http://www.stinnocent.com/seraphim/dtw/dtw.html

"DEATH TO THE WORLD is a zine to inspire Truth-seeking and soul-searching amidst the modern age of nihilism and despair, promoting the ancient principles of the last true rebellion -- being dead to this world and alive to the other world."

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- DEATH TO THE WORLD -
Children of the Burning Heart

Just a few years back, a group of earnest young men and women, some of them former punks, created a 'zine for seekers of truth. The hand photo-copied pages were filled with drawings and Icons of Early Christian Saints and Martyrs, and accounts of their lives and struggles, as well as those of more recent times. Also included were writings from the hearts of young God-seekers today - poetry and accounts of personal struggles for truth. It was titled Death to the World, a 7th century term used by St. Isaac the Syrian for ascetic practice - the cutting off of the passions.

What do we mean by: "DEATH TO THE WORLD"?

"The world is the general name for all passions. When we wish to call the passions by a common name, we call them the world. But when we wish to distinguish them by their special names, we call them passions. The passions are the following: love of riches, desire for possessions, bodily pleasures from which comes sexual passion, love of honor gives rise to envy, lust for power, arrogance and pride of position, the craving to adorn oneself with luxurious clothing and vain ornaments, the itch for human glory which is a source of rancor and resentment, and physical fear. Where these passions cease to be active, there the world is dead....

Someone has said of the Saints that while alive they were dead; for though living in the flesh, they did not live for the flesh. See for which of these passions you are alive. Then you will know how far you are alive to the world, and how far you are dead to it."
--St. Isaac the Syrian, 7th Century

Overdose (http://www.stinnocent.com/seraphim/dtw/dtw4/overdose.htm) | Suicide: The Last Genocide (http://www.stinnocent.com/seraphim/dtw/dtw4/suicide.htm) | Never Kneel (http://www.stinnocent.com/seraphim/dtw/dtw4/nevkneel.htm) | Perfection in Pain (http://www.stinnocent.com/seraphim/dtw/dtw1/pain.txt) | A Prison Called Self (http://www.stinnocent.com/seraphim/dtw/dtw12/prsnself.html)

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http://www.saintinnocent.com/seraphim/books/youth.htm

Youth of the Apocalypse and the Last True Rebellion - Punx to Monks

A battle cry to today's youth,
to live and die for Christ crucfied...
By Monks John Marler and Andrew Wermuth

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...If one looks at the land, he will see darkness and distress; even the light will be darkened by the clouds. - Isaiah 5:30

In the darkening world of contemporary unbelief, where the impending storm clouds of destruction have indeed almost drowned out the light, this distress is most intensely felt by the still-tender souls of the youth. We, the youth of today, see how reality is warped and twisted into escapism by those who have swallowed the lies of this world and chosen to live in the shadow of evil. We see how our society has made the dollar the justification for all means, even to the point of trying to sell us "god" in the market place like a slave, bound and gagged.

We don't want a homogenized smiling American god, who is merely the refuse of the rotting system around us. We have been raised on commercials and billboards; we don't want to be sold god in silver wrapping paper and a pink bow. We want to discover reality, not in an abstract way which will make us feel good about ourselves, but hard grueling reality. We want truth, raw and real. We are desperate to know Christ crucified, not a plastic imitation of Him. Only the Man of Sorrows can understand our sorrow, and only a God crucified and resurrected deserves our faith.

Youth of the Apocalypse is a ray of light cutting through the dark clouds of hypocritical, worldly pseudo-religion. It presents the realities of Orthodox Truth without any apologies. For those of us who have been raised in the stifling smog of lies and sugar-coated excuses, it is a breath of fresh air, a life preserver in an increasingly choppy ocean, a crumb of reality under the table of self-deception, a punch in the face. This book is a virtual manifesto for the despairing children of the eleventh hour, addressing the issues and problems that are literally tearing apart the fabric of innocence: it deals with suicide, insanity, drugs, violence, art, the occult, the apocalypse, and finally with our salvation, suffering and resurrection out of the depths of this post-human wasteland.

Youth of the Apocalypse was torn from the hearts of two young monastics in Alaska, who themselves have been raised out of the muck of contemporary Nihilism in its most extreme form. It has already brought suicidal young souls, despairing Orthodox young people, and other Christian youths into the ranks of God's Army.

Humanity had thought itself sufficient, and even now we think we can escape our destiny by our own efforts. Escape! - that is our only thought. To escape form the insanity, the hell, of modern life is all we wish. But we cannot escape!!! We must go through this hell, and accept it, knowing it is the love of God that causes our suffering. What terrible anguish! - to suffer so, not knowing why, indeed thinking there is no reason. The reason is God's love - do we see it blazing in the darkness? - we are blind.
- Blessed Heiromonk Fr. Seraphim Rose

http://www.saintinnocent.com/seraphim/music.htm

Otherworldly Music & Hardcore Chant

Chants from Optina Monastery

Chants from Valaam Monastery - Hymns of the All-Night Vigil

LAMENTATIONS - Composed by young Eastern Orthodox monks and nuns in wilderness monasteries, and performed by Monk John Marler, who was once a punk recording artist, this album consists of ten acoustic songs wrenched from the heart.

Punks to Monks:
Eastern Orthodoxy's Curious Allure for Young Rebels
by Danny Duncan Collum

When John Marler arrived at the St. Herman monastery in Platina, California, he was only 19, but he was already in a state of advanced world-weariness. A disenchanted ex-guitarist for hard-core bands Sleep and Paxton Quiggly, he was hoping that the monk's life would grant him a modicum of relief from the nihilism and despair of the alternative rock scene. Four years later, Father John, as he's sometimes called, has become an inspiration to a surprisingly growing number of young people eager to embrace the mystical theology of -- are you ready? -- Eastern Orthodoxy.

As Frederica Mathewes-Green reports in Regeneration Quarterly (Winter 1997), Marler and two other punks-turned-monks at St Herman's -- Mother Neonilla and Father Damascene -- are reaching out to disaffected teens in ways hitherto unexplored by Orthodox Christianity: a zine, alternative music, a Web site, and a chain of coffeehouses. The zine, Death to the World, has reached more than 50,000 readers, mostly punks who "feel out of place in this world,"says Father Damascene. "We try to open up to them the beauty of God's creation," he adds, "and invite them to put to death 'the passions,' which is what we mean by 'the world.'. . . Selfish passions can then be redirected into love for God." What's most remarkable about these monks is that they're tapping the heart of contemporary youth culture even though they have little or no contact with its commercial manifestations. Two of the St. Herman Brotherhood's three California monasteries have no electricity, phones, or running water. And Father John lives in a monastery on an island off Alaska and communicates only by mail.

On another level, however, the leap from punk to monk should not be that startling. Punk rock has always been a semi-monastic movement, with its distinctive reject-the-world garb and ritualistic mortifications of the flesh. The one thing punk has always insisted upon, from the very beginning, is passion. It didn't matter much whether it was the passionate nihilism of the Sex Pistols or the passionate idealism of the Clash as long as it was fervent and deeply felt. It's no accident that the hard-core wing of the punk movement gave birth early on to the "straight-edge"ethos, in which followers swear to abstain from drugs, drink, and meat.

There's something about going all the way, without compromise or equivocation, that appeals to young people in a time when commitments of all kinds, from employment to marriage, seem temporary and conditional. Of course, going all the way can mean all the way out -- to drugs, or crime, or a one-way trip to the Hale-Bopp mothership. Or, as in the case of the punk monks, it can mean going all the way into the life of the spirit.

This article originally appeared in Regeneration Quarterly.

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