All the World is Myth

Put the peace of the heart before everything

I don’t suppose I am the only one who has noticed the resemblance between this:

and this:

I’m not here to write about Donald Trump, or about America. Instead, I want to try and write about something else that these pictures help conjur. I want to talk about the meat behind them. Because I don’t think it is politics we are dealing with here, or culture even. These things are the surface manifestation of the myths that writhe and turn beneath them. On the surface, sometimes, a fin breaks the water. Beneath, something huge is swimming.

To put that another way: everything is myth.

Look at what you are given here, in this picture. An American hero-slash-villain who is bloodied but unbowed. Now he will rise from the ground to save-slash-destroy us. Look: a lucky photographer has framed the moment in a way that resembles one of that nation’s best known images of liberation.

Nobody needed to plan this. It is myth in action. What we call ‘politics’ is always a manifestation of what is happening in the depths, but in the depths move forces that are beyond us. Sometimes you see images that make this clear to you.

But what do we do? everyone cries, what should we do? It is the oldest question. God’s son answered it with the first words he uttered when he began his work:

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Repent is a translation of the Greek word metanoia, which is usually translated as ‘change of mind’. The mind in question, though, is not the discursive ‘left brain’ that we in the modern West have come to associate with that word. It is the nous, which is often spoken of as the ‘heart-mind’ but for which, again, there is not really a literal translation. The nous is the part of us in which the Holy Spirit resides. It is the part of us in which, if we are quiet, can hear the Father speaking.

Change your mind. Change your heart. Change your direction. Change the orientation of your seeing. Change your whole life.

Repent.

What do we do when we see the myth break the surface? We do this. We put not our trust in Princes. And we watch out for the Devil.

Ah, yes: him. The One We Do Not Mention. Yet there is no getting away from Old Scratch in this Christian life. After the instruction to repent, and after his baptism but before his Ministry begins, Old Nick takes the Jesus the Son up the mountain, into the wilds, away from the people, and he makes him three offers.

Why not turn these stones into bread? (Show us miracles or we won’t believe.)

Why not rule the world through politics, rather than self-emptying sacrifice? (Choose the Devil over God. Choose the world over the Kingdom.)

Why not throw yourself to your death? (Test God’s love. Demand proof before belief.)

Can we be naive enough to believe that these offers are not still live? Do we think it was only Jesus they were made to? Surely we know they are made to each of us every minute?

How are we doing in our response?

I am not doing very well.

Some time ago, I received an instruction in prayer. This doesn’t happen often, and I’m still reluctant to talk about it in public. But I think it might be time to pass it on, because the world is going madder and madder, or perhaps the world has always been this way and some of us are only now understanding what it is made of and who is running the show. Whichever: it has helped me to see what the heart of things is.

I always question things like this, of course. Did I imagine it? Did the words I thought I heard come from me? Had I read them somewhere, and had they emerged from my subconcious now? Why would anyone speak to me, anyway? I can’t prove anything. And yet, when it happens, you know something is going on. I have never heard a voice from the clouds - I’m sure it would terrify me if I did - but this time, something presented itself from somewhere. The words I heard were quite clear:

Put the peace of the heart before everything.

I had been asking in prayer for a long time for guidance on how to live a Christian life. What work I should do or not do? What should I lose, walk away from, walk towards? What would even the beginning of repentance actually look like in this one crooked heart?

I think this was the answer.

Put the peace of the heart before everything.

It is so beautifully simply. Follow it - actually follow it - and everything would fall into place.

The heart - the nous - is where our minds really dwell. It is where the Spirit resides, and where the stories come from and where images settle. When the heart sees images, it understands instantly. Images are much older than words, just as songs are much older than arguments. We are regressing today, in a way, to the mean. The age of the Internet is moving us away from the brief age of words and back into the age of images.

How many images do we see every day, and who is projecting them? We may not think we are formed by them - we may believe we are ‘rational’ beings, who think everything through - but formed by them we are. Bloodied Unbowed Man is this week’s image. Next week there will be another, and every one of them, if we are not paying attention, will grab us by the passions and take us precisely where it wants us to go.

For years I have worried at a question like a dog with an old bone. I have written whole books about it. I spoke about it on film just a couple of weeks ago. Are words my problem? I have asked. But words are not my problem, and the prayer instruction tells me that. My problem - our problem - is who our words serve.

Put the peace of the heart before everything.

If, in response to whatever image the world throws at us, we look at our hearts, we can see instantly if peace dwells there, or something else: anger, rage, righteousness, distraction, even joy. If it is not peace, then something, or someone, is leading us astray.

