* * *
'They sought him too' - that was the title of Gleb's pamphlet.
'My soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land ... Hide not thy face from me ... As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God…'
What is it, the old psalms?
Or it is he, Ignatius Darenov, Paris, seventies of the twentieth century, who stretches out his hands into the void?
* * *
'Desire! What's good to desire in vain and forever?'
* * *
'Why settle down and make so much effort and build a society of people correctly, wisely and morally upright?
To this, of course, no one can give me an answer.
All they could answer me was:
'To get pleasure'.
Yes, if I were a flower or a cow, I would get pleasure.
But asking myself constant questions, I cannot be happy, even at the highest and immediate happiness, love of neighbor and love of humanity to me...
For I know that tomorrow it will all be destroyed:
I and all the happiness and all the love and all of humanity will turn to nothing in the old chaos.
And under such a condition I cannot accept happiness at any price because I will not and do not want to be happy under the condition of zero that threatens me.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
* * *
'Nature, through my consciousness, proclaims me about some harmony in the whole...
She tells me that, though I know well that cannot and will never participate in the 'harmony of the whole', and I do not understand it at all, but I must still comply with this proclamation.
I must accept, to accept suffering, since harmony in general, and agree to live.
However, I do not care abour the whole and its harmony exactly after I will die, whether it will be in the whole with the harmony of the world, or it will be destroyed right now with me?
While I do not know, why? - I cannot do anything, I cannot live.
Well, you'll have 6,000 acres in the province of Samara, 300 horses, well then?
And I totally descouraged and did not know what to think further.
Or starting to think about how I was brought up children, I said to myself,
'Why?'
Or, talking about how people can achieve well-being, I suddenly said to himself, 'What do I care?'
Or thinking of the glory that will get me my writings, I said to myself:
'Well, you will be more glorious than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, all the writers in the world - well, what of it?
And I could answer nothing.
Life was not, because there was no such desires, the satisfaction that I found would be prudent...
The truth was that life was meaningless.'
Leo Tolstoy.
* * *
'No possible satisfaction in the world cannot be sufficient to quench yearning of man to put the limit of his desire and to fill the bottomless pit of his heart."
Arthur Schopenhauer.
* * *
Alexander Pushkin:
I am a child of the earth and sky,
But my generation is heavenly...
* * *
I began to look by my painfully opened eye,
As being freed from walleyes by a physician.
'I can see some light,' I said finally.
'Go on, he continued, 'you hold on this world;
Let it be unto thee the only goal,
Until you reach narrow gates of salvation,
Go on!'
And I set off running at the same moment.
* * *
Not for everyday emotion
Not for gain, not for battle,
We are born for inspiration,
For sweet sounds and prayers.
* * *
Mikhail Lermontov:
In a moment of difficult life,
Or sadness sits in the heart,
A wonderful prayer
I am reciting by heart.
The power of grace
In consonance of words is alive
And incomprehensible.
Holy beauty breathes in them.
Doubt will slide as the burden
From my soul.
And I believe, I cry,
And it is so easy, easy...
* * *
Nikolai Gogol:
'Compatriots, it is terrible! ..
The whole dying part of mine moans, feeling gigantic increase and fruits, which are the seeds we sew in life, not knowing and not hearing what ghosts would lift from them...
Maybe my farewell story will act as something for those who still believe life is still a toy...
And their heart will hear at least in part the mystery of strict and innermost the heavenly music of this mystery.'
* * *
'You created us to seek Thee, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.'
(St. Augustine Aurelius)
* * *
'For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
For he must reign, until he hath put all enemies under his feet.
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death'
(1 Corinthians 15, Apostle Paul)
'God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son'.
(1 John 5:11)
'By honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things'.
(2 Corinthians 6:8-10)
* * *
'I'd rather die for Jesus Christ than to reign over all the earth.
I'm looking for him who died for us,
I desire for him who has risen for us...'
(Ignatius of Antioch. Romans. 4)
* * *
'Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord'
(Romans 8:38-39)
'nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me'.
(Galatians 2:20)
'For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain'.
(Philippians 1:21)
'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith'.
(1 John 5:4)
'Да и все почитаю тщетою ради превосходства познания Христа Иисуса, Господа моего: для Него я от всего отказался, и все почитаю за сор, чтобы приобрести Христа'.
(Philippians 3:8)
* * *
Nikolai Gumilev:
And my soul answered me,
As if far harp sung:
Why have I opened for the existence
Eyes in contemptible human body?
Being mad, I threw my home
To another grandeur rushing
And the globe has become the core of me,
To which a convict chained.
* * *
I'm in the hallway of close days,
Where even the sky is a heavy yoke,
I look in the century and live in minutes
And wait for the Sabbath of Sabbaths.
The end of the anxieties and good luck,
Blind wanderings of my soul ...
Come oh day when I'm seeing,
And knowing strange thing!
I shall find another soul
All that teased me I caught.
I will bless the gold way
To the sun from the worm.
