Orthodox tradition of the spiritual and moral development of man. Western spiritual traditions

Traditions are some historically established group experience embodied in social stereotypes, which is accumulated and reproduced in society. It is necessary to distinguish this concept from art, which represents a more individual creative activity. Through traditions, a certain group of individuals inherits the knowledge necessary for self-development and even survival. That is, this term can be interpreted as a certain mechanism of collective communication. Experts identify the main types of traditions: folk (ethnic), social, national, religious and cultural.

Origin of the term

The well-known word "tradition" for many has a fairly clear meaning. If we talk about literal translation, then in Latin the term means "transmission".

Initially, the concept of "tradition" was used only in a literal sense and denoted an action. The ancient Romans used it when they had to give someone a material object or marry a daughter. Subsequently, material objects faded into the background, they were pushed aside by the transmitted skills and abilities. Thus "tradition", or rather, its semantic spectrum, indicates the main difference from everything that could be summed up under this concept. Tradition is something that does not belong to a certain individual, as it is transferred from outside. The derived meaning is associated with everything that is connected with the distant past, which has irrevocably lost its novelty, is unchanged and symbolically stable. And strict adherence to customs relieves many of the need to independently comprehend the situation and make a decision.

Traditions and society

Each new generation, having at its disposal a certain set of traditional samples, does not accept and assimilate them in finished form, it involuntarily carries out their own interpretation. It turns out that society chooses not only its coming future, but also the past that has sunk into oblivion. Social groups and society as a whole, selectively accepting some elements of the social heritage, simultaneously reject others. Therefore, social traditions may well be both positive and negative.

national heritage

In general, traditions are the so-called element of culture, which arises in one generation and is transmitted from ancestors to descendants, remaining for a long time. These are certain norms, rules of conduct, rituals, procedures that must be followed. Considering the definition of the word “heritage” together with this term, we can say that the concepts are almost identical.

If we talk about national traditions, then these are rules that are manifested in almost everything. This applies not only to clothing, style and behavior in general, they are also manifested in movements, gestures and other elements that are present in the psychology of people. Such concepts and manifestations are very important for a person, since it is they that are able to trigger an unconscious mechanism in a person who is clearly able to determine the line between "one's own" and "alien".

National traditions are a phenomenon that has been formed as a result of the life of each people or nation, regulated by functions in the human mind. In other words, regulation occurs in family life, in communication, and behavior. Traditions have their own characteristics, namely, they have high stability, continuity and even stereotyping. They are characterized by a long-term factor, which is the regulator of social phenomena.

Modern attitude to cultural traditions

The variety of traditions of most countries is sometimes simply amazing. The fact that for a certain people is the norm of everyday life, in another country can often be perceived as a personal insult. We can say that traditions are one of the fundamental things in the cultures of various countries of the world. Therefore, if you decide to relax in some exotic country, you must first familiarize yourself with its customs in order not to get into an awkward position. For example, in Turkey, one of the important traditions is the need to remove shoes when entering a house and a temple. In no case should you refuse an offer to drink a cup of tea, this can be perceived as an insult.

Not just a set of rules

Cultural traditions are not only a set of etiquette rules, they are a certain semantic flow aimed at showing the depth of the history of a particular country, these are values ​​laid down over the centuries, passed down from generation to generation to maintain and reveal the unique mentality of its inhabitants. For example: countries where Buddhism is widespread believe that touching a person’s head is unacceptable, since the human soul lives in it. Unfortunately, in many countries, traditional rites have gone out of fashion, so to speak, and have lost their value due to technological progress. I would like the interest in preserving one's culture not to lose its relevance in any corner of the world.

Word synonym

The word "tradition" is a feminine noun, if necessary, it can be replaced by the concepts custom, practice(masculine nouns), legacy, tradition(nouns of the middle gender). Instead of a single term, you can use phrases with the word "so", for example: so it is, so it is. Among writers, and not only among them, traditions are called unwritten laws. One of the most unusual synonyms in Russian for this noun is the word "itihasa", which means "that's exactly what happened." Most sources define a synonym for the word "tradition" in several variants, in which, in addition to those presented above, norm, establishment, habit, value. An interesting option is the use of the word "khashar" (a term that has long been included in the Turkic and Tajik languages ​​and means "joint work").

Religious traditions

Religion also has its own traditions, which makes it a spiritual and cultural treasure. represent a set of stable forms and methods of worshiping the gods (God). Each of the religions existing on earth carefully preserves and in every possible way maintains its tradition, but most often in each religion there are several traditions at once, for example: Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism - in Christianity, Shiites and Sunnis - in Islam, Mahayana and Hinayana - in Buddhism. The religious traditions of the East practice a certain technique of working with both the body and consciousness, which is aimed at enlightenment, i.e. obtaining extremely high states of human consciousness. Christian religious traditions include church attendance, prayers, confession and worship. The most famous holidays are Easter, Christmas, Epiphany, Trinity, Ascension, Annunciation. Also, not all traditions are observed, if only because in the digital age people have become not as pious as their ancestors were. Now, few people at the festive table ask for harvest or rain. Just a holiday has become another reason to get together with the whole family.

There is no future without a past

Traditions are a heritage that is unshakably authoritative, they are meekly accepted and transmitted in accordance with the fact that the departed ancestors - "carriers" - have a solid foundation in the life of their heirs - "followers".

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RUSSIAN FAMILY CULTURE AND ITS RELIGIOUS ROOTS

Chapter from the book: "From the Russian spiritual and creative tradition."

The beauty and comfort and inner warmth of patriarchal family life - what a wealth it is! How a whole world of spiritual and spiritual values ​​is revealed here in this family warmth, in this saturation with cultural tradition, in this living connection with the living world of the past. In this quiet, inconspicuous tradition, nourished from the same vital sources that flow in the world of the Russian family, new seeds are thrown, giving sprouts. And we sometimes see—but still much more often we don’t see—the very throwing of seeds and the first sprouts and the ovary of the fruit, and then we see the rich fruit and the harvest. AS Khomyakov, already an elderly man, admitted that he owed all his spiritual direction to his mother. 1 The philosopher Prince Evgeny Trubetskoy, in his childhood memoirs, shows in small episodes how their mother influenced the receptive souls of children, so that consciousness of moral impossibility offend the weak or another equally important consciousness: the all-seeing, everywhere-present Eye of God: “I don’t remember what my mother said to that. I only remember that from that moment on, with some extraordinary force of hypnosis, a religious sensation sank into my soul, which forever remained for me one of the central, most powerful, sensations,

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1 “As for me, I know that how much I can be useful to her (my mother) I owe both my direction and my steadfastness in this direction, although she did not think so. Happy is the one who had such a mother and mentor in childhood, and at the same time what a lesson in humility such a conviction gives. How little of the good that is in a man belongs to him.” (Letter to M.S. Mukhanova).

a clear and bright Eye penetrating darkness, penetrating into the soul, and into the very depths of the world, and nowhere can you hide from this look. Such suggestions are the very essence of education, and mother, like no one else, knew how to make them.

And what a monument of gratitude Leo Tolstoy erected to the one who “with selfless love replaced his mother and his brothers and sister. (He lost his mother at a very early age): “Aunt Tatyana Alexandrovna had the greatest influence on my life: this influence was, firstly, in the fact that she taught me the spiritual pleasure of love even in childhood! She did not teach me this with words, but with her whole being she infected me with love. I saw, I felt how good it was for her to love, and I understood the happiness of love.

This is how life is built, this is how a great deed is done. spiritual fertilization This is how an often invisible, often hardly noticeable, but powerful stream of spiritual, vital dynamics flows, constituting the stronghold of the life of the people, its core, the connection between its past and future.

The background — or rather, the nourishing basis or the spiritual atmosphere that embraces such a quiet, inconspicuous and at the same time creatively warmed Russian family — is religious life, a stream of faith flowing from the depths of the Church, peaceful and enveloping with blissful warmth. How close this family was to the life of the Church, how this life of the Church intertwined with the life of the family - both in the first religious instructions, and in the very element of the mother, nourished from this grace-filled stream and saturated with it, and in pious household rituals, and, finally, through participation the whole family in church services and fasts, feasts and sacraments of the church. The whole fabric of life is permeated with this: the blessing of parents, joint prayers, cherished, ancestral icons that pass from generation to generation, or, for example, icons that were ordered on a child’s birthday according to his height - the “birth measure” of a child. The latter is a very old custom, going deep into pre-Petrine Rus'. We meet him in family life

Russian tsars of the 17th century. So, for example, in the old records of the Moscow Armory of the times of Alexei Mikhailovich we read: “17 (1666) September 19. Krestovoy Foma Borisov brought to the Armory a wooden measure half an inch long, half a quarter inch wide, and said this de measure gave out Anna Mikhailovna Velyaminova from the choir of the Queen of the Territory, and said that V. G. Ts. and V. K. Alexei Mikhailovich and others had directed against this measure to be taken to Arms. The chamber is a figurative cypress board, and on it to write the Angel of V. G. Tsarevich John Alekseevich, the image of John the Baptist ”2.

