An introduction to Father Justin

Father Justin scans a manuscript with palimpsest

Why I particularly like this photograph is that is shows a lot of things.  It shows a monk from the Greek Orthodox tradition with beard and black robes and hat, a habit which goes back centuries.  It shows a manuscript in his hands being scanned with rays (I think infra-red) to show the palimpsest text hidden under the top writing.  It shows that these ancient texts are being made available to scholars over the world to see online, to examine and translate.  It shows ancient knowledge written say in the 4th to 10th centuries being made available today.  It perhaps shows that true knowledge doesn't change even if the means of transmitting it do.  And in that monk with his ancient garb and his daily practice of prayer and devotion to these manuscripts and icons, there is a highly educated, 21st century mind.  All of this says to me that God is a details God and must be eager to be known if he pulls all these strands together in a protected place.  This monk is Father Justin, a softly spoken American on one level, a highly disciplined monk whose love for the tradition of worship shines from him.  That is who Father Justin is.  Today from the perspective of an anonymous hotel room in Cairo which is supposed to be luxurious with hot water, large soft towels, telly and kettles and mini bar, the world we left yesterday seems so sweet and refined and full of light and  I am already missing it.  Meditating here, upright on the soft bed is much much more difficult, I keep nodding off!  In our monastery guesthouse we meditated twice a day in a space in the café with a heater in the middle.  There were the occasional mobile phones going off, the sound of the coffee machine in the background, cats who came to join us but it had a genuineness to it, it had a clarity about it and I didn't nod off there.  That tells the story which Father Justin embodies, the story of the importance of the old and gold remaining where it should be in its holy antique setting where Moses and Elijah and many Saints have loved it even if we can click on Google and find the same thing on our modern tablets. In the photograph underneath this Father Nilus, a monk from Devon is in the middle.  The next post will be about him and why he was such an important part of our time at St Catherine's Monastery at the foot of the holy mountain, Mount Sinai.

Father Nilus in the middle of this picture talking about the Jesus Prayer