The last time I headed to the mountains of western Pennsylvania for a spiritual retreat, the Martz bus was crammed with students returning to school after Easter weekend. It was not a pleasant ride. The bus driver, annoyed that he had to load passengers’ luggage into the baggage compartment all by himself, was in a foul mood. We arrived in Scranton more than a half hour late, though I suppose things could have been worse.
Brother Daniel met me at the station. In his black hat (skufia), sunglasses, long flowing beard and full black cassock, he looked like a monk from central casting. I first met Brother Daniel a year and a half earlier when he came to St. Tikhon’s monastery as a postulant from Colorado. He stayed in the guest room across the hall from me. He had short hair then but now his long hair was tied in a pony tail, and then of course there was his mammoth beard.
Saint Tikhon’s in Waymart, Pennsylvania is so isolated that when visitors without a car come to visit, a monk has to drive to the bus station to pick them up. It’s a 40-minute ride from the station to the monastery so that’s plenty of time to chat and get to know the monk who’s chauffeuring you.
I could see that monastic life was agreeing with Brother Daniel. He seemed happy and he had certainly retained his sense of humor. If you think talking to a monk is like walking on eggshells where you have to watch your P’s and Q’s and talk only of “holy things,” think again. We laughed and talked so much I was almost a little sorry that the drive came to an end as he brought me to the front door of the guest house.
Visiting an Orthodox monastery during Great Lent (Orthodox Easter this year was May 5) is not for the weak of heart. The diet is strictly vegetarian, though shell fish can be eaten on certain days. No dairy, no butter. There’s only one big meal a day — a lush vegetarian feast — although in the morning after Divine Liturgy you can help yourself to a variety of cereals, fruits, bagels, dried fruits and so on, so it’s impossible to go hungry.
I encountered my old friend Father Stephen, who had arranged this and all my prior visits to the monastery. During this visit Father Stephen told me about his trip with the Abbot, Father Sergius, author of the book, Acquiring the Mind of Christ, to Essex, England, Italy, and Istanbul. Often when the Abbot travels he asks one of the monks to accompany him.
Istanbul, of course, is in Muslim-dominated Turkey, and for Christians this can be problematic. Father Stephen — all Orthodox monks, even non-priests, are called ‘Father’ after spending a specified amount of time in the monastery — told me how it was recommended to Abbot Sergius to hold off wearing a cross in public while in Istanbul.
In recent years, the Turkish government has banned foreign Christians with Turkish spouses and children from settling in the country. Attacks on Christian sites in Turkey have also increased since 2015.
Abbot Sergius was advised to leave the cross behind because of “uncertain radical elements that could be in hiding.” Both Abbot Sergius and Father Stephen still wore their black cassocks and monastic black hats while in Turkey although, as Father Stephen explained, nearly everybody on the street is in some form of robed dress. There are no woke lefty women walking around with their tattooed flabby flesh exposed.
“We didn’t stand out at all,” Father Stephen said, whereas, of course, on the streets of New York or Philadelphia the opposite would be true. Unlike western monks, eastern monks rarely if ever don secular clothing when they leave the monastery, meaning that the cassock and black skufia (and beard) becomes their only form of dress.
In Turkey, there is a law that Turkish citizens who are members of the Christian clergy are not permitted to wear religious habits or crosses in public. Only the Ecumenical Patriarch is permitted to wear religious attire. Turkish priests and other bishops, including metropolitans, must wear secular garb. Christian churches, even cathedrals in Istanbul and in the whole of Turkey, must downplay exterior religious iconography; hence you have cathedrals that look like office buildings or banks because they are not decorated with religious symbols like a cross.
“It’s nothing but discrimination,” Father Stephen said, after telling me how he and Abbot Sergius went into the offices of the Ecumenical Patriarch near Saint George’s cathedral and noticed a man in a fashionably cut suit with raven black hair slicked back in the style of a fashion model. While the Patriarch was dressed according to the traditions of his office (robe, icon nec0klace and a klobuk or veil), Father Stephen said he had no idea who the fashionably dressed attendant was. He assumed it was security but was shocked to learn later that it was the metropolitan (archbishop), a Turkish citizen.
One doesn’t see too many monks or nuns in full habit walking the streets of U.S. cities these days. Many Catholic nuns have ditched their veils although the opposite is true for Orthodox nuns. Today when you see women in black on city streets they are almost always Muslim. The full robed Catholic nuns of fifty years ago have either disappeared or are cloistered in convents and rarely go out. Even Catholic monks when they go out on the town often slip into jeans and a sweater, making them indistinguishable from everybody else.
When Father Stephen leaves the confines of the monastery in the Scranton area, he wears his robe and skufia, which sometimes has funny consequences.
“Are you ISIS!?” a woman in Home Depot once asked him.
These episodes of mistaken identity happen a lot to Father Stephen, and for good reason. People in this country have not seen Christian clergy in religious garb for so long that any man or woman who appears in a black robe is now automatically assumed to be Muslim. But as I listened to Father Stephen relate his experiences, I had to admit that he did look…Islamic. Only people familiar with eastern Christianity would be able to catch the subtle difference in the garb.
Wearing a cross would change all that, of course. A cross would end the ambiguity. It would end those encounters that Father Stephen sometimes has when he’s in New York City and bearded, robed men approach him and say, “Hello brother. Are you Muslim?”
When some people say that Orthodox Christianity is not for “sissies,” they are referring to the length of services, the fasting and the number of prostrations preformed in church before and during the Divine Liturgy.
A prostration is lowering yourself to the ground on your knees, with your head touching the floor, then getting up quickly as the next prayer is recited, then crossing yourself and going down again. Prostrations can happen in multiples of ten or twelve, the rapid repetition of stretching the limbs making for one the best aerobatic exercises in the world. Some prostrations go into freeze frame mode when a bit of “yoga” is added to the mix as you stay put with your head touching the floor for the duration of a chant or a prayer.
This frozen “Zen” position to the untrained western eye can seem highly Islamic. In fact, Islam adopted full floor prostrations from eastern Christianity although all prostrations today are thought of as Islamic.
At the monastery, I stood behind twenty robust seminarians in black cassocks going full blast in prostration calisthenics, the effect of which was a little bit like standing behind a manly chorus of The Rockettes. All joking aside, the level of spirituality and intensity at St. Tikhon’s is profound. When your body is used in worship, when you are able to extend and test your limbs and muscles, prayer seems to become more meaningful.
All of which means, the next time you see a Muslim on the ground in public prayer, remember that this practice is really not Islamic at all but has its roots in a belief in Christ.