Me & Metropolitan Anthony

So I went ahead and ordered this book from SVS Press, as a rather luxurious pre-Chrismas present to myself (I can be quite wreckless in this department and usually require supervision in bookstores). The book is about Metropolitan ANTHONY (Bloom), who fell asleep in the Lord on August 3, 2003, just one day after I left London to come back to Edmonton. I had been in his Cathedral Church of the Dormition at Ennismore Gardens just a week before. A few years previous, in Spring 2001, I had the chance to meet him and speak with him briefly, after I went to the Cathedral with my good friend Derek. He listened to me very deeply, and that encounter changed the course of my life, though he didn't "tell me what to do."

He lived, as they say, in interesting times, which perhaps many of us know can be both a curse as well as a blessing. He was the nephew of the composer Alexander Scriabin, son to a Diplomat of the Russian Empire, born in Switzerland, raised in the palatial Persian paradise and then penniless in Paris (ridiculous, I know). An ardent hater of the Church as a young man, and then, all of a sudden - after reading the Gospel of Mark - a serious Christian. A wartime medical doctor and secretly tonsured monk during the French resistance. A missionary priest and Bishop in England. Life-long volleyball player and actor (Metropolitan Anthony played volleyball and did skits with the kids at the Church Summer Camp well into his 80s). I'll have more to say about "This Holy Man." I'm finding out from the book that he could also be extremely 'salty' and quite 'tough' sometimes, but usually brimming with God's life, truth, and vigour. For now, all I'll say, is that I'm having trouble putting down this book... (just ask Krista).

May his memory be eternal!