Market Study confirms: The Thebaid Project is Unique (Updated)

On August 26, 2016August 26, 2016 By zosimasIn Monasteries, Photographs, Project2 Comments

The North American Thebaid is truly unique in the Orthodox Christian world. Market research reveals very few projects similar to this in scope or purpose, and nothing like it in North America. Most photo books on Orthodox monasticism center on exotic and legendary locales such as Mount Athos in Greece, or St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai, or on church art and architecture.

Light in DesertBook-OBrien — ‘Light in the Desert’, by Tony O’Brien, University of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe.

Much more than a documentary or photo essay, the images selected for the Thebaid book will resonate with Dostoevsky’s famous dictum, “Beauty will save the world.”

Both inspirational and informational, the Thebaid book will be something to linger over and return to again and again, conveying the unseen mystery and beauty of Orthodox monasticism through visual means, and drawing the viewer to “ask, seek and knock”, and to go deeper into the Orthodox Christian faith.

Because of this podvig of seeking to explore the apophatic, hidden life of the Monastic Way using visual means, I have sought to articulate a ‘Theology of Photography’ (see here and here). It is this emphasis which sets the North American Thebaid Project somewhat apart, and which requires some comparison with other photography books on monasticism.

I am deeply indebted to Archimandrite Gerasim (Eliel) of the OCA Diocese of the South who, in a conversation back in February 2016, urged me to conduct an actual “market study”, to survey and identify photographic books both similar to, as well as different from, my concept for the North American Thebaid. What I discovered is both illuminating, and inspiring.

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Doubt and the Monastic Journey

On August 8, 2016August 7, 2016 By zosimasIn Monastic Calling, Monastic WritingsLeave a comment

“To the reader, it will hardly sound surprising that the evil one is far from thrilled to hear that a man or woman wishes to profess monastic vows. If we imagine the whole body of the Church as an army of the faithful here on earth regarding the spiritual life, monks and nuns are like the elite special-ops teams. We stand on the front lines of the battle for the world, and the enemy sends the fiercest attacks against us.”

by Monk Kilian, Pravmir, July 7, 2010:

Within the Tradition of our Church, monastic tonsure is considered a sacrament, a holy mystery, and thus forms for the monk or nun a liminal event in life.

tonsure01 — (Photo of monastic tonsure included with the original article in Pravmir.)

Many sources consider tonsure to the schema a “second Baptism,” and having been recently tonsured myself as a stavrophore monk, I can vouch for the aptness of this description. Tonsure is the beginning of another life: all sins are washed away, the old man is laid aside, and a new person is born with a new name, given by the abbot or abbess and taken by the newly-enrolled soldier of Christ in love and obedience.

Like any mystery in the Church, tonsure itself and life as a fully professed monk is hard to put into words; I must admit I was a bit daunted by the task of speaking of doubt and tonsure simply because it defies expression on many levels. As with baptism or marriage, you cannot fully know what to expect on the other side of the font or the next day after the wedding. At these thresholds of our life in the Church, we have to leap out in faith, trusting that God is leading us along His path.

I had been a monastic for five years before my tonsure, and when I first entered the monastery, I was chomping at the bit to be tonsured into the schema. I had no clue about the hard work, both physical and spiritual, that monastic life would lay on me in order to peel away at least some of the passionate crust around my heart in order to begin to see who I really was, and who God wanted me to be.

Yet this process, as necessary as it may be, is also very frightening. Over the past few years, I’ve had to confront my own weaknesses in a very matter-of-fact way. I’ve had to humble myself (or be humbled, as it were) and deny myself: my way of thinking, my desires for my life, my understandings of where life was going.

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Inspirations

On August 7, 2016August 7, 2016 By zosimasIn Monastic Calling, Project2 Comments

The inspiration for the North American Thebaid Photographic Pilgrimage Project springs primarily from the example of seminarian Gleb Podmoshensky, whose 1961 pilgrimage to monastic sketes and settlements across the United States, Canada and Alaska, and his photographic slide show from these visits, had an inspiring and pivotal impact on a certain young man: Eugene Rose.