And the one that was next to me
In the thunder and the gentle silence
Who was cruel to my delight
And clearly merciful to my fault;
He taught to keep silent and fight,
All the ancient wisdom of the earth.
He will lay his staff and turn around
And say simply,
'We have arrived.'
* * *
Oh, if I would find a country
In which I could not cry and sing,
I silently rising to the height
Countless thousands of years!
* * *
I did not live, I languished
Half of my life on the earth,
And, oh Lord, you appeared to me
In an impossible a dream.
See the light on Mount Tabor
And I'm in terrible grief,
Because I loved land and sea,
The whole dream of being.
* * *
In my best bright day,
On the day of Christ's Resurrection,
I suddenly dreamt of redemption
What I have looked for everywhere.
I suddenly imagined that it,
Wounded, naked, I lie in more often
And I began to cry over everything
Tears of joy bubbling.
* * *
But why do we bend without strenths
It seems to us that someone has forgotten us,
We clearly know horror of the ancient temptation
When by chance someone's hand
Will connect us for a moment crosswise.
* * *
I left in the air alone
To look at the sleepy backwater,
Where at day it is so gratifying to swim
And cry in the evening,
Because I love you, Lord.
* * *
Blaise Pascal:
'Lord, you gave me health to serve you, and I spent it for vain purposes...
If my heart was full of affection for the world as long as there was some force - to destroy this power to save me and make me unable to enjoy the world: if my body is weakening, or aroused in me a passion of love for others to enjoy my one thee .. .
Open to my heart, O Lord, enter into this rebellious place, dominated by vices.
They keep him in their power...
Wish health and life only in order to use them and finish it for you, with you and in you. "
* * *
'Not believe is the easiest thing.
Disbelief or non-binding, non-imposing, no debt, no job over oneself.
It is easiest to take off one's cap, ran into outside and say, 'I don't believe.'
And then go with the wind, where it pulls, eat what is not earned, not recognize anyone or anything.
Such people are the most non-believers loafers, idlers, dropouts, etc.
They shoot themselves if they do not succeed; life nothing for them.
They were not taught a letter by good parents: it is because at first, and then they were helped by geeks, non-believers, skeptics, philosophers naturofphilosophers and simple philosophers.
This blindness of proud minds is so strange and incomprehensible for me that I seriously sometimes think, looking at all diligently praying simple men or women, that they are smarter than, for example, Schopenhauer, Hartmann and other inventors of systems in order to explain the beginning of all things.
They are really smarter!
They seem to understand that knowing of everything is not open completely opened to a person - the beginning and end of things - until that time he has only one leader: sense, religion...
However, the greatest of thinkers, the true geniuses, believed before and now believe.
One can point to examples of the first minds of naturalists, thinkers...
They penetrate deep into matter of creation, exploring it in every way, make great discoveries, but they do not infringe the Creator.
Only henchmen of science infringe, who devoid of sacred creative fire, and willful ignoramuses.
And unfortunately, there are legion of them.
(Ivan Goncharov)
* * *
God's temple on the hill flashed.
And child-friendly sense of faith
It suddenly puffed at the soul.
No denial, no doubt,
And voice of unearthly whispers:
'Seize the moment of excitement,
Come with an open head!'
The temple of sighs, the temple of sorrow,
The shabby temple of thy land:
Heavy moans were not heard
Neither by Roman Peter, nor by the Coliseum.
No matter how warm a strange sea is,
No matter how red is strange expanse
It cannot fix our grief
And break the Russian grief!
To this place people loved by Thee,
Its unquenchable yearning
Holy burden brought
And went off being unburdened!
Come in! Christ will lay hands
And remove by his holy will
Bonds form the soul, pains from with the heart.
And ulcers from sick conscience...
I listened to... I am touched in a childish way
And for a long time I cried and struggled
On the old plate by my brow,
To forgive, to intercede,
And crossed me.
God of the oppressed, God of mourners,
God of coming generations
Before this poor altar!
* * *
Not flesh but spirit was corrupt in our days,
And man is desperately sad.
He rushes toward the light from night shadows
And one who found the light, he murmurs, and rebels,
Being burned and withered by faithlessness
He now bears unbearable things…
And he is aware of his doom,
And he craves for faith but does not ask about it.
The age will not tell with prayers and tears
Not it grieves before the closed door:
'Let me in, I believe, my God!
Come and help my unbelief! "
(Fyodor Tyutchev)
* * *
'Russian person can so easy become an atheist, even easier than everyone else in the world can.
And we do not simply become atheists, and certainly believe in atheism, as in a new faith.
Not noticing that they believed in zero.
Much on earth is hidden from us, but instead of that secret things are given to us, intimate feel of our living bond with the other world, the other and lofty world.
The roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds.
God took seeds from other worlds and sowed them here on earth and nurtured his garden.
But nurtured seeds are live and lives only by its feeling of contact with other mysterious worlds;
If this feeling is weakened or destroyed in you, then seeds nurtured in you die too.
Then you becomes indifferent to life and hate it.'
