Fact 10
The story of Fr. Athanasius Kone
Fr. Athanasius Kone13
Interview 09.04.2020.
Kailua (Honolulu), Hawaii, 96734 USA.
In 2003, I lived on Kodiak Island, Alaska, with my wife Denise and my two-year-old daughter Selah. It was the time when I was deeply immersed in Protestantism, and was even preparing to become a Protestant pastor.
I have worked with Alaska Natives in villages where the population is completely Orthodox, but as a Protestant, I believed that Orthodoxy was a religion of the past and did not deserve any attention.
In the summer of 2003, I was the director of a spiritual camp for the Alaska Natives Association (KANA). The camp was organized in such a way that it provided an opportunity for local youth to immerse in a special atmosphere of communication, where three generations of indigenous people came together to teach and learn. It was a fairly popular and successful Protestant missionary program.
The camp was located near Pestrikovsky beach on Spruce Island, not far from Kodiak Island. I, being a leader, lived on Spruce Island, and my family lived on Kodiak.
Once my family and I decided to visit the so-called “Monk’s Lagoon” - the place where St. Herman of Alaska practiced his ascetic life and was also laid to rest there. There is a small church there in the name of the Monks Sergius and Herman of Valaam. On a weekly boat with visitors from Kodyak Island, my wife and daughter have arrived one day.
My wife grew up on Kodiak Island, has Russian roots, but has never been to the Monastic Lagoon. The incident that I want to tell actually happened on the spring day in this holy place, on the Spruce Island.
I, my wife, and our daughter Selah were walking along the path leading from the cemetery to the church, when suddenly we felt a fragrance: it smelled of roses and incense at the same time. My wife said, "I can smell incense ... but I thought the monks live on the other side of the island?" I replied: “Yes, they are. There is no one on our side." On the island there is an Orthodox hermitage which belongs to the monastery of St. Herman of Alaska from Platinum (California), and it is indeed located on the other side, about two hours walk from this coast. Therefore, the smell of incense that we felt, if indeed coming from the church service, could not be the reason for our experience.
The smell that we felt was strong enough and varied in intensity: it would fade a little, then increase again ... it was noticeable.
We realized that something unusual was happening!
In a couple of minutes we saw a lot of people climbing the path - they were children from the camp and their parents. They were accompanied by two teachers Judy Simenova from the local village of Akhiok and Ziki. There were about fifty of them. The teachers led them from Pestrikovsky beach to the church - the distance of about half a mile.
When they approached us, we asked if they felt any smell (scent) - they answered "no" - they did not feel anything like that.
After that, Judy, who was a native of this island, invited my daughter to try the waters from the spring of St. Herman, which happen to be nearby. My daughter ran, but I didn't really like the idea. I had no intention of trying this water, because the very idea that water might have some special healing properties was not yet acceptable to me at that time. But since my daughter had a sip, I did the same. Then my wife also had some water from the holy spring.
My wife Denis had a severe headache that day from the very morning, but after drinking water, she felt something clicked in her head, and the headache instantly went away.
After the events on Spruce Island (I was confused) I did not know what to do ... We felt that all this happened through the action of the Power of God and through the prayers of St. Herman, but we tried to explain it to ourselves in our own way, and the only way familiar back then - through Protestantism. Therefore, that spiritual experience, although raised all these serious questions, did not bring us any closer to Orthodoxy at that time.
About thirty days after events on Spruce Island - I had a dream!
In a dream, I saw several people from the St. Innocent Academy praying for me (this is an Orthodox school on the Kodiak, and I had some friends there). While these people from the academy were praying, I began to cry bitterly… I began to look for something to wipe away my tears and saw a folded piece of fabric laying on the shelf. I grabbed this fabric, and it seemed to me that it belonged to a great prayer and a deeply spiritual person. It was a folded clerical garment14, apparently a riasson.
And then a priest appeared in front of me, dressed in black, with a long, disheveled beard and a radiant face. I felt that the fabric I had just used as a napkin belonged to him. He said his name is "Seraphim Rose".
