Journey Back to Eden.pdf - St Mark Coptic Orthodox Church Chicago

AFTERWORDFifteen years have passed since my sojourn in Egypt. Scarcely anhour and never a day has passed without my thoughts returning tothat time. And while I have parlayed the experience into a doctoraldissertation as well as into the resources of thousands of retreatconferences, days of recollection, classroom illustrations, and pedagogicalanecdotes, returning from Egypt has made me infinitelypoorer than I was while living there among the monks in their remotemonasteries. Though I have revisited my desert haunts a fewtimes since then, each effort to do so grows heavier with the realizationthat there is no going back. God has set an angel with afiery sword at the gate of Eden.I hope that the poverty within my soul after all these years ofdis-location since I left is of the spiritual kind that Jesus called“blessed!” I only know that it robs me, not only of what I unexpectedlyfound in that blessed corridor of time, but also of my easeof presence and sense of home in the present society to which I belongand, sadly, I am even less at home in the setting of the Westernmonks with whom I pray.For all the burden of these transitions, however, I have neverregretted the opportunities of those days. Only a grateful memorylies at the bottom of all the pain. What purity of prayer, what admirationfor saints, what wisdom of ascetics, what adventures andtriumphs, what humiliations resolving into faith, what filial discoursein grace—all of these were mine for the taking! Lord, havemercy, that I was not then expansive enough to generously receivewhat was so bountifully given. I expect to spend the rest of my lifeunpacking those treasures with thanksgiving.May this little journal, a catharsis of gratitude for me, becomefor the thoughtful reader an extension of the blessings I once receivedfrom a beloved Desert Father.208