Писание статьи для нашего церковного "Ежегодника" о Православии в Америке в свете "bicentennial"[597].

Сильный мороз, но солнечно и ясно.

Понедельник, 19 января 1976

Письмо от Никиты с просьбой (или вопросительным предложением?) смягчить обличительную часть моего ответа Солженицыну… А также приглашение на съезд 1-2мая ("Обряд и свобода").

Вчера у Ксаны Хлебниковой в [госпитале]. Сорок шесть лет – и чудовищный рак, внезапно обнаруженный. Ей вырезали прямую кишку и часть кишечника. Лежит бодрая, смеется. Ехал обратно, думал: как бы я вел себя, если бы это случилось со мною или Л.?

Сильный мороз и яркое солнце. Все утро суматоха в семинарии, лава дел, делишек, решений… Плюс – "личные проблемы". Почти радуюсь поэтому отъезду на четыре дня в Техас.

Austin, Texas. Вторник, 20 января 1976

In a motel in faraway Texas, where he came for three days to give an "intensive" course on "sacramental theology" at the Episcopal seminary.

A long flight yesterday, during which I finished Aries' book on death. It is very interesting, especially that he writes about the evolution of the perception of death since the Middle Ages. Its scheme: acceptance of death by everyone and society – hence "public dying" and "habit" to the dead (bazaars in cemeteries), burial ad sanctos. The absence of the cult of graves (it is obvious that the dead, being in the Church and with the Church, are felt as part of life, as with us...). Then there is the "individualization" of death (15th-16th centuries): personal judgment, etc. Then, in the 18th century, death as rupture, its rapprochement with eros. In the 19th century – the cult of graves, the idea of nation, succession. And only in the 20th century, the complete removal of death from life (hospital, etc.). All this will need to be reread and rethink.

This morning is "social" life. Meeting with the Dean and other professors. The first lecture is out of five, which I am more or less satisfied with. Breakfast with one of the professors and two Anglican priests, very cozy and interesting. In such conversations, one checks what everyone needs in Orthodoxy and what is a relic that requires an Entmythologizierung... Two hours of rest in a motel. He began Hendrick Smith's book The Russians, The Russians, by Hendrick Smith (a three-year correspondent for the New York Times in Moscow). At 4.30 a.m. "sherry party" [603] in the seminary. The inevitable conversation about the consecration of women. On my way back, the dean drove me past the famous U. of Texas tower, from which a paranoid man had shot and killed about twenty people a few years before.

Sunny. Warmth. Especially beautiful are Texas evergreen oaks.

Wednesday, January 21, 1976

Outside the window there is a bright southern sun and palm trees over the swimming pool, and L. has just called from New York, where it is cold, snowy and slushy. Last night dinner with three professors and their wives. It always seems to me that the main feature of an American professor (and perhaps a theologian especially) is timidity, a kind of fear spread throughout the atmosphere around them. Well-being and the fear that corrodes well-being...

In the morning - the second lecture. I am more than surprised by the interest and passionate attention of the audience. "You may not know," one of them later told me, "that your writings saved this seminary" (it was the center of "secularism"). Indeed, there is no prophet in his own country... Breakfast with six students in the restaurant is incredibly friendly and joyful...