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Wish I could be in Chicago for this week-long event. I have a warm place in my heart for the Antiochian Archdiocese, having been received into the Orthodox Church in 1987 at St Michael the Archangel in Louisville, Kentucky, by Fr Alexander Atty of beloved memory. I still have dear friends there, whom I only get to see occasionally due to distance and such. Our parish hosted an Antiochian Convention during my time there, presided over by Metropolitan Philip (Saliba), and I have fond memories of the experience.

In fact, it was Fr Alexander Atty who nurtured in me the love for holy pilgrimage. He led parish pilgrimages to monasteries as well as to miraculous icons in our region, and he made it a point to take parish groups to retreats hosted by other Orthodox parishes, so we always felt connected to Orthodoxy across the Tri-State Region (Ohio-Kentucky-Southern Indiana), and across jurisdictions. I feel especially blessed to have been able to go on two pilgrimages to Mount Athos, Greece, with groups led by him in 1988 and 1990. Fr Alexander traveled to Athos every couple of years for decades, making his last pilgrimage only the year before his death. I think he would have heartily approved of The North American Thebaid.

In fact, it was after going on a pilgrimage led by Fr Atty to Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Ellwood City PA, in 1992, that I first conceived the idea of using my photographic ‘talent’ to undertake a visual pilgrimage to monasteries across America. Mother Abbess Christophora reminded me of this during my visit to Ellwood City in 2016; she even had kept a typed letter I had written to her at the time, setting forth the basic idea for what would eventually become The North American Thebaid Project!

So, you can say that Fr Atty helped plant and water the initial seed of the idea that would grow to become this beautiful book, truly a photographic pilgrimage. And the Antiochian Archdiocese played a profound part in nurturing me in my early years in the Church.

In planning my travels for my 3+ years long photographic pilgrimage, I strived to include monasteries in the Antiochian Archdiocese. There are not many! But I was able to include the Monastery of Our Lady and St. Laurence (Ladyminster, Western Rite Vicariate) in Canon City, Colorado (in the Rockies, just west of Colorado Springs), and St Paul Skete in Grand Junction, Tennessee, in the farmlands outside Memphis. Mother Nektaria at St Paul’s reposed in the Lord on August 9, 2023, the glorification feast of St Herman of Alaska, and the skete was closed for a time. However, Metropolitan Saba had a vision for the beautiful grounds and well-maintained chapels and dwellings, and in January 2025 founded a new men’s monastery, dedicated to the Life-Giving Trinity, with the Athonite Hieromonk Paul installed as Superior. Thus monasticism continues on the sanctified grounds and prayed-in holy chapels there, and we look forward to a fruitful renewal of monastic life in this region, with God’s help.

All that to preface my invitation to my Antiochian brothers and sisters: please stop by St Tikhon’s Press Booth and explore The North American Thebaid! Some of you may have seen it already in Louisville, which hosted last month the Toledo and Midwest Diocese conference, and where my friend William Weber set up a small display with my book and some info cards I provided for him. (Thank you, William!)

It’s wonderful to see this vigorous commitment to monasticism continuing to flow from Antioch (“where the disciples were first called ‘Christians’.” – Acts 11:26), which has been fostered for years prior also especially by Bishop Basil of Wichita. May it be blessed!