The blessing of parents to children is the core and guiding beacon in the lives of children under all circumstances of life: both in the everyday, daily atmosphere of family warmth and comfort, and at parting, and at moments of decisive events in the life of children - during departures, separations, especially when children establish their own a new family, and, finally, at the dying farewell of parents with children. The blessing of children by parents or the mutual blessing of all family members for the coming sleep is a feature that is characteristic of patriarchal Russian families even to this day: I am talking about such families that have managed to convey to our time the living treasure of prayer communication between children and parents. Out of this warmth of evening family experiences and out of longing for them, a well-known poem by A. S. Khomyakov emerged:

It used to be, in the deep midnight hour,

Little ones, I will come to admire you,

I used to love to mark you with a cross,

Pray that grace be upon you,

Love of the Almighty God... (1838)

Blessing before parting, the custom in silence to "sit" together in silent prayer before leaving, is characteristic of our family. The severity of separation is brightened by the bridge of blessing and prayer thrown over it. Children released to a foreign land, sons going to war - so many blessings were given with them.

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2 I. Zabelin. "The domestic life of Russian tsars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries". Part II , p. 558. Moscow 1915.

prayers for the journey, and there were so many stories in the old days about how a mother's "blessing" - an icon hung around the mother's neck before leaving - deflected the flight of an enemy bullet: the icon bent, and the bullet flew past. We are here touching the most sacred, secret and intimate in the life of the family. From here grow those invisible bonds and threads that make the family a single spiritual organism, give so much warmth and charm to its inner “air”. No, more than that: they give so much depth and religious value to her life, make her the highest of human shrines, make her, as it were, a kind of "home church" in the face of God. The greatest artist of Russian patriarchal family life, L. N. Tolstoy, managed, like no one else, to convey the beauty of this inner “air” of the family, especially in War and Peace. The most sacred thing in human relations is indescribable, but how truly and subtly this scene of Princess Mary’s blessing of brother Andrei, who is going to the front, is written: “Against your will, He will save and have mercy on You and turn you to Himself, because in Him alone is truth and peace, she said in a voice trembling with excitement, with a solemn gesture holding in both hands in front of her brother an oval, ancient icon of the Savior with a black face, in a silver chasuble on a silver chain of fine workmanship. She crossed herself, kissed the icon and handed it to Andrey. - Please, for me... Rays of kind and timid light shone from her large eyes. These eyes illuminated the whole sickly, thin face and made it beautiful. The brother wanted to take the scapular, but she stopped him. Andrei understood, crossed himself and kissed the icon "...

This scene is inspired by a Tolstoyan family tradition, according to which Lev Nikolayevich's great-grandfather, Prince Sergei Fedorovich Volkonsky, was protected from a bullet during the Seven Years' War by an icon of his mother's blessing.

One of the heroes of the Patriotic War of 1812, General D.S. Dokhturov, wrote to his wife in Moscow immediately after the Battle of Borodino, where he commanded the left flank, replacing the mortally wounded Bagration: “Thank you

for the image, my soul, I will immediately put it on myself. I clearly see God's mercy to me, in terrible danger He saved me. I thank the Almighty" 3 .

In the notes of A. M. Turgenev (1772-1863), written in 1848, it is described how his 14-year-old boy (in 1786) was sent by his parents to the royal service in St. Petersburg: “Before departure, my parents blessed me with the icon of our Savior, Not Made by Hands called. On top of this, the parent put a small life-giving cross with a palm around my neck and gave me a bag with copper kopecks and money, severely punishing me so as not to be able to refuse the one who asks for alms for Christ's sake.

When Konstantin Leontiev went to war in the Crimea in 1854, his mother gave him a family golden reliquary with relics as a parental blessing.

Or this is how Nekrasov’s “Russian Women” begins (the farewell of the old father, Count Laval, with his daughter Princess Trubetskoy, who is going forever to Siberia to her husband):

Calm, durable and light

A marvelously well-coordinated carriage,

The count-father himself more than once, not twice

Tried it first...

Making a prayer, scapular

Hung in the right corner

And sobbed ... the princess-daughter

Goes somewhere tonight...

An old Russian epic depicts a parental blessing to a hero setting out on his exploits:

Not a damp oak tends to the ground,

Non-paper leaves spread out:

The son spreads himself before the father,

He asks himself a blessing:

“Oh, you are a goy, dear dear father,

________________

4 "Russian Antiquities" 1885 p. 375.

Give me your blessing...

The old peasant Ivan Timofeevich answers:

“I will give you a blessing for good deeds,

And there is no blessing for bad deeds ...

Do not think evil of the Tatar,

Do not kill a peasant in an open field.

(From the epic about Ilya Muromets).

And in the epic about Duke Stepanovich we read:

To that mother to the dear

Honest widow Omelfa Timofeevna,

The Duke then fell to mother in frisky legs,

The blessed lady asks her to go to Kyiv-grad ...

Even the violent Vaska Buslaev meekly asks for a mother's blessing:

Vasenka decided to go to Jerusalem city,

He began to ask his mother for a blessing,

He has a wild head to the damp earth,

How not a white birch bends,

Not silk leaves spread,

Vasenka bows to mother.

A new life, a new family begins with the blessing of the grooms and newlyweds by the parents, is built on it, it “establishes the homes of the children.” In all-Russian, for example, and peasant life, it was firmly preserved until the very last times - before the revolution and even longer. In the consciously religious tradition of strong Russian families that ended up in emigration, for example, in many families from the old Russian cultural layer, this central role of parental blessing in building a new family is still fully preserved to this day.

And here are a few sketches of the ceremony of blessing the newlyweds in the Russian peasant life of the middle and end of the 19th century. R. Tereshchenko in his famous book "The Life of the Russian People" (part II, weddings. Petersburg, 1848) collected a lot of valuable material.

In the Smolensk province, fathers, native and planted,

and the mother instruct and bless the groom, he bows at their feet, the matchmakers sing:

Not a black horse digs the ground with its hoof,

Our young prince of blessing asks:

At the father of the parent, at the father of the blessing,

At the mother of the parents, at the mother of the blessing.

In the Nizhny Novgorod province, when everything is ready for the train to church, each of the young is blessed by their parents in their home in the following way: they advance the table to the corner under the icons and cover it with a white cloth, then they put rye bread with salt, pie and white bread on the table, candles and a lampada are lighted under the images, all households and relatives pray with the bride. Then the father and mother put on fur coats turned inside out, and the godfather takes the groom’s right hand by one of his hands, holding the turned-out fur coat in his right hand, the friend or brother takes the groom’s other hand and brings him to his parents, who stand behind table: father with an icon, and mother with bread. Druzhko says: “Dear father, bless the dear child, the golden crown of acceptance and the fruit from the tree of paradise.” He repeats these words three times, and the groom falls three times at the feet of his father, on the spread out coat that the matchmaker has prepared. Then the father blesses his son with an icon in the shape of a cross, which he kisses first himself, then gives it to his son to kiss, and, finally, they kiss each other. In exactly the same way, the mother blesses her son, then the father and mother bless him alternately with bread and salt and let him go to the crown 5.

The rite of blessing was very solemn during the celebration of the wedding of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich on February 5, 1626.

The sovereign listened to the early mass, then he was blessed by his father, the most holy patriarch, and spoke to him: “Our great sovereign, our father, Filaret Nikitich,

________________

5 See Tereshchenko, p. 448, p. 269, p. 3, 6, 7, p. N. Kharuzin vol. 1. Moscow, 1889, pp. 112-113.

His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'. By the will of the All-Good and the permission of you and our mother, the nun of the Great Empress Marfa Feodorovna, it is appointed to be our wedding, and this day is my joy. Holy Patriarch, bless your son." The patriarch, blessing his son, said: “The Almighty and indescribable in mercy, who raised you to the royal throne for piety, He blesses you. May He give you and your wife longevity and reproduction of the family. May you see on the throne the sons of your sons and the daughters of your daughters, and may He protect you all from enemies, spread your power from sea to sea, and from rivers to the ends of the universe. Then the patriarch blessed him with the image of the Most Holy Theotokos.

Family icons are visual bearers of parental blessing, moreover, symbols of God's blessing, sacred for children and families. They are passed down from generation to generation, as if embodying the spiritual connection, the spiritual succession of fathers and children. Countless strong Russian families, simple and noble, of meager means, prosperous and rich, had these cherished family or family icons, “parental” or “grandfather’s” blessings. In the old merchants, among the Old Believers, in the old noble and princely families, among the clergy, in the strong nests of peasant family life, especially, for example, in the north of Russia. Some family or tribal icons, as it were, embodied the life of generations, the history of a family or clan from the paternal or maternal side.

