The Blog of Ruth-Entry #2

January 27, 2011

To Our Readers:

We have received several comments to the first entry on Ruth’s Blog. Many have been moved by her experience. As promised, here is Part II of Ruth’s letter to His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios.

Part II of Ruth’s Letter to Archbishop Demetrios:

When I arrived at my daughter’s house, I thought the worst surely must be over. I was completely numb, empty, hopeless, as though having no future, and I had absolutely nothing to call my own, nor any resources. But the worst was not by any means over.

My daughter had an arrangement with her father (that is, a blessing from the abbot) to speak with him on the phone once a week. She also had a blessing to visit the monastery that following week-end. Before I left, I mentioned to the abbess that my daughter was going to go visit on Saturday. She said, “Oh, I doubt if they will let her come now that you are leaving. They will probably put him in isolation.” Immediately I got that his family had now become a threat. Sure enough, three days later, he called to say that she could not visit, probably until sometime next year, and that she could not call him for at least two months. His comment was, “It’s different than I thought.” She was devastated.

Before the visit was cancelled, my daughter was given permission to visit her father for 15 minutes. She would be driving by herself, making a 20-hour round trip with her three young children, all under the age of three. That would mean that she would be turning around and going straight back home, because no hospitality was offered for her to stay overnight. She wanted to see her father so badly that she was going to do it anyway.

It happened that I was the one that answered the phone when my husband called. He was clearly not expecting to hear my voice. He never as much as asked me what happened, how was I doing, what were my plans, was I disappointed that our 7-year plan had fallen apart for me, was I sad about having to go back to the world – i.e., none of the normal responses. It seemed to be of no interest to him that something awful must have happened to me or I would never have left. Instead, he kept repeating, “I’m not coming out!” I said, “I’m not asking you to come out.” With some agitation he kept saying, “Well, if you’re not asking me to come out, then what do you want?” At this point in the narrative, it goes beyond the scope of language to describe the stabbing pain in my heart, the totally helpless feeling of talking with my best friend who was now a stranger treating me like an enemy. His personality was so altered, he seemed so heartless, all I could think to say was, “Why are you being so cold? Are they listening in? Are they telling you what to say? Why the long pauses? I feel that you have cut me out of your heart.” After another long pause, I said, “They own you.” He said nothing. For thirty-one years we were arm-in-arm on the spiritual path. I am not exaggerating this. I was always fully convinced that he would gladly jump in front of a train rather than see me hurt in any way. Now, all the sweetness, the integrity, the caring, the things I identified as my husband, were absent.

In the time since I have been home, aside from the single accidental phone conversation, it has just been understood that my husband and I have absolutely no contact with each other for any reason. As far as the monastery is concerned, I simply don’t exist.

As soon as I returned home, he was immediately clothed, becoming an instant monk, and was placed in complete seclusion. This was part and parcel of a long series of flatteries he had received not only from the abbess but from the abbot and from Fr. Ephraim himself, who had given him a glowing blessing to enter the monastery.

Following that devastating phone conversation, I spoke with a priest. After hearing briefly of the situation, he said, “she wanted to get rid of you”. He shook his head sadly and said, “This is a very heavy cross for you, a very heavy cross.” On several occasions he read long prayers of deliverance over me. He again would shake his head, speaking of “heavy crosses.”

I wish I could say that it stops here, but it doesn’t. Shortly thereafter, my daughter’s husband walked out leaving her with the three very small children. Unbeknownst to me, things had been deteriorating in their marriage. Soon, her husband was going to withdraw most of his paycheck. This threw me into a complete panic because it pretty much put us either on the street or in a shelter.

Having no other resource, I called the abbess on the phone and attempted to appeal to her heart to let my husband know we were about to be destitute. She first said, “Well, then it’s about time for your daughter to go out and get a job.” (It happens that she has applied for numerous jobs but there are no jobs to be found around here.) She then assured me she would be sure he knew about it, and that she would call me back. Nothing came of it. I wrote her a desperate letter. No response. I found out later that my husband was never told anything about this.

I am praying with all my heart to Our Lady Who is Quick to Hear that my husband will somehow realize what he is involved in. It will take a miracle, as he has a wonderful inbred Catholic inclination toward pure obedience, coupled with a naïve inability to stare down the complete absurdity of his required obedience relative to his family, compounded again by sufficient self-deception to blank out any recognition of the cloak-and-dagger, non-traditional, Moonie-type approach to obedience being demanded of him (such as whisking an “at-risk” monk away to a secret monastery, not answering my daughter’s phone calls for weeks on end, and upon finally picking up the phone, reporting that my husband is not there). While I saw things every day that convinced me something was terribly wrong, he is drunk on flattery, treated kindly, given privileges, not overworked, and he never sees anything but the surface perfection of monasticism at its glorious best, right here on American soil. He doesn’t even have to go to Mt Athos. He believes he is there saving 13 generations of our family (seven generations each way, according to Fr. Paisios); he is the hero he always wanted to be but was not able, being too strapped supporting a family, taking care of a parish, going to court with his son, taking care of a pregnant daughter, making hard decisions. Now he can let someone else safely (he believes) make all the decisions for him. He is no longer responsible for his soul. Others will vouch for him at the judgment (he thinks) and protect him at the “toll houses” (a concept that we were assured is a fully-accepted and traditional Orthodox teaching.) All he has to do is be obedient, believe everything he is told, and trust that others more powerful than he will pray for everything he left behind. He rests assured that the “Gerondas” are God’s very doorway into the kingdom, saviors, if you will. Finally, he can take a deep, well-deserved breath, and be a puppet dangling on a string for the rest of his life. He can leave behind all the disillusionment of the world, all the pressures of life, all the demands of his family, and be free without impunity to walk on water, never mind if his family is drowning, and never mind if he is believing that a vow of obedience overrides his sacramental marriage vow and prior commitment to Christ to care for his wife. (Again, it is one thing if we, albeit mistakenly, agreed to serve God as monastics, and quite another for him to knowingly abandon me to a life with no assets and no resources.)

Your Eminence, this situation has turned out to be nothing like the agreement my husband and I had before we went our separate ways into what we believed would be a true and blessed Orthodox monastic experience. One might say that my husband is living at the monastery by an act of his own free will and is living under perfect obedience, as a monk should. Does he not deserve to know that the situation he is living in is radically different from what we both believed it to be? He has no way of finding out that he is living there under false pretenses in that, first, the monastery is teaching subtle doctrines that are directly contrary to Scripture and are considered heretical by the Orthodox in general, (which, being converts, we did not comprehend) (These doctrines, seemingly small or insignificant, are nonetheless powerful enough to ruin lives and wreck marriages.) Second, because the practices of mind control used there have nothing to do with traditional obedience; and third, because he has been deliberately and systematically turned against his family, leaving no means of reconciliation between us. This prevents me from ever receiving communion with a free and clear conscience.

I am appealing to you, as the primary shepherd of the Greek Orthodox flock of North America, to have him released from the monastery and returned to his family. I have no one else to turn to. By no means can he be reached by any of his friends or extended family. If he makes a free-will decision to return to the monastery, knowing all the facts, and having reconciled with his family, then that is up to him. All of this has destroyed our marriage, our family, and in the case of our daughter, her faith. She will not set foot in an Orthodox Church, nor allow her children to go, because her beloved father has been turned into someone she no longer recognizes, at the hands of “Orthodox” monks. My husband and I prepared for the monastic life prayerfully for years; we took a huge leap of faith, and it has turned into the worst emotional and spiritual tragedy imaginable for our family. PLEASE help us!!

Respectfully yours in Christ,

Ruth