Why do happy and successful people give up everything and go to a monastery? Can a modern person follow the path of the monks? We bring to your attention an interview with nun Juliania (Denisova), a nun of the St. Elisabeth Monastery (Minsk), included in the book “Monks” by Yulia Posashko, which is published by the Nikeya publishing house .
45 bags, 35 pairs of shoes, a closet of cosmetics, your own separate apartment - eat, drink, be merry! And in my soul there is a cry: “I can’t do this anymore!” Irina Denisova, a famous regent throughout Belarus, entered the monastery at the peak of success. She raised three children, achieved recognition in the world of music, achieved everything... They even made a film about her - “Regent”. And a few years later the second film was released - “Nun”...
Our story is about how a woman who had never dreamed of it came to monasticism...
Why compose the five hundred and first “Cherubic”
– Tell us how songs are born.
– Different songs in different ways. It sounds trite: something comes over you, you can’t get rid of it. A melody just appears in my head. I can compose 50 melodies this evening, give me the lyrics and I’ll immediately sing them to you on the recorder. But is this creativity? No.
For a melody to become a song, it takes a long time to learn. Just imagine, I studied in a special school, an 11-year school, and then at a conservatory. For about 30 years I taught children what a melody is made of, how to break it down into its components, and then assemble it so that it becomes a work. You know, like a designer.
And just like our constructor, any fifth grade student can create a melody. But if you add talent to it, you get something special that is in demand by people. Talent has such an amazing component - conciliarity. A person talks about something, and everyone thinks that it is written about him personally.
Because when an author is talented, he is an exponent of something greater, something transcendental, transcendental. And a 5th grade student is an exponent only of what he has been taught and of his hard work.
– For example, 50 melodies came into your head, but is it possible to somehow take one of them, arrange it correctly – and make something worthwhile out of it?
- What for? This question arises before any creator.
If the melody torments you, it means you need it. And if not, then don’t torture her.
It happens that some melody comes back to you all the time, you cannot get rid of it without pouring it into a compositionally complete structure of the chant. This must be done, it must be completed.
How many are unfinished? I don’t even count or pay attention, which means they are not needed. Not everything you know how to create should be written down and presented: as I famously wrote. There is some kind of internal censor. He sits inside me and does not allow me to present to people what I myself do not like. I need it to please me to the point of tears. And this is the main sign.
– In church music today there are many melodies for any sacred text. Let’s say there are 500 “Cherubimskaya” melodies, but you write the 501st. For what?
– I can’t say, I have the same question. I am not a supporter of original music in the Church. For what? After all, everything has already been written before us. And it’s not written, but created - these are God-given melodies that make up the code of Znamenny or Byzantine chant. They have no authorship, they are given to people by God.
These are like Rublev's icons. We know that this is Rublev, but if we didn’t know, it would still be the property of humanity. So is the ancient chant - everything is expressed in it. It only bothers those who don’t pay attention, or those who are, in principle, bored with life.
The church needs a different beauty of melodies, not that which is expressed in our sometimes overly sensitive bursts and harmonic turns. The texts don't require this.
For example, “Mercy of peace, sacrifice of praise” are simply responses to a priestly exclamation. And sometimes we make this out of these words - we put some deep feelings there, we almost depict the ringing of a bell. For what? Here everything should be modest, ascetic, as it is in the Znamenny chant.
– Church choirs sing liturgical hymns both in church and at concerts. Is it possible to consider that during the service the choristers pray and do not perform?
– This is a philosophical question. What is praying, what is prayer? Standing on the choir, we try to take a lot of things into account: flip through the notes in time, take the correct intonation, look at the conductor’s hand, convey the text, build a chord... It would seem - what kind of prayer is there?
On the other hand, for the work that singers undertake, God allows people to hear prayer. And even at a concert. I have heard people say about us many times: “They are praying,” “Today I was at a concert, like in a temple.”
And if they had told me at church: “Today you sang like you were at a concert,” I would have quit right away!
Life according to plan
— Mother Juliana, in the film “Nun” [1] You said that you didn’t even think about monasticism, but decided on it suddenly, in three days. What happened in these three days?
“I had to answer this question many times: how is it that you didn’t intend to, but then got ready?” I still don’t know how to explain this correctly...
Those three days were the tip of the iceberg; this is what my whole life has really been leading up to. Now, as if through a transparent glass, my entire previous fate became visible to me as a preparation for this final event.
There were times when I went in the exact opposite direction from God. You know, now I think that the Lord gives the opportunity to choose, some variability to every person. A person always strives to go out of his way and slides into sin, but the Lord “catches” him there and looks for another path for him.
