Feb 16, 2017

Confessions of a former novice Maria Kikot

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Title: Confessions of a former novice

About the book "Confessions of a former novice" Maria Kikot

"Confessions of a former novice" made a lot of noise in the Orthodox community. Its effect was like an exploding bomb. After Maria Kikot published part of her book in LiveJournal, there was a great response: many men and women responded to her story. Some readers shared their stories in response, supplementing and confirming Mary's words, others accused her of lying.

Initially, the author did not plan to publicize the events from her life. However, the decision was made. And the book "Confessions of a former novice" was an attempt to rethink why it happened that an exemplary novice became a "former" and left an exemplary monastery.

At the age of 28, Maria Kikot, already a fairly mature person, having established herself as a professional, decided to become Orthodox. Moreover, she set foot on the path of monasticism.

Her spiritual father blessed her to go to the famous monastery in Optina Hermitage. However, the young woman had absolutely no idea that in the holy monastery she would be met by a real totalitarian hell. The author describes life inside the nunnery. Before us, she appears as Mary saw her for five years. Her confession is not an action-packed "action", it lacks a plot and intrigue. However, it leaves a very deep impression.

"Confessions of a former novice" will not be easy to read if you have a romantic and sublime attitude towards Orthodox monasteries. However, many responses to the story of Maria Kikot confirm that everything written by her is true. She talks about the complete lack of rights of novices and nuns, that the authorities are absolutely indifferent to their mental and physical health. As a result, many women suffer, their lives are broken. The author shares his life drama so poignantly that it is impossible to turn a blind eye to it.

Maria Kikot writes about how people are manipulated, and emotional abuse is disguised as a real Orthodox patristic tradition of monasticism. From her story it becomes clear how "obedience", "humility" and "blessing" turn into ways of manipulation, and nuns and novices end up in a concentration camp for body and soul.

Reading the book "Confessions of a former novice" is interesting and very fast. It evokes a strong emotional reaction. After all, the elders, abbesses, confessors abuse the sincere desire of a person to know the truth and draw closer to God.

On our site about books, you can download the site for free without registration or read online the book "Confessions of a Former Novice" by Maria Kikot in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and a real pleasure to read. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For novice writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you can try your hand at writing.

Quotes from the book "Confessions of a former novice" Maria Kikot

The more time a person lives in a monastery, the more difficult it is for him to leave, because the very personality of a person is immersed in this environment: with certain emotions, beliefs, worldview, relationships. Life "in the world", if it was, is gradually forgotten, becomes something unreal.

Everyone followed each other. If you don't write, they will write to you. Nothing in this huge monastery could be hidden from the abbess. The loyalty of sister Matushka was measured by the number of denunciations. Especially zealous scammers Matushka favored with ranks - they became elders in obedience, assistants to the dean, matushka's cell-attendants, elders in sketes, and then abbesses of monasteries sponsored by the mother throughout Russia.

It was very scary to piss off Mother. It was better to silently endure the flow of insults, and then ask everyone for forgiveness with a bow to the ground. Especially in the classroom, “mothers” usually got it for their negligence, laziness and ingratitude. This is often used in sects. All against one, then all against the other.

Sneaking has been the most disgusting thing in the world for me since kindergarten. And there was also some kind of subconscious fear that it was only once to try to annoy someone or take revenge with the help of a denunciation, and then it would be impossible to return back to the previous state: there was in all this a feeling of some kind of irrevocable fall, akin to prostitution.

A week after my arrival, my passport, money and mobile phone were taken away from me somewhere in a safe. The tradition is strange, but it is done in all our monasteries.

... conversations at the meal were forbidden, everyone looked at their plates and ate quickly in order to be in time before the bell.

... real monastic life is not at all like it is described in books.

Always afraid of those who yearn to rule over souls. What do they do with the bodies?

For her, order was important, the charter of her monastery, and people just need to be fitted to this mechanism and made to do everything right. Adapted - good, no - you can leave. She often repeated a phrase plucked from the book of some Athonite fathers: "Fulfill or depart." She liked her very much.

Victor Hugo, Dostoevsky, Ostrovsky, Pushkin and some fantasy. Mother did not bless the monastic sisters and novices to read any fiction, only the lives of the saints and the instructions of the fathers, so the books had to be hidden from the sisters. If someone had caught me with such a book, Masha and I would have been hit hard.

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Confessions of a former novice

Chapter 1

It was almost dark outside, and it was raining. I stood on the wide white window sill of the huge window in the children's refectory with a rag and glass cleaner in my hands, watching the drops of water flow down the glass. An unbearable feeling of loneliness squeezed his chest and really wanted to cry. Very close by, children from the orphanage were rehearsing songs for the play Cinderella, music was blaring from the speakers, and it was somehow embarrassing and indecent to burst into tears in the middle of this huge refectory, among strangers who didn’t care about me at all.

Everything from the very beginning was strange and unexpected. After a long car ride from Moscow to Maloyaroslavets, I was terribly tired and hungry, but there was a time for obediences in the monastery (that is, a working family), and nothing else occurred to anyone, as soon as immediately after the report on my arrival, the abbess gave me rag and send straight in what was for obedience with all the pilgrims. The backpack with which I arrived was taken to the pilgrimage - a small two-story house on the territory of the monastery, where pilgrims stayed. There was a pilgrimage refectory and several large rooms where beds stood close together. So far I have been assigned there, although I was not a pilgrim, and Matushka's blessing for my admission to the monastery had already been received through Father Athanasius (Serebrennikov), hieromonk of Optina Pustyn, who blessed me to this monastery.

After the end of the obediences, the pilgrims, together with Mother Kosma, a nun, who was the elder in the pilgrimage house, began to serve tea. For the pilgrims, tea was not just with bread, jam and crackers, as for the nuns of the monastery, but, as it were, a late dinner, for which the remnants of food from the sister's afternoon meal were brought in plastic trays and buckets. I helped mother Kosma set the table, and we got into a conversation. She was a rather plump, nimble and good-natured woman of about 55, I immediately liked her. While our dinner was heated in the microwave, we talked, and I began to chew on corn flakes that were in an open large bag near the table. Mother Kosma, seeing this, was horrified: “What are you doing? The demons are tormenting!” Here it was strictly forbidden to eat anything between official meals.

After tea, M. Kosma took me upstairs, where in a large room there were about ten beds and several bedside tables close together. Several pilgrims had already settled there and there was loud snoring. It was very stuffy, and I chose a seat by the window so that I could open the window slightly without disturbing anyone. I fell asleep immediately, from fatigue, no longer paying attention to snoring and stuffiness.

In the morning we were all woken up at 7 am. After breakfast, we were supposed to be on obediences. It was Monday of Holy Week and everyone was getting ready for Easter, washing the huge guest refectory. The daily routine for the pilgrims did not leave any free time, we communicated only on obedience, during cleaning. The pilgrim Ekaterina from Obninsk came with me one day, she was a beginner singer, she sang at holidays and weddings. She came here to work for the glory of God and sing a few songs at the Easter concert. It was clear that she had only recently come to faith, and was constantly in some kind of sublimely enthusiastic state. Another pilgrim was a 65-year-old grandmother, Elena Petushkova. She was blessed to enter the monastery by her confessor. It was harder for her at that age to work than for us, but she tried very hard. She used to work in a church behind a candle box somewhere not far from Kaluga, but now she dreamed of becoming a nun. She was looking forward to Mother Nikolay transferring her from the pilgrimage to the sisters. Elena, even after a hard day before going to bed, read something from the holy fathers about real monasticism, which she had dreamed of for many years.

The sister territory began from the gate of the bell tower and was fenced off from the territory of the shelter and pilgrimage, we were not blessed to go there. I was there only once, when they sent me to bring half a bag of potatoes. The novice Irina in the Greek apostle had to show me where she was lying. I did not manage to talk with Irina, she constantly repeated the Jesus Prayer in a half whisper, looking down at her feet and not reacting in any way to my words. We went with her to the sisterly territory, which started from the bell tower and went down in tiers, walked through the vegetable gardens and the garden, which was just beginning to bloom, went down the wooden stairs and went into the sisters' refectory. There was no one in the refectory, the tables were not set yet, the sisters were in the church at that time. The window panes were decorated with stained-glass ornaments, through which soft light penetrated the inside and streamed along the frescoes on the walls. In the left corner was an icon of the Mother of God in a gilded riza, on the windowsill stood a large golden clock. We descended the steep stairs down to the cellar. They were ancient cellars, not yet repaired, with vaulted brick walls and columns whitewashed in places. Below, vegetables were arranged in wooden compartments, and rows of jars of pickles and jams stood on the shelves. It smelled like a cellar. We collected potatoes, and I took them to the children's kitchen at the orphanage, Irina wandered into the temple, head down and whispering a prayer without ceasing.

