Elder Isidore’s Cell Part 2 -The Garden

Passing through the front room, you enter into a small garden measuring not more than 5 feet wide. The garden is spread out between the skete wall and the little house, skirting the house and enclosing it on both sides by a tall plank fence with a garden gate. This so-called “Inner Desert” is where Fr. Isidore would retire for prayer and spiritual contemplation. Tall willow trees grow above the “Inner Desert” and sometimes the entire desert becomes whitened with flying fluff. But Father, with childlike joy, and glancing all around would say, “It looks as if it has been snowing here”! The “Desert” also contained herbs tended to by the gardener, nettles and onions: some in tin cans kept dusted by the Elder himself, others planted in straight in th earth. Toads and all types of living creatures also live here in Fr. Isidore’s “Desert”. There is also a little table made of a stump of wood, and another stump for sitting, as well as additional seating being provided by stones which the master of the “Desert” has picked up from various places. But everything your eyes see here has its own symbolic meaning: the willow- this is the oak of Mamre, under which the Forefather Abraham received the Holy Trinity; the stone benches represent the cliffs of the Thebaid; the branching twigs which are joined together by a wooden cross and nailed to the tree and which reminded one of antlers- as the elder himself said- represent a vision of St. Eustathius Placidas. In this “Desert” there is not a single corner without its own special meaning. Even in the air itself is filled with the memories of the lives of the Forefathers and Saints. For Fr. Isidore, events of sacred Scripture and Church history are much closer, clearer, and more alive than the commotion of the world.-Salt of the Earth by St. Paul Florensky