In an old Russian house, a “red corner” with icons, a shrine or a home chapel was the center of the religious and spiritual life of the family. What a huge role these icons played in the life of a house in ancient Rus' is clear at least from the instructions of Sylvester's "Domostroy":

Chapter 8: “How to decorate your house with holy images, and have a clean house. In every Christian’s house, in every temple, holy and honest images are written on icons, put on the walls, having arranged a magnificent place with every decoration and from lamps, in them candles before the holy images are lit at every praise of God, and after the requiem they extinguish, with a veil close,

all for the sake of cleanliness, and from dust, for the sake of deanery and care, but always sweep them with a clean wing, and wipe them with a soft lip, and always keep that temple clean, and touch the holy images worthy, in a clear conscience, and on the praise of God and on the holy singing and prayer, dare to burn, and incense with fragrant incense, and incense, in prayers and in vigils, and in bows and in all praise of God, always honor them, with tears, and with sobbing, and with a contrite heart, confess, asking for the remission of sins " .

When an old Russian person entered a house, he first of all looked for icons with his eyes. At first he bowed before them, then he only bowed to the hosts and to everyone else present. This is what foreigners tell us who visited Muscovite Rus' in the 16th and 17th centuries, for example, Herberstein, who was in Moscow under Vasily the Third in 1517 and 1526, and Meyerbeer, the Caesar's ambassador in 1660-63. to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. And how much authenticity there is in this scene in Leo Tolstoy’s unfinished novel The Decembrists, where a simple village old woman, Tikhonovna, comes to Moscow on foot from a distant village to her masters Chernyshev to fuss about her old husband, who, due to a misunderstanding, without guilt, went to prison. Shy, she enters in bast shoes and white shoes into the noisy people's hut of the Moscow estate of the Chernyshevs, but does not lose her temper, although she is shy. “Perspective”, “in the right village attire”, first she lays down crosses and bows to the front corner, not embarrassed by the unfamiliar situation to her, then she bows to those present. As in this picture written off from nature, the "magnificent" "devout" rootedness in the grandfather's custom of the then strong ordinary people was vividly expressed.

For Konstantin Leontiev, the flickering of the lamp in front of the icon was mysteriously connected with unforgettable memories of his mother, with the best childhood memories. All Russian domestic life in its true manifestations is alive with this, sanctified by this. Prayerful life flowed abundantly in the bowels of the family. Already in the same “Domostroy” by Sylvester we read:

Chapter 12. “How men and women and households in the house

pray for yours. All days, in the evening, to a husband and wife, and with children, and with household members, who knows how to read and write Vespers, Vespers, Midnight Office, with silence and attention, and with meekness, and with prayer, and with bows. Petit clearly and unanimously. After the rule, neither drink, nor eat, nor create a rumor ... And going to bed, every Christian should bow three times to the ground before God. And at midnight, always, secretly getting up, with tears diligently pray to God, as much as possible, about your sin: and when you get up in the morning, also, and to anyone according to your strength and desire ... Every Christian prays for his sin and forgiveness of sin. .

Of course, this is an idealized image, this is what the author of "Domostroy" exposes as an ideal - not everyone did this. But the prayer structure was strong in the old Russian family. The danger for old Russian piety consisted, as we know, in religious formalism, in a certain tendency to attach paramount importance to the external, ritual, secondary, and thereby materialize religion, turn it into a rigid ritual law, into a tendency that was the fatal cause of the split and not always overcome later. But the inner deep acceptance of the faith also lived, as we have partly already seen, in the patriarchal Russian families, spiritualized them with its breath, gave them strength for the struggle of life, gave inner light and warmth to their whole way of life. How many religiously fortified, morally strong, enlightened, righteous and blissful, shining with the quiet light of love, well-known, and even more unknown personalities, who perhaps constitute the highest ornament of Russian national life, have come out of the bowels of the pious Russian family, have grown together in the most intimate way with this life and consecrated it; we will dwell on this in more detail in the chapter on Russian righteous men of various times, various degrees of culture, various estates and conditions.

The charm of the patriarchal family life of the old Russian educated aristocratic environment of the 19th century - this time of especially magnificent and creative flowering of Russian culture - lies, among other things, in the harmonious mutual combination of two cultural principles - Western European and native Russian - in the bosom of many of these families. Here, that creative synthesis was obtained, which is so characteristic of the Russian cultural, especially artistic and philosophical tradition of the 19th century. This is also a huge historical merit of family life.

And in Western culture, Russian religious feeling, Russian family culture, was looking for this old and undying religiously rooted, life-creating. Therefore, in a whole series of old Russian religious-minded cultural families, the spirit of true "Ecumenism" was so strong - universality, the search for the rays of the Logos of God - the Word of God wherever they met, and rejoicing in their radiance, spiritual openness for them, the spirit of true Christian fraternal love for the spiritual and religious treasures of the West, for its searches and acquisitions, for its great thinkers, artists, religious lights and righteous people, with deep spiritual fusion with the bosom of its Mother - the Eastern Church.

The warmth and comfort of old Moscow, old Moscow families rooted in tradition and at the same time living an enhanced cultural life! However, not only Moscow, but in general Russian Old Testament cultural families. But let us first dwell on Moscow, especially on this peculiar world of Moscow lanes full of great charm, for example, in the area of ​​​​the Arbat and Prechistenka, Povarskaya - the center of a concentrated, hospitable, patriarchal-cosy, simple-hearted, and at the same time often so refined and cultural life, so breathing tradition, so inextricably linked with him

known and at the same time often so dynamic and creative spiritually. This is, indeed, a whole special world connected with the rest of the world, but at the same time living its own special, concentrated life. Small, sometimes crooked lanes, mansions, partly hidden in the depths of a courtyard or garden, partly facing the street, mostly one-story, with a mezzanine, with several Empire columns and 8-9 facade windows (but often this house, which seems small from the street , stretches deep into the courtyard and turns out to be a huge house). And right next to it is the parish church (often two in the same lane, sometimes three), small, with green, blue or gold domes or bulbs, often five-domed, with a small, detached belfry, half-grown into the ground, with a planted a yard with trees, sometimes a walk-through, in which the wooden houses of the clergy peacefully stretch along the sides, and in the middle sometimes there is a large puddle with ducks lapping in it. From here, from this little church, the bell ringing is heard at any time of the day - in the morning, and in the evening, and in the afternoon, if, for example, someone is being buried. In the church itself, what a gracious peace, what concentration, especially during the hours of the evening service! The parishioners have their favorite, more or less permanent places. They stand and pray, some alone, others in families, the elderly are closer to the walls, sometimes with a chair. Lampadas are flickering, reflected on the salaries of icons, it is semi-dark in the church. They sing: “Quiet light, holy glory... Having come to the setting of the sun, having seen the light of the evening, let us sing to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit of God”... This gathered church life is pleasing and quiet, and not only soothing, but also invigorating. And in these mansions it is so warm and peaceful. A yard with numerous services, a garden to the street, often a garden stretches behind the house, sometimes a large one, with a gazebo, dense thickets of lilacs, where nightingales sing loudly in spring, with silvery poplars (there are especially many of them in Moscow). Their fallen buds are fragrant on spring evenings in the yard and garden, especially after a short, warm and blessed rain. A great lover and connoisseur of old Russia and especially old Moscow remarkably wrote about the charm of these mansions and life in them in his memoirs,

a man of knightly nobility, a fighter for the national cause against Bolshevism, and at the same time an artist at heart - Nikolai Nikolaevich Lvov.

“... The children grew up, studied at home with visiting teachers and teachers, skated from the mountains and skated on the Patriarch's Ponds and on Presnya, with childlike joy they played with simple handicraft toys, a carved wooden horse, amusingly painted dolls from the Trinity or a ruddy Matryoshka in sundress, ate raisins, halva, pods, sunflowers, and there was nothing better than a fig in the nanny's room. On Maslenaya they were taken to festivities in booths on Podnovinsky, during Great Lent everyone fasted, on Strastnaya everyone fasted, and confessed at their parish priest or in the monastery, where it was so scary to enter a small cell to an old confessor in a black cassock, met the Bright Resurrection of Christ in their parish and experienced all the mysterious joy of a dark spring night, when the first rumble of the bell of Ivan the Great is heard, and the oncoming inviting voices of Moscow bells rush towards him in the night air from all over and merge into one mysterious joyful iridescent ringing, going far, far into the sky over a city plunged into darkness.