Since the rise for us was at 7, and not at 5 in the morning, like the sisters of the monastery, we were not supposed to have any rest during the day, we could only sit and relax at the table during the meal, which lasted 20-30 minutes. All day the pilgrims had to be in obedience, that is, to do what the sister specially assigned to them says. This sister's name was novice Kharitina, and she was the second person in the monastery, after M. Kosma, with whom I had a chance to communicate. Invariably polite, with very pleasant manners, with us she was always somehow deliberately cheerful and even cheerful, but on her pale gray face with dark circles around the eyes, fatigue and even exhaustion were read. It was rarely possible to see any emotion on his face, except for the same half-smile all the time. Kharitina gave us tasks that needed to be washed and cleaned, provided us with rags and everything necessary for cleaning, made sure that we were busy all the time. Her clothes were rather strange: a faded gray-blue skirt, so old as if it had been worn for an eternity, an equally dilapidated shirt of an incomprehensible style with holes in it, and a gray scarf that must have once been black. She was the eldest in the "nursery", that is, she was responsible for the guest and children's refectories, where they fed the children of the monastery shelter, guests, and also arranged holidays. Kharitina was constantly doing something, running around, delivering food, washing dishes, serving guests, helping pilgrims herself, together with the cook and the taverna. She lived right in the kitchen, in a small room, like a kennel, located outside the front door. In the same closet, next to the folding sofa, where she slept at night, without undressing, curled up like an animal, various valuable kitchen items were stored in boxes and all the keys were kept. Later I learned that Kharitina was a “mother”, that is, not a sister of the monastery, but rather something like a slave working off her huge unpaid debt in the monastery. There were quite a lot of “mums” in the monastery, almost a third of all the sisters of the monastery. Kosma's mother was also once a "mother", but now her daughter has grown up, and m. Kosma was tonsured into monasticism. "Moms" are women with children whom their confessors have blessed for monastic deeds. That's why they came here, to the St. Nicholas Chernoostrovsky Monastery, where there is an orphanage "Otrada" and an Orthodox gymnasium right inside the walls of the monastery. Children here live on a full board basis in a separate building of the orphanage, they study, in addition to basic school disciplines, music, dance, and acting. Although the orphanage is considered an orphanage, almost a third of the children in it are by no means orphans, but children with "mothers". "Moms" are in a special account with Abbess Nikolai. They work on the most difficult obediences (cowshed, kitchen, cleaning) do not have, like the rest of the sisters, an hour of rest per day, that is, they work from 7 in the morning until 11-12 at night without rest, the monastic prayer rule is also replaced by obedience (work ), they attend the Liturgy in the temple only on Sundays. Sunday is the only day when they are allowed 3 hours of free time during the day to communicate with the child or rest. Some of them live in the shelter not one, but two, one “mother” even had three children. At meetings, Mother often said this:

You have to work for two. We are raising your child. Don't be ungrateful!

Often "mothers" were punished in case of bad behavior of their daughters. This blackmail lasted until the moment when the children grew up and left the orphanage, then the monastic or monastic vows of the “mother” became possible.

Kharitina had a daughter, Anastasia, at the orphanage, she was very small, then she was about 1.5 - 2 years old. I don’t know her story, in the monastery the sisters are forbidden to talk about their life “in the world”, I don’t know how Kharitina got into the monastery with such a small child. I don't even know her real name. From one sister, I heard about unhappy love, a failed family life, and the blessing of Elder Vlasy on monasticism. Most of the "moms" got here just like that, with the blessing of the elder of the Borovsky monastery Vlasiy (Peregontsev) or the elder of the Optina Hermitage Iliy (Nozdrin). These women were not special, many had both housing and good jobs before the monastery, some had higher education, they just ended up here at a difficult period in their lives. All day long, these "mothers" worked on difficult obediences, paying with their health, while the children were raised by strangers in the barracks of an orphanage. On big holidays, when our Metropolitan of Kaluga and Borovsk Kliment, or other important guests, came to the monastery, Kharitina's little daughter in a beautiful dress was taken to them, photographed, she sang songs and danced with two other little girls. Plump, curly, healthy, she caused universal tenderness.

Father Diodorus, I would like to ask you a few questions about the "Confessions of a former novice" that everyone is talking about now. Have you read this work yourself?

Yes, I read it.

- Do you have any opinion about this book?

Yes, it happened, and literally from the first lines: as soon as I started reading, I understood the importance and meaning of this text. Many things are immediately visible: the state of the person who writes about it, the problems that he raises, the perspective in which he considers it. And then everything expands and deepens. The text is very lively, direct and clear. It can be seen that the author does not care about the beauty of the style, but tries to describe everything as it is.

Is this something new in the near-church literature, can you name analogues of such a work, or is it really a “bomb” that exploded?

This is a text that has been brewing over the past few years, because problems of this kind have been discussed a lot, and, above all, in 2012, when the draft “Regulations on Monasteries and Monastics” came out. Then just the "bomb" were the comments of many monks and nuns. It was completely unexpected, spilled out. All this sounded very loudly, made a huge impression.

Around the same time, The Cry of the Third Bird came out, which I just couldn't read. I can’t read such texts, it seemed to me that there was solid water there. abstract reasoning. Nevertheless, many seized on this book, because it was at least some way of posing questions about monasticism - more honest and correct. After all, we are used to saying that everything is fine. Golden iconostases, huge temples with golden domes - it means that everything is fine inside. But it turns out that it is much more difficult to establish a monastic life than to build external buildings.

“Confessions of a former novice” differs from previous texts on this topic in that it was written completely honestly, sincerely, directly, without any water, without ambiguous hints, teachings, and completely unnecessary distractions from the topic. It is written directly and clearly about how a person experienced it all, how he sees it, how he imagines it all. This is a big plus of this text.

Apparently, because the abbess wrote that book, and the novice wrote this story? So she has such a simple attitude.

It doesn't matter who wrote. Texts are like heaven and earth from each other. I couldn't believe a single word in that book, I couldn't even read it. And this text is read avidly. It's impossible to break away. Because you just believe everything that is described there.

I also had a feeling of absolute trust in this text, but people say that much is fictional and in general, it is impossible for such a thing to happen. What do you think about it?

I think that those people who say that this is impossible simply did not experience it and did not see it themselves.

- Did you worry?

In the story, I was just struck by the fact that a person describes in fact the same thing that I have observed for several years. One to one. I myself observed and heard many similar stories from other monks. The things she writes about are very well known among the monastics and are discussed between us. Therefore, all this is not for me the discovery of some new planet, as for many who do not believe this.

I was most impressed that the abbess before dinner for two or three hours discussing this or that guilty sister, and then the sisters eat cold soup. And this happens almost daily. Is this a common practice in Russian monasteries? Indeed, this is how it is done, have you seen it?

This is not something that is practiced in Russian monasteries. It all depends on the specific personality of the abbot. I can say that for me a completely unexpected discovery in the monastery was that one person can just absolutely madly, very loudly and for half an hour shout at another person. That is, the abbot of the brethren. They were guilty of something, for example, someone drank tea at the wrong time, someone hesitated in obedience and didn’t have time somewhere, someone didn’t walk like that, someone didn’t have the look that they might like to the abbot... Not that some serious violations, but such trifles. And so, he can line them up in a row in front of the temple, walk like an ensign in front of them and shout very loudly and furiously for an hour. When I heard this the first few times, I just laughed - it seemed to me that this was some kind of joke, that this could not really be. But it was real.

And then the same person could very pitifully and even, as it were, with surprise, say about himself that he was so tired, ill, might forget something, but they did not show condescension to him, demanding too much. And the brethren had to sit with him for hours and calm him down, pity him. Like this.

If they had told me, I wouldn't have believed it either. But when you yourself see such things, and then read it in the text, you know what it is about. It reminded me of scenes from the "Prince of Silver", which described the changeable character of Ivan the Terrible.

But there are people who, for example, lived in the monastery: pilgrims, workers close to the abbot - they partially saw such scenes. But their attitude was different: that the rector “educates” the brethren, that he loves them so much, and punishes those whom he loves, that he is simply strict. But the laity had their own homes and left, but what was happening inside, they still could not see the internal relations between the abbot and the brethren. Moreover, they could not see the development of the situation in a psychiatric context.

- Did something serious happen, mental illness?

Oh sure. The unhealthy attitude of the abbot, manifested in anger and suspicion, for example, greatly exhausts the subordinate person, who even has nowhere to hide - the person is always in sight and all the time under the "gun sight". This leads to accentuation in behavior, to nervous breakdowns. A person suppresses all this, keeps it in himself, but his health is gradually shaken. And this turns into permanent chronic neuroses.

