Blog Posts
We are glad to be able to share with you, by permission, a reflection by Abbess Katherine Weston–superior of the St. Xenia Monastic Community for over 30 years and the President of the Fellowship of St. Moses the Black–in which she considers the role of deaconesses and abbesses.
Today, because of the recent and conspicuous ordination of a female deacon in Zimbabwe, I want to start to say something about ordination.
“A ritual is the highest form of habit” is one of Dr. Ioana Popa’s signature phrases.
That is also how Dr. Ioana, a board-certified psychiatrist, trained spiritual director, and life coach, began her webinar, Space, Rituals and Your Mind: How to Support Sacred Habits Using Your Surroundings. The event, which Axia co-hosted for the first time with the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, began with an excellent introduction by Dr. Elizabeth Theokritoff, who set the context of Orthodox women’s challenges and opportunities - particularly in the UK, where they are based.
Why do you walk?
This opening question was asked by Jennifer Nahas during our most recent Axia webinar, How to Prepare for a Walking Pilgrimage. Participants answered with statements such as:
Walking helps to calm me and ground me and also to connect me to the beauty of creation and to God.
Walking puts something substantive on my habit of prayer and silence and being.
To reset and get perspective.
To connect with a saint or sacred place.
I walk to focus my attention (and feel free).
Eighteen years ago, on behalf of the Fellowship of St. Moses the Black (of which she is currently President), Abbess Katherine Weston, whom Axia spotlighted last July before the work premiered, began experimenting with using African-American Spirituals as a source or inspiration for Orthodox liturgical composition. She finished the entire Jubilee Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in 2023 and premiered it at the Fellowship’s conference in Houston last October.
My pilgrimage to Patmos Island in Greece last fall really began on an earlier pilgrimage five years ago to England, sitting with Metropolitan Kallistos, who told our small group that “to 'pray without ceasing' is not something we should try to do as often as possible, but is something that we potentially 'are' ... to become a person who has been turned into prayer!”
Way back when I was writing Orthogals, we were asked for advice on how to handle inappropriate questions. We had a dozen real-life examples at the ready. A decade and a pandemic later, I have far more, and I was asked to update this article.
The short answer is that the best answer to rude questions is a refusal. We do not owe anyone intimate information.
Examples, all from real life:
I was 33 years old before I made a pilgrimage to a monastery in my own country. Before then, I had visited numerous monasteries in the country of Georgia: Gareji, Saparo, Martqopi, and also Pechora in Russia, and I loved them very much. At that time, they were just coming back to life after the Soviet period. I could not understand why someone would stay isolated and pray all day, but I did find the idea attractive.