Returning to Where it all Began
Back in the Fall of 2013 I decided to spend time with my younger brother, Dwayne, before the onset of winter, thus avoiding the snows that would make Snoqualmie Pass on I-90, perilous. This visit turned out to be one of the best I’d had with my brother, and the highlight was the day we drove to a remote portion of Priest Lake, where our grandfather had built a lake cabin. It was the first time I’d been there since my senior year in high school.
The place was just as I’d remembered it, with the cabin still the same color my grandfather had chosen, and Priest Lake, with the snow capped mountains off in the distance, and the little island just off shore, just as tranquil as the first time I had walked on that beach, soon after my grandparents had purchased the property from the Idaho Department of Forestry. I remember camping in a tent, while my grandfather began clearing trees, and selecting the site where he’d build his lake home.
The photo of me standing next to the dock is especially meaningful for me, for it was this dock that served as my special place of solitude, as a sixteen year old. I would spend hours sitting in a deck chair, alone, praying, and reading the Bible and theological works. It was on this dock that I first experienced contemplative life, and sensed God calling me to be a monk.
This beach overwhelmed me with memories of my youth, for it was here where I first felt the desire to wear a black robe, and live a life that would be focused on communing with God. It was this place where God first instilled in me a desire to spend my future in solitude, prayer, and community, as a monk. No longer a sixteen year old with dreams, but a sixty-eight year old monk, wearing that black robe, and gazing out at the beauty that first instilled in me a desire to live a life in communion with God.
Now, at the age of 76, I look back at my childhood with gratefulness of heart. I’m thankful that God instilled in me a love of nature, and in turn, a love of beauty. It was this very love of beauty that would draw me to Orthodoxy.
With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon
Monday November 15, 2021 / November 2, 2021
22nd Week after Pentecost. Tone four.
Martyrs Acindynus, Pegasius, Aphthonius, Elpidephorus, and Anempodistus of Persia (341).
New Hieromartyrs Constantine and Anania priests (1918).
New Hieromartyrs Bishop Victorin and Priest Basil Luzgin of Glazomicha (1918).
Venerable Marcian of Cyrrhus (388).
“Shuiu-Smolensk” Wonderworking Icon of the Mother of God (1654-1655).
Blessed Cyprian of Storozhev, former outlaw (Olonets) (16th c.).
St. Erc, bishop of Slane, Ireland (512) (Celtic & British).
St. Anthony the Confessor, archbishop of Thessalonica (844).
Women-Martyrs Cyriaca, Domnina and Domna (Greek).
Martyrs of senatorial rank beheaded under Marcus Aurelius (Greek).
The Scripture Readings
Colossians 2:13-20
13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.
16 So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, 17 which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. 18 Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.
20 [e]Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations—
Luke 11:29-33
Seeking a Sign
29 And while the crowds were thickly gathered together, He began to say, “This is an evil generation. It seeks a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah the prophet. 30 For as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so also the Son of Man will be to this generation. 31 The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and indeed a greater than Solomon is here. 32 The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.
The Lamp of the Body
33 “No one, when he has lit a lamp, puts it in a secret place or under a basket, but on a lampstand, that those who come in may see the light.