In the monks I saw, over time, this began to manifest itself, for example, in sharp jumps in pressure and heartbeat with any sudden fright, with loud sounds, with sudden movements ... There were cases of hospitalization in a psychiatric clinic, when one novice due to such conditions and attitude there was an attack, hallucinations and serious mental disorders began. One hieromonk, who for a long time was subjected to humiliation and bullying by the rector, over time began to talk, confuse words, sharply change his opinions to the opposite - depending on what is expected of him, experience mood swings, now laughing, then suddenly sinking into depression , etc.

Under such conditions, an atmosphere of internal co-dependence is created, when one needs to constantly humiliate others, but at the same time he feels like a victim, and others need to be humiliated, but at the same time they are aware of themselves as tormentors. I think it acts like a drug that atrophies some parts of the soul's reactions and thinking.

The Confessions very well and consistently describes situations that, as a rule, lead to the results that I talk about. In monasteries, such things, as a rule, entail alcohol - people start thinking about alcohol all the time as a holiday that frees them from unbearable reality for a while and generally alleviates nervous tension. In nunneries, apparently, this leads to the use of drugs and even, as described in the "Confessions", the strongest sedatives and antidepressants.

But this is extremely dangerous: it affects the brain, distorts the perception of reality and leads to mental disorders. It is imperative to write about such things and discuss them publicly - as soon as it becomes known about the acceptance of such funds by the monks, you need to sound the alarm.

Therefore, it is very strange to hear those who have not been in such conditions and say about the text that it supposedly contains slander and untruth. It's all true there.

No worse than the Greeks

I must say, I believed immediately. There is sincerity in the very language of this narrator, even awkwardness in the choice of words, but this is precisely what convinces the most. Any person who goes to a monastery should be ready to accept what is described? If he wants to be saved in a monastery, should he know that something similar awaits him?

In general, of course, this is a serious problem of modern monasticism. Monasteries in the post-Soviet era were founded quite spontaneously. People who had some organizational skills, leadership qualities, were able to unite around themselves, but did not imagine the essence of the spiritual tradition at all, were appointed as abbots there. They didn’t even understand what monasticism was. Because they themselves had never lived in monasteries before, or lived in those that bear little resemblance to a traditional monastery of the Eastern tradition.

For example, in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, novices were ordained to the priesthood after two or three months or after a month. Such a monk, while still a completely novice novice, who often did not even have time to graduate from the seminary, immediately became a priest, and he was immediately sent to confess. He plunged into this environment of relations with the laity, they demanded spiritual advice and spiritual guidance from him. He, as a priest, served a number of people, communicated with these people, but did not have the opportunity and time to live some part of the time as a simple monk. Without any relationship with the laity.

As a result, young monks acquired a bunch of spiritual children, separated themselves from the brethren, and became the center of their little group gathered around. Between themselves, the monks had absolutely no fraternal relations, but such - a little suspicious. On distance. And the closest relationships were with spiritual children. And how can it be called? What's this? Monastery or what? In fact, this is no longer a monastic life.

Even today, this continues: the “Soviet” tradition of ordaining all monks to the priesthood without a long experience of life as a simple monk has established itself in our monasteries everywhere. And then several thousand people came to Pechory for the holidays. And everyone needs to confess, everyone wants to take communion. Therefore, all the monks without exception, with the exception of some sick and fools, were ordained hieromonks. In women's monasteries, I think it was better in Soviet times. But, nevertheless, all the same, the monastic tradition was interrupted after the revolution.

- And what has changed in Soviet times?

For example, the liturgical charter was actually identified with the parish charter. Not only the circle of the day has changed - they began to serve Matins in the evening in order to serve the Liturgy in the morning - but also introduced a lot of non-statutory "private" services, such as prayers, akathists, and so on. The bishop, who lives in the city sometimes a hundred kilometers from the monastery, became the rector, who determines the whole life of the brethren. And his deputy on the spot, that is, the "viceroy", began to be regarded as a simple administrator, a manager according to a secular model. He ceased to be one of the monks and became a boss who was not used to being trusted.

The election of the abbot by the monks was also cancelled. That is, the tradition of treating the abbot as a spiritual leader was abolished, because a spiritual leader cannot be “appointed”, he can only be voluntarily chosen, and so on.

In fact, the monasteries became "grand parishes", or in some cases, so to speak, "farms" to provide for the needs of the diocese. And then, when new monasteries were opened in the 1990s, all these people suddenly began to be appointed abbots and abbesses. From large monasteries began to appoint abbots. Some of them were deeply imbued with the monastic life (I think there are monasteries in which they live modestly, humbly and monastically). But the majority continued to live the life to which they were already accustomed. That is, to behave like administrators and secular bosses.

In the 1990s there was a large influx of people to the monasteries. And after a few years, half of all those who came left because of the disorder of the inner monastic life.

And then Greece played a fatal role. "Deputies" and abbesses began to go there and observe how the monastic life was well organized there. And they decided to borrow some elements of the charter to show that they are no worse than the Greeks. But the fact of the matter is that one could learn from them, but our abbots and abbesses, who considered themselves knowledgeable enough, did not really want to learn. There are a lot of similar stories: when the “governors” and abbesses of the monasteries wanted to transfer something Greek to their environment and took only what they liked.

The "Confessions of a former novice" tells about the revelation of thoughts. The abbess saw how revelations of thoughts are practiced in Greek monasteries (apparently, the Greek elders told her that this was a useful thing). So she decided to use it all too, introduced the revelation of thoughts in her monastery. She demanded absolute obedience. But instead of benefit, it turned into harm, led to even worse consequences, because it was all applied externally, but there was absolutely no attempt to understand the essence for real, to figure out what Eastern monasticism breathes, what it is alive with. There was no understanding that these external factors - the revelation of thoughts or obedience - are not something exclusive and self-sufficient. They are something that enters the general context of life.

- Are you saying that they just pulled certain rules out of context?

That's it. If these principles are taken out of context, they begin to work to the detriment. The principle of obedience is important, yes, but it is important precisely among other virtues. Moreover, this is a spiritual virtue, one of the highest. A person who has come to a monastery cannot have absolute obedience from the first day. He hasn't learned it yet. Experienced monks in the East see this, show the monastic life by their example and love, teach a person to have not only obedience, but also other virtues: prayer, love, humility, meekness, long-suffering, goodness, mercy, faith. And a novice in a natural way, gradually acquires a higher concept of obedience. In the end, this virtue becomes his second nature. Straightening one's will according to the will of God is a subtle and delicate process, which is akin to the professional development of a complex scientific discipline. This is a job that has been going on for decades.

If you begin to demand absolute obedience from a person who does not even understand elementary things, who has not learned to fulfill not only the commandments of Christ, but also the simple norms of universal morality, such a person either breaks down, resists this and falls into despondency, or same begins to imitate obedience.

I think most of the problems in such monasteries arise from the fact that people imitate these virtues. Obedience has such an ersatz, a distorted copy, which looks similar in appearance, but in fact is its opposite. This is what is called philanthropy or flattery.

It is the same with the revelation of thoughts: under the guise of the revelation of thoughts, as it is told in the Confession, the sisters write about other sisters. And gradually it becomes a snitch. A good deed produces the opposite. The abbot who starts doing this thinks that he is introducing something good. But he is also a person, something inside him also changes. Several years pass, and it seems to him that he did everything right. In fact, constant flattery and philanthropy also change him. Of course, the abbot is flattered to think that in his monastery everything is according to the Greek rules, no worse than that of the Greeks. He sees confirmation of this in those people who flatter him. It is as if he looks in the mirror, listening only to those who are used to constantly assenting to him. And then the next stage begins, which can end very badly. This is the stage of serious mental disorders, which I also witnessed and which we spoke about above.

The abbot must show love first

What struck me most about this book was that Christian relationships are depicted, but in fact, everything is directly opposite to the Gospel. And all this is presented as the norm of monastic life. And such a contradiction, this lie and hypocrisy, is simply terrifying. Have you been to Greek monasteries, how do you manage to avoid this?

Archimandrite Nikodim, the abbot of a monastery in the Peloponnese in Greece, with whom we discussed these issues at various times, always said that love is that invisible and inner monastic tradition that is hidden behind the rules and charters. A novice novice perceives the external charter, but at the same time he joins the internal “tradition”, learns those manifestations of love that he sees from older and more experienced monks, first of all, of course, from the abbot. The role of the abbot, or spiritual mentor, turns out to be key, because this person becomes for the novice - for some time - the main source of monastic tradition. Therefore, it is very important to understand the key rule of this tradition: the abbot must show love first. Because in this way he imitates Christ Himself.

