Today I began to give lectures. Surprisingly, even after thirty years you experience this feeling of novelty. I think this is a sure sign that here, more than anything else, is my true calling. For everything else (except, of course, the ministry) is always somehow under the stick, especially "spiritual" conversations.

Before sending Nikita his answer, Solzh. [Yenitsyn] gave the proofs to Misha Aksyonov to read. I found his "remarks" on the table:

"The article is brilliant and is probably the smartest and most profound answer possible. Quite rightly, the conversation has been transferred to the true level: it has been taken away from jurisdictional friction and slander to the level of worldview and church. It has been said very well about the vice of the "intelligentsia" approach to the Church. And the full significance of the "Old Believers' seduction" is quite correctly seen, not as an accidental aesthetic element, but precisely as a deep non-historicism, the desire to fall out of history, to leave oneself and lead the whole of Russia with oneself into the "sump" of the Russian nation, that is, into the sump of history itself... It is very well said about the vice of "ideologism", which began with the Old Believers. Your article is probably the most serious and profound criticism of his position that exists today... In relation to S. himself, this is perhaps the most harsh and accusatory article and should touch him to the core, because it touches his most important thing. But I think that pastorally this is a tactful article, and if he is a Christian, he will understand that by writing it as it is, you have simply fulfilled your pastoral duty to him. In general, it is very modern and relevant and should become a wedge in the dispute about the Church that has begun and is being conducted in Russia."

Friday, January 30, 1976

"Three Saints". A wonderful early Liturgy, and then the consecration of academic premises and students' rooms. In seminary and at lectures I feel cheerful, but at home I am overcome by a kind of laziness and inability to work. I sit down at the table, but after half an hour everything literally "falls out of my hands". And this is without any despondency or bad mood. Rather, it is a "decline in creativity".

The whole morning is spent in business conversations, except for a half-hour lecture. At home, after breakfast, I fell asleep! Maybe this is a sign of old age or at least aging?

Almost spring warmth in the yard.

Monday, February 2, 1976

Candlemas. Yesterday I served for the second time on 71st Street, then a "treat" and my lecture. A conversation at breakfast with M.M. Koryakov and Vyach. Zavalishin. At the lecture ("On Russian Religious Thought Abroad") there are quite a lot of people. All four Steins, with whom, after the lecture, we go to the café for half an hour. Yura talks with passion about dissident quarrels, mutual curses, intrigues. How sad it all is!

On Saturday – thirty-three years since the wedding day! A wonderful quiet day at home, and in the evening - at Anya's.

Yesterday there were three confessions, two in the morning, one after the vigil. The reality of unhappiness, in the sense of "non-happiness", that is, the absence of happiness, what you want, the inability to possess it. Perhaps, only now, in my old age, I am beginning to understand this – not with my mind, but with my gut. I didn't understand because I myself had been very happy all my life, again in the sense of having what I wanted. I even get scared at the thought that God has never "deprived" me. Nothing, not a drop of Job's fate. Maybe it's because He knows the extent of my weakness. But how difficult it is then to "teach" others to be strong, to call for this.

An icy blizzard in the yard.

Tuesday, February 3, 1976

Spent about six hours yesterday at La Guardia and Kennedy in a futile attempt to fly to Colorado, where I was supposed to go for three days. Because of the weather (monstrous ice) it was not possible ...