And so I made some decisions this week. The decisions are not related to these images, but the images do help firm them up. Because we are moving now, openly, into a mythic time. We have alway lived in one, but now we are able to make it out. Old stories are being replayed. Old passions are being re-fired. Old tribes, old gods, are rising. War is coming, or is already here.

Things are not going well.

But then - things have never gone well. When the Son walked on Earth, politics nailed him to an instrument of torture, and the people who had cheered his arrival three days ago cheered his death today. In doing so, they were unwitting players in a new myth, an anti-myth, a story that would nail all of the old ones up. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. Whoever seeks to save his life shall lose it. This was a world turned upside down, like Peter in Rome - like Rome itself, in the end.

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

We can be players in the old myths, though, if we still want to. Though they were nailed up, they haven’t died yet. We can be putty in the hands of Old Nick any day of the week. The world is still his playground, and all the games happen at the level of the heart. But now, it is not all we can be. Now can be something else entirely.

Now we can be something quite miraculous.

What good is repentance when the world is coming apart? But the world has always been coming apart. And repent, remember, means change. Change at the level of the image. Change at the level of the atom. Change at the level of the nous. All of this is under our control. All of this we have the power over.

Isn’t change what we all need? It is certainly what I need. Boy, is it what I need.

Put the peace of the heart before everything.

In our inner kingdom, in the heart-mind of each of us, is the still, small voice. But we can only hear it when the world stops raging. The devil is a roaring lion, says St Peter, stalking about, seeking who to devour. The world stalks about us today in insta-images and songs and news and anger and argument, in memes and clickbait and deepfakes and soundbites. It demands to be served by our passions, it draws them to like it ocean waves, it builds them from calm water. It insists that you take sides. Look at what those f***ers did! Get them! It doesn’t matter who the f***ers are. Once you want to get them, you are prey.

All of this has been given over to me.

I made some decisions this weekend, and now I’m going to write them down and publish them, because that way they become harder to back away from. I have seen now, I think, that is not words that are my problem, but discursive thought. Positions. Analysis. Opinions. Argument: especially argument. All the things that divide. All the things that would earn me a much better living and a much bigger reputation than posts like this. But the world’s wisdom is foolishness to God, and he catches the wise in their craftiness. I have tried being crafty in my life, tried being clever too. All of that ends up at a locked door.

All I know today is that I cannot hear the still, small voice if the gods of politics and opinion are roaring at me like lions, stoking my passions, demanding my opinions and allegiance. I am easily stoked. I suppose we all are.

You will not be able to pray purely, wrote Evagrios the Solitary, if you are all involved with material affairs and agitated with unremitting concerns. For prayer is the rejection of concepts.

I have already stopped writing about these things, but from now on I have stopped reading about them too. I have sworn off any news or analysis or politics for the next forty days. I’ve sworn off alcohol too, because it stokes me in a different way. I have sworn off anything that comes before the peace of the heart, interrupts it, prevents me from feeling it. I know what that peace is, on the rare occasions I am dropped silently into it. You do too, I’m sure. That’s the peace of God. That is what we are here for.

Attain the spirit of peace, said St Seraphim of Sarov, and thousands of people around you will be saved.

What do we do? That’s what we do.

I suppose we all wonder what God wants from us. I wonder, quite often, at a related question: what does God want me to give up? That seems to be how I understand my place in the world. I have given up various things over the years, or never had them, from smartphones to credit cards to mortgages to booze. There is nothing morally good about this. I am not morally good. I just sense that all of this scaffolding crowds the light out of a heart. Or muffles it, so that the voice cannot be heard.

A man who craves esteem, wrote St Isaac the Syrian, cannot be rid of the causes of grief.

Perhaps when I have cleared enough away I will realise that the real reason I write anything is that I crave esteem, and then I will have to stop. At the moment, I am not sure, and so I keep going. I am sure, though, that the world craves our esteem. The world-historical figures seek the blood-energy of our passions through the images they are conjured into. All the world is myth, and we operate on the level of it. Politics is not politics. Image is not image. Everything is myth. Everything is story. Everything is carried along on deep, deep currents.

More and more every day, I am desperate to step out of the river.

We are still living in the Roman Empire, friends. There is still a Colosseum and a Circus Maximus. There are still gladiators and slaves, there are still heroes and tyrants, and how exactly are we to know the difference?

All of this has been given over to me.

Put not your trust in Princes. Put your trust in the Spirit of Peace. This seems like the message to all of us; the oldest instruction. Me, I can’t make sense of the world at all anymore unless I am stumbling about in prayer or standing before the chalice. I think this was how it was meant to be. I think this was how the Father shaped it. I think we always forget that. But we can repent. We can come home. There’s the joy. There’s the deepest story of all there have ever been.

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