We love God because He first loved us. Our love for God is always reciprocal, always secondary, it is born from His love. This is a very important moment, which is a model for life in the monastery. The abbot must be the first to love the incoming monk, give him this love, and then he will also love. Because he is a student, he has come to study, he does not yet know love. He has not yet tasted it and has not known it. In order for him to know it, you need to give him this love. This is the essence of monastic tradition.

And it seems to me that this text that I read, “Confessions of a former novice,” very well depicts a situation where monasticism means anything, but not monasticism itself. I call it mouse fuss when such passions and intrigues occur, when the abbess does not understand the sisters, the sisters are afraid of the abbess, they are suspicious of each other. In women's monasteries, it even comes to some kind of absurdity: the "Confession" describes attempts to threaten each other with the revelation of thoughts. In such an atmosphere it is difficult to navigate. But this is not impossible if there is a head on the shoulders. The problem here is still in the absence of a head ...

There was an idea that this is how it should be in the monastery: they say, there will be no sorrows, there will be no salvation. It is believed that such a life is not for the faint of heart.

Yes, I agree, the opinion has taken root in Russia that it should be unbearable in a monastery. In fact, this is not the norm, this is a perversion. And it seems very difficult, in general, impossible to fix this whole situation. And when I read “Confessions of a former novice,” I thought that it was easy to fix it - it was worth showing at least a drop of love. And this small drop of love can manifest itself in the usual human benevolent attitude towards another. Everyday life can consist of simple manifestations of love… If such manifestations appeared in the lives of these nuns, it seems to me that everything could immediately change radically.

The monastery is often presented as a group of people who exist for no reason at all. For some reason, people in black clothes get together to live together, while it is very difficult to interact with each other, everyone treats each other with distrust. The sisters are afraid of the mother, who is also afraid of the sisters and suspects something all the time. These relationships develop into such a tangle of passions. This situation seems completely hopeless. But if someone at this moment takes it and understands who we are, why we are here, the situation will immediately cease to be hopeless.

If we understand that we are Christians and have come here to live as a Christian, and in the first place we have the commandments of Christ, which we fulfill for the sake of love for Christ, and “he who loves me will keep my commandments”, then something else will appear in life measurement, right? Passions and intrigues will simply seem uninteresting.

It is always your personal choice. For Christ speaks of this as a condition. He does not force us to keep His commandments. He says: if you love, then you will keep. If you don't love, you won't keep. If we take this seriously and understand that we are all Christians who have gathered here to live as a Christian for the sake of Christ, then the picture will change, completely change from within. I think it could be in this monastery.

Vladyka Pankraty said many times in his own: leave this monastery if you don't like it there. Wouldn't you say - leave?

No, of course not, because a person who comes to a monastery does not come to some kind of abbot or to a person. He comes to Christ. I think one can live and be saved in any monastery, live like a Christian. This is evidenced by the whole of human history and the whole history of monasticism.

The ideal monastery is hard to find and there is no need to look for it. Such a monastery is given, which a person needs. "He who endures to the end shall be saved." And if he endures to the end, he will acquire such a spiritual fruit, such a benefit that cannot be compared with anything. But for this you need to have at least a little spiritual maturity, an understanding of why you came, to whom you came. Therefore, I consider the advice to leave the monastery to be absolutely wrong, it contradicts the entire experience of monasticism in general, the entire history of monasticism.

In addition, in the “monastic law” there are canons that indicate in what cases and in what way a monk or novice has reason to leave the monastery. The "Rules" of St. Basil the Great say that this is possible in case of heresy of the abbot and in case of spiritual harm. The latter is explained in the "rules" of Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople, who says that the monastery can be left if there is a temptation from the opposite sex. And if the rector neglects this or deliberately does nothing. Other interpretations of the concept of "spiritual harm" are also possible. In any case, St. Basil sets the condition for leaving the monastery to be approved by "spiritual men." Knowing the arrangements for the dormitories of Basil the Great, we can say that by “spiritual men” he means the abbots of other monasteries in the region.

Such precautions are necessary for many reasons. First of all, because any departure from the monastery is a kind of spiritual catastrophe, which is then reflected in all life. Even if you seem to have left fairly and from "bad" people.

- It turns out that the novice, in some sense, also leaves Christ?

When they give such advice, I think they want to say that it is necessary to leave this particular monastery or something similar to the one described in the story. For this, obedience is given, supposedly to test oneself. But experience shows that a person who lived in one monastery and did not take root, then does not take root anywhere else. Because there is another side of the matter. In addition to the fact that external conditions for a particular person can be difficult, passions also operate in him. The devil himself wants to confuse him, to suggest that in this particular place it is bad, “not saving”.

How to figure out where the thought comes from, is it really bad, or is it a completely unfair thought that slanders the charter of the monastery? A novice novice cannot understand this.

Fairytale detail - an old man from the forest

When you read this text, from the first lines you can understand the complete immaturity of this novice who came to the monastery. I was struck by her story about how she first got there. She was a photographer, she shot model girls, she was a completely secular person. They went to the shooting, stopped near some monastery and set up a tent camp near it. And then she met an Orthodox old man, whose thinking is absolutely devoid of any rationality and adequacy.

And this conversation between her and the old man is generally the quintessence of absurdity. The old man told her: you must come to us, we need a cook. And all this was said in such a mythological, semi-fairy language, in which normal people do not express themselves. She, I think, being a socialite, a young woman who had some adventures in the past, was just interested in the possibility of a new adventure. I think that's why she got there. What a fabulous detail: the old man from the forest! So she was drawn into this environment.

It must be understood that there is a certain horizon in which there is a thinking of such people, wandering around the monasteries. They have their own jargon, their own ideas about literally everything. They talk about the TIN, about the Antichrist, about something else, at best, within the framework of Domostroy. A complete mess in my head, nothing to do with the Christian faith and serious problems of spiritual life. She was drawn in, sucked in, and she herself began to reason in the same way. Her brains were completely turned off, all rational thinking.

She got there for several years, "went to the monasteries." A characteristic feature of this text is that the author ended up in the monasteries completely immature, not understanding why she was doing this. Even if she understood something, it was in this mythological dimension. In itself, this could not give her the opportunity, strength and knowledge, thanks to which she would be able to overcome the very serious difficulties that subsequently arose.

- If she got into a good monastery, would she have a chance to succeed on the monastic path?

Certainly. What is a good monastery? This is the one that has the right spiritual guidance. The task of the mentor is not to command the students, but to teach them to make mature Christian decisions on their own. In fact, the task of a mentor is to educate a whole, mature personality.

The mentor shows paternal love to the student, showing that he is his father. And you already see how he is disposed towards you, how he takes care of you, how much he gives you spiritually. And you also want to learn this, to imitate, his love penetrates you, and in return you begin to love. Then this “family” connection is established, and you realize that this is your father, who gradually gives birth to you in spiritual life.

In the monastery, which is described by the author of the "Confession", there was, on the contrary, a gradual alienation between her, the novice, and the mentor - the abbess. That is, she came with some illusion about the abbess, with complete trust in her and openness, not yet knowing her, but already thinking that she was some kind of “higher creature”, a guru who unmistakably determines the path of salvation for everyone - but she faced the fact that it turned out to be a weak woman with her passions and delusions. This is how sobering up, the convergence “to the ground” gradually began to occur.

I would like you to say a few words about the role of elders. We see how many people come to monasteries, because some elders decide, go there...

I suspect that all these elders are some kind of role-playing game. They know what needs to be done, how to communicate with people, so that this game is carried out. This has nothing to do with Christianity. This is a false, absolutely invented thing for the most part, virtual reality with its own storyline and mythology. There are people who want these elders, there are elders who know what people want.

I think that both those and others behave absolutely unreasonably. The elders generally act criminally, and the people who come to them are at least irresponsible. This has nothing to do with the Optina Elders or the Monk Seraphim, who achieved a high degree of holiness through their exploits. These elders are of a completely different spirit, and we can judge their deeds by their fruits. They just destroy other people's lives, treat other people like puppets. An absolutely heartless, cruel game that cripple the spiritual and mental health of all those involved.

And the girl, the author of the story, got into this mythological reality, into this horizon of thinking, and for her Orthodoxy became some kind of adventure, a role-playing game. The whole problem is that the author herself did not come to Christ for real, did not go to the monastery for Him, but ended up there, like in a swamp, she was simply sucked. She initially joined the game, believed in the myth, in the adventure. First, through this old man, she got into religion, then she went to the elder, then from the elder to the monastery ...

It seems to me that one should come to the monastery with completely different guidelines in life. Absolutely without these walks among the elders. Because no one can bless you into a monastery. It is the individual's own decision. It ripens inside completely voluntarily.

totalitarian spirituality

When you read all kinds of reviews about this work, you see that most of them simply grab their heads from what happened in this monastery, and the other part condemns and criticizes the author. What is the use of this work? Can it change something?

