Our Island Neighbors Since 1988
Introduction
By Andy Valencia
The Vashon Loop is working with All-Merciful Saviour Monastery to publish excerpts from their documented history. We hope you enjoy learning a bit more about one of the Island’s quietly famous neighbors.
All-Merciful Saviour Monastery is indeed a monastery, and it is run by actual monks. They each have their own tiny, humble building, which serves as their monastic “cell.” There is a common room with a kitchen where all monks and guests gather to share meals. There is a small but comfortable library building, and there are some very limited accommodations for guests. And last – but certainly not least – there is their church where they gather to worship.
As Christianity spread to the world, there was a single Church up until 1054 AD. At that point, tensions between the East and West portions of the Church became critical. At its heart, the disagreement was about authority – the Pope argued that he held supremacy over all of the Church and could unilaterally make changes to the tenets of the faith. The Eastern portion argued that the Pope was only “first among equals” as a position of honor, but that all decisions on Church doctrine had to be addressed in councils. Neither side abandoned their position, and they excommunicated one another.
The All-Merciful Saviour Monastery is in the Orthodox Christian tradition, ultimately a part of the “Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.” The monastery has been led by Abbot Tryphon since co-founding it with Father Paul in 1986. What follows is how they found their way to Vashon, in Father Tryphon’s own words. It’s a winding road involving the West Coast, danger, TV stars, and a home nestled against a hill on Maury Island.
The Planting of a Monastery
Part One
By Abbot Tryphon
In many ways, this monastery was founded as one would plant a garden. The germination took place in a small blue-collar house in a poor part of Richmond, California, in 1983, where we struggled in a neighborhood constructed for World War II shipbuilders. It was sometimes a rather scary place; the noise of cars with their boombox stereos blasting, the attempted break-ins, and untended yards. I remember laying in bed at night, looking at the orange-colored sky tinted by the flames of a nearby refinery, jets flying overhead, and remembering the star-studded skies of Northern Idaho, where I was born.
After my youth in Idaho near Pend Oreille lake, I presently found myself drawn to Berkeley, California where I pursued a graduate degree in psychology, followed by a practice in Portland, Oregon. During this time, the call from God became clearer and clearer, and after a sabbatical from my teaching and practice, my path forward became clear.
Still living near Portland, I co-founded a monastery with Fr. Paul that consisted of five monks. When three of them were called to depart, myself and Fr. Paul decided to move our monastery to Richmond, California. It was a dangerous place, but housing prices were low and it was close to all the contacts I’d developed during my Berkeley studies.
One fateful night in Richmond, we were awakened by the sound of a police helicopter hovering directly overhead for 45 minutes, with spotlights trained on the front and back doors of a neighbor’s house during a drug bust. That very night, I decided to pray that God, if it be His will, would let us relocate to a rural location. Little did I know that the All-Merciful Saviour Monastery would one day be nestled in a forest, on an Island, in the Salish Sea.
Love in Christ, Abbot Tryphon
(Continued next month)
