A monastic in the "desert of human hearts"

I have been reading a fabulous book entitled "Living Icons: Persons of Faith in the Eastern Church" by Fr. Michael Plekon. The book was a gift to me at the outset of my internship/ parish assignment in my last year at SVOTS from Fr. Michael.

It is a well written and thought provoking anthology of sorts, a gathering of the lives and labors of some of the last century's most incredible human beings - people truly human. It is available here. (http://www.amazon.com/Living-Icons-Persons-Eastern-Church/dp/026803351X)

I am working on my Masters thesis, a meandering corralling of ideas surrounding the issue our role as Co-Creators - a reflection on faith, art and liturgical worship, inculturation, missions and evangelism at this point... So I have been studying the people that Fr. Michael writes about in his book, particularly Mother Maria Skobtsova.

Fr. M made reference to one of Mother Maria's articles on "types of religious lives" and quoted much of it in his chapter on her - I was immediately excited, she clarified much for me regarding current Ortho-praxis in America. I found a link to a newly translated text of the article here (http://www.tuirgin.com/orthodoxy/articles/types_of_religious_lives.html) It blew me away! I also found this page (http://incommunion.org/articles/resources/st-maria-skobtsova/mother-maria-skobtsova-bibliography) from Incommunion.org [the Orthodox Peace Fellowship website] that has an exhaustive bibliography concerning her life and labors for Christ before her martyrdom in a Nazi concentration camp.

Get ready to dive in deep at the deepend...

FrJM