Such texts expose what other people hide. You look at this system of existence and it seems unreal. What happens in it is hidden from the majority, even those who often visit the monastery and live there for a long time.

Of course, it's good that it gets publicity. People may think about the complexity and danger of such a religious life, which is not associated with rationality and responsibility. And monastics can see themselves from the outside. To get acquainted with the experience of another person and look at yourself, test yourself.

Yes, just writing about what you experienced is already good. Maybe she experienced some kind of nervous shock or shock after everything, and in order to get rid of this, she needed to write about it. She was in a closed system for a long time, and when she got out of it, she wanted to comprehend it, and in order to comprehend, the easiest way is to simply write about it. For her, it seems to me, this is a kind of experience of self-discovery. But she lacks, it seems to me, precisely spiritual understanding - this can be seen from the text. She entered this life, lived for some period, and then did not understand what had happened to her. For her, this is an attempt to understand.

The more other people write about their experiences, especially with the monastery, the better. This affects many in one way or another, and of course it is helpful to know what a person has experienced while in a similar situation. Of course, this text may have consequences in the form of some kind of temptation for people who do not understand the Christian life, the essence of monasticism, and who read the book as an entertaining story about what is bad somewhere. Well, this text is not written for them. He's not for everyone.

I would say that this situation is very reminiscent of a totalitarian sect, but the word "sect" here can be used purely metaphorically. How do totalitarian sects differ from other groups? The fact that their leader declares himself the founder of a new religion. And the presence of some special creed is a very important element of a sect. It doesn't exist here. The monastery adheres to all the dogmas of Orthodoxy, but, nevertheless, there is a totalitarian component in relations. I would say that it is rather a totalitarian group within the Orthodox Church.

A separate monastery is a rather closed structure, and it is this isolation that contributes to the development of totalitarian relations. Within this group, such rules are instilled as the revelation of thoughts - that is, an honest story about everything that is in your soul and head - as well as the requirement of absolute obedience, and so on. This whole system can work well if the spiritual reasoning of the mentor and the love of the mentor are present. Otherwise, what could be called "totalitarian spirituality" arises.

And what shows the lack of spiritual reasoning? How to understand this in such conditions, which are described in the "Confession"?

A person who receives thoughts must understand that this is not the sacrament of confession. In fact, the revelation of thoughts is a conversation between two interested people about how to deal with the internal movements of the soul, how to tune the energies of your soul so that they work for our good, and not for evil. A more experienced person simply helps another in this matter, teaches him the art of controlling his spiritual forces.

The spiritual mentor must be aware that he is an adviser, assistant, and not a boss or master. That the soul that trusted him is priceless, and does not belong to him, but to God. That he is present in the formation of the human personality, which is primary in relation to God, and he, as a witness and present at the same time, is secondary.

This is the first point that concerns the relationship of the mentor to the student. And the second point concerns personal impartiality. It is necessary to accept thoughts dispassionately on the basis of objective criteria, which are given in the Gospel, the Gospel commandments, in the teaching of the Church, monastic tradition and monastic rules. Because thoughts contain an element of passion. Usually people with passions get infected from each other: if one condemns, the other immediately joins in the condemnation - it ignites from passion, like from a match. Anger and the passions associated with anger are especially easily transmitted. Therefore, listening to thoughts, an inexperienced mentor, being subject to passions, also becomes infected with them, begins to get angry at the novice, suspect him of something, be jealous, envy, and not trust. That is, he reacts to the revelation of other people's thoughts in accordance with his passions, which are in him. This is an indicator of the lack of reasoning. Such a mentor further confuses a person and further harms his progress.

- Why is such a system bad for monastic life?

The fact that the abbot, who acts by the methods of absolutist power, like a monarch who owns the bodies and souls of his subordinates, deprives the monks, who absolutely follow his opinions and even whims in everything, of the opportunity to become mature personalities. There is a dangerous psychological breakdown here. Most of those who make up the "backbone" of such a community come to this community young. Then they grow up bodily, but internally they remain at the same level they were at when they arrived. They can't do anything without their abbot, not even talk to another person.

I witnessed how a 35-year-old hieromonk could not pick up the phone, because he was “afraid” that someone “big and unfamiliar” would talk to him and ask those things that only “father” knows. The monks are inspired, and they themselves are inspired, that this is the virtue of obedience. Such a psychology, when a person grows up, he is already over thirty, closer to forty, and his consciousness is like that of a ten-year-old.

Infantilism is a disease. It's not just "a person is not mature." It is impossible, being an adult, to remain with the consciousness of a child. There must be consciousness of an adult, responsibility for one's actions. And a person who has grown up, but has the consciousness of a child, is not able to be aware of his actions, to make decisions. Therefore, when a test occurs that requires an act related to morality, they are lost and do not know what to do.

For example, the abbot tells everyone to lie to the “sponsor” or “necessary” pilgrim and say that we have a strict routine, that we wake up at two o’clock at night, we serve the midnight office. There is no such thing, but everyone says that it is, because they believe that the priest knows better - since he said so, then it must be so. They cannot, as adults, be aware of their actions. They do everything "out of obedience." Because they are used to thinking that the priest decides everything for them.

To deceive someone, to commit an unseemly act, for example, to slander a neighbor, “for the sake of his correction”, forge documents, steal something, love someone or suddenly hate - they are ready for anything, because the consciousness of an adult who understands, what is good and evil. A certain type of personality is brought up, psychologically defective, which is limited in moral judgment.

This is a very big danger. And it is always present where there is a claim to "spirituality". I believe that in Russia, if you introduce absolute obedience and revelation of thoughts formally and do nothing from a spiritual point of view, do not have love and reason, do not educate individuals in the commandments of Christ, these individuals will turn into manipulated, controlled people, completely irresponsible, who are capable of anything. They will turn into people without moral consciousness. They will do any meanness and go to any crime, because the father says so, because the mother says so. From a Christian point of view, what happens is that the image of the father and mother obscures the image of Christ. Gradually, Christ disappears as unnecessary. It simply does not exist in the personal horizon of such a person. Everything is determined by the father or mother.

- Is there a way to fix this? What do monasteries lack to avoid such distortions?

As I said, it is necessary to follow the inner spirit of monastic tradition, which is mostly expressed in love and reason. By the way, the external charter of monasteries, as it was conceived by the holy fathers, the great founders of monastic traditions, is imbued with this spirit and completely logically obeys it, grows out of it. Each, even the smallest, provision of the charter, not to mention such important and fundamental ones as the election of the hegumen (and sometimes even the steward) by the brethren of the monastery, spiritual leadership in the monastery, and other things that we constantly talk about, are written in blood. And therefore every monk must fight to the death for this tradition, otherwise there will be no monasticism. It will die.

And the second very important point is theology. Any practice must be substantiated by a sound and convincing theory, otherwise, as experience shows, there is a danger of the development of irrational uncontrolled impulses, that is, passions. Our theory is the Christology of Chalcedon. Since the time of Maximus the Confessor, our entire practical life has been built on this foundation. A dogmatic consciousness is necessary for the mentor and elder brethren of any monastery, then other monks, ignorant of the theory, will be able to safely asceticise and be part of the general atmosphere. Through this involvement, they will absorb in practice what is contained in theory. This is how it has been for centuries.

These are the important things I wanted to say. These are the questions this text asks.