Parents were not separated from their children by their daily activities or service, they lived a common life with them, in the summer in the countryside, in the winter in Moscow in their mansions, and the upbringing of children was warmed by such a warm feeling of love that nothing can replace. The words of the prayer, repeated in a child's whisper and learned from mother and nanny, and the child's fear of the first confession, and the joyful feeling, and the child's grief, and the tears—everything was connected in recollection with dear faces, with the kindness of the old nanny, with the tenderness of the mother, with her in a quiet voice and the soft, gentle touch of her hand on the hot forehead of a sick child, and then in these general readings and in the music in the evenings in the large living room, the whole impression of reading and playing the piano merges in memory with the sound of a mother’s voice reading aloud, with a smell lilacs and bird cherry, pouring into the room through the open window, with laughter and childish tears when reading

a sad story or a merry story, and the sounds of the Beethoven Sonata penetrate deeply into the child's soul, and just like reading aloud and the words of a prayer, everything remains for life - as one bright joyful memory of childhood.

I would like to dwell especially on this inner family world. How much spiritual light and softness and warmth is in it. It is captured, for example, by Leo Tolstoy in an unforgettable way both in "Childhood" and in "War and Peace". For example, I will refer to the inimitable, fragrant scene of the return of Nikolai Rostov to his parents' house from the theater of war.

And these maternal concerns about the upbringing of children, this diary of children's behavior, which is kept by Marie Bolkonskaya, in the marriage of Rostov.

Tolstoy got it right. The center of all this life, its inspiring source, is the mother. The significance of the mother, the woman in the Russian patriarchal, cultural family, is decisive and fundamental. In the Russian cultural family, a woman - mother and wife - plays a spiritually more important role than a man, and not only in the upbringing of children. She is the inner hearth of family life, exuding warmth and affection, pouring out this maternal-female affection on family members, and on all household members, on relatives, friends and acquaintances, and even on outsiders, especially lonely, abandoned, unfortunate ones who have fallen into the sphere the impact of this family, who fell under her hospitable shelter, who come to bask in her warm soulful flame. She is the center of this hostel, a cheerful and gentle sun in the sky of this small world, a source of affection, compassion and comfort, and at the same time through her, through her prayers, through her participation in the prayer of children, through her example, through her instruction, the flow religious energy, a jet of another - beneficent being, in which all the best that this family possesses is rooted, pour into its daily, most everyday and ordinary, life manifestations. Here we touch on the deepest, most sacred of the creative roots of Russian

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6 "Past years", in "Russian Thought", Prague, 1923 kN. I-II, pp. 104, 98-99.

family culture and Russian culture in general. And this image of the Russian mother and wife, the center of the family and family charm and the bearer of the religious principle, has not died, has not outlived itself. He lives to this day in many Russian mothers!

The one who replaced his mother from a very early age, his aunt Tatyana Aleksandrovna Ergolskaya, Leo Tolstoy commemorates in his senile memoirs the following words filled with noble emotion: “The main feature of her life, which involuntarily infected me, was her amazing, universal kindness to everyone without exception. I try to remember, and I can’t, not a single case when she got angry, said a harsh word, condemned - I can’t remember a single case in 30 years of her life ... She never taught how to live, in words, never didn't read the lectures. All her moral work was processed inside her, and only her deeds came out - and not deeds, ... but her whole life, calm, meek, submissive and loving not with anxious, admiring herself, but with quiet, imperceptible love. She was doing the inner work of love, and therefore she did not need to rush anywhere. And these two qualities - love and slowness - imperceptibly attracted to society to her and gave a special charm to this closeness ... More than one love for me was joyful. Joyful was this atmosphere of love for all those present and absent, the living and the dead, people and even animals. The image of the mother, who, judging by all the data, was an amazing woman, according to the blessed, meek radiance of her spirit, but whom he knew only from the stories of loved ones (he was 2 years old when she died), was one of the most cherished and holy; wealth of his inner world. In his memoirs, Tolstoy writes about his mother in the following way: “She seemed to me such a high, pure, spiritual being that often in the middle period of my life, during the struggle with the temptations that overcame me, I prayed to her soul, asking her to help me, and these prayers have always helped me.” N. G. Molostov says that when in the summer of 1908 in Yasnaya Polyana there was a conversation about what an amazing person Maria Nikolaevna was, Lev Nikolaevich gently and quietly, apparently holding back tears,

said, “Well, I don’t know that; I only know that I have c u lte to her." The entry in Tolstoy's diary dates back to the same time: "I can't talk about my mother without tears" (June 13, 1908). And a few days before that, he writes: “This morning I go around the garden and, as always, I remember my mother, about “mother”, whom I don’t remember at all, but who remained for me a holy ideal” ... (June 10th 1908). And a day later: "... the dearest ... being for me is my mother." It is not for nothing that N. N. Gusev dedicates his “Life of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy” to “her blessed memory” 7 .

Prince Evgeny Nikolaevich Trubetskoy in his childhood memoirs depicts the spiritual atmosphere that surrounded his childhood in this way: “Maybe this is self-deception, maybe this is just my personal feeling, but now, 40 years after our last departure from Akhtyrka, it seems to me that we breathed grace there, as if every breath of air was full of grace there. I remember four cribs in the nursery, in my very early childhood, when we boys were not yet separated from our sisters; on the cots - muslin curtains from mosquitoes and swatches. Through the open window, all sorts of evening village sounds burst in - the monotonous and, as it were, violin unison of mosquitoes, the drawn-out top note of a song in the distance, the rare and even more mysterious strike of a church bell - and above all this - a loud affirmation of the joy of life - a whole symphony performed by an orchestra of numerous swifts , flying out at sunset from the nests above the windows of the manor house 9 . The decisive factor in this atmosphere of peace and grace was his mother. “The more conscious, the more I became, the more these golden grains in my memories of her. I remember how deliberately incomprehensible reading in the evenings was replaced by reading the Gospel when we began to grow up. I remember how we got into the habit of confessing to her every day in our

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7 N. N. Gusev. The life of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Young Tolstoy. Moscow, 1927. Page. 26, 23, 33-37.

8 Trubetskoy's estate.

9 Book. E. N. Trubetskoy. "From the Past", p. 31.

children's crimes. I remember how she knew how to cut through to tears and arouse a deep consciousness of guilt. For a grievously delinquent, she had words of deep fiery indignation” 10 .

I will finish again with a reminiscence related to my family. What silence and peace the evenings breathed in the house of my grandfather, Vasily Sergeevich Arsenyev, in Moscow on Sadovaya. The old grandfather reads aloud to two unmarried daughters, my aunts, Nadezhda and Maria Vasilievna (the “Martha and Mary” of our family, individuals of an unusually high spiritual level, great kindness and spiritual radiance) in a cozy living room under the old Dolgorukovsky portraits by Borovikovsky and Levitsky. Both aunts work - they knit or embroider; I need to go upstairs to study, but I want to sit for an extra 5-10 minutes.

And here is an excerpt from my grandfather's letter:

Letter to the eldest son (about the relationship between him and his wife).

“... Our tenderness and love unites us in such a way that it is similar to your ideal love for each other, with the only difference being that we are elders, and that the miracle of Christ in the exaltation of marriage, symbolized by the turning of water into wine, at the marriage in Cana Galilee, we are now stronger and stronger feel "...

Here we involuntarily again touched the inner Holy of Holies of this family life.

The family is not the last. The atmosphere of family warmth and comfort and mutual self-forgetting love is one of the highest human values, but it itself suggests a nourishing principle. There are still greater depths that are revealed in the bosom of the same believing family, the depths of a grace-filled life, which I have already spoken about more than once. Not only were her nourishing roots here, but here she was touching something Immeasurably Superior.

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10 Book. E. N. Trubetskoy. "From the Past", p. 34.

walking towards the Ultimate and Highest Reality, where the family principle found its highest limit, but also its overcoming or completion. The ideal of domestic warmth, the precious reality of family happiness, were shattered by life, or rather by death, tearing the dearest members of the family out of the family circle, and then the image of another, imperishable House, the Father's house, in which "there are many abodes" grew before the eyes. But this is the great significance of a believing family, that the first news about this House of the Father - the first, still unclear feeling of it and the first inner meeting with this Father took place in its depths. “Every family in heaven and on earth is named after Him,” says the Apostle Paul (Eph. 3:15). In believing families, the bearers of this principle of “Fatherland” – father and mother, were looking for the last, decisive point of support for themselves and their children in this heavenly “Fatherland”, their children’s eyes were directed to it. Therefore, as we have already seen, joint prayer, joint kneeling before the Heavenly Father, surrendering ourselves and each other into His hands - this is one of the main pillars of the life of this family.

We started with the religious, and we finish this image of the Russian Old Testament family culture with the religious. But if, at the beginning of our presentation, we especially paid attention to the ritual, more external, although deeply saturated with prayer currents, side of this life, that is, to life, to the way of life, the enormous importance of which as a background, as a framework and moral support for family and In general, the entire folk culture is undoubted, but now I would like to touch a little more on what is even more important, essential and deep - namely, the living, nourishing dynamics, the prayer element and the life of inner achievement associated with it, as they manifested themselves in the family.