(Fyodor Dostoevsky)
* * *
'One thing I know that I feel bad without you ... and every excess, which is not my God, is poverty for me.'
(St. Augustine Aurelius)
* * *
That I long for thee, only thee, let my heart repeat it without end.
All desires that embarrass me night and day are fundamentally false and vain.
As the night hides in its prayers for the light darkness, so in the depths of my being shouting sounds:
'I thirst for thee, only thee...'
Oh my only friend, my beloved, the gates are open in my house, do not pass away, like a dream!
Let's the least of me remain so that I could say:
You are everything.
Let the least of me remain, so I can feel thee everywhere.
And resort to thee with all needs and offer my love hourly.
Let's the least of me remain, so that I cannot cover Thee.
Let it remain the least of my tie, so that I can be bound with Thy love by ties of Thy will.
Thy love to me crave for my love!
(Rabindranat Tagore)
* * *
'God became man so that we can divinize'.
(St. Athanasius the Great)
* * *
Oh Thou who is infinite by space,
Alive in motion of matter,
Thou art eternal by flight of time,
Thou are personless in three persons of the Godhead!
The Spirit, who is everywhere and a single,
Who has no place and no reason,
Whom no one could understand,
Who fills all by Himself,
Embraces, builds and retains,
Whom we call 'God!'
The timeless existence of chaos
From the depths of eternity Though called
And eternity, which was born before the ages,
In Thyself Thou hast founded.
He is Himself of Himself.
And shines by Himself from Himself
Thou art the light, where light came from,
Creating all by one word,
Extending in new creation,
Thou were, Thou art, Thou shall be forever!
As a drop lowered in the sea,
The entire firmament shines in front of Thee;
But what f universe I see?
And what am I before Thee?
In that air ocean
Multiplied by a million worlds
Hundredfold than other worlds, and the thing
I will dare to compare with Thee,
Will be only one point,
And I'm in front of Thee is nothing.
Thou exist, nature's order proclaims,
My heart says that to me
My mind assures me:
Thou exist, and I'm not nothing!
I am a part of the entire universe,
I was put, methinks,
In the venerable middle of the nature
Where Thou finished bodily creatures.
Where you started heavenly spirits
And the chain of all beings finished in me.
Thou contain a chain of beings,
Thou contain and nourish it,
Thou connect the end of the beginning
And Thou give death by life,
As sparks fall and run out,
So suns will be born of Thee;
As in frosty clear day in winter
Specks of frost sparkle
They roll and shine,
As stars in the depths over Thee,
I am and, of course, Thou art too!
I am the link of the worlds, which exist everywhere,
I am an extreme degree of substance
I am living center,
An initial features of the Deity.
I have a body in the dust of decay,
I command thunders by mind,
I am the king; I am a slave; I am a worm; I am God!
But, as I am so wonderful,
Whence have I come? I am unknown.
But I could not be myself.
Thy creature I am, oh Creator!
I am a creature of Thy wisdom!
Thou art the source of life, the giver of wealth,
And the king of my soul!
Fir thy truth it was necessary
That the death abyss was passed
By my immortal being,
My spirit dressed in mortality
And through death I returned
Father! in Thy immortality.
Gavril Derzhavin
* * *
How handy this carefully compiled by someone's hand booklet was for Ignatius in his tortured standing before a question-barrier!
Vociferous moaning through dozens, hundreds or thousands of years...
Of them who lived at one time, glorious and great ones, just like him, Ignatius Darenov, rejected the 'dust of earthly vanities', and languished before unknown, incredible and impossible things.
Before the barrier behind which there was the thing that was madness to this world.
Who of them darde to cross the line?
'Let me in, I believe, my God.
Come help my unbelief!'
'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith'
(1 John 5:4).
There, beyond question, a barrier, all the answers and ends met.
There an impasse ended and infinity began.
But it was all wrong there, everything was incredible, as in Wonderland.
There was madness there.
'Yes' or 'No"'?
'No' was reasonable, 'Yes' was mad.
But reasonable 'no' meant 'no' to everything: life, future, joy and meaning. And thus it was crazy too.
It was dead and empty as the eye sockets of a driver of a locomotive flying to nowhere.
'Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit'.
(Ecclesiastes 2:17)
Ignatius stood in the vestibule before the open door.
Behind there were a 'no' past, present and future.
Past and future, devouring each other in the name of this, which is not.
It was real nothing.
Ahead there was an incredible 'something'.
And more and more discernible call of this 'something' that everyone was impossible to resist.
'It's too late I loved Thee, too late I loved Thee, O Beauty so ancient and ever new!
And now Thou was inside, and I was outside, and there I was looking for Thee ...
Thou were with me, but I was not with Thee ...
But here Thou cried and called me, and broke through my deafness.
Thou flashed and flashed and drove away my blindness.
You touched me, and I was smitten by thy peace.' "
(St. Augustine Aurelius)
Only Joanna as a faithful shadow or a double waited expectantly behind his backs.
And her hair tied up by an ancient twisted cord was waved the time flying past her.