A Time Of GiftsBy Rod Dreher
April 14, 2022
I spent the past few days in Romania, most of that time visiting Orthodox monasteries in the Bukovina region, just south of the Ukraine border. Bukovina is the heart of Romanian monastery life; my friends from Bucharest wanted me to go to the source to do interviews for my upcoming book on re-enchantment. For me, it was a life-changing trip. I wrote about it in three installments on my subscription-only Substack newsletter, which focuses on spiritual and aesthetic things, and strives to present reasons for hope (you can subscribe here). My Substack readers got the whole story, but I do want to share highlights with you here. It was a trip that gave me a lot of hope and confidence.
I stayed in the guest house of the Sihastria Putnei monastery, which is near the Putna monastery, the oldest and most important of all the monasteries of Romania. “Sihastria Putnei” means “hermitage of Putna” — it was founded by Putna monks who wanted a more remote monastery. On this trip, I was based at Sihastria Putnei (henceforth, SP), but also visited Putna, as well as the smaller women’s monasteries of Voronet and Sucevita (famous for their painted exterior walls). As soon as we arrived in SP, in the Carpathians, I stepped out of the car and knew I was in a sacred place. Yes, the mountain air was clear and bracing, but more than that, the sense of holiness was profound. I knew that I had arrived at a “thin” place.
After settling in my room, I came downstairs to meet the monks Father Efrem and Father Chrysostom. Efrem is a young monk who serves as the secretary to His Holiness Damascin, the bishop of Suceava, the diocese in which the monasteries are. He was brought into the monastic priesthood by Father Chrysostom, and they are very close. Here is a photo I took of them inside a church. Chrysostom is on the left, Efrem on the right:
I only just met these monks, but it was as if they had been waiting for me for many years. It was uncanny.
Later, I had lunch with Abbot Melchisidek, the staretz of the Putna monastery. He was a bluff, cheerful monk.
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Later, I thought back to the opening sequence of Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia , (if you click on this, turn on the captions) which has had such a powerful effect on my spirituality. The cosmopolitan Roman translator Eugenia visits a rural Tuscan church, where Christian women are coming to pray for fertility. The old sacristan asks her if she is there to petition God for a baby too. No, she says, I’m just looking.
The sacristan says that those who are mere observers will experience nothing. She responds by asking what she can expect to receive if she sacrifices? He says:
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/a-time-of-gifts-romania-bukovina-monasteries/
