Perfect. I attended your Erasmus lecture. As to your comment: “How many of us can even see ourselves? Sometimes I get glimpses from the outside and I feel like hiding under the duvet for the next four days,” the person I was with and someone we met sitting next to us could feel in your presence that “special thing” that you only get a few times in your life—from people who by their mere presence affect you for the better, it’s something you feel from them. I know you hate this type of thing but others must have communicated this sentiment.
This piece was perfect. Sacrifice creates the future. Wonderfully said.
When I saw the title, Paul, I thought you meant the first Moses! And I thought of a skull-bashing fugitive who laid low for forty years in the mountains, marrying the pretty daughter of a pagan shaman and raising children and sheep, until coming face to face with the Holy One, in the fire-blossoms of some incandescent alpine flora, returning to the Empire, this time as a liberator and basically god-man, who went head to head with another god-man, the Pharaoh, and one-upped him ten times in a row, in terms of weather control, and led his people out in wild, fleet-footed droves, leaving the Empire behind them in smoldering ruins. So, that was confusing! Ha! But this other Moses is cