humans engage with the chaos and the unknown. Just like we can experience a UFO or a stranger, we can definitely come into contact with a dragon. And I think the story of St-George and many other traditional stories of dragons are built, are constructed in a manner that helps us understand “what” a dragon is. This is the reason the story of St. George perdures despite all the myth busters trying to take it down.

But we need to give the myth busters their due. So now, just as a thought experiment, imagine a terrible dragon threatening a city and eating its children. St-George comes and kills it. Imagine now a scientist arriving with all his instruments to dissect it. After several weeks of analysis and peer-reviewed data, the scientist informs the silly people of the town via some academic journal, that the dragon was not a dragon, but rather it was a giant siamese-twin crocodile(s) with elephantiasis and rabies. The paper is quite long, in fact it details how each deformity on the giant siamese-twin crocodile(s) with elephantiasis and rabies is related either to it being siamese, it having elephantiasis or rather having come with time from its own violent self-destructive behavior due to its rabies. Some scientists begin to argue over the cause of certain of the deformities and soon someone holds a conference and the organizers publish a book stating the different views on the matter.

The question is this: which is more real, the dragon or the giant siamese-twin crocodile(s) with elephantiasis and rabies? The giant siamese-twin crocodile(s) with elephantiasis and rabies does not properly account for the terrifying experience of monstrosity, and though the dragon has been dissected and tamed in a way, the experience, the narrative which impacted the very identity of that village is an encounter with a dragon. And also, it would be absurd to rewrite our zoological categories to make way for the exceptional category of the siamese-twin crocodile(s) with elephantiasis and rabies. Just stick with dragons.

In the icon of St. George, the dragon is shown as an impossible hybrid, combining mammals, lizards and birds. As I have explained elsewhere, hybridity is the chaos which appears on the limits, in the in-betweens of categories, the exceptions. It is the very experience of the monster. The strange and exceptional are very important things and are categories which include many spiritual mysteries. Strangers in the Bible and in our tradition can secretly either be angels or devils. In the story of Abraham, the three strangers which come to him are angels and an image of the Trinity, but in the traditions surrounding the Nativity, the unknown shepherd tempting St. Joseph is secretly a devil. This is the nature of the ambiguous, it can hide either extremes.

Sadly in a world of only taxonomic categories, there is no room for the peripheral, the exception and the strange. Everything must fit, or else. This has caused both the mad permissiveness and unilateral openness as well as the totalitarian identity of absolute exclusion which characterize the duality of modernity. Both extremes cause each other and so can only swing from one impossible extreme to the next, either attempting to account for and justify every exception or else tracing an absolute border between us and them. In such a world there is no other option, either everything must fit, or else Occam’s razor comes a slicing. But in a world with room for dragons, the natural hierarchy of being is allowed to both include the rule and leave an undefined space for the strange and exceptional, the monster even. There the dragon can almost exist.

As long as the dragon does not eat our children. And there are those of us now who intuit that the dragons have started to devour children.

Luckily we will always have St. George to protect us.

Source: https://www.orthodoxartsjournal.org/dragons-almost-exist/

Don’t you worry, don’t be anxious:

Time of happiness will bloom!

Just you wait and just be patient:

The award will find you soon.

To mark the day of Elder Nikolai Gurianov’s blissful repose, we would like to share the memories of those who had the chance to talk with our dear spiritual guide. He is undoubtedly a spiritual guide for our St. Elisabeth Convent. Many years ago, Elder Nikolai blessed our spiritual father, Archpriest Andrew Lemeshonok, to build the Convent. Father Nikolai handed him a 5-rouble bill with the image of a church, and said, “People will give you the rest.” It was our first donation…

The life story of Olga Kormukhina, a famous singer, is amazing and wonderful. She got married thanks to the prayers of our dear Elder Nikolai:

Next time, I asked him about my private life. I said, ‘Father, I would like to remain chaste.’ I was certain that if I wanted to continue singing, it would preclude me from becoming a nun, even though I was very eager to go to a convent, I was ready. I couldn’t imagine a different road for myself. I told him that my only obstacle was that I hadn’t given birth to a child and therefore hadn’t accomplished my mission as a woman. He looked at me and said, “You’re not going to have kids.” I burst into tears! Then he brought an icon of the Holy Royal Martyrs to me, and he was praying for a long time, I just can’t describe it with words. I was in some kind of a flow, an ecstatic state. Naturally, Father Nikolai was the source of this state. I felt that I was between him and Someone else, whom he was asking for something. It took a while, fifteen or twenty minutes. Suddenly, he turned to me and said, with love and pain in his eyes, “The Lord will do what you want.” He added, “She won’t be ill.”

And indeed, while I was pregnant and then gave birth and fed my daughter, we didn’t get ill at all, even though doctors had predicted that the girl would have Down’s Syndrome."

During one of my visits, the elder saw an icon of the Guardian Angel, which I had received as a gift from a spiritual child of Metropolitan John. That icon stood by His Eminence’s deathbed when he was dying. Of course, it’s a really sacred object for me and my family. So, when Father Nikolai saw that icon, he asked me, “Who did you get that sacred icon from?” I realised that he was aware of its previous owner. So I replied, “A spiritual child of Metropolitan John gave it to me.” He said, “Keep it!” He blessed everyone and let them kiss that icon. That’s what an elder means. You don’t have to speak too many words with him. When I told him, “Father, I’d like to remain chaste,” he simply stroked me on my chin—his usual way of casting away bad thoughts. He said, “You shall get married.”

Now I had to struggle with my unwillingness to get married. I had almost convinced myself into becoming a nun and no longer considered any other alternative, so the prospect of marriage was… well, not wholly undesirable but still hard to swallow. I had already known what a marriage was really like. An abbess once said that it could be more difficult than living in a Convent, if it’s done right. I was fully aware of the fact that I’d have a hard time obeying my husband, given my character.

After Father Nikolai announced God’s will about my future life, I began praying, “O Lord, You know I’m not ready. Please make me ready to accept this decision with my whole heart and my soul.” And I started whining like a stupid girl. I said, “Lord, You know that I will have to continue being a singer. You remember how difficult it has always been for me to find good songs. It’s such a pain. One out of a hundred, and even then it has to be tailored to match my requirements. Please may he be a composer, O Lord! And You know how hard it has been for me to find the right arrangement of my songs because I don’t like anything that arrangers do. May he be a good arranger. Lord, You know how highly I value myself, so he must be a world-class musician, or else I will hardly obey him in work-related issues. And… he must be at least two years older and never married before.” Imagine? That request was granted in its entirety. By the way, girls, it shows you that sometimes it’s okay to pray.

I met my future husband in a monastery. I had seen him before and I had even been in love with him. I approached him and asked, “Hello, are you Alexei Belov?” He replied, “Yes, I’m from Gorky Park band.” And I said, “I’m Olga Kormukhina, a singer.” He said, “Interesting!” We went to the nearest café and had a cup of coffee. We immediately recognised that we had a lot in common, surprisingly. And he said, “My greatest dream is to visit Elder Nikolai Gurianov.”

God’s will was for him to go to Elder Nikolai together with me. When we were about to go to the island, I called Father Nikolai’s cell attendant and said, “Aunt Nina, please ask Father Nikolai if he blesses me to bring Alexei to him.” She responded, “He does.” I asked, “Aunt Nina, please ask him to pray for good weather.” We had planned to go there in September when it rains often but I wanted Alexei to have a wonderful trip. He thought to himself, “How arrogant she is, asking the elder for good weather.” He didn’t know that I was asking for good weather to make him happy. I knew how Father reacted to requests like those. It was evidence of our childlike faith. You see? Ask, and it will be given to you.

After the meeting, Father Nikolai blessed us to go on a walk around the island. We spent five days walking around the island, and Alexei later told me, “I was feeling that it was not accidental that Father Nikolai had told us to go on a walk.” And he kept observing me.

In fact, it was a real obsession, and we both saw it. We didn’t resist, I just said, “If your mother doesn’t bless our marriage, I’ll say no.” He went back to the elder and said, “Father, what should I do? My mother doesn’t want me to get married.” Father Nikolai responded, “I say, I bless you.” And he added, “The Lord will instruct your mother.” Then we brought his mother to the elder, and everything went fine.

Now we live happily and love one another. Of course, it is thanks to Father Nikolai’s prayers, and one also has to work hard to improve relationships, it has to be done on a daily basis. Alexei is very wise, and he has the gift of love.

Photos and a fragment of an interview with Olga Kormukhina are taken from her official website http://olgakormuhina.ru

August 24, 2018

St. Elisabeth Convent

On September 10, the Orthodox Church commemorated a unique saint – St. Moses the Black. Although the saint was from Ethiopia, which is located in the East Africa, it takes a while to understand that St. Moses was a black man. What is more, even the fact that in Church Slavonic language the saint is called by a strange name “Murin” (the Moor), which literally means “black”, does not help to shed the light to his race at first.

Moses became a saint when he rejected his predatory way of life and accepted difficult obediences in one of the monasteries. For his great humility, for his repentance in his former sins and his work on himself, St. Moses was ordained as a deacon; some time later, after his virtues were tested, he was ordained as a priest. There was a joke that remained untill today, told by a bishop at the ordination of St. Moses. When he was being dressed a sticharion, the bishop said: “Now, Abba Moses, you are absolutely white”.

St. Moses died at the hands of the robbers. He rejected to escape from his monastery since he wanted the words of the Savior to come true for him: “All who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matthew 26:52).

Although St. Moses the Black is one of the most well-known black Orthodox saints, there are plenty of them in fact. We can also mention, for example, the eunuch from Candace, who was baptized by Apostle Philipp, and who possibly was the originator of Orthodoxy in Ethiopia. There is also a countless host of saint fathers and mothers who spent their lives in the monasteries of Egypt and Ethiopia, martyrs and bishops as well as simple people of God, who were the loyal children of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

It is known that the Ethiopian Church preserved the Eucharistic communion with other local churches up to the time of the 4^th Council of Chalcedon. This is why all the saints of the Ethiopian Church that lived before the 4-5^th centuries can be commemorated as the Orthodox saints and we can ask them for help in prayers.

Overall, the Orthodoxy in Africa is strengthening, although the number of the Orthodox believers is still less than the number of the Catholics, Protestants and Muslims. However, Orthodoxy is the fastest-spreading confession on the territory of the whole continent. In the end of the 19^th century, the clergy of the Patriarchate of Alexandria consisted of only 2 bishops and 50 clerics, while the total amount of the believers was about 100,000 people, the biggest part of whom were of the Greek origin. Due to the wide mission among the peoples of Africa, the total number of the charge of the Patriarchate of Alexandria consists today of more than 6,000,000 people and the Church of Alexandria is the most rapidly growing Orthodox Church in the world.

The expansion of the Gospel preaching in Africa and the fact that more and more people come to the fold of the Orthodox Church, helps the Christians from other local churches to understand the universalism of Orthodoxy, to understand more clearly the plan of the Lord, to understand the great mission of the Church: to consecrate any creature and to call all the peoples to the saving Kingdom of Christ. Such saints as St. Moses the Black testify that the doors of God’s forgiveness are open for any dreadful sinner, for everyone is “called to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9).

By John Nichiporuk, a Bachelor of Theology,

a student of the Minsk Academy of Theology.

The Catalog Of Good Deeds, 2018

Their lives were literally divided into the “before” and the “after”. They used to work, make friends, dream, love, and believe… until a mental disorder broke into their daily routine unexpectedly. After they left the psychiatric hospital, they found themselves alone in the face of the new world where neither the society as a whole nor employers want to have anything in common with them.

Dobrodel Social Rehabilitation Workshop was established by St Elisabeth Convent this spring. Dobrodel gives mentally challenged people an opportunity of rehabilitation. Government regulations guarantee rehabilitation as an integral part of treatment but in fact, mental disorders are heavily stigmatized in our society. Sadly, people are more ready to admit that their relative is an alcohol addict than that s/he is mentally challenged. This is pitiful because no one is ever fully protected against mental health issues. As a result, all rehabilitation efforts are solely the responsibility of the patient’s family. What can possibly be done?

We spent a day in Dobrodel Workshop and saw people who had been abandoned by many but are finding a way to return to normal life.

Sergey

Sergey is a jack of all trades. He learned to take pictures in a club house and now takes excellent photos. He spent a long time in hospital and looking for a suitable medicine. He is better now but drugs manufactured abroad are not sponsored by the government, so he has to buy them on his own money.

“I was a regular guy. It happened gradually. Several months prior to my demobilization, a drunk soldier started a fight. As a result, I got a double fracture with a displacement of the upper cheekbone and almost lost my eyesight. Now it seems to me that it was the first negative impact on my health.

I lost two close friends whom I had known since my first year at school during the tragic 1990s. I was depressed. I lost sleep. However, I heard about how awful psychiatric hospitals were and decided that I would never go there voluntarily.

I worked in an industrial plant after I had been discharged from the army. My health condition deteriorated until I had a fight with a co-worker. Finally, they sent me to the hospital for compulsory treatment in 1999.”

“When I was dismissed from the hospital in 2000, I received the 2nd disability group, and I was fired from my job immediately. I was looking for a job. I spent some time working as a mover and as an unskilled builder. My condition was unstable due to unsuitable drug therapy: I couldn’t sleep at all, I was weak to the extent of barely being able to drag my feet. After several years of suffering, I went to a private doctor who finally managed to choose the right drugs for me.”

“Today, I feel that I’m a regular person whose skills are in demand. The atmosphere here in the Workshop is totally different. It’s amicable. We are not hopeless. It’s just that the illness chose us.”

Igor

Igor is not disabled at all. He graduated from the Belarusian National Technical University, School of Transport. He used to work as an engineer in a large company. However, he admits, his unstable mental state would not let him stay in one and the same position. He had to change jobs all the time.

The Dobrodel Workshop has found a way to use Igor’s engineering skills. He develops schemes and blueprints of new items in AutoCAD. Igor has a very healthy and sweet hobby: he looks after bees. He has 7 beehives in Bierazino Raion. He participated in a special course on apiculture and received a certificate.

“I used to be a regular guy until I was 25 or 26. I had a job, hobbies, and friends. My life was totally normal. Then suddenly I felt bad, and that was how it started. I was weak, I had headaches and strange sensations. My parents showed me to a doctor but he just prescribed me some drugs and sent me away.”

“I know for a fact that our society doesn’t care about the people who are trapped by their own brain. It’s a huge problem. It’s almost impossible to find a good job that corresponds to your skills and qualifications. Employers don’t want to listen to anything you say. Who wants to deal with your quirks and symptoms?”

“The Open House Centre run by the Belarusian Red Cross helped me to adapt and return to normal life. I went from a guest to the foreman of the Centre. I had a list of duties, even if it was small. I felt my own value for the society and for the world.”

“The Dobrodel Workshop is a new step for me. I have crossed the line between rehabilitation and employment. Right now, I have a job. It’s hard for me to talk about it, but that’s my way…”

September 19, 2018

St. Elisabeth Convent

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Elder Nikolai Gurianov: Being the Father of Many

The "Black" Orthodoxy: St. Moses the Black and Other Black Saints in Orthodox History

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