L. Seraphim Rose
EDITOR'S PREFACE
Father Seraphim may have been wrong sometimes, he may have had to learn some things the hard way, but he was no coward. He was a manly, virile "warrior of the spirit" (as one of the essay contest winners has called him), one who fought his way, first through unbelief, nihilism, the counterculture, modern academia, and false and incomplete spiritual paths, and then through worldliness and fakery in his own church. If he saw something wrong in the church, he warred against it even if he knew he might get in trouble for it. He did not fight only against that which it was safe to attack, that is, against that which he had been given a license to criticize by his hierarchs or by his circle of public opinion. About one of his own hierarchs whose actions he saw to be detrimental, he wrote: "We respect his high rank, but we still speak the truth when it is called for." He did not, of course, speak of all church problems to all of his friends, acquaintances and spiritual children. In the sum of his letters which have been preserved, we find these comments directed chiefly to those who could help his Brotherhood face these problems, or to those who were themselves facing them and needed to be warned and encouraged. Above all, he spoke out so that his and his brothers' monastic labors in the wilderness would not be swallowed up by the organizational mentality that paralyzes activity, quenches the spirit, and makes life intolerably boring.
There are some who would like to make Fr. Seraphim into the politically correct party man of one Orthodox jurisdiction. This he was not. In addition to his writings quoted in Not of This World, the testimony of his letters quoted below are enough in themselves to show that he was not the property of any party. There are many more such letters which remain unpublished.
The letters presented here also show Fr. Seraphim as one who, out of love for the monastic brothers placed under his care, was not afraid to be bold and forceful in offering correction. His aim in bawling them out was to shake them out of the weakness and complacency which had been bred in them by their pampered modern American upbringing, to awaken them out of the calculation and phariseeism known as "the stingy-heart syndrome," and to help them understand and appreciate the "oneness of soul" and simple trust that is the basis of all monastic life.
Save for a few short excerpts, the letters presented here did not appear in Not of This World, and are appearing now for the first time in print. We have arranged them in chronological order, and have supplied them with tides.
Copies of Fr. Seraphim's original letters and journals (including the those quoted in Not of This World, the collection below, and others) are preserved in the archives of the Fr. Seraphim Rose Studies Center (1139 Janero Drive, Santa Rosa, California 95407), and are available for public viewing.
Fr. Herman
1. FIGHTING FOR THE GENUINE MONASTIC SPIRIT
Aug. 10/23, 1971
Dear Brother in Christ L_______,
Congratulations on your namesday! May God grant you to grow with each year in Christian virtues and attain in the end to His eternal Kingdom!
Enclosed is our official epistle to you to help you make up your mind about joining us. What does it say to your heart?
Fr. F______s being so upset is apparently significant of something; he complained also to Deacon Nicholas. As for giving advice, he asked for it, telling Fr. Herman that he was dissatisfied where he was, that he had a chance to go to Vladika Vitaly, or maybe he would join us, and what did Fr. Herman think? Fr. Herman's reply was by no means unkind or sharp, but it was very definitely based on the idea that we could not possibly ask someone to travel 3,000 miles to our primitive conditions when he was no more than casually (if at all) interested in what we are doing. Fr. Herman suggested that he read several issues of the OW if he wanted to know what makes our community "tick," but that probably he would find himself more at home with Vladika Vitaly's Russian-oriented work. That Fr. F_____ could get so upset at this leads one to suspect that he indeed did have in mind just what he told you: that he, being experienced (?) in monasticism, wanted to come and "run the show."
