The “Russian Priest’s” delightful walk

  • All right, I know I’m falling into a rut of tran­scrib­ing snip­pets from “The Diary of a Russ­ian Priest” just about every day. But I hope that my gen­tle read­ers will see why it is that I am so fond of this book. What a great thing it is to be able to share Fr. Elchaninov’s thoughts and impres­sions, and in this case, even to share in his joy at the pro­found beauty of creation.

    Today, I had a delight­ful walk. At first the ascent was rather dull — along an almost invis­i­ble path wind­ing amidst chalk embank­ments through a for­est of low, sparse pines. How­ever, there were inci­dents to com­pen­sate for this: a hare sprang almost from under my feet; I wan­dered across barberry-bushes and sweet-briar, shed­ding its blossoms.I walked slowly, read­ing, as I went, the Orthros ser­vice and the Hours, sit­ting down to rest from time to time. I mounted the hill for about two hours and then reached a pass: imme­di­ately the whole land­scape was trans­formed. To the left, a small vil­lage scat­tered round a church; to the right, lovely mead­ows, and directly beyond the pass, an end­less view open­ing on the moun­tains, streaked and spot­ted with snow. Around me and quite near to me — torn, craggy rocks. Below — green slopes of for­est; and about all, an extra­or­di­nary, snow-saturated atmos­phere and absolute silence. Only from below came the sound of the brook, and a hid­den spring was bab­bling some­where under a rock.

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    I sat for a long time, enjoy­ing the still­ness, the moun­tains, the fra­grance. At my side some immortelles were bloom­ing, such as I have never seen before, blue with a heart of deep vio­let. In the val­ley below there were no flow­ers at all, but here on the hill­side they were as abun­dant as if they had sprung, not from the earth, but from the air and sun. And I thought: this is why moun­tains are so beau­ti­ful; through them, as through a friend­ship with some wise human being, one drinks in fresh­ness, clar­ity, calm — the qual­i­ties born of altitudes.
    – Fr. Alexan­der Elchani­nov, “The Diary of a Russ­ian Priest”
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    Related posts:

    1. “The Russ­ian Priest”: On our rela­tion­ship to the state
    2. The “Russ­ian Priest”: On self-denial
    3. Why is faith so difficult?
    4. Read­ing the lives of the saints
    5. A Trea­sury of Russ­ian Spir­i­tu­al­ity by G. P. Fedotov

    January 30th, 2007 | Grace | 1 Comment |

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  • This Side of Glory » Blog Archive » Tran­scend­ing morality 01.30.2007

    […] Back when I was read­ing “Diary of a Russ­ian Priest,” I hap­pened on a thought by Fr. Elchani­nov that one of the signs that a Chris­t­ian soci­ety had become too nom­i­nal was a ten­dency to exag­ger­ate the impor­tance of moral­ity. It sur­prised me when I read it, because I had been mulling over some ter­ri­ble news events and con­sid­er­ing the need for increased moral­ity. But over time, I saw the point. There’s a lot more to being good, after all, than merely being cor­rect or pious. […]

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