Pilgrimage To Dzhvari: A Woman's Journey of Spiritual Awakening

by Valeria Alfeyeva

Pilgrimage to Dzhvari is set in the last days of the Communist regime when people from all levels of Soviet society are searching for ways to reconnect with their memories of goodness and truth. A writer leaves her work in Moscow and with her teenage son sets out to visit the few remaining monasteries in the Georgian Caucasus in order to discover the mystical teachings of the Eastern Orthodox Church. In particular, they seek instruction in the Prayer of the Heart, the constant internal repetition of the words, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." For centuries this practice -- known in the West as the "Jesus Prayer" -- has been one of the principal disciplines of monks, priests, and elders of the Eastern rite.

There is a purity and clarity about this simple tale of devotion that is reminiscent of that earlier spiritual classic The Way of a Pilgrim. But this journey is undertaken by a woman at the end of the twentieth century. The eloquence and power of Valeria Alfeyeva's description of the eternal quest for the divine on earth will not easily be forgotten.

Cover illustration by Tim Bower

Cover design by John Fontana

Genres: Nonfiction, Russia

338 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Franklin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ran across this book way back in 1992 or so in a Waldenbooks in Columbia, South Carolina where I was living at the time. I was in my early 20's and had just finished graduating from a local Bible College. I was hungry for substance. I was hungry for God. I glanced through this memoir and it looked like a very dense and hearty meal. I wasn't disappointed, but I was left wounded, like Jacob who wrestled the Angel of the Lord. As I travelled with her through her wandering pilgrimage, I felt God stripping away my intellectual confidence, my theological pretensions, leaving me battered, bruised and about naked upon the dusty ground of my 'western' arrogance and self confidence. I was drawn by the spareness of her prose, and was enriched by the grace with which she welcomed me on her journey and by the richness and mystery of the world of the contemporary Orthodox elders and fathers from whom she sought a living witness of the holiness of Jesus, the beauty of the holiness of God.

This was the first book that introduced me to the ascetic world of Eastern Orthodoxy. What I now know (in part) I wish I would have understood then, though I did taste it through the truths shared in her narrative: Orthodoxy is a life, not a 'theology' as commonly understood. Orthodoxy is not an ideology, it is an orthopraxy - it is "for me to live is Christ and to die is gain". One will glimpse that truth while reading this beautiful, gritty and haunting memoir. Valeria's testimony is not for those accustomed to thinking that thinking can get them close to God. One must experience a stripping of ones confidence in ones self that one may look alone to Christ as one's confidence. One must take the pilgrimage from which one will not come home alive, during which one will surely die - yet drudging through the desert wastes, battered by want, by the heat of the sun, one is flayed of the flesh and its comforts and comes to know a comfort beyond the lure of the worlds siren call - a peace that passes understanding - a love beyond knowledge - a joy inexpressible and full of glory - which the world cannot take away; infinite, inexhaustible, a gift - a treasure for which one gladly gives up all.

Pilgrimage to Dzhvari set me on a life altering course. This is not a book for the voyeur - it is for the hungry, for those who hunger for life, for God, for the living Bread. You can't 'think' bread into your stomach, you must lay down the book and eat - like your life depended on it - because it does. Valeria has left us a trail of her bread crumbs . . . perhaps they will lead us to the full loaf. "Taste and see that the Lord is good."

[CEGatling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stalled. I'll pick this up again I am sure because I want to finish it eventually but right now the author/narrator is getting on my nerves which is why it has taken me this long to get this far (p 201)

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I primarily chose this book because of the location, the Republic of Georgia, where I am travelling soon. The author provides us with a detailed description of her pilgrimage and enlightens us in describing Orthodox monasteries in Georgia. Some of the language is colorful and gives me a mind picture (again, helpful to me before my journey to Georgia), but some meandering thoughts I found mediocre. If others have read Kathleen Norris' work, I find that Pilgrimage to Dzhvari suffers in comparison. I did find solace in the faith journey of Veronica and her son, who becomes a heiromonk (monk who is also a priest).

[Corinne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read this twice, 20 years apart. My husband had met her son who is an hierarch now in the Orthodox Church. I reread it because of an upcoming trip to Georgia. I would like to see how she would describe her life as a convert to Orthodoxy now, after all these years.

[Ann Hutchinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, inspiring. Poorly edited.

[Lacey Louwagie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was really beautifully written in places. Alfeyeva captured the settings she wrote about so vividly -- I truly felt as though I had traveled to Dzhvari with her, sitting on the mountainside looking down, attending mass in the monastery, sleeping in a damp tent or a bare cell.

But as a "journey of spiritual awakening," it felt lacking to me. It seemed to skim the surface -- Valeria was far too content to accept "the party line" when it came to Orthodox Catholicism, to stay in the shadows while her teenage son was allowed more access to spiritual experiences than she was simply by virtue of his sex, to buy the monks' explanation that she had to leave because the presence of a woman was too much "temptation," etc. She seemed more a spiritual "accepter" of doctrine than a spiritual "seeker." I think this this perhaps reflective of the fact that she was fairly new to the faith and still in the "honeymoon phase," but that doesn't necessarily make for the most compelling reading.

She wrote her memoir about the time when Russia was just beginning to allow the free and open expression of religious belief again, and I really wanted to know more about how that past played into her spirituality. What was it like to be able to openly practice religion after a lifetime of oppression? But the book seemed to just assume an underlying knowledge of all that background that I didn't have -- maybe because I read a translation and the original audience was closer to the culture the book came out of than I was. But it sort of missed the mark in terms of what I was looking for from it.

I read this as part of my Year of Expanded Reading project, which is a focus on reading books by non-white and/or non-American authors. Valeria Alfeyeva is a Russian journalist, and I read her memoir in translation.

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Reason,given so that we might know the One,plunges into a thousand details. The world splinters like a shattered mirror and reflects nothing.We study what has passed long since;we dream about what will never be; but we don't know how to live today.'

If the above quote resonates with you,you may love this tranquil account of spiritual struggle.To the author,life without faith is meaningless. Her problem seems to be that faith is not a familiar attitude for those brought up in severely secular societies,as VA was in the Soviet Union.

I confess I found the mystical Christian emphasis rather overbearing, but her fiery spirit delighted me and I found much here to intruige and ponder.