On the Trials and Redemption of Monk Sebastian K.
/I am now closer to completing my little book. A ‘long letter’ from a dying monk who is asked by a spiritual child to write a reflection on his understanding of God. Our old monk who in his younger days was a painter, also quotes from his many notebooks for he has also been a passionate reader. He is a composite of a number of monastics and other people in the world from different walks of life, which I have been blessed to encounter during my own travels [and, of course, for it cannot be otherwise, there are some pieces of myself in there as well]. I can now share with you the first few pages of this [psychotherapeutic] exercise. Many thanks to those friends who have already read sections of this work and have been so very encouraging in their responses. We, the old monk and I, thank you from the depths of our heart. (MGM)
On the Trials and Redemption of Monk Sebastian K.
By M. G. Michael
I
Especially for those who set themselves as obstacles before me, for it is through you that I have learnt of the incomparable beauty and power of compassion and forgiveness. The truth is, I have numbered you from the beginning, amongst my dearest of friends. A sweet balm to the soul even in the autumn of her crossing over.
II
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Everywhere I look there are feathers. Their function is clearly marked. For example, flight feathers and down feathers. Most of the time I find them on the grass in parks; other times near the traffic lights at busy intersections; on the platforms of train stations; near hospitals and fire stations. And as Wim Wenders similarly discovered, very often you will find feathers at the front entrances to libraries. There is more to these integumentary appendages than meets the eye. They are of every size and colour. Feathers as beautiful as the flying flatweaves of Xinjiang, and Ningxia, and Kashgar. If you have time to examine these closely, you can sometimes make out the insignia and decorations.
Inside humble exteriors of churches in the little village of Arbanassi in north central Bulgaria, and others in the northern reaches of the Troodos Mountains in Cyprus, are to be found breathtaking murals and frescoes which have been compared to the magnificence of the Sistine Chapel. The “uninitiated” tourist will regularly walk or hike past these treasures not interested and let down by the first impressions. This scenario is repeated countless of times and in many other places everyday across the world. It is worse still, when we choose to ignore our neighbour because he or she might be of a comely appearance, not realizing that within him or her there is to be found an even greater splendour. “You yourself are indeed another small world,” says Origen, “with the sun, moon and stars within you.”
III
“And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you— it’s born with us the day that we are born.” (The Iliad, Homer)
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor. 13:11-13)
“Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.”(Memoirs, Pablo Neruda)
“The day when God is absent, when he is silent – that is the beginning of prayer.” (Beginning to Pray, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom)
“In every life there is a mystery that can never wholly be divulged. We all take secrets with us to the grave and the most profound of those secrets is who we really are.” (Dark Night: Walking with McCahon, Martin Edmond)
“It was the last that remained of a past whose annihilation had not taken place because it was still in a process of annihilation, consuming itself from within, ending at every moment but never ending its ending.” (One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez)
IV
The Monk’s Two Recurring Dreams
I am walking along a narrow, winding path, when I suddenly come across a great mountain. At the foot of the mountain stand seven old men, they are dressed in humble attire and hold on to a shepherd’s staff. They look almost identical and could quite easily be mistaken for the same man. Yet, I am drawn to one in particular, and I ask him to guide me up the mountain. I follow him up what at first looks to be very difficult and impassable terrain. As we progress up the mountain I notice a series of green pools of water with beautiful fish. The terrain becomes less challenging until we reach the summit. Then I am alone. I find myself immersed in a golden-blue light.
I am holding hard onto the neck of a great eagle, there is some snow on us. I can see a blazing gold horizon in the distance. It could be a fire, but I feel no heat and I am not frightened. I am terrified only that I will lose my grip and drop into the dark vacuum below, or that this marvellous creature will decide to shake me off. It is oddly quiet, except for a familiar choral sound which is emanating from afar, music which I have heard before in another dream.
[1] And now as I prepare for my death
I was a painter in my life compelled by the alchemy of colour and by Isaac Newton’s glass prism of light. Then a soldier of fortune when my art would evolve into a hideous representation of my soul. I drank to my fill and experienced all manner of carnal pleasure. I wandered the earth until my eyes were at last opened by the grace of God. And now as I prepare for my death, a monk for the greater part of my life, I give an account of my days, in the hope of coming closer to my ultimate truth. That I might find forgiveness and be spared from future judgement. Whatever little might prove to be of any good or profitable use to you, from what will follow, this you can take away. As for the rest, consign it at once to the dirt.
“The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.” (Job 33:34)
“I paint because the spirits whisper madly inside my head.” (El Greco)
[2] The first drawing I ever made was of a flower
Myths and metaphors are not to be too easily discarded. They can help make sense of how the mind interacts with reality. My mother would tell me the first drawing I ever made was of a flower. It was she said, “a purple Hyacinth”. The god Apollo created the flower from the blood of the slain youth Hyacinth. On its waxy florets he had inscribed something analogous to the word “despair”. She remembers the impression it had made on her for I had quite inexplicably drawn the flower with all of its intricate detail on the inside of my forearm, right down through to my fingers. I don’t recollect too much of this, except for a commotion made around me. The bulbs of this plant are poisonous. They contain oxalic acid. Maybe I had made myself sick.
“Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.” (Joseph Campbell)
“The metaphor is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.” (José Ortega y Gasset)
[3] Annotations on the intoxicating fragrances
I would draw flowers whenever a new shape, an urceolate or a stellate, a campanulate or a cruciform, for example, would catch my attention. I discovered that colour would determine the meaning of a flower. I filled notebooks, one after the other with sketches; annotations on the intoxicating fragrances; and directions reminding me where I had made my precious finds. I was delighted, as well, to realise through my own childhood investigations, that most flowers showed a bilateral symmetry. If you cut them in half in any place, those halves would prove identical. Then some time later, I began to paint rivers and seas. I used watercolours, or aquarelle, as Father would correct me, whose business affairs would often take him to the great capitals of Europe. He had made it clear to me, above all given as I was of a robust constitution, that he would have preferred I wasn’t too much interested in flowers.
“There are always flowers for those who want to see them.” (Henri Matisse)
“You could wonder for hours what flowers mean, but for me, they’re life itself, in all its happy brilliance. We couldn’t do without flowers. Flowers help you forget life’s tragedies.” (Marc Chagall)
[4] I drew and painted very nearly without cease
I would practise my brushstrokes endlessly and passionately, just as Martha, my eldest sister, rehearsed her beloved, yet ultimately tragic, Chopin. In the movements of my hand and wrist I tried to mimic the wings of a bird, even of a butterfly in flight. I stayed with watercolours, which were good for my temperament. Oils would take far too long to dry. I drew and painted very nearly without cease, as if I was a possessed man, fighting against some unseen demon. And this demon, barely noticeable at first like the onset of a poisonous infection, would grow threatening to completely consume me. Years later, this obdurate dedication to my art would help me to understand the rudiments of prayer. Like the use of watercolours, prayer, too, was filled with never-ending possibilities. “Nothing is insignificant,” the Old Man would later tell me, “all acts touch upon the eternal.”
“He who wishes to become a master of colour must see, feel, and experience each individual colour in its endless combinations with all other colours.” (Johannes Itten)
“Every canvas is a journey all its own.” (Helen Frankenthaler)
[5] An accumulation without the sorting
Next to painting I enjoyed literature. There were books everywhere in our home. So many they were at one time stored one atop the other in old valises beneath the staircase. Most of our books were, of course, in our native tongue, Greek, including a large number of translations from the western classics. I remember the collected works of Shakespeare above all. The Othello volume with its terrifying Moor of Venice on the cover was, in hindsight, a meticulous representation of confused dread. Later, when I was better equipped, there would be time enough for the concentrated reading of these writers and the others which I would uncover from the Orient. There were a number of books in English and French. My English was acceptable but I gave up on the language of Victor Hugo long before my three sisters, much smarter and more diligent than me. For now the emphasis was more in the doing than in the being; an accumulation without the sorting.
“Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Write all the words which I have spoken to you in a book.’” (Jer. 30:2)
“When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments.” (2 Tim. 4:13)
“Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.” (Vera Nazarian)
“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.” (Robert Louis Stevenson)
