Recalling his first meeting with Fr. Adrian, Gleb writes:
"After a train ride, a subway ride through the city, and finally an hour on a bus going to Spring Valley, I arrived and had to walk an hour or so across town to the convent. It was a small estate in a suburban area opposite a local airport, and seemed quite out of place there, meaningless to my new life. I knew no one in the convent of New Diveyevo and had not the vaguest idea of what to expect there, save for a host of imaginary pictures of what it might have looked like in St. Seraphim's old Diveyevo in Russia. I was hardly born, fresh to everything and just learning to walk in the Church atmosphere. "I do not remember who showed me to Fr. Adrian's little cottage. It was right in the center of the court, to the left of and behind a white church, which was not yet fully built but had a nice blue dome. At my timid knocking, the door of the cottage was opened by an elderly and energetic lady, Fr. Adrian's wife, who called him. He came out from a door to my right and asked me to come into his little vestibule-an office with a low ceiling and an air of warmth and coziness. He bade me sit in a chair with my back to the window, facing an icon corner with many dark icons and a burning lampada.* Then he sat down opposite me on a little divan against the wall, and looked at me with a very inspiring smile. He was tall and handsome. His bright blue eyes were joyous, yet his whole appearance was very serious. "I had not come to find an `elder,' as I later learned that concept. Neither had I any urgency in seeking him, for I felt all was being taken care of in Jordanville. Nor was I burdened with any questions. I basically came for a visit, and he understood this and started asking me questions about myself. It was very brief and insignificant, and I was paying more attention to the many portraits of monks in klobuks on the walls than to what he was saying- when all of a sudden he baffled me by asking whether I did a certain sin. I sank in utter amazement at his clairvoyance. I never even thought that he might have this gift. Then he drew himself closer, looking intensely straight into my eyes, and opened to me things about myself which I had never realized.
"The talk was not long, but I was utterly overtaken by the idea that before me sat the perfect embodiment of an all-knowing, caring, and convincingly well-disposed father, one who was interested in you the way you were, not trying to mold you into anything. Of course I wept, not because my heart was touched, which it was, but because I had found something wonderful, for which my soul had been hungry for so many years. I immediately had a thousand questions with which I had long been tormented, and he gave me in a nutshell principles by which to unlock these dilemmas by myself. He told me answers to the question of what is evil; he told me that the purpose of man's life upon this earth is contained in the daily cycle of Church services; that icons are windows into heaven, which we can see into by getting to know the saints; that painting, music, and other arts can be ways to come closer to God as Creator; that the relationship between family members is connected with the mystery of knowing God; what is righteousness; what is theology; what is our duty before society, before suffering Russia, before America, which he loved. And above all he expressed his exuberance over the Optina Elders, whose faces now radiated from the walls around me. I had known that he was the spiritual son of Elder Nektary, for I had read portions of his wife's reminiscences of the Elder's life in persecuted Russia in a Jordanville periodical. Fr. Adrian always referred to Batiushka** Nektary, and would illustrate his points with some anecdotes about that holy Elder." As Fr. Adrian had become a spiritual father to Fr. Vladimir, so now he became one to Gleb. Although Gleb had not been looking for a father after Fr. Vladimir had entered his life, Fr. Vladimir was wise in giving him over to the direction of his own spiritual father. Despite his failing health and the great demands on his time, Fr. Adrian took great pains to further Gleb's development.
