Of all the various means of effectively communicating oneself at our disposal in this age, I’ve decided to start a blog, arguably the most obsolete at this point. Ironic, coming from someone who’s father was able to provide for a family of eight on a single income of the donations supporting his writings. The point still stands. I could be on Tik-Tok or Youtube, but will instead spend the foreseeable future laboring away sifting through and copying hundreds of pages of my cryptic handwriting into digital form, which nobody will likely end up reading anyway (not that it was at all possible otherwise…).

So why am I here? What have I to gain by such a hefty endeavor? Truthfully, very little. I want to be clear from the outset that this blog is primarily for myself. There are valuable things I want to share–of course–but by the very nature of what this blog will be, namely, a collection of scattered excerpts and entries of my former journaling from when I was a poustinik, those things will naturally be more valuable to me than anyone else. I, for one, would not be the first to line up to spend time reading someone else’s private journaling, if not because such a thing seems an odd use of one’s time, then because the very fact the author deemed his own interior musings as worthy for public perusal would be enough to stifle any initial endearment I might’ve felt towards him.

So I grasp the oddity of the whole thing. I think the reason it has taken me so long to actually follow through with this is that very fact. Yet here we are, and it is still no less odd to me. There are a few things I should clarify, however. One is that my undertaking this is not out of any sense of admiration or appreciation for my own material, but rather reverence for the process that made it possible. That process was my own interior encounter with Christ over a period of around 15 months from when I was about age 19 to 21.

Every Christian has had this experience in some form or another, so I’m not claiming to have been some sort of exception. I’ve been a cradle Catholic my whole life… which I realize only adds to the peculiarity of this blog. It’s not like I have some earth-shattering conversion testimony to share. If I did I suppose I’d be on Tik-Tok or Youtube. I do, however, believe my time as a poustinik taught me a language I have not quite heard spoken anywhere else in the church. I originally suspected the Lord would somehow manifest this language into something more accessible, but as that has not exactly happened in the years since, I’ve turned to this as a way not only of sharing what I learned in the hopes of it being somewhat useful, but also to help me remember and re-acquaint with that language.

Another thing that I should clarify is that the majority of these writings came from a time where I was first beginning to grasp the nuances of writing itself (I may or may not have progressed here at all). Often I was overly verbose when struggling to make a point, in part due to the irrevocable nature of pen-on-paper processing and in part because of the level of experience I had with writing at those ages. With that said, I am making myself extremely vulnerable here, especially as someone quite critical of ideas and their representation. I will be making small changes, deletions and revisions as I go through, but for the most part will leave the original narrative as is, even if it becomes more personal than practical.

The last thing I will clarify is the whole context of the writings themselves. The word “poustinia” is the Russian word for desert. There is a very old spiritual practice in the eastern Orthodox church of going out to a secluded place–often a small hermitage–and staying there for a time of prayer, fasting, scripture and silence. There is much that could be said about the spirituality and intention surrounding these things, but could all be summed up from this one quote paraphrased from Catherine de Hueck Doherty’s book on the subject: going to poustinia is about giving your soul the space it needs to approach God directly in prayer.

To approach God directly. I remember reading that line from the first time in 2018 and realizing then that the poustinia was the place I needed to go. After running it past my spiritual director at the time, I made my first poustinia that September. Although my initial expectations were not exactly met, I have a distinct memory of awaking the next morning with this inexplicable sense I was “home”. It was a feeling I hadn’t experienced to the same degree since childhood, waking up in my grandparents guest bedroom at the family farm. I took it as a signal that I was not quite done in the desert…

At the top of 2019 I left for Combermere, Ontario to stay as a working guest with the Madonna House Lay Apostolate for a year of discernment and weekly poustinia. What then transpired in the privacy of those cabins was the most impactful experience of my life. The majority of it was my own personal encounter with God, something which I believe would not really be fitting to share in this context. Although much of that is bound to show up throughout the blog (and thus will not really be worthwhile to anyone but myself), there are certain experiences and insights I had in the poustinia that I do believe are worth publicly relaying.

It’s best to let them speak for themselves, but know moving forward that my motivation for even making these public is based on a belief of mine that the poustinia made possible: that the very essence of Christianity is adventure. Given the state of the modern church, this could be received with no more enthusiasm than one might a sales-pitch in a supermarket. Yet I believe that if the church is to have any shot at reaching the culture at where it is today, then this is something we need to remember. Christianity is very often interpreted as something clinical, invasive, restrictive and dull. An arbitrary system of hand-selected mores to ensure the best possible success of the next generation. A peculiar lifestyle choice that is tolerable only insofar as it aligns with the broader western ideal of general altruism.

If we as the church want to reconnect with the modern world, we could start with an appeal to one of humanity’s most primal instincts: the thirst for adventure. This is what I discovered my faith to truly be in the poustinia, and it has given me a hope and a vision that I regard as vital to my own representation of the core of what I believe. So yes, these are personal reflections not necessarily tailored for a viewing audience, but I want to share them nonetheless, even if only 5 people ever discover this blog. I have faith that souls could be won if they knew the magnanimity of the adventure it is to discover the God living within them, so let me share with you the beginnings of that faith from my poustinia days…

-Gregory