However, I will not dwell on the description, for example, of the joint fasting of children and parents during Great Lent, on the pictures of joint going to the services of Holy Week, on the enormous significance of the elements of prayer and the sacraments of the Church in the life of patriarchal Russians, including old cultural families.

mei, approved in this world of religious Reality - all this is known even without books. How, for example, was the religious atmosphere of Aksakov's house reflected in Ivan Aksakov's well-known poetic depiction of the evening church service in the village parish church - a picture that was well known and close to him from childhood.

Come, you weak

Come, joyous one.

Calling for Vespers

To a blessed prayer.

And the sound of peace

Everyone asks for the soul;

The neighborhood is calling

It spreads in the fields...

And slenderly clear

There is singing,

And the deacon is peaceful

Creates an announcement.

About gratitude

Labor of those who pray

About the royal city

About all workers

About those who are in favor

Suffering is given...

And smoke hangs in the church,

Thick with incense...

There were leaders of these families in religious life. The close connection between patriarchal believing families—especially the mothers of these families and the Russian elders—is a phenomenon of great significance in the history of Russian culture and spiritual life, which has not yet been adequately explored. Characteristic is the following episode from the life of Ivan Kireevsky, the founder of Russian religious philosophy, the first Russian philosopher who fertilized his thought by turning to the inner experience of the great ascetics and mystics of the Eastern Church. As is well known, he was initially fascinated by the religious philosophy of Schelling. With delight, he read aloud some passages from Schelling's works to his young wife Natalia Petrovna. She answered him that all this was not new to her, she had already met all this in the works of the holy fathers. Kireevsky then himself began to read the works of the fathers and mystics of the Orthodox Church, and his wife introduced him to the wonderful Elder Filaret of the Moscow Novospassky Monastery. After the death of the old

in 1842, both spouses of the Kireevskys came under the spiritual leadership of the remarkable elder Macarius of Optinsky. Of interest are the preserved letters of the Kireevsky spouses, especially Natalia Petrovna, to the elder Macarius. She confides her spiritual difficulties to him and asks for consolation and encouragement: ... “I am no good, my heart suffers incessantly: fear arises and produces sadness. Sometimes prayer makes it easier, and sometimes there is no strength to pray. Sometimes in the present I see the past and what has happened, unknown or hidden, I am distracted by the thought: spiritual suffering is increasing, while mental and physical strength is diminishing ... Here, father, my worthless sin, I confess to you, as to my merciful father, and I hope to receive from you healing of my infirmity of soul" 11 ...

Many, many Russian families, especially mothers of families, received spiritual support and guidance from the elders. One of these spiritual leaders was the famous recluse Vyshinsky, Bishop Feofan. Here, for example, is how he writes to one mother, burdened with many family trials:

“The grace of God be with you. Everything that is from the Lord, apart from our arbitrariness, is the best for us. This is not only by faith, it is abstractly so, but no matter what the circumstances of life are, you will palpably see that this is always the case. So now your embarrassment from everywhere - and your own illness and filial, and those difficult things about which you hint - all this is the best for you and for all of yours. Just pray and, praying, thank God. And for mournful things we must give thanks even more—to kiss the punishing and teaching right hand of God. Our blindness, not seeing anything, and too pretentious pride are the same - the reasons are the essence of your sorrows and the fact that my heart is too sick under unfavorable circumstances. Of course, you understand all this in such a way and know how to insert your feelings into a frame that Heavenly Providence makes with inimitable art. I wish you b-

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11 See Prot. Sergiy Chetverikov Optina Pustyn. Paris, YMCA-Press, pp. 149-150 (Letters from N.P. Kireevskaya to the Optina Elder Hieromonk Father Macarius).

goodwill. A heart devoted to the Lord always knows how to find peace. May the Mother of God warm you with maternal consolation in your soul. What is it like for you now? My desire is for the Lord to lighten you and clear your horizon a little. (November 15, 1872).

And here again is a whole series of letters to another mother, Princess N.I.

... “It is the duty of parents to admonish children,” so did yours. And be afraid of what? The word love never irritates. Commander only does not produce any fruit. In order for the Lord to bless the children to avoid dangers, one must pray day and night. God is merciful, He has many means to prevent - which we cannot even think of. God rules everything. He is a wise, all-good and all-powerful Ruler. And we belong to His Kingdom. Why be discouraged? He will not let His own be hurt. One thing is to be taken care of—how not to offend Him—and He has not struck you out of His number... (September 21, 1875).

He gives advice to mothers about fasting together with children:

“The grace of God be with you. Bless the Lord - to tell you all and partake of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. More contrition about sinfulness is needed than enumeration of sins, although this is necessary. More prayerful sighs from the heart than reading prayers, although this is necessary. Fussiness must be expelled from the soul and reverence before God should be established there. Having established this reverence, then remain with it. Let the beauties revere: "Rise, sleep." This will be a good introduction to repentance... Pray for your husband, but refrain from judging. It is not surprising for the Lord to turn his heart in one minute. And God forbid the high school student to succeed ... ".

Theophan writes to the father of the family, who has turned to faith, inciting him to works of mercy:

...“For the fact that the Lord called you to faith, nothing special is required, except to be sincerely faithful to the faith. And be grateful that the Lord has called you out of darkness into light. Help the most

needy. Whoever comes to you with tears, do not let him go without drying this tear. Blessed are the merciful ones, for there will be mercy... Because of the hand of the needy, always behold the hand of the Lord Himself, who converted You, extended to You. He Himself said, “Whatever you do to them—the poor, you will do to Me”... (September 14, 1874)

We have seen how streams of grace-filled instructions, of a grace-filled inner life poured through parents, especially through the mother of the family, into the environment of the family and did not remain without influence. To this I could give a number of examples from personal experience and personal meetings.

And the grief of a mother who has lost her children finds a lively response in a loving spiritual leader and adviser who knows how to support a soul shaken by sadness. In this regard, the correspondence between Ekaterina Vladimirovna Novosiltseva, born Countess Orlova, who lost her only son in a duel, and her spiritual mentor, Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, is characteristic. On September 21, 1825, Filaret wrote to Novosiltseva from the Lavra:

“May the God of patience and consolation grant His servant not to become exhausted in the feat of patience, and may He send His consolation in sorrow, in which human consolations fail. “The Mother of the Crucified for us, who experienced the greatest of Mother’s sorrows, may she accept the prayer of a grieving mother in order to bring her to the throne of Her Son and God.” (September 21, 1825) 12.

A reassessment of values ​​occurs in this internal struggle, in this grief and the loss of the dearest and closest. And the gaze is directed to other, the highest plane of being, to the House of the Heavenly Father, when the most precious thing that was in this life, that gave comfort and value to the hearth, went there from this life. The soul is shocked, wounded, the crust of earthly well-being and some kind of earthly, even the most innocent, self-satisfaction, focusing mainly on one's earthly happiness has been cut through.

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12 Letters of the Most Reverend. Filaret Metropolitan of Moscow to E. V. Novosiltseva. Moscow. 1911, p. 61.

and comfort, and an impulse is revealed — in the most real, albeit painful way — into the depths of the highest and decisive Reality, not as before, but with all one’s strength, all one’s will, all one’s mind. And earthly love is transformed and grows and helps the soul in this new life of service, and itself visits the soul thrown into its languor - undying, already purified and deepened love. Such a reassessment of values, such an overcoming of attachments to earthly warmth and comfort occurred in Khomyakov's soul after the death of his infinitely beloved wife. A record made by Yuri Samarin of his conversation with Khomyakov, which took place shortly after this event, and published many years later in the Tatev collection of S. A. Rachinsky. This is perhaps one of the most significant documents of Russian intimate and family, and at the same time, mystical life. I bring the full story of Samarin 13.

“... Khomyakov understood Christian revelation as a living, continuous speech of God, directly addressed to the personal consciousness of each person, and he listened to it with intense attention. Our conversations often touched on this topic with regard to the general question of the significance of Providence in the history of mankind, a people, or an individual, but he never introduced me to the realm of my own inner feelings. Only once was it given to me to penetrate into the secret of this uninterrupted conversation between him and God. This conversation is so deeply engraved in my memory that I can repeat it almost from word to word.

