Then, at two o'clock, in some absolutely paradisiacal weather, there was a tour of the library-museum of President Johnson from Prof. S. Very impressive. In everything - Texas immensity and grandeur. Three hours of solitude and tranquility in a motel, reading H.Smith. Cleverly and not even without depth. The quality of American journalism that always amazes me...

Thursday, January 22, 1976

A hectic day. Yesterday there was an evening lecture, then an evening at the dear Perry's with Green and Bellamy. This morning there was a sermon and a lecture, followed by a conversation with a young man who had converted to Orthodoxy. A conversation that made me sad! Why is conversion to Orthodoxy immediately accompanied by this petty interest in "carlovatism," suspicion, a kind of tormenting confusion of consciousness? It would seem that he has found the truth, he has come to the Father's House...

Friday, January 23, 1976

Last day in Texas. Yesterday dinner with the Dean and his wife, Prof. S. and his wife, in the cozy and very "authentic" restaurant "Old Vienna". Reflections on Western Christianity, on its "ethos" and on what we, the Orthodox, should do... Yesterday, before dinner, I spent an hour and a half with a class that studied Orthodoxy... I try to "catch" everything for myself – what is the difference in the approach, the basic intuition. Everything keeps coming back to the question of the consecration of women, and here, with the greatest benevolence, with all the "openness," there is a complete wall of misunderstanding. In the last count[607] "The West" is, after all, a mixture of pride and masochism ("guilt complex"[608]). By initiating women, he "corrects" something, "repents" of something. But he is also proud in his repentance. Having understood his sin, he himself must instantly "reparate" with the same self-confidence with which he "sinned". Each stage seems final to him. We answer poorly, because, in fact, we do not know what the impossibility of a female priesthood is. We only feel. When we, babbling, try to explain, it turns out that we are the "proud" ones, and not them! And since the Orthodox in the main (not Orthodoxy!) are really proud ("of Orthodoxy") and cheaply triumphalist (they themselves are good!) – then it turns out to be an incredible triple confusion... All this is painful, all this – I feel – requires some kind of radical inner clarification.

Crestwood. Monday 26 January 1976

Today is the start of registration for the second semester. A lot of noisy seminarians, hugs and kisses. I feel like an old man in the midst of all this seething. A passionate desire for solitude, already an old fatigue from the crowd.

Thaw. Fog. Dirty snow.

After Smith's book, after the conversation on Saturday with Andrei O., after the lecture yesterday at Wilmington, the question in my head is: what is true freedom? How to be free?

Wednesday 28 January 1976

Two days of rain that washed away all the snow, and today it is sunny, frosty, windy again. In the morning in New York: a script in "Svoboda", a visit to Veronika Stein, breakfast with Fr. Kirill Fotieff. The impression of the conversation with V.Sh. is sad: insanity and quarrels in the "dissident" environment. In fact, they did not bring anything truly new with them, but they adopted and even revived the old émigré tradition of quarreling both personally and "in principle". About Solzhenitsyn she says: he rebels, always rebels – also against God...

I received the 6th book of "Continent". The general impression, first of all, is boredom, lack of a real gift, a spark. These latter are only in Brodsky's amazing poem. In all other respects, there is some kind of organic confusion. Now, says Veronika, the collection of Litvinov-Shragin-Aksyonov should be published... See. But I don't feel a sacred impatience.

Last night, at the Drilloks' place, Katya T.'s engagement to Vasya L. I felt old, old, who had lived for a century, but also grateful for the diversity of my life, which had made me at least somewhat free, which had given me that detachment[609] which I always feel joyfully in myself.

Thursday, January 29, 1976