Be the shepherd of my lambs, A spirituality in harmony with nature and animals
d’Alexandre Siniakov
Desclée de Brouwer, 200 p., €17.90
In his previous book, Untie them and bring them to me (1), crowned in 2019 by the literary prize of the 30 Million Friends Foundation, he had already told the “graces received” after the adoption of his first horses within the confines of the Russian Orthodox seminary in France at Épinay-sous-Sénart (Essonne), of which he has been rector since 2008. A figure of Orthodoxy and ecumenical dialogue, Father Alexandre Siniakov returns to the spiritual literary scene with Be the shepherd of my lambs, title chosen in reference to Jn 21, 15-19.
Retaining the charm of a Russian tale, his new story, humble and sensitive, seeks to retrace the existential upheavals experienced by the energetic forties in recent years. Chief among which is undoubtedly his move in the fall of 2020 to an old farmhouse in the north of Sarthe, in Sougé-le-Ganelon, “in a small and picturesque geographical region called the “Alpes mancelles”, about two hours by road from the seminary”where the monk continues to go every Sunday.
“Adversity”
There, surrounded by his parents from his native Caucasus, he now lives in the midst of his ever-increasing number of animals, in a setting of fields and green meadows. A companionship that allowed him to deepen his reflection on the relationship between man and animal, offering as a corollary an original meditation on the meaning of hierarchy or service within Creation. “In a few years, donkeys and horses have made me a simpler priest, a better monk, more careful to sanctify time and more able to see in Creation the living reflection of the Creator”, he raises as well.
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Punctuated with work and simple joys, the daily life of the young religious – “resolved to be that hospitable monk to animals lost on the way” – will also have gone through darker days during this period: « (…) In one year my herd and I have known everything: the adversity of the environment and the happiness of improbable encounters, the hardness of learning and the lightness of equestrian epiphanies such as dreamed of by the masters of the high school. , the bite of death and the illumination of new births. »
“Shepherd of my animals”
Thus avoiding the pitfall of insipidity, his work does not conceal “arbitrariness, brutality and bullying” of the animal kingdom. Djehol, Almael, Pandora, Lily, Oberon, Quenelle, Hestia, Tumnus… Convinced that “Qualities in animals are as unequally distributed as in humans,” the author strives to tell the specific link that unites him to each of his animals, horses, donkeys, dogs and goats. Behind the first, he sees “figures of Christ”. Behind the latest “mediators of the love of God”.
Steeped in spiritual references – Francis of Assisi, Gregory of Nazianze… – his book still traces the deep inner journey experienced from his hermitage, far from the consumer society: “I remained this man, a simple father in the desert in love with serving (…) the living creatures that came back to me. But according to the works, the tests and the pains, the profane joys too, the seasons of solstice, the accidents of meadow, parturitions and terrible agonies, here I am become the shepherd of my animals. »