Having learned about the death of Ekaterina Mikhailovna, I took a vacation and, having arrived in Moscow, hurried to him. When I entered his office, he stood up, took me by both hands and for some time could not utter a single word. Soon, however, he regained control of himself and told me in detail the whole course of the illness and treatment. The meaning of his story was that Ekaterina Mikhailovna died, contrary to all probabilities, due to a necessary combination of circumstances. He himself understood clearly the root of the disease and,

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13 See “Tataevsky Collection” by S. A. Rachinsky, St. Petersburg. 1899, pp. 128-133.

knowing firmly what means were to help, in spite of his usual determination, he hesitated to use them. The two doctors, not recognizing the disease, of which the symptoms, according to him, were obvious, fell into a deep error and, by wrong treatment, produced a new disease, first exhausting all the forces of the body. He saw it all and yielded to them. After listening to him, I noticed that all this seemed obvious to him now, because the unfortunate outcome of the illness justified his fears and at the same time erased from his memory all the other signs on which he himself probably based his hope of recovery in the last minutes. I added that in reproducing now in his own way and in reverse order the consequences to the causes of the whole course of the disease, he only exposes himself to fruitless torment. Then he stopped me, taking my hand: “You did not understand me; I didn't mean to say that it was easy to save her. On the contrary, I see with crushing clarity that she had to die for me, precisely because there was no reason to die. The blow was directed not at her, but at me. I know that she is better now than she was here, but I forgot myself in the fullness of my happiness. I neglected the first blow; the second is such that it cannot be forgotten. His voice trembled and he lowered his head. A few minutes later he continued: “I want to tell you what happened to me. A few years ago, I came home from church after communion and, unfolding the Gospel of John, I attacked the last conversation of the Savior with the disciples after the Last Supper. As I read, these words, from which a stream of boundless love beats with a living spring, came to me stronger and stronger, as if someone were saying them next to me. Having reached the words: "You are my friends," I stopped reading and listened to them for a long time. They penetrated right through me. On this I fell asleep. My heart felt unusually light and light. Some kind of force lifted me higher and higher, streams of light poured from above and washed over me; I felt that a voice would soon be heard. Trembling penetrated all the veins. But in one minute everything stopped; I can't tell you what happened to me. It was not a ghost, but some kind of dark, impenetrable veil that suddenly lowered

hovered before me and separated me from the realm of light. What was on it, I could not make out; but at the same instant all the idle moments of my life, all my fruitless conversations, my vain vanity, my laziness, my attachment to worldly squabbles flashed through my memory like a whirlwind. What was not there. Familiar faces with whom, God knows why, I met and diverged, delicious dinners, cards, a game of billiards, many such things that, apparently, I never think about and which, it seemed, I did not value at all. All this together merged into some kind of ugly mass, leaned on my chest and crushed me to the ground. I woke up with a feeling of crushing shame. For the first time, I felt like a slave to the bustle of life from head to toe. Remember, in passages, it seems to John of the Ladder these words: “Blessed is he who has seen an angel; a hundred times more blessed is he who has seen himself." For a long time I could not recover from this lesson, but then life took its toll. It was hard not to lose myself in that fullness of imperturbable happiness which I enjoyed. You can't understand what this life together means. You are too young to appreciate her." Here he stopped and was silent for some time, then added: “On the eve of her death, when the doctors had already hung their heads and there was no hope of salvation, I threw myself on my knees in front of the image in a state close to frenzy and began - let alone pray, but ask God for it. We all repeat that prayer is omnipotent, but we ourselves do not know its power, because it rarely happens to pray with all our soul. I felt such a power of prayer that could melt away everything that seems to be a solid and inexorable obstacle; I felt that God's omnipotence, as if summoned by me, was coming towards my prayer, and that the life of a wife could be given to me. At that moment the black veil descended upon me again; what had already happened to me the first time was repeated, and my powerless prayer fell to the ground. Now all the charm of life is lost for me. I cannot enjoy life. Joy was available to me only through her, as what comforted me was reflected on her face. It remains to fulfill my lesson. Now, thanks to God, there will be no need to

remind myself of death, she will go with me inseparably to the end.

I wrote this story from word to word, as it was preserved in my memory; but, after rereading it, I feel that I am unable to convey the calmly concentrated tone in which he spoke to me. His words made a deep impression on me precisely because it was in him alone that not a shadow of self-delusion could be supposed. There was not a person in the world who was to such an extent disgusted and unusual to be carried away by his own sensations and give way to clarity of consciousness to nervous irritation. His inner life was distinguished by sobriety - this was the predominant feature of his piety. He was even afraid of emotion, knowing that a person is too inclined to take credit for every earthly feeling, every shed tear; and when tenderness came over him, he deliberately poured a stream of cold mockery on himself in order not to let his soul evaporate in fruitless impulses and to direct all its forces to the cause. That everything that he told me really happened to him, that in those moments of his life his self-consciousness was illumined by a revelation from above - I am as sure of this as that he was sitting opposite me, that he, and no one else, spoke with me.

His whole subsequent life is explained by this story. The death of Ekaterina Mikhailovna produced a decisive turning point in her. Even those who did not know him very closely could notice that from that moment on, his ability to get carried away by anything that was not directly related to his vocation had cooled down. He no longer allowed himself to do anything. Apparently, he retained his former gaiety and sociability, but the memory of his wife and the thought of death did not leave him. How many times I noticed, by the expression of his face, how this thought interrupted the cheerful stream of his good-natured laughter. His life was split in two. During the day he worked, read, talked, went about his business, gave himself to everyone who cared about him. But when night fell and everything around him settled down and fell silent, another time began for him. Here memories of the former bright and happy

In the early years of his life, the image of his dead wife was resurrected before him, and only in these moments of complete solitude did he give vent to restrained longing.

Once I lived with him in Ivanovskoye. Several guests came to him, so that all the rooms were occupied, and he moved my bed to him. After supper, after long conversations animated by his inexhaustible gaiety, we lay down, put out the candles, and I fell asleep. Long after midnight, I woke up from some conversation in the room. The morning dawn barely illuminated her. Without moving or raising my voice, I began to peer and listen. He knelt in front of his marching icon, his hands were folded in a cross on the chair cushion, his head rested in his hands. Repressed sobs reached my ears. This went on until the morning. Of course, I pretended to be asleep. The next day he came out to us cheerful, cheerful, with his usual good-natured laugh. From the man who accompanied him everywhere, I heard that this was repeated almost every night.

Here, for a moment, we flashed before us the innermost, intimate depths, where the highest rise of human feeling touches the highest and ultimate Reality, that Reality from which the meaning and life of an individual person and the entire spiritual and creative tradition of the family and people are fertilized and receive.

Each family has its own indescribable atmosphere of love, understanding and warmth. Children born in families adopt this atmosphere. How does it arise? A similar halo in the family is created by family traditions, customs or laws of family leisure. Often such laws take their roots from the family foundations of previous generations - they are strong and unshakable. Thanks to them, a feeling of reliability of family relations is created, a strong bond arises between family members, close and trusting relationships are maintained, children feel the stability of the family.

What are family traditions: examples

Family traditions are regularly repeated actions of family members aimed at rallying intra-family ties and strengthening the family as the main foundation of society. Traditions are an indispensable attribute of family happiness and well-being, reflecting the moral position of all family members. Each family is individual and has its own history. Family customs allow all members to feel their importance, give time and attention to relatives, show them respect and love.

Examples of traditions: joint holidays, themed dinners on weekends, family vacations, reading fairy tales to children before bedtime or singing lullabies, going to church on Sundays or religious holidays, writing letters to Santa Claus for the New Year, baking Easter cakes for household members, sharing meals and many others.

What are family traditions and holidays

• Holding family holidays. This tradition has its roots in the distant past - for centuries it was customary to celebrate holidays with family and friends. The main such holiday should be called a birthday. In most families, it is customary on this day to invite guests to the house, set the festive table, give gifts to the birthday man and by all means blow out the candles on the birthday cake, making a wish. Family holidays include weddings, the birth of children, baptisms, etc.

• Holding public holidays. They include everyone's favorite holiday - the New Year. Most families practice the custom of holding it together at a large table, with Olivier salad, traditional for our country, and champagne. Children write letters to Santa Claus asking for the desired gifts. Many families celebrate Easter by baking Easter cakes and lighting them up in the church. Among the national holidays, the World Workers' Day is traditionally celebrated on May 1. On this holiday, most families go on a picnic and cook meat dishes on the grill.

• Games with children. It is important that both parents take part in the upbringing of the child, play with him. During games, the child learns the world, acquires new skills, improves his physical and intellectual level. For example, according to custom, a mother teaches a child to play chess every Saturday, and a father plays football with his son on Sundays. Children love stability, so try not to break the established customs.

• Reading stories before bed. This is the most important tradition in raising children, because fairy tales allow the child to develop imagination, to know the world. In addition, daily reading of fairy tales before going to bed develops a certain mode of going to bed in the child. Even if the child is too small to understand the meaning of what is read, the calm and measured voice of mom or dad will have a calming effect on him. Such an evening ritual will calm even the most active children, contributing to a good sound sleep.