Gleb remembers how he imparted to him the Patristic teaching on guarding the mind and purifying the heart:
"He drew a beautiful image of a pure virgin who is to be beheaded the next day for her love and faith in Christ. She is proceeding through the dark, damp, windy catacomb tunnels with a flickering candle, her only source of light that will enable her to arrive at the secret place where Christians are celebrating the Eucharist-through the partaking of which she will inherit Christ and His Kingdom. Her whole future in eternity depends on that flickering speck of light that leads her away from the graceless world of darkness. With what awe and trembling she has to guard that candlelight to obtain her desired life! "The virgin, Fr. Adrian said, is the human soul that must guard the light of the knowledge of God, to be attentive to the various unfavorable movements which might darken or extinguish the Light that came into the world to save sinners (I Tim. 1:15). How important is the guarding of our senses, through which we perceive and comprehend life! Our awareness of life, our love towards the Source of it, ought to be pure before Him, so that we may better hear His voice in our hearts, the center of our God-given life. The process of purification, the constant `dusting' of our senses, is essential to keep burning that candlelight of the virgin which enlightens us. `The Light of Christ enlightens all.'*** That light is the grace of God.. "Fr. Adrian got up. I could see he was inspired, and almost in a whisper he bade me to follow him. "Behind him was a door to his office or, most likely, his prayer room. As he opened it I felt as though it was his holy of holies and I was being vouchsafed to enter it. Right before us was his prayer corner with many, many icons of all sizes and shapes, and analogia**** with open books, the Psalter, etc. Above, dominating the entire room, was a life-size, black-and-white photograph of the head of Christ, a reproduction of the famous painting by Vasnetsov. It depicted very realistically Christ in a crown of thorns, truly suffering, rather emaciated, and with piercing eyes. This was the key to Fr. Adrian; this holy Face spelled Suffering. But why? I was always dissatisfied with the explanation of suffering: why was it necessary for us to continue suffering after Christ conquered pain and death? If our adherence to Him promises us eternal bliss, why do we still have to suffer here on earth, as during Old Testament times?. "From the rose-colored icon lamps, the little low-ceilinged room-really the cell of a starets*****-was all in pink light. A feeling of utter awe, even slight trembling, seized me. Fr. Adrian immediately bowed down to venerate the holy objects and began to point them out to me as I too kissed them one by one with reverence. There were tiny pieces of the relics of the Saints of the Kiev Caves. He pointed out especially St. Agapitus the Healer, who helped him all the time in his sickness; St. John the Much-Suffering, who had buried himself up to his waist in order to avoid temptation; and St. Moses the Hungarian, who had fed hungry people just as Fr. Adrian had later done during terrible Soviet times.
"There was an almost audible silence in the room. Fr. Adrian spoke virtually in a whisper all the time, which I felt was natural because of the closeness of the holiness. He held his hand on his heart and was telling me about inward peace, inward activity, quietness, and silence. I was afraid that under the impression of what my soul was experiencing I might not retain the important things he was telling me, yet I dared not interrupt because he was now speaking as if to himself, looking before him at the icons. And suddenly I understood the sweetness of the suffering that Christ did not take away. Contrary to what I had thought before, this pain is essential to retain the presence of holiness.
"The movement of my mind quieted down, died out in concentration interspersed with prayer. A sense of being responsible for each word, thought, and feeling suddenly rose in me: a warning that these can pollute, disfigure, or erase that flowing presence of Divinity. The very pain of this awareness is a sweetness, just as in the Akathist hymn****** Christ is called `Sweetest Jesus.' The fear for one's sins is actually the fear of losing hold of this highly inspiring mental vision of `standing before God'-as if the thread of this melodious line can at any moment become inaudible through carelessness in guarding the senses, through allowing them to wander at ease in the godless darkness of the above-mentioned tunnels of the fallen world." Fr. Adrian repeatedly stressed the need to cultivate inward quietness (tishina) through both purity of heart and pain of heart. He himself had witnessed the fruits of this quietness when he had beheld his Elder Nektary bathed in the unearthly "Quiet Light"******* of Uncreated Divinity. But for him quietness meant no mere passivism. Reiterating the words of Elder Nektary, he taught that Orthodoxy is life, a living apostolic power. On one memorable occasion, he took Gleb into the church at the convent. "I could see," Gleb recalls, "that Fr. Adrian was burning with inspiration as he motioned to the frescoes on the walls depicting the saints in heaven. When we came outside, the sky was brilliant with stars. Fr. Adrian asked, `Why did God splash us like a wave over the broad expanse of the American land? Why were we scattered like these stars amidst the good people of America? Is it not so that we can recreate here the way of life of, as a witness of true Christianity to the world-before the end comes?' "Fr. Adrian's convent, together with the community of lay people he had gathered around it, was his attempt to bring into being an Orthodox heaven over America, to transplant the ancient Orthodox way of life into the soil of this freedom-loving land, to bring here that lost quietness. These apostolic ideas were absolutely new to me. Fr. Adrian had literally opened to me new horizons."
* Lampada: a vigil light, usually filled with oil.
** Batiushka: an endearing term for a priest or a monk.
*** From the Presanctified Liturgy of the Orthodox Church.
**** Analogia: icon stands or reading stands used during Church services.
***** Starets: elder.
****** Akathist: a special service to Jesus Christ, the Mother of God, or a saint.
******* From the Orthodox Vesper service, in which Jesus Christ is called the "Quiet Light" of the Father.