The Morning Offering

This morning, as I was visiting the blog of my Indonesian brother Yudhie, I happened to notice for the umpteenth time a link in his sidebar to a blog called The Morning Offering. I had never stopped to look at it, but today something made me take a look.

Lo and behold! It was the blog of an old acquaintance (I wish I could say old friend) of mine, Abbot Tryphon of Vashon Island monastery! More than a dozen years ago I met Fr Tryphon, had lunch with him at a downtown Portland restaurant along with my godmother Stephanie and some others from Aghía Triás church who were getting together to try to help Fr Tryphon market his monastery's main product, Monastery Blends coffee.

Orthodox monasteries have always operated by the work of their hands, supplemented of course, by donations from the faithful, some more successfully than others, but rarely do you find Orthodox monastics simply living off donations. They're just too manly (or womanly) to do that. They are the "wild men" of the wilderness (forests in the northern climes, deserts in the southern). And the "wild women" too.

That day many years ago, I was blessed to spend a sunny afternoon of several hours sitting in the rec room of my godmother's house in Gresham, Oregon, getting to know Fr Tryphon personally. It was just he and I, and what a wonderful chat we had, getting to know one another. His Norwegian Lutheran background strangely aligned with my Polish Protestant upbringing, both of us being of that northern type of personality that C. S. Lewis writes about—he was one of us too.
I also met Fr Paul on that visit. In those days, I think it was only Fr Tryphon and Fr Paul. He's the dark haired older monk in one of the pictures I'm posting, shown with the monastery's Norwegian forest cat. Whether or not this is a special breed, I don't know. Maybe the Scandinavian Orthodoxy of the place just affects everyone, even the cat, and yes, the moni is in the forest, naturally. It's part of the northern Thebaïd (a designation for the monasteries of the North in Russia and elsewhere).

I visited Fr Tryphon's blog and really enjoyed it. It's not a typical blog wherein the author's thoughts and ideas or news takes the fore. No, instead it's a consistent, daily clean sheet of the scriptures for the day, a fresh photograph, a nourishing chunk of Orthodox wisdom with which to start one's day. It is so good, that I have also added it to the sidebar of my blog under "Orthodoxy". I've called the link "Abbot Tryphon of Vashon Island" so that it will rise to the top of the list alphabetically and be easy and at hand, when wanted.

I hope my readers will visit Fr Tryphon's blog and, if they live nearby, that they will visit the monastery as well—I plan to, at the earliest possibility. I've been talking about doing just that for years, and here I sit. This latest encounter with my old acquaintance has ignited another spark of interest, and I can thank Yudhie for unintentionally lighting this fire under me.

I have added a bunch of images taken from Fr Tryphon's blog to this post, also to give my readers a quick view of what an Orthodox monastery in the Pacific Northwest looks like. The monastery itself also has its own webpage, the banner of which is at the end of this post, which you can also visit by clicking HERE.

Good morning, Fr Tryphon, Fr Paul, and the brethren! We will be seeing you soon!