Eugene Rose

Much has been written about my uncle, Eugene Rose, who became Monk Seraphim Rose
in 1970. This book is a biography based on true and first-hand accounts from his family, friends, priests, and professors. Most importantly, it includes his personal correspondence from the time he left home for college to his passing in Redding, California, nearly three decades later. This compilation is the true account of his life’s journey that led him into Orthodoxy. It is not a purified version of his life. The sanitized version was authored in 1993 by Monk Damascene Christensen with Not of This World. Large portions of Eugene’s life were omitted in that version.

The first letter Eugene wrote and included in this book was dated August 23, 1953. The
last letter he wrote was dated Wednesday, July 27, 1982. It was to his mother. It is believed that
he did not write after that because he had fallen ill. For nearly two weeks, until he was ultimately driven to a hospital, he was trying to recuperate, alone on a cot, in his tiny forest cabin.

Some have called him a saint. But to his classmates throughout his first twelve years of
school, he was called “Eugenius”; to his college friends he was, and still is, Eugen (in German
pronounced Oy-gen); to his mother, he was Eugenie or Oogie; to the Russian Orthodox Church
Abroad, he was Hieromonk Father Seraphim Rose; to everyone else, including me, he was,
simply, Uncle Gene.

Long before he became a monk, he gave up certain things. From my research, I learned
that Eugene quit his post-college lifestyle when he lived in San Francisco around the late 1950s to early 1960s, where he hung out with the Beat poets. Shortly after, he embraced Orthodoxy and the rules of the Church, even before he joined that faith in 1962, and a decade before he became a monk. With his heart and soul, he loved the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad until the day he died. He never spoke or wrote despairingly about her to any church members, friends, or relatives. He was truly loyal to the Church.

From the time Eugene was a boy, he was never materialistic. He was always a deep
thinker, almost disconnected from the material world. He loved nature and often took long walks. While he had what his closest friends described as a sweet disposition and a kind heart, he was steadfast in his opinions and beliefs: He stood his ground for what he believed while also respecting others’ opinions. He quietly and intently heard what other people had to say. He also had a great sense of humor, including while in high school. That whimsical quality came across in his letters.

Eugene was a storyteller. Those stories included lessons about people. He told them as a
teenager and continued, as a monk, to deliver tales in his sermons and lectures so people could better identify with the message he was relaying.

During his spiritual journey, which culminated in his turning to the teachings of the first
church fathers for answers, Eugene reached into the past and presented the ancestral Christian faith to modern man. He is said to be single-handedly responsible for the renewed spread of Orthodoxy to the Western world. No one has been like him before or since. During the Communist era, Eugene’s books were banned in the USSR; today scores of copies are sold in bookstores throughout Russia and the West. Enter his name on the Internet, and hundreds of related websites will be returned. Eugene made his mark by translating the works of the ancient Russian fathers into English. It was the first time the West had read their writings, and it set Eugene’s path to publish The Orthodox Word, a magazine he published on a hand press until his death, which continues to be published today.

In September 1992, on the tenth anniversary of Uncle Eugene’s death, I visited the Platina
wilderness above Redding, California, where Eugene spent the last fifteen years of his life. I saw for myself the beauty and tranquility Eugene treasured. I went to his cabin – what in the
Orthodox religion is called a “cell” – and imagined him sitting at his small desk, tapping away on his antique manual typewriter as he looked out on the seemingly endless and tranquil forest
through the window in front of him. He rests in an above-ground grave near that cabin, on the
property of the monastery he founded and helped build, where he monthly published the
Orthodox Word.