Gleb titled his presentation, “Holy Places in America,” and described his encounter with Eugene as follows:

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A Call for ‘Radical Monastic Renewal’ within the Orthodox Church

On May 17, 2016May 17, 2016 By zosimasIn MonasteriesLeave a comment

Nothing less “than a radical renewal and growth of monasticism within Orthodoxy will meet the crisis of the coming deluge.”

From ‘A Festival of Celtic Orthodoxy’, by Fr. Stephen Freeman, Glory to God for All Things Blog, May 12, 2016:

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Celtic Christianity was the role of monasticism. The missions to the Celts occurred mostly after the rise of desert monasticism, indeed, they were pretty much coincident. For whatever reason, monastic Christianity and all that accompanies it took deep root among the Celts and the English as well…

But the monastics in the British Isles, like the monastics across the Christian world of Late Antiquity, became a primary force within the whole of Church life. They were missionaries. They were librarians. They were copyists. They were authors. They were hymnographers. They were a hedge against the power of the state. They were protectors of Orthodox teaching.

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Holy Myrrhbearers Monastery begins 40th year

On May 16, 2016 By zosimasIn MonasteriesLeave a comment

OCA, Holy Myrrhbearers, May 13, 2016:

His Beatitude, Metropolitan Tikhon, will preside at the celebration of the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy marking the opening of the 40th anniversary year of Holy Myrrhbearers’ Monastery here on the Sunday of the Holy Myrrhbearing Women, May 15, 2016.

The Divine Liturgy, to which the faithful are warmly invited, will begin at 10:00 a.m. in the monastery chapel. An informal “Agape” fellowship hour will follow.

“Throughout the week of May 15, we will have an informal Open House, ending with the celebration of the Divine Liturgy at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, May 21,” said Mother Raphaela, Abbess. “In addition, while we no longer schedule formal ‘pilgrimage’ days, the monastery chapel will be open daily for monastic services and quite prayer. Everyone is always welcome!”
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‘Fire in the Desert’ – The Radical Call of Monasticism

On January 11, 2016January 11, 2016 By zosimasIn Monastic CallingLeave a comment

Monastics are a sign to the world, and to the Church in particular, that there are persons, men and women, whose love for Christ and zeal for following His call is so extreme as to lead them to literally “deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow Him.”

This is the visible, radical, total response to the call of Christ.

Monastics who heed this call are a sign of the eschaton, the fulfillment of all things when Christ comes again in glory. They die to this world, that they may begin living even now in the heavenly kingdom. They wear black, that they might be filled with light. They deny themselves, yet provide solace, hospitality and healing to pilgrims. They wear themselves out through asceticism, yet are renewed daily by the Holy Spirit.

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OCA Monastic Synaxis looks to ‘Creative Methods’ to Nurture Vocations

On November 8, 2015November 8, 2015 By zosimasIn Missions, Monasteries, ProjectLeave a comment

Key Points of Convergence show how the Thebaid Project resonates with the Monastic Mission of the OCA.

The timing and topics of the Orthodox Church in America’s 2015 Monastic Synaxis could not have been more significant.

While His Beatitude, Metropolitan Tikhon, His Eminence, Archbishop Benjamin of the Diocese of the West, and fourteen superiors from among the more than two-dozen monastic communities in the US, Canada and Mexico were meeting at the Monastery of St John of Shanghai and San Francisco in Manton CA, many of the foundational components of The North American Thebaid Photographic Pilgrimage Project were being finalized, including the budget, funding proposals, and itinerary.

At its core, the Synaxis affirmed the message which Metropolitan Tikhon delivered at his address to the AAC in July, that “the monastic life is a vital part of the mission of the church.”

But how to enhance and expand this “vital part of the mission?”

I believe it will take vision, hard work, sacrifice, and not a little creativity. As with any good work in Christ’s Church, it will also require what Elder Joseph the Hesychast would call “patient endurance in suffering,” and, as St. Paisios of Mount Athos would say, philotimo. There will be challenges, setbacks, disappointments. Anyone who seeks to follow Christ, whatever his or her labors, will be taking up a cross in order to do so.

Most significant for the Thebaid Project are these three points of convergence with the Monastic Synaxis:

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