• Family walks. For the development of the physical abilities of the child, and maintaining their own, it is important to take joint walks. During such a walk, you need to communicate, you can see the sights. In order to instill spiritual values, it is advisable for the whole family to visit cinemas, theaters, museums, and exhibitions. Such trips can broaden the horizons and raise the cultural level of the family as a whole.

• Kissing tradition. To create an atmosphere of love, it is important to kiss your loved ones more often. It is advisable to kiss children at least twice a day - in the morning when they wake up, in the evening - before going to bed. More frequent kisses and hugs are welcome, even with an older child, because when there is a lack of affection, children grow up callous. It is also important to wish all relatives a good night before going to bed and good morning when you wake up.
• Joint vacation trips. Do not underestimate this type of leisure, because most psychologists recommend regularly changing the environment to maintain good relationships. The main thing is to visit new cities and countries all together in order to escape from routine and everyday life, to expand your horizons.

• Orthodox traditions. These include going to church together on Orthodox holidays or every Sunday, celebrating Christmas and Easter, fasting, baptizing children, reading the Bible, praying before bed, regularly visiting deceased relatives.

What values ​​underlie family traditions

Family traditions generate and nurture important values ​​in people: love for the family, respect for one's relatives, care for loved ones, a correct understanding of the family and its role in life. Failure to comply with family customs and foundations can lead to a weakening of ties between its members, to the destruction of family ties. Even a cell of society in which love reigns cannot exist without certain important and pleasant customs, for example, joint leisure.

Traditions strengthen in children a sense of gratitude to their parents, as well as to grandparents, instilling respect for the older generation. Spouses customs give a sense of inviolability, stability of family relationships. L.N. Tolstoy said: "Happy is he who is happy at home." A person living in a family that respects traditions will surely be surrounded by care, love, warmth and tenderness. In such a person, family well-being will certainly be transferred to other areas of life.

Family traditions of different countries and peoples of the world

Each nation has its own special traditions related to all areas of life, and especially the family. This is due, first of all, to the fact that each nation or country has its own special geography, location, climate, history, unique culture, adheres to different religions. All these factors influence the formation of cultural and family customs. Family traditions, in turn, shape the worldview and attitude to life. Such family structures have existed for centuries, practically unchanged, passing from older family members to younger ones.

Family cultural traditions in Russia history and modernity

If we turn to history, it becomes obvious that there are many traditions in Rus'. From time immemorial, the main family custom in Russia has been genealogy - in the past it was considered indecent not to know one's family, and the expression "Ivan, who does not remember kinship" was an insult. An integral part of the family structure was the compilation of a family tree or family tree. Also known are such traditions of the Russian people as the transfer of valuable things from generation to generation and naming a child in honor of one of the respected ancestors.

In modern Russia, the significance of family customs has been somewhat lost. For example, nowadays you rarely meet a family leading their own genealogy. Often the memory of generations is reduced to an album with photographs. But such wonderful traditions as a joint meal and holding joint holidays have been preserved. Family customs and traditions in the Kuban still suggest a Cossack life, raising children in the spirit of a Cossack family.

Traditions in Germany

There is a stereotype that the Germans are extremely pedantic. The most strict traditions among the Germans relate to the family:

• it is customary to treat your home with the utmost care, carefully cleaning it and bringing beauty to it;
• it is not customary to leave grandchildren to be raised by their grandmother or grandfather - for this it is necessary to determine the amount of money for them;
• parents in old age do not live with children - they are looked after by nurses or they live in special boarding houses;
• at Christmas, it is customary for the whole family to gather in the parental home;
• The Germans are prudent and economical, so they have a tradition of saving for old age, during which they usually travel a lot around the world.

In England

The British have traditions - these are the three pillars on which the Earth rests, so they honor them with special trepidation. Who does not know about the notorious English custom of drinking tea? Family gatherings and discussions are sure to be held over a cup of real Earl Gray with milk. The British are Catholics, so they especially celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving, gathering with the whole family, preparing traditional dishes. It is necessary to call a fine tradition among the English the custom of giving children a good education. It is considered bad form not to send your child to a private boarding school or college.

In France

In France, the custom is widespread - on Sundays to gather at a common table, drink wine and have a meal. Of the holidays, the French like to celebrate Christmas, gathering in their parents' house. At the festive banquet, there are always such delicacies as foie gras, salmon, seafood, iscariot snails and noble cheeses. The traditional drink for Christmas is champagne, and the dessert is “Christmas log”.

In India

India is a country of the strictest family customs and traditions. Indian society is divided into social castes, so the issue of marriage is approached very unusually there. The father of the family must himself choose the future groom for his daughter, she was given in marriage only to a representative of her social caste. A lavish wedding celebration is more of a duty than a wish. The bride traditionally had to provide a dowry. Divorce and remarriage in India used to be prohibited.

Indian family life is greatly influenced by Buddhist traditions. According to them, a man should:

• Show respect for your spouse.
• Do not change.
• Provide for a family.
• Teaching children the craft.
• Choose the right pair for the kids.

A woman must:

• Respect your husband.
• To raise children.
• Perform all household duties.
• Don't cheat on your husband.
• Fulfill all the wishes of the spouse.

Tatar traditions

Tatars are Muslims, so family structures are based on Sharia and the Koran. Among the Tatars, the creation of a family is considered a necessity dictated by religion. Interestingly, after marriage, the husband receives full power over his wife, and the wife is dependent on him - she does not even have the right to leave the house without the consent of her husband. Divorces among Tatars are extremely rare, exclusively at the initiative of the husband. It is customary for children to be brought up by their wife, but they are required to show complete obedience to their father.

What family traditions are important in raising children

Family customs play an important role in the upbringing of children. It is extremely difficult to instill traditions in an adult, so they are often passed down from generation to generation from parents to children. Children perceive the world the way their parents do, therefore, pleasant family customs determine the child's perception of the family as the main element of his life, as well as determining its place in the value system.

The traditions of family reading before going to bed, singing lullabies, kisses at every meeting, joint dinners, walks will be useful. They define in the child the concept of stability, the inviolability of family structures, give a sense of solidarity, make children more tender and affectionate. It is also important to instill from childhood the custom of respecting and honoring one's ancestors by regularly visiting them on holidays.

Proverbs and poems about family traditions

There are many instructive proverbs about family customs and traditions:

• "What is the treasure when the family is in harmony."
• "Children are not a burden, but a joy."
• "When the sun is warm, when the mother is good."
• "Not the mother who gave birth, but the one who raised."
• "A family is strong when there is only one roof over it."
• "The whole family is together, and the soul is in place."
• "A tree is supported by roots, but a man is a family."
• “If I have granddaughters, I know fairy tales.”
• "Don't hide your failures from your parents."
• "Honour your parents - you will not go astray from the true path."
• "In a family where they help each other, troubles are not terrible."

Poems about the family, as well as traditions, see the photo below:

Family traditions are one of the most important aspects of everyone's life, so it is so important to cultivate and support them in every possible way. Family life without traditions would be boring. It's great when young families do it themselves, relying on the experience of their parents' family life, adding their own personal moments to them. The main goal is rapprochement with the rest of the relatives, building a strong reliable family, as well as enjoying communication with loved ones. Be happy!

1. Introduction

2. What is a family?

3. Family forms

4. Why start a family?

5. Functions of the family

6. The main condition for finding happiness in family life

Introduction

How does the life of a person who has come into incarnation begin?

Usually from family.

In the family, he receives care and love, takes his first steps, gains experience in interacting with the outside world.

Everything that happens in the family is firmly imprinted from the first minutes of incarnation and then is reflected in the future life of a person. This is the way of life of the family, and the emotional reactions of family members to different situations, and the range of their interests. All these ideas and habits are passed down from generation to generation, forming the traditions of the family.

The family is strong, first of all, spiritual traditions.

The family is the foundation of any society. And therefore, the prosperity of society or its decline as a whole depends on how strong the spiritual traditions of the family are.

Family traditions are aimed at rallying family ties and strengthening the family as the main foundation of society. Traditions are an indispensable attribute of family happiness and prosperity. They allow all family members to feel their importance, give time and attention to relatives, show them respect and love.

Spiritual traditions reflect the moral position of all family members.

Probably everyone is familiar with these traditions in one way or another. They exist for thousands of years as moral rules bequeathed by the wise teachers of mankind. They were carefully preserved and passed on in the monuments of ancient literature, in the customs of peoples, in religious rites. And in this lecture, we will look at some of these traditions.

It’s just that the very understanding of morality gradually becomes smaller, sometimes reduced to rituals, to the performance of ritual actions bequeathed by the ancestors without realizing the true reasons for the need for a certain behavior.

And also we observe both in the family and in society a complete decline in morals.