I want to repeat and especially note that his face was shining! It radiated a white light! Light came out of him! Not in the sense that he was smiling and full of joy, as it is customary to understand allegorically, but he was truly emanating light.
Also, at the moment of communicating with him in a dream - I experienced an awe.
Then he said a lot about my life. He said that I have a vocation, that I will accept Orthodoxy and become a priest. I began to argue with him, saying that I did not want to accept Orthodoxy and wear such an "awkward black hat" like his…
He talked about other things ... but now, as well as right after my dream, I could not remember everything.
When I woke up, I realized that something deeply spiritual had happened to me. I want to emphasize that before this dream I did not know anyone with the name "Seraphim Rose". Moreover, I must admit that, being a Protestant, it was even unpleasant for me to be visited in a dream by an Orthodox priest, and especially by a dead one, as I’ve known somehow.
I could ignore an ordinary dream, but what I experienced was different from an ordinary dream. It was so intense/colorful that I couldn't forget it.
The next day, I went to look for an Orthodox priest. I knew Father Paisios, the dean of St. Innocent’s Academy, so I went to see him. Sitting in his office, I told him that I might be losing my mind, and asked if he had heard of a priest named Seraphim Rose. He was very happy and having said “Yes” handed me a thick book about the life of Fr. Seraphim. And I told him about my dream.
I read the book "Out of this World" the whole weekend. I was amazed by the life of Fr. Seraphim. I have never known such Orthodoxy. The main thing that struck me was how deeply the life of the holy fathers of the early church, their thoughts, and their way of life was inscribed on the life of Fr. Seraphim15.
Having a history education and a scientific degree, I partly knew the holy fathers of the Church, and had enough knowledge to recognize a similar way of Fr. Seraphim’s thinking and living from his biography.
I could not forget the dream about Fr. Seraphim, and could not explain it. This dream deeply touched my soul. I had a lot of questions and started reading a lot. I even spent the weekend at the skete of St. Michael the Archangel on Spruce Island. The spiritual atmosphere of this place amazed me. Walking through the grounds of the monastery, I felt a "cloud of stillness/peace " enveloping me. All this led to a profound change in me.
After all that had happened and described above, I began to pay a serious attention to Orthodoxy. My wife even joked that I "started an affair with Orthodoxy", and not without a bit of a perplexed question ... since we both had serious obligations to our local Protestant church.
Definitely, the revelation(s) we had did not match our previous life plans. We thought that we had already figured out everything in our life ... but now it was as if we were ripped out of it. It was very destructive!
I started reading Orthodox evening prayers, because a good friend told me that it is impossible to understand Orthodoxy without its main spiritual practice - prayer.
About three months later, while reading evening prayers, including the prayer of St. Basil the Great, I suddenly realized that this man, in 25 lines, had described all the necessary elements of the knowledge of God. I remember thinking for the first time - he really saw God, unlike me.
My conversion lasted for two or three years. Sometimes in the morning I would come to the Protestant community, and in the evening I was at Vespers in an Orthodox church.
On the feast of Pentecost 2006, after such careful preparation, my wife, daughter and I were baptized in the Orthodox Church in Washington, in the church of St. Silouan the Athonite.
And later, I became a priest, just as Fr. Seraphim Rose have had predicted.
13 This message was sent on September 13, 2006 to the monastery of Rev. Herman of Alaska in Platina by Athanasius (Arum) Kone (later a priest (Fr. Athanasius Kone), now a rector of the Holy Theotokos of Iveron Russian Orthodox church in Honolulu (Hawaii). At that time he converted to Orthodoxy just three months ago.
Additions and clarifications were made during interview with Fr. Kone in April 2020 in the process of collecting material describing the facts of the manifestation of grace through the prayers of Fr. Seraphim Platinsky.
14 I didn’t know at that time what it was or what it was called, so I identified this thing with the Jewish shawl known as “tallit”, but all this naturally was at the level of certain semantic associations.
15 …In fact, he was one of them.