To be very honest, the condition for Mihai to do the “Fine & Simple” podcast with me (with Father Theologos) was that he also agree to sit down for a podcast with us!
You will find out things you (very likely) didn’t know about the spiritual side of the man Mihai Morar – about the spiritual people who influenced his career.
Of course, we made it much shorter and divided it into two parts because we are not at the level of Mihai.
Enjoy!
You cannot raise 10 children just with… …with reason …with reason and physical strenght. You also need a lot of faith. An Athonite Cell Joys from the Holy Mountain Lord help us! We have among us, at the cell, a dear friend of mine, who I have known for a pretty long time, we met at Vatopedi, and who, you should know, has been a journalist since childhood. We are speaking about Mihai Morar. And I would like to ask him to talk about his activity as a journalist, but not the one that you know about, but the one that he knows, meaning to speak about the extraordinary events, about spiritual events, and about the spiritual people he has met in his life. You have the word. Thank you very much. It is a joy, father. Thank you very much first of all for hosting. Last night, sitting on… how should I call it? Porch? Terrace? Loggia? on the loggia of the cell…. Porch… So, sitting on the porch of the cell, I was looking through the posts from 3 years ago, when I was in the Mountain for the first time and most of the pictures from the Holy Mountain – although I didn’t stay here last time and you weren’t here either… That’s right. Most pictures are from here. Glory to God! I am fascinated by that gazebo with the view… – the most beautiful view in this world – of Mount Athon. Look, we are in the middle of spring and there’s still snow up on Athon… There is snow up there, yes. It is very beautiful. Here the flowers are already blooming, the trees have already bloomed. Does it even matter what you are in the other world? In the outside world… It matters there. It doesn’t matter here. Here it does not matter. What you are beyond…
We are all brothers with one consciousness as you told me in the Fain&Simplu podcast that turned out great and I thank you very much for this blessing. Otherwise, I think that these spiritual events that you speak of, I think are more related to my development as a human being. And the man Mihai Morar mattered in his career… not necessarily in the first part of his career, rather in the last years. Yes, yes, I know. I realized that the man is more important than the journalist. That’s right. Although I don’t do straight journalism, journalism as it is written in the book. I also do entertainment, a podcast. I’m more of a man of words than… Should I give you an example? Please! I will give an example. As you know, we post one post a day… Yes. In the past we also had an English edition of another website that we had… I know, I know. And I posted the post of the day in the morning. In the evening I was very tired, very, very tired. And I am about to go to the cell, to turn off the computer and at that moment: ding-ding: email. I open the email and what do I see? In the email it says, “Hello, I am Anne from Texas. And my friend is dying as I am writing now. Please, write something for her!” Write something for her. At that moment I got a little stuck, I thought yes, it’s about a lady from Texas who is with a dying person, in fact it was a woman, and I had to write something for that woman who is dying… What? At that moment, I began to pray with great intensity. I was saying, God, don’t leave me! Because the eternity of the dying is at stake, and above all, how do I get to her? Because let’s not forget, we are talking about people who are not Orthodox, very likely. I asked her, “Is she orthodox, does she believe?” And she said to me: Yeah, ok, she believes in a higher power, but she’s not… Then somehow I had to get her attention, I had to say something to get to her. Then I prayed to God and the Mother of God revealed to me. She reminded me of a famous book that was made into a famous movie and then a famous play. And I said; this is what I’m going to write, it was from God! And I wrote the title of that book. Especially because the book was about… it actually talked about death. It’s called “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” Hemingway’s famous book, the Oscar-winning movie, and Metallica song. And I wrote the title: “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” I wrote that based on our courage to confess, to open up to others, we will earn our eternity. I found a very nice picture of Father Hariton carrying the bier of Father Joachim, who had just died, and I made it black and white to make it more official. Posted, sent the email. You should have seen how the emails flew between the Holy Mountain and Texas. Texas? Yes… And I sent it and said, “Keep me posted.” And she answered me: “She is peaceful now. She is ok now.” So she got the message, and I said glory to God that I managed to, be it even a little, to ensure her, maybe, I hope, or rather, God through me, to ensure a better place for her in eternity. She confessed – well – as she could. Of course we are not speaking of confession but an openness.
I think after all, somehow we have similar missions. Yes. Somewhere they get confused, they meet, the two missions of a monk from Athos and that of a man who works in mass media in Romania or anywhere in this world. And I realized this in Athos. I had no idea why I had come 3 years ago for the first time, just before the pandemic, why I came to Athos for the first time, brought by my colleague Buzdugan. And not by chance, the story I’m going to tell you is with me and Daniel (Buzdugan). I wrote about it then after I left the Holy Mountain. We were at Saint Andrew’s, at the church store, and there was a Greek monk on duty who told us his whole life story, how he worked at a large corporation, in a large multinational, how he reached burnout, how he made money his god, how he lost every shred of faith, coming from a faithful people… Faithful, yes. …from the Greek people. He told us how he ended up being a kind of walking corpse. Then, he met a Romanian father. His spiritual father was father Rafail Noica. Noica? Glory to God!