And above all, this is due to the lack of sexual culture, which should be part of the general culture of society. And sexual culture is directly related to the reproductive function of the family - one of its main functions. These and other questions will be discussed in the lecture.

To begin with, consider what a family is and answer the question of why create a family.

What is family?

There are many definitions of the concept a family . If the dictionaries of the middle of the last century (Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary, Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary) called a family a group of close relatives living together, then modern encyclopedias give a more extended definition.

So, the Philosophical Encyclopedia and the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary give the following definition:

A family – a small group based on marriage or consanguinity, whose members are connected by a common life, mutual moral responsibility and mutual assistance.

And under marriage implied “a historically determined, sanctioned and regulated by society form of relations between a man and a woman, establishing their rights and obligations in relation to each other, to children and to society”.

That is, marriage is a kind of contract concluded by three parties: a man, a woman and the state. It stipulates only one date - the date of the conclusion of the marriage agreement, but does not indicate the date of expiration of the contract. This implies that the bonds of marriage hold people together for the rest of their lives.

In many countries, the consecration of marriage is performed by the church. Spouses take an oath of fidelity to each other before God and take upon themselves the duty of mutual guardianship "both in sorrow and in joy, and in sickness and in health, until death do us part." The consecration of a marriage in front of a church altar is considered a very powerful form of strengthening a marriage.

Marriage is a sacrament. Through marriage, spouses can work out karma with their life partner, carry the burden of their neighbor. This understanding of marriage is now almost lost in the Western world.

In 2006, the Lords of Wisdom gave us the opportunity during the dispensation on the 23rd to work out the karma of someone close to us. And we can choose as such a person, for example, our spouse.

Maintaining an immaculate concept of your partner, thinking of him as God is the duty of every spouse. Otherwise, people simply focus on the mistakes and negative aspects of living together, and not on each other's Divine potential.

In our time, the convergence of karma has intensified, and therefore many relationships are aggravated, including family ones. And that's where so many divorces come from. But you should never even allow the thought of divorce: as long as you do not think about divorce, your thoughts are aimed at overcoming the problems that arise. Divorce is the easiest way to solve problems, as it seems to spouses. But it only generates new problems, new karmic debts. Therefore, do not allow difficulties to become a reason for the dissolution of a marriage.

A person is an arena of struggle with his ego (and not with the outside world). In marriage, this struggle is especially acute, because the spouses are connected with each other. And each of the spouses has to control the manifestation of their ego on a daily basis and find a common language with family members, thereby protecting their marriage.

Family forms

The forms of the family gradually changed in connection with the change in the socio-economic conditions of society.

So, in the 19th century in Russia, where the peasantry represented the largest class, families were large, included several generations (up to four or five) and resembled a community. Such a family was multi-family, and included several families related by blood, living together and leading one household under the control of one person, who was called a householder.

For example, the family of the Voronezh peasant Leon Izmailov consisted of 54 people. It consisted of a householder with his wife (76 and 74 years old), 6 married sons (from 36 to 55 years old), 7 married grandchildren, 9 unmarried grandchildren, 10 unmarried granddaughters, 3 minor great-grandchildren and 4 great-granddaughters. There are 26 men and 28 women in total.

Multi-family gave the peasant economy stability and acted as a guarantee of economic well-being.

With the development of scientific and technological progress and in connection with the industrialization of society, many families no longer needed hard peasant labor, and with it the need for several generations to live together.

The modern family is for the most part nuclear, that is, one that consists of parents and their children (until the children are married). Moreover, when children create their own family, they tend to live independently, and their family also becomes nuclear.

Increasingly, there are families that live in the so-called civil marriage. In this case, the man and woman do not register their marriage, although in all other respects their union performs the same functions as the family that formalized its relationship.

The society did not stop there. Representatives of sexual minorities advocate the legalization of same-sex marriages and their legalization at the state level. There is a serious debate in society whether it is possible to call such a partnership a family. But, as one of the participants in such a discussion, which took place in Lithuania, said, “The question is not whether this bill will be passed, the question is only when it will be passed”.

Thus, we are witnessing the rapid degradation of the institution of the family. In just some 130-150 years, a family from a patriarchal-communal family turns into a civil marriage, illegal before God and before the state. And, moreover, - in the cohabitation of people of the same sex who cannot fulfill one of the most important functions of the family - childbearing. If this continues, then in a few generations the population of developed countries will simply die out.

Why start a family?

Thus, the right motive for creating a family is to help and support each other, as well as the birth of children and raising them in the best traditions. And not getting sexual pleasure.

Please note: this is not just about creating a family, but about legal creating a family - about marriage.

In modern society, the motives for which people unite in families are very diverse.

Here is the result of one small student research. The table shows that the most common motives for marriage are love and community of interests.

First of all, people are looking for love and hope through family relationships to consolidate this feeling. To a greater extent, young people want to receive love and to a lesser extent - to give, i.e. and in love, as in other aspects of the life of a consumer society, there is consumerism. In addition, many associate this feeling with sexuality and seek to obtain a stable and harmonious sexual relationship with a partner in family life.

By creating a family, a person hopes to find in it a joy for his soul and a source of happiness. spiritual intimacy makes spouses truly happy. The same or similar views on life lead to mutual understanding. General interests give a lot of interesting topics for communication, create the possibility of joint self-realization. Spiritual communication promotes mutual enrichment, personal, intellectual and spiritual growth of family members.

Emotional support and understanding in the family help a person feel more confident, calm and safe, which helps to maintain and restore the mental health of all family members. When entering into marriage, a person hopes to find in the face of his partner a true friend who will accept him as he is, support him in all endeavors, empathize and sympathize, share all joys and sorrows.

Sooner or later spouses think about children, about procreation. A person needs a family to be able to have offspring, raise and educate happy and healthy children.

Creating a family allows a person to establish household and economic aspects of life. A common budget is formed in the family, which makes it possible to satisfy the material and biological needs of its members in nutrition, the acquisition and maintenance of household property, clothes, shoes, home improvement, and the creation of home comfort. Each spouse has their own area of ​​responsibility. A well-established and stable life greatly facilitates a person's life, helps to support family members in case they have economic difficulties.

Recall the pyramid of the American psychologist Abraham Maslow - a model of human needs.

The family satisfies the needs listed above at all levels:

- are realized on the physical plane household and economic aspects of family life that give physical health to family members, as well as the satisfaction of sexual relationships that bring pleasure,

- on the astral plane - this is emotional support and mutual understanding, which give psychological stability and mental health to all family members,

- on the mental plane, the need for love and respect is provided: even if not all the people around you understand you, then in the family team you will be loved as you are;

- on the ethereal level - this is self-realization in procreation and raising children.

And these four levels of needs subject to their implementation give a person the opportunity to grow and develop on higher planes. Since in the family - as in a small model of society - there is an accumulation of those qualities of a person that will then remain in his higher bodies and pass into his new incarnation. That is, the family provides a person with numerous opportunities for development on all planes.

At the fifth level, a person can fulfill his mission in the family, realizing the spiritual side of life and helping loved ones to elevate their consciousness. We will return to the consideration of this issue later, in the section “The balance of spiritual and physical”.

Family Functions

Thus, we found out that a person seeks to satisfy a number of needs by creating a family. And the family is just endowed with these functions. Psychologists note about one and a half to two dozen family functions. Moreover, the authors of textbooks on family psychology distribute them in order of importance in a different order, starting with the reproductive and educational functions. Then come (in a different sequence) communicative, emotional, spiritual, household, economic, protective, status, socialization and other functions.

Much attention is paid to the first two main functions of the family: reproductive and educational.

reproductive function is associated with the reproduction of life, that is, with the birth of children, the continuation of the human race. The conception of children occurs with the help of sexual energy.

Educational function is associated with the formation of the personality of the child. Also in the family there is a systematic educational impact of the family team on each of its members. Parents constantly influence children, and they, in turn, influence parents and other family members.

The family is teaching the next generation. Here they teach to speak, walk, read, count, etc. And they also teach the acquisition of qualities: the development of willpower, the ability to overcome difficult life situations, the manifestation of care for the elders and the younger.

In the family, there is a distribution of responsibilities, familiarization with work. The initial experience of communal life is acquired: the experience of sharing in common or gaining common ground with another person. There comes an understanding of the concept of the Common Good - first as the common good of the family.

The main condition for finding happiness in family life

So, it depends on how correct the motive is at the very beginning of creating a family, whether people will be happy in family life. A happy family life is extremely important for a person. So, according to sociological surveys of Russian women, it is this indicator that ranks first in their scale of life values.

But there is one condition - the most important condition for finding happiness in family life:

Worship of the Divine Law should become the main spiritual tradition of any family and the basis for all other family foundations. Without this condition, it is impossible to carry out the mission (the fifth level in Maslow's pyramid).

The lecture was prepared by E.Yu. Ilyin