- Is that what happened to you?
- Yes. My soul has always been a seeker, ever since my youth. I tried to “catch” God’s providence, even being an unbeliever and unbaptized. I wanted some kind of purity... How was I to know then that such categories do not live in a sinful being who does not know God, does not turn to Him, lives only by himself: all these “I, I, I” leave their mark from childhood ...
Church choir according to the Butusov principle
– Is a director in a church choir primarily a leader? You have such a friendly team, but perhaps you still need a clear chain of command?
– We have a peculiar situation in the choir, I cannot impose it: do it this way, and you will have it like we have. You just need to be friends. Everyone in our team is very different, but all the choristers consider unity and conciliarity to be the main thing in the choir.
We were making an album for the 20th anniversary of the choir, and each one was filmed separately, no one knew what the previous one was talking about. But when they put it together, it turned out that everyone was talking about the same thing: we are friends, we are family. And it is very dear to me. How to achieve this? Just to love.
Like Butusov in a song that I really like: “All you need is love.” There is a decoding of what love is: not this snotty romantic feeling that is there today and gone tomorrow, but true love.
– Does burnout happen in the choir?
- Certainly. What to do? Don't make any decisions. You didn’t put yourself here, it’s not your choice. This is God's choice. Every singer understands that he is in the choir for a reason. If you feel like it’s not your thing, or you’re bored, you have to be patient, you can’t throw things like that around.
But in our choir such questions do not arise. Precisely because there are other things that hold it together. Firstly, this is professionalism, and secondly and most importantly, human relations. We’ve had a lot of people go through the choir, but some didn’t work out. But those who exist now are a wonderful community, simply God’s mercy.
Someone climbs the mountains, and someone goes to the monastery
– Can a monastic community be called a family?
– Yes, and the monastic community corresponds very well with this concept. The structure there is exactly the same as in a family, only this family has 130 people. If you don’t come to a monastery with the goal of joining the family, there is no point in becoming a monk.
Everything else, of course, should also be there: asceticism, obedience, change in lifestyle. But if there is no brotherly or sisterly relationship, everything will be in vain. Lay people, when thinking about a monastery, incorrectly emphasize that “monastery” comes from the word “mono,” which means “one.” It is clear that our monasticism began with holy hermits, but from time immemorial in Rus', monasteries were communal.
In our monastery, we don’t even live alone in a cell - except for Mother Abbess, who lives in the same cell as us, in the same row, but only one. And living with my sister in the same room is the most difficult thing. But they go to the monastery for difficulties! If you need comfort, why should you go to a monastery?
I had everything in the world: recognition, prosperity, children - why would I run away to a monastery if I didn’t feel some kind of fire, a call inside?
This reason must exist - it is expressed differently among the sisters, but it is not connected with anything material. Not with any passions that someone has abandoned you. There is a point in life when you feel that you can no longer do the way you are now. And you need something to overcome yourself.
Some people climb into the mountains for this and risk their lives there, while others go to a monastery and also risk their lives. With your inner life. We are all at risk - because it is a difficult internal struggle that is not visible to anyone.
With your vanity, self-confidence, narcissism, you go to a place where you will be left alone with them. You don’t yet know how to deal with them, but in the monastery there is a chance that you will learn to see and condemn them in yourself. You still won’t be able to completely defeat them, unless with God’s help, but that’s exactly what it is there, in the monastery.
– As far as I know, your monastery is organized like the monastery of Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov)?
– Yes, he and the Monk Silouan of Athos are our spiritual reference points. The whole point of the parallel with the monastery founded by Father Sophronius (the stavropegic monastery of St. John the Baptist in England. - Ed.) is in the general meeting. This is the heart of the monastery. Such meetings are almost nowhere to be found in Russian monasticism, but we have them. And experience shows that the monastery lives by these meetings.
Sometimes they reproach us, they say, “You have such an open monastery, your mothers, fathers, and children come to you. So of course they come, since they are parishioners of our monastery. Should we hide from them, avoid them? We love everyone else, but you, my own child, stay away from me! This is strange to say the least.
In normal Orthodoxy there should be everything - family ties, openness, and a general meeting.
We have two types of congregations - sisterhood and monastics. Sisterhood is when the “white” sisterhood gathers (sisters of mercy, today we have about three hundred of them) and 125 “black”, that is, monastic sisters. And the monastic meeting consists only of the confessor, the abbess and the monastics.
Meetings are weekly and they run very differently. These are not production meetings on the topic “Well, let’s all think about whether or not to lock the monastic building.” There is a discussion of any question anyone wants about internal problems.
