Wisdom for the Journey: Conversations with Spiritual Fathers of the Christian East

This book is largely made up of conversations that Dr. Serge Bolshakoff had with monastic fathers of the Russian Orthodox Church. These took place through 50 years in Russia, Estonia, Finland, on Mount Athos, and in France. Many of them appeared, in a somewhat different form, in the book In Search o [...]
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This book is largely made up of conversations that Dr. Serge Bolshakoff had with monastic fathers of the Russian Orthodox Church. These took place through 50 years in Russia, Estonia, Finland, on Mount Athos, and in France. Many of them appeared, in a somewhat different form, in the book In Search of True Wisdom, now out of print. These accounts have a vivid quality so that we can feel ourselves being drawn alongside the author into the presences of these great teachers of life and religion as they talk with him. They are profoundly enlightening about Eastern Orthodox spirituality. These qualities derive from the nature of the encounters: they are between a man of devout Orthodox faith with an unusual skill for interviewing and then recording what was said and men advanced in the life of prayer, some of whom were true mystics. There is a poetry in these writings. It breaks through in the descriptions of landscapes and monasteries. Thus transformed they symbolize the deeper meaning of the text. The journey that Bolshakoff paints is an icon of the spiritual journey. In the course of these travels this searching man of God found much deep Christian meaning, and in these accounts he seeks to share it with us.