It was almost dark outside, and it was raining. I stood on the wide white window sill of the huge window in the children's refectory with a rag and glass cleaner in my hands, watching the drops of water flow down the glass. An unbearable feeling of loneliness squeezed his chest and really wanted to cry. Very close by, children from the orphanage were rehearsing songs for the play Cinderella, music was blaring from the speakers, and it was somehow embarrassing and indecent to burst into tears in the middle of this huge refectory, among strangers who didn’t care about me at all.
Everything from the very beginning was strange and unexpected. After a long car ride from Moscow to Maloyaroslavets, I was terribly tired and hungry, but there was a time for obediences in the monastery (that is, a working family), and nothing else occurred to anyone, as soon as immediately after the report on my arrival, the abbess gave me rag and send straight in what was for obedience with all the pilgrims. The backpack with which I arrived was taken to the pilgrimage - a small two-story house on the territory of the monastery, where pilgrims stayed. There was a pilgrimage refectory and several large rooms where beds stood close together. So far I have been assigned there, although I was not a pilgrim, and Matushka's blessing for my admission to the monastery had already been received through Father Athanasius (Serebrennikov), hieromonk of Optina Pustyn, who blessed me to this monastery.
After the end of the obediences, the pilgrims, together with Mother Kosma, a nun, who was the elder in the pilgrimage house, began to serve tea. For the pilgrims, tea was not just with bread, jam and crackers, as for the nuns of the monastery, but, as it were, a late dinner, for which the remnants of food from the sister's afternoon meal were brought in plastic trays and buckets. I helped mother Kosma set the table, and we got into a conversation. She was a rather plump, nimble and good-natured woman of about 55, I immediately liked her. While our dinner was heated in the microwave, we talked, and I began to chew on corn flakes that were in an open large bag near the table. Mother Kosma, seeing this, was horrified: “What are you doing? The demons are tormenting!” Here it was strictly forbidden to eat anything between official meals.
After tea, M. Kosma took me upstairs, where in a large room there were about ten beds and several bedside tables close together. Several pilgrims had already settled there and there was loud snoring. It was very stuffy, and I chose a seat by the window so that I could open the window slightly without disturbing anyone. I fell asleep immediately, from fatigue, no longer paying attention to snoring and stuffiness.
In the morning we were all woken up at 7 am. After breakfast, we were supposed to be on obediences. It was Monday of Holy Week and everyone was getting ready for Easter, washing the huge guest refectory. The daily routine for the pilgrims did not leave any free time, we communicated only on obedience, during cleaning. The pilgrim Ekaterina from Obninsk came with me one day, she was a beginner singer, she sang at holidays and weddings. She came here to work for the glory of God and sing a few songs at the Easter concert. It was clear that she had only recently come to faith, and was constantly in some kind of sublimely enthusiastic state. Another pilgrim was a 65-year-old grandmother, Elena Petushkova. She was blessed to enter the monastery by her confessor. It was harder for her at that age to work than for us, but she tried very hard. She used to work in a church behind a candle box somewhere not far from Kaluga, but now she dreamed of becoming a nun. She was looking forward to Mother Nikolay transferring her from the pilgrimage to the sisters. Elena, even after a hard day before going to bed, read something from the holy fathers about real monasticism, which she had dreamed of for many years.

The sister territory began from the gate of the bell tower and was fenced off from the territory of the shelter and pilgrimage, we were not blessed to go there. I was there only once, when they sent me to bring half a bag of potatoes. The novice Irina in the Greek apostle had to show me where she was lying. I did not manage to talk with Irina, she constantly repeated the Jesus Prayer in a half whisper, looking down at her feet and not reacting in any way to my words. We went with her to the sisterly territory, which started from the bell tower and went down in tiers, walked through the vegetable gardens and the garden, which was just beginning to bloom, went down the wooden stairs and went into the sisters' refectory. There was no one in the refectory, the tables were not set yet, the sisters were in the church at that time. The window panes were decorated with stained-glass ornaments, through which soft light penetrated the inside and streamed along the frescoes on the walls. In the left corner was an icon of the Mother of God in a gilded riza, on the windowsill stood a large golden clock. We descended the steep stairs down to the cellar. They were ancient cellars, not yet repaired, with vaulted brick walls and columns whitewashed in places. Below, vegetables were arranged in wooden compartments, and rows of jars of pickles and jams stood on the shelves. It smelled like a cellar. We collected potatoes, and I took them to the children's kitchen at the orphanage, Irina wandered into the temple, head down and whispering a prayer without ceasing.
Since the rise for us was at 7, and not at 5 in the morning, like the sisters of the monastery, we were not supposed to have any rest during the day, we could only sit and relax at the table during the meal, which lasted 20-30 minutes. All day the pilgrims had to be in obedience, that is, to do what the sister specially assigned to them says. This sister's name was novice Kharitina, and she was the second person in the monastery, after M. Kosma, with whom I had a chance to communicate. Invariably polite, with very pleasant manners, with us she was always somehow deliberately cheerful and even cheerful, but on her pale gray face with dark circles around the eyes, fatigue and even exhaustion were read. It was rarely possible to see any emotion on his face, except for the same half-smile all the time. Kharitina gave us tasks that needed to be washed and cleaned, provided us with rags and everything necessary for cleaning, made sure that we were busy all the time. Her clothes were rather strange: a faded gray-blue skirt, so old as if it had been worn for an eternity, an equally dilapidated shirt of an incomprehensible style with holes in it, and a gray scarf that must have once been black. She was the eldest in the "nursery", that is, she was responsible for the guest and children's refectories, where they fed the children of the monastery shelter, guests, and also arranged holidays. Kharitina was constantly doing something, running around, delivering food, washing dishes, serving guests, helping pilgrims herself, together with the cook and the taverna. She lived right in the kitchen, in a small room, like a kennel, located outside the front door. In the same closet, next to the folding sofa, where she slept at night, without undressing, curled up like an animal, various valuable kitchen items were stored in boxes and all the keys were kept. Later I learned that Kharitina was a “mother”, that is, not a sister of the monastery, but rather something like a slave working off her huge unpaid debt in the monastery. There were quite a lot of “mums” in the monastery, almost a third of all the sisters of the monastery. Kosma's mother was also once a "mother", but now her daughter has grown up, and m. Kosma was tonsured into monasticism. "Moms" are women with children whom their confessors have blessed for monastic deeds. That's why they came here, to the St. Nicholas Chernoostrovsky Monastery, where there is an orphanage "Otrada" and an Orthodox gymnasium right inside the walls of the monastery. Children here live on a full board basis in a separate building of the orphanage, they study, in addition to basic school disciplines, music, dance, and acting. Although the orphanage is considered an orphanage, almost a third of the children in it are by no means orphans, but children with "mothers". "Moms" are in a special account with Abbess Nikolai. They work on the most difficult obediences (cowshed, kitchen, cleaning) do not have, like the rest of the sisters, an hour of rest per day, that is, they work from 7 in the morning until 11-12 at night without rest, the monastic prayer rule is also replaced by obedience (work ), they attend the Liturgy in the temple only on Sundays. Sunday is the only day when they are allowed 3 hours of free time during the day to communicate with the child or relax. Some of them live in the shelter not one, but two, one “mother” even had three children. At meetings, Mother often said this:

You have to work for two. We are raising your child. Don't be ungrateful!

Often "mothers" were punished in case of bad behavior of their daughters. This blackmail lasted until the moment when the children grew up and left the orphanage, then the monastic or monastic vows of the “mother” became possible.
Kharitina had a daughter, Anastasia, at the orphanage, very small, then she was about 1.5 - 2 years old. I don’t know her story, in the monastery the sisters are forbidden to talk about their life “in the world”, I don’t know how Kharitina got into the monastery with such a small child. I don't even know her real name. From one sister, I heard about unhappy love, a failed family life, and the blessing of Elder Vlasy on monasticism. Most of the "moms" got here just like that, with the blessing of the elder of the Borovsky monastery Vlasiy (Peregontsev) or the elder of the Optina Hermitage Iliy (Nozdrin). These women were not special, many had both housing and good jobs before the monastery, some had higher education, they just ended up here at a difficult period in their lives. All day long, these "mothers" worked on difficult obediences, paying with their health, while the children were raised by strangers in the barracks of an orphanage. On big holidays, when our Metropolitan of Kaluga and Borovsk Kliment, or other important guests, came to the monastery, Kharitina's little daughter in a beautiful dress was taken to them, photographed, she sang songs and danced with two other little girls. Plump, curly, healthy, she caused universal tenderness.
Abbess forbade Kharitina to often communicate with her daughter, according to her, this distracts from work, and besides, the other children could envy.
Then I didn’t know any of this, we, with other pilgrims and “mothers”, from morning to evening until we dropped, wiped the floors, walls, doors in the large guest refectory, and then we had dinner and sleep. Never before have I worked from morning to night like this, without any rest, I thought that it was even somehow unrealistic for a person. I hoped that when I was settled with my sisters, it would not be so hard.