Sometimes someone is asked to answer a question, sometimes we ask the questions ourselves. There are also “fights”, there are tearful confessions, there are showdowns. It’s better if the sisters figure it out here, in front of us - the priest and mother will pray and help, and this works one hundred percent, this is what is necessary to really become a sister.
But simply locking it all inside and corking it with a cork on top, like a genie in a bottle, and walking touchingly: “God save me,” don’t touch me, I’m in the house, that’s not true. It is much healthier and more correct to express everything at the meeting, and with the intention not to expose my sister, but to find out what I am guilty of. It's difficult because our nature wants to be right. And we justify ourselves all the time. Sometimes after meetings, your eyes open shockingly, and you suddenly see yourself in the true light - this is what is necessary in a monastery. See yourself.
“Maybe such meetings would be useful in the world.” Sometimes you can’t eradicate some of your minor shortcomings, and they really poison your life.
– Yes, it happens that you get stuck on something for decades, and your confessions turn into a broken record. It seems to me that sometimes you don’t even have to fight this windmill, you just have to live with it. You have to stop and say: “Well, now it’s like this, I saw it, this notch, I condemn it in myself - but so far I can’t do anything. You, Lord, do what you can.”
Be patient with yourself like this, maybe a year will pass, maybe 10 years. Yes, you periodically make some brutal efforts to tame this monster of yours, you even succeed in something, but then everything returns to normal.
Sin sits like a virus in a person. You cannot get rid of the virus immediately; it can remain in the body in a passive state for the rest of its life. And then he raises his head - and you see that you haven’t coped with anything, you’re in the same place. The main thing here is not to become sad.
Spiritual life is very interesting. And you have to believe that this is not a circle, but a spiral. And someday it will lead to something. Maybe not to the final ideal result - but the main thing is not the result, but the path.
The Road Through the Occult
—What happened in your inner life before you came to faith?
— Creativity driven inside. In general, a good question: how can you live when you don’t know God, what kind of inner life? There was some kind of secret life of the soul and a search for meaning. Inside - tragedy, search, dissatisfaction... Everything did not satisfy.
— Have you ever been tempted to replace the meaning of life with children and work?
- The meaning of life is in children, in service, in work - this is all earthly. My soul felt that it was not from here! But she couldn’t formulate it. So I searched wherever possible. And in the early 90s - as always at the turn of eras - suddenly the evocation of spirits, occultism, astrology became very popular, the names of Blavatsky and the Roerichs surfaced. Literally a month after I was baptized, I was offered a subscription to Pavel Globa’s school of astrology...
Nobody really knew what it was, but the intelligentsia buys into such “things.” The devil understands the social structure of man and acts in the terminology that is close to him. In my case, it was such a choice: “this is for the elite, some factory worker won’t understand, but you’re not just anyone, you’re a highly cultured person!”
We drew up horoscopes, practiced palmistry, and by the time my youngest son Ignat was diagnosed with terminal kidney cancer, we were undergoing medical astrology - “health correction according to the horoscope.”
- What a cruel irony: it seems like they were learning to treat people, but their own children were getting sick...
- Yes, my children suffered greatly from all this - they suffered from almost every disease there is, all the hospitals in Minsk were known to me. For some reason, it’s amazing! — I didn’t connect this with my astrology studies.
It seemed to me that this was temporary: a little more, and I would find some kind of “philosopher’s stone”, and all these troubles would disappear. The biggest mystery in my life today is how the Lord pulled me out of all this!..
The astrological stage of my life was the most intense and leading to some kind of catastrophe. I felt it with my whole being, I knew that something terrible was about to happen.
Three weeks before I turned to God, I wrote this poem:
My heart
The heart sleeps in the shackles of boredom - Apparently it feels more comfortable this way. And nothing will touch him, will not free him from captivity: neither thinking about the sad, nor news about the secret. Even the terrible face of death does not wake him from sleep. I have separated myself from my heart - Here I live, I sing, I moan, I lament, like a merchant, About universal indifference, With a battered sleeping heart, Feeling nothing, Without dreaming, without suffering, Knowing everything until the grave. How easy it is for me to pretend that there are fires and storms in my chest! It doesn’t cost me any effort - Everyone is “happy to be deceived.” I know: with a restless heart, with a numb soul, I will cry out as much grief as I have never known before. I know: troubles are not mistakes, They cannot be corrected. Where is the One Who will not allow the Evil Heart to die?!
This was in early December 1991. And a week later I learned Ignat’s diagnosis...
My son’s illness brought me to God, that’s absolutely certain. This was the last “button” that the Lord pressed.
