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Short Trip to the Edge:
Where Earth Meets Heaven—a Pilgrimage
by Scott Cairns
HarperSanFrancisco, 2007. 263 pages.
An acclaimed poet and a Baptist-raised convert to Greek Orthodoxy, Scott Cairns proves himself to be an engaging companion in this account of his pilgrimages to Mount Athos. His goal, to experience “genuine prayer, prayer of a sort I could only suspect, and desire” is a worthy and elusive one. It demands a definition of terms and a level of personal sharing that require theological acumen and a poet’s ability to articulate, both of which are, fortunately, in great supply in this writer.
The physicality of this pilgrimage must be mentioned. Cairns chooses to traverse much of the Mount Athos environs on foot, covering many miles in weather fair and foul, all the while working to maintain the interior awareness he has traveled to Greece to cultivate. This is a truly embodied, incarnate pilgrimage, not a head-trip in first-class coach Cairns’s descriptive abilities serve him well—I could feel the ache in his muscles and bones at the end of a long walk, as well as the disconcerting aspect of adjusting to the monastic clock and waking up in the middle of the night for liturgies.
Cairns’s narratives of his present-day journeys are at once inviting and demanding. He seems fully transparent, leaving himself open to the reader’s view with little inhibition. At the same time, he is relating information about Greek Orthodoxy that ranges from relatively common knowledge to the arcane, and calls for the reader’s careful attention to detail in order to keep it all together. Having said that, however, Cairns’s pilgrimage is in no way an experience—for him or for the reader—that can be neatly tied up and filed away upon completion. There is much to return to here, to revisit and meditate upon to one’s benefit.
I would have enjoyed a little more attention to the origins of Cairns’s interest in this type of spirituality. He spends a few paragraphs relating his first exposure to the prayer he seeks, variously known as “the Jesus prayer” or “the prayer of the heart.”
My own meandering path to the Jesus Prayer began in late 1974 when, as college freshman, I read J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey over Christmas break. That novel happens to be about a young woman suffering what I would now recognize as a spiritual crisis.
For many of us who were college freshmen in 1974, spiritual crises were not uncommon, though I suspect most of us suffered them alone. Like Cairns, I also found Franny and Zooey and was thus introduced to the Jesus Prayer and, eventually, to some of its analogs in other traditions such as Zen and meditation practices that employ mantras or prayer words that are repeated internally and eventually become part and parcel of the seeker’s life. Franny, in the midst of her own crisis,
is depicted as clutching a “small pea-green clothbound book” and moving her lips soundlessly. . . . The pea-green book, as it turns out, is The Way of the Pilgrim, and the lovely Franny—with whom, incidentally, I fell in love as I read the book—is saying the Jesus Prayer.
Books lead to books lead to books, which is one of the marvels of the object we call a book, and each piece of reading led Cairns to another and another. Reading Franny and Zooey was formative, and it would have been interesting to hear more from Cairns about the path that led from it to, years later, conversion to Greek Orthodoxy and his continued search for prayer.
Without trying to be politically correct, it can’t be overlooked that the levels of hospitality to be found at the various Mount Athos monasteries vary greatly. “Most of the visitors are Orthodox Christians, and most are from Greece,” Cairns writes. Visitors come from other parts of the world as well, but “the daily limit for entry to the Holy Mountain is 120 Orthodox and 14 non-Orthodox men. Since a vote among resident monks in the year 1045 and a subsequent edict of Emperor Constantine in 1060, women are not allowed entry at all, ever.” In some monasteries, non-Orthodox pilgrims are segregated from the Orthodox, and in one monastery Greek Orthodox men who are not Greek are also considered as if they are on a lower tier of existence. Other monasteries are much more inclusive. Cairns acknowledges these differences and inequalities, and though he is concerned about them in general, they seem to cause only a minor annoyance. And one can’t help but wonder if, after excluding women for the past 962 years, it might be time for another vote of the monks. This is a womanless pilgrimage and book—and, with Cairns seeking “to come upon a holy man, an adept, a spiritual father, who could help me to pray,” it seems he would have greater odds of finding the direction he needs if his search allowed for the possibility of a “spiritual mother.”
A minor complaint: With all his accounts of hikes from monastery to monastery on the Mount Athos peninsula, it would have been helpful for the book to include a map showing the relative locations of the various monasteries. A pilgrimage is in part a journey in space, after all, and readers who are along for the journey will feel more grounded with the help of a map. According to Cairns, there is only one extant map of the peninsula that is of any use, one put together by a Reinhold Zwerger. Though that map is available only for purchase in print, an adaptation of it would provide a service to Cairns’s readers. I suspect that the story behind Zwerger’s map is a fascinating one in and of itself—clicks to several internet sites that come up via a search of Zwerger’s name indicate a very protective attitude exists concerning Zwerger and his map. Similarly, a bit of googling led to websites such as this one on Macedonian heritage, which includes photos of some of the incredibly impressive monastic buildings of Mount Athos. As able a writer as he is, Cairns could enrich his readers’ experience of his pilgrimage with inclusion of photos such as these.
All things taken together, however, these complaints are small. Short Trip to the Edge is an intelligent, companionable account of a journey that is as much an interior one as it is an exterior one that carries the author halfway around the physical world. It is a trip worth taking.
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