Who told him, “Go to Athos!” He did not tell him to become a monk. “Go to Athos!” A Romanian in Great Britain, a priest, says to a Greek in Great Britain, “Go to Greece, go to Athos…” And blessed him. Yes, yes, beautiful. Glory to God! And that’s how the father came to visit for the first time. Then he came back and then he stayed here in the Holy Mountain. And I met him there in the church store. We were looking for some icons, some bracelets… we were going to leave for our families, for home. And I told him that we work on the radio in Romania, that we do morning show on the radio in Romania. He was looking at us… He was like a… this image of a wise old man from… what’s it called…, Game of Thrones. Thank you, yes. I know a little…Yes, I haven’t played and I haven’t seen. He had that purity of a man from Athos. Yes, yes… wise, old… And he told us, “You work in radio?” He had no idea of the two of us of course…a Greek in Athos. “You work on the radio in Romania? Do you know that you do not have a show? You have a mission! And your mission is to ‘speak the good.'” Yes, exactly. So to speak the good! They seem like some words… I mean, he didn’t give us a theorem… Yes, yes, or some philosophy. Something very, very simple. And from this very simple thing, arriving on the continent, our continent, which is called Radio Zu, or whatever our continent is called, “Buzdugan and Morar,” we processed the information that the father from St. Andrew’s gave us, and we put it in everything that we did, not that we weren’t doing good until then, but things were a lot more mixed, things were more gray. We applied this to everything we had done, before. It is very important because evil gives birth to repulsion, evil is distortion. It does not solve things. It’s like me telling you, “Don’t go down this way, because it’s bad.” You know this too. And besides this, it is not a solution, I have to tell you that the solution is to go that way, because that is where the road is. Understand? So always it is the good that helps, the good that resolves things. That does not mean that we do not have a lot of sins, that we do not commit sins. In the morning when we do a radio show, I think after the first visit to Athos, when I also met you, father, and I related this in my podcast, what you told ne. Exactly, yes… It seems to have changed. That is, the direction, the road… The road, yes… The road has narrowed. That’s right. That’s how it is. So we are talking about an Athonite radio… Or a show…. Yes. But also the fact that I gave up – I said this in the podcast with father Pimen after I came to Athos, after 6 months, I gave up television. I was doing television, but I didn’t know why I was spinning that wheel like a hamster. Yes…
And it keeps spinning without… The hamster has no direction. Yes, that’s right… He tires himself unnecessarily. I stopped television. I had a break that came at the same time as the pandemic, I had time, I had space for thinking, for self-reflection, and that’s how the Fain&Simplu podcast was born, for example. Which seems to me to have a mission. Yes, it has a mission. It makes people better. And that matters. As I said, God is interested in the amount of love. The fact that God Himself says that the human soul is more precious than this entire 93 billion light-year Universe that we know of… It means that the human soul is more loving, has a greater capacity for love than this entire 93 billion light-year Universe. And I realized that the point of this job, everyone is looking for the largest possible audience, yes, it is important that as many people as possible watch… Yes, sure, yes… It depends what brings those people in. Because I said that the road has narrowed. This is not a downgrade… No. It is a focus. It is also becoming more efficient. Exactly. Because it’s in vain to be on a six-lane highway where you’re one of those cars, one of the thousands, tens of thousands of cars going in one direction. It’s in vain to go on the highway, you’re better off on a path. Yes… I mean, a path can lead you to something more precious than a highway. Of course. And not only that. It’s about – what matters to people. What matters to people? Do you understand? Because of course, it’s about the many, but beyond that, the sensation doesn’t solve man, it doesn’t solve the person, it doesn’t make the person better. It gives him a rush of dopamine. Exactly. And… after that, the person will be sad person. But I think we have to sort people out. We have to make people better. Let’s be better! So that’s that. Thank you very much. I hope you return to the Holy Mountain. And I think… This is all I want to add. I think it also comes with age. I turned 40 last year. Many more! I’m already old, father. But not in the wise sense. Yes, yes, yes. What can I say for myself then? Yes, thank you. Only biologically. Yes. And… the more years that go by, the more you return to your childhood values. The madness disappears… The madness disappears, yes. And you realize that everything was very, very pure there.
And because you provoked me to speak of spiritual events… Yes, yes, I would like you to. My first spiritual experience was with my grandmother, my father’s mother. My grandmother from Apuseni who gave birth to ten children. She raised ten children. We were dozens of grandchildren. There were many grandchildren there, on the hills, in Apuseni, and I remember her humility and, the holiness of this grandmother who raised children all her life. You can’t raise them, I mean you can’t raise ten kids with just… With reason. With reason and physical strength. You also need a lot of faith. Much faith and much holiness. You see… in the West – they have books for raising children and they have rules for raising children. Parenting. Parenting. Yes, that’s the word. Parenting, ok. No! Personal example is needed. The personal example is needed. Sure. The advice is good too. First of all, we need the person, the personal example and holiness. And that comes through sacrifice. And see what you have left of your grandmother? You are left with her personality. And what changes things for the better is the person. A good person. And you see, because of this always when… and I am asking this of businessmen, or of those who recruit people, brethren, don’t look for people with skills, those who are skilled! You will make a company of skills. A skilled company. It’s not a good thing even grammatically speaking. Look for good people! Look for good people to make a good company! Do you understand? It is one of the most valuable tips! I think we have passed the time of hiring based on CV. CV doesn’t even matter… It’s secondary yes… Goodness first and goodness comes from God. And thank God that there is still some goodness left in the Romanian nation! That is, in the Orthodox area. That’s that. Thank you very much. I thank you very much. May God bless you. And I wish very much that you return. For you and for the boys to come back. We are waiting for them with lots of love! And let’s do more podcasts, hoping to change something for the better. So help us God! Lord help us! To be continued!
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