A week later I was called to the temple to Mother. I heard a lot of good things about her from my confessor and close friend of my family, Father Athanasius. Father Athanasius praised this monastery very much for me, according to him, it was the only convent in Russia, where they really seriously tried to follow the Athos rule of monastic life. Athos monks often came here, held talks, sang in the kliros in ancient Byzantine chant, and served night services. He told me so many good things about this monastery that I understood: if you want to labor somewhere, then only here. I was very glad to finally see Mother, I so wanted to quickly move to the sisters, to have the opportunity to visit the church, to pray. Pilgrims and "mothers" almost never visited the temple.
Matushka Nikolai was sitting in her abbot's stasidia, which looked more like a luxurious royal throne, all upholstered in red velvet, gilded, with some elaborate decorations, a roof and carved armrests. I did not have time to figure out from which side I needed to approach this structure, there was no chair or bench nearby where I could sit down. The service was almost over, and Matushka sat in the back of her velvet throne and received the sisters. I was very worried, approached the blessing with a wide smile and said that I was the same Mary from Father Athanasius. Mother abbess gave me a radiant smile, extended her hand to me, which I hastily kissed, and pointed to a small rug next to her stasidia. The sisters could talk to Mother only on their knees, and nothing else. It was unusual to kneel next to the throne, but Matushka was very affectionate with me, stroking my arm with her soft plump hand, asking if I sang in the kliros and something else of that kind, blessed me to go to a meal with my sisters and move from the pilgrimage house to the nursing corps, which made me very happy.
After the service, I, along with all the sisters, went to the sisters' refectory. From the temple to the refectory, the sisters went in formation, lining up in pairs according to their rank: first novices, then nuns and nuns. It was a separate house, consisting of a kitchen, where the sisters prepared food, and a refectory proper, with heavy wooden tables and chairs on which stood shiny iron utensils. The tables were long, served in "fours", that is, for every 4 people - a tureen, a bowl with a second course, salad, a kettle, a bread box and cutlery. At the end of the hall is the abbot's table, where there was a teapot, a cup and a glass of water. Mother often attended the meal, held classes with the sisters, but she always ate separately in her abbot's room, the food for her was prepared by Antonia's mother, the abbot's personal cook and from separate, specially purchased products for Mother. The sisters were seated along the tables, also in order - first nuns, nuns, novices, then "mothers" (they were invited to the sisters' refectory if classes were held, the rest of the time they ate in the children's kitchen in the shelter), then "monastery children" (orphanage adults girls who were blessed to live in the sisters' territory as novices (the children liked this because they were given more freedom in the monastery than in the orphanage). Everyone was waiting for Mother. When she entered, the sisters sang prayers, sat down, and the classes began. Father Athanasius told me that in this monastery the abbess often conducts conversations with the sisters on spiritual topics, there is also a kind of “debriefing”, that is, Mother and the sisters point out to the sister, who has strayed a little from the spiritual path, her misdeeds and sins, direct them to the right path of obedience and prayer. Of course, the priest said, this is not easy, and such an honor is given only to those who are able to withstand such a public trial. I then thought with admiration that it was just like in the first centuries of Christianity, when confession was often public, the confessor went to the middle of the temple and told all his brothers and sisters in Christ what he had sinned, and then received the remission of sins. Only a strong-willed person can do this and, of course, he will receive support from his brothers, and help and advice from his spiritual mentor. All this is done in an atmosphere of love and benevolence towards each other. A wonderful custom, I thought, it's great that this monastery has it.
The session started out of the blue. Mother sank into her chair at the end of the hall, and we, sitting at the tables, waited for her words. Mother asked the nun Euphrosia to stand up and began to scold her for her indecent behavior. M. Euphrosia was a cook at the children's refectory. I often saw her there while I was a pilgrim. Small in stature, strong, with a rather pretty face, on which there was almost always an expression of some serious bewilderment or discontent, quite comically combined with her low, slightly nasal voice. She always muttered something displeased under her breath, and sometimes, if something didn’t work out for her, she cursed at pots, scoops, carts, at herself and, of course, at the one who came across her arm. But all this was somehow childish, even funny, rarely anyone took it seriously. This time it looks like she did something serious.
Mother began to scold her menacingly, and M. Euphrosia, in her displeased childlike manner, bulging her eyes, justified herself, blaming all the other sisters in her turn. Then Mother got tired and gave the floor to the others. Sisters of different ranks stood up in turn and each told some unpleasant story from the life of M. Euphrosia. Novice Galina from the sewing shop remembered how Mother Euphrosia took the scissors from her and did not return them. Because of these scissors, a scandal erupted, because M. Euphrosia did not want to confess to this atrocity. Everything else was about the same. I somehow felt a little sorry for M. Euphrosia when the whole assembly of sisters, headed by Matushka, attacked her alone and accused her of misdeeds, most of which were committed quite a long time ago. Then she no longer made excuses, it was clear that it was useless, she just stood with her eyes downcast on the floor and bellowed discontentedly, like a beaten animal. But, of course, I thought, Mother knows what she is doing, all this is for the correction and salvation of a lost soul. It took about an hour before the flow of complaints and insults finally dried up. Matushka summed it up and delivered a verdict: send m. Euphrosia to be corrected in Rozhdestveno. Everyone froze. I didn’t know where Rozhdestveno was and what was happening there, but judging by the way Mother Euphrosia begged her with tears not to send her there, it became clear that there was little good there. It took another half an hour to threaten and exhort the weeping m. Euphrosia, she was offered either to leave completely, or to go to the proposed exile. Finally Matushka rang the bell on her desk, and the reading sister at the lectern began to read a book about the Hesychasts of Athos. The sisters set to work on the cold soup.

I will never forget that first meal with my sisters. I have never experienced such shame and horror in my life. Everyone turned their heads to their plates and began to eat quickly. I didn't feel like soup, so I reached for the bowl of uniformed potatoes on top of our foursome. Then my sister, who was sitting opposite me, suddenly lightly slapped me on the arm and shook her finger. I jerked my hand away: “You can’t ... But why ???” I was left sitting in complete bewilderment. There was no one to ask, conversations at the meal were forbidden, everyone looked at their plates and ate quickly in order to be in time before the bell. Okay, for some reason you can’t have potatoes. Next to my empty plate was a small bowl with one serving of oatmeal porridge, one for the whole "four". I decided to eat this porridge because it was closest to me. The rest, as if nothing had happened, began to eat potatoes. I laid out 2 tablespoons of porridge for myself, there was no more, and I started eating. My sister gave me a displeased look. A lump of porridge got stuck in my throat. I wanted to drink. I reached for the kettle, my ears were ringing. Another sister stopped my hand on the way to the teapot and shook her head. This is some nonsense. Suddenly, the bell rang again and everyone, as if on cue, began to pour tea, they handed me a kettle with cold tea. It was not sweet at all, I put myself some jam, just a little bit, just to try it. The jam turned out to be apple and very tasty, I wanted to take more, but when I reached for it, they slapped my hand again. Everyone was eating, no one was looking at me, but somehow my whole “four” was watching all my actions. 20 minutes after the start of the meal, Mother rang the bell again, everyone stood up, prayed and began to disperse. An elderly novice Galina came up to me and, taking me aside, began to quietly reprimand me for trying to take the jam a second time. "Don't you know that jam can only be taken once?" I felt very uncomfortable. I apologized, began to ask her what the rules were in general, but she had no time to explain, she had to quickly change into work clothes and run out of obedience, for being late for at least a few minutes she was punished with a nightly washing of dishes.

Although there were still many meals and classes ahead, this first meal and first classes I remember best. I still don't understand why it's called practice. Least of all, it was similar to classes in the usual sense of the word. They were held quite often, sometimes almost every day before the first meal and lasted from 30 minutes to two hours. Then the sisters began to eat the cooled food, digesting what they heard. Sometimes Matushka read something spiritually useful from the Athos fathers, usually about obedience to your mentor and cutting off your will, or instructions about life in a cenobitic monastery, but this is rare. Basically, for some reason, these classes were more like a showdown, where first Mother, and then all the sisters together scolded some sister who had been guilty of something. It was possible to be guilty not only by deed, but also by thought, and look, or simply being on the way to Mother at the wrong time and in the wrong place. At that time, everyone sat and thought with relief that today they were scolding and disgracing not him, but his neighbor, which means it had passed. Moreover, if the sister was scolded, she should not have said anything in her own defense, this was regarded as insolence to Matushka and could only anger her more. And if Mother began to get angry, which happened quite often, she could no longer restrain herself, she had a very quick-tempered character. Turning to screaming, she could scream for an hour or two in a row, depending on how strong her indignation was. It was very scary to piss off Mother. It was better to silently endure the flow of insults, and then ask everyone for forgiveness with a bow to the ground. Especially in the classroom, “mothers” usually got it for their negligence, laziness and ingratitude.
If there was no guilty sister at that time, Mother began to reprimand us all for negligence, disobedience, laziness, etc. And in this case she used an interesting trick: it was not You who spoke, but We. That is, as it were, keeping himself and everyone in mind, but somehow this did not make it easier. She scolded all the sisters, some more often, some less often, no one could afford to relax and calm down, this was done more for prevention, to keep us all in a state of anxiety and fear. Matushka held these classes as often as she could, sometimes every day. As a rule, everything went according to the same scenario: Mother lifted her sister from the table. She was to stand alone in front of the whole assembly. Mother pointed out to her her guilt, as a rule describing her actions in some shamefully absurd way. She did not denounce her with love, as the holy fathers write in books, she dishonored her in front of everyone, ridiculed, mocked her. Often the sister turned out to be just a victim of slander or someone else's slander, but this did not matter to anyone. Then the sisters who were especially “faithful” to Mother, as a rule from nuns, but there were also novices who especially wanted to distinguish themselves, in turn had to add something to the accusation. This technique is called the "principle of group pressure", if scientifically, this is often used in sects. All against one, then all against the other. Etc. At the end, the victim, crushed and morally destroyed, asks everyone for forgiveness and bows to the ground. Many could not stand it and cried, but these were, as a rule, beginners, those to whom all this was new. The sisters, who had lived in the monastery for many years, took this for granted, they simply got used to it.
The idea of ​​holding classes was taken, like many other things, from the cenobitic Athos monasteries. We sometimes listened at the meal to the recordings of classes that Abbot Ephraim of the Vatopedi Monastery conducted with his brethren. But this was different. He never scolded or insulted anyone, never shouted, never specifically addressed anyone. He tried to inspire his monks to exploits, told them stories from the life of the Athos fathers, shared wisdom and love, set an example of humility on himself, and did not “humble” others. And after our classes, we all left depressed and frightened, because their meaning was precisely to scare and suppress, as I later realized, Mother Abbess Nicholas used these two methods most often.

When you have found meaning and truth in Orthodoxy, then everything and everyone around promises (and you yourself hope) that belonging to the church community and trust in elders give guarantees. Do this and that, then you will be saved - you can read a lot of such recipes in any pious literature. And now, it seems that he did everything right, as it is written in the book, as the priest blessed, he seemed to fulfill the will of God ... But it turned out ...

Maria Kikot's book is an attempt to comprehend why the novice turned into a "former" and left the exemplary monastery, where her spiritual father blessed her to enter. The author tells how at the age of 28 she became Orthodox and tried to follow the path of monasticism, not expecting that the holy monastery would turn out to be a totalitarian hell. The book does not contain any action-packed "action" or intrigue. But the life of the convent as it is, described from the inside, without embellishment, makes a very strong impression.

"Confessions of a former novice" was written by the author not for publication, and not even so much for readers, but primarily for himself, with therapeutic purposes. But the story instantly resonated in the Orthodox Runet and, as many have noted, produced the effect of a bomb. It turned out that there are a lot of "former" ones. It turned out that the lack of rights of novices and nuns, the indifference of the authorities to their mental and physical health, mental suffering and broken lives are not an exception, but rather a typical situation for modern Russia. And the author managed to tell about all this in such a way that somehow it’s impossible to plug your ears.

After Maria published her “Confession” in parts on LiveJournal, dozens of women and men answered her: to confirm the truth of her words, to supplement them with their own stories, to thank her for her courage and determination. It turned out something like a flash mob #I'm not afraid to say about the experience of sexual violence, which recently shocked the Russian-speaking Internet community. Only in Mary's story is it about emotional violence - about the manipulation of people, which both torturers and victims pass off as the true patristic tradition of Orthodox monasticism.

There were, of course, critics. Whatever Mary is accused of, I don't think she needs defense or acquittal. The history of this book speaks for itself - with its sincerity and simplicity, it accidentally fell into some secret place of the system, and it will be defended even contrary to common sense. But I will still mention some reproaches against the author. Someone noticed that the title does not correspond to the content: in the "Confession" you need to write about your sins, but here you can not see reproach and repentance. This, however, is not the case. It is worth remembering that in Orthodoxy (only real, not totalitarian) confession (or repentance) is the sacrament of active change of oneself, one's soul through the awareness of one's mistakes, a process in which God cooperates with a person. I see in the book of Mary just such a change of mind - this is how the Greek word "metanoia" is translated, repentance - in relation to oneself, one's faith and one's experience. Another doubt of some readers is the veracity of the story. Here you don’t have to comment - for me, let’s say, the public testimonies of several people directly connected with the monastery and mentioned in the story are quite enough for me. Rather, on the contrary, Maria kept silent about many things: somewhere due to a lack of memory, somewhere out of fear of harming people. She herself writes about this in her LiveJournal.

The most successful Russian Orthodox Internet portal took several interviews and comments about the "Confession" from the current abbots and monks of the Russian Orthodox Church. Almost all of them tried to justify the monastery and the order described in it, and the author was accused of dishonesty and lack of humility and patience. One of the respondents, the abbot of the Valaam Monastery, Bishop Pankraty, who had not read the story, expressed bewilderment why the sisters had not yet left such a monastery, and advised everyone from a bad monastery to scatter. If he still read the Confession, he could learn in detail about the mechanism of turning people into weak-willed and devoted slaves, which is so beautifully described by Mary both at the level of psychological dependence and at the level of material lack of rights. To resist the built system, when you have already got inside, is almost impossible. And those who manage to escape and cope with the guilt of violating the blessing of the abbess (and therefore, of course, the “will of God”) are left alone with their own desocialization and deprofessionalization that happened during the years of their stay in the monastery. Therefore, many have no choice but to “repent” and return. But is it possible that Bishop Pankraty, himself a monk who spent a lot of time in the church and knows much more about monastic life than anyone else, hasn't heard anything about it?

Many apology answers directly or indirectly prove the veracity of the book. This, for example, is a letter from nine abbesses in defense of the monastery, signed by its “graduates,” the spiritual daughters of Abbess Nikolai, who have now themselves become abbesses in Russian convents. In this letter, even if we ignore the style of denunciation in the best Soviet traditions, the mothers report that in fact the monastery has a sauna, and a cheese factory, and a pharmacy, and foreign trips for the children's choir, and rich meals ... But all these attributes of effective management for guests and sponsors in no way refute, but, on the contrary, confirm many of the details described by Maria. They only reinforce the impression that external splendor in the current church system is more important for some of the church leaders than the growth of believers in Christ.

Neither Abbess Nikolai herself nor the higher church authorities have so far commented on the appearance of the Confession. And the answers of various other fathers and mothers come down, in fact, to the same advice about nothing, which in the book was given to Mary by her confessor, Father Athanasius: humble yourself, endure, repent. For some reason, all of them cannot or do not want to protect the soul entrusted to them, which, in fact, is their first pastoral duty (and not at all defending corporate interests).

Why such a violent reaction? Obviously, "Confession" touched some key node of modern Russian Orthodoxy. The main thread in this knot, which Mary involuntarily pulled, is obedience to the boss, which becomes the highest and, in fact, the only virtue. Maria shows how "obedience", "humility" and "blessing" become tools of manipulation and the creation of a concentration camp for body and soul. The topic of manipulation in the modern Russian Orthodox Church was recently raised in a public lecture by psychotherapist Natalia Skuratovskaya, which, by the way, also caused outrage among some believers (though the question is: believers in what?). The meaning of their indignation boiled down to something like this: manipulations in the Holy Church? How could you dare to say such a thing?!

Meanwhile, Mary in her book tells exactly how the elder, the abbess, the confessor abuse their power over the people who trusted them. And the means of manipulation here is the sincere desire of a person for the truth and the search for God. This is scary. Here we recall the words of the Gospel that there are sins that will not be forgiven either in this age or in the future. The question that arises in a normal person: how did it happen that we have gone so far in search of an Orthodox life, that the apologists of the abbess blame Mary for not loving all this and that is why she herself is to blame for turning off the path of salvation? Where and when did the substitution of corporatism and subculture take place and is taking place?

Another thread is monasticism. It seems like it is believed that everything in the world is worldly and, accordingly, the requirements for the purity of life and service are lower, while the monks have an increased concentration of holiness, or at least the fight against sin. If the devil is going on in the world in an ordinary parish - the pop, for example, is mercenary, and no one has a spiritual life, then this, in general, is understandable. After all, we are all sinners and live among the temptations and temptations of the world. But when it turns out that the nuns of the angelic image, the brides of Christ, who have specially gathered to be saved and grow spiritually, in a special place where they are protected from worldly passions and where there should be all the conditions for asceticism - that's if they not only flourish vice , but it also takes on even more ugly forms than in the world ... Again, it's time to think about what is happening with the ROC. This book at least debunks the myth about some special holiness of monastic life. Nuns are ordinary people, and just as they came to the monastery as ordinary, they remain ordinary, but do not become saints. And what is much more important - the illusion of the unconditional saving of being in a monastery crumbles. If something went wrong in the monastery, then no matter how the elders bless you for the feat, no matter how you humble yourself and endure, most likely you will harm your soul, and there is every chance that it will be irreparable. Therefore, thanks to Mary for the warning book: now there is hope that those who read it will no longer blindly trust their spiritual leaders, will not retreat under their pressure from themselves, from their souls, from their own relationship with God, from their vocation (monastic or otherwise). And for those who have already left the monastery, "Confession" will be support on the path to rehabilitation. Because behind this text there is a huge internal work with oneself, with one's consciousness, poisoned in a destructive environment. This is a difficult period of returning to life, to professional activity, to loved ones. Thanks to Maria and for this work done for her own sake, but in the end for the sake of the readers and all of us. If it weren't for him, such a book could not have been written and could not have been written in this way - in order to create something good in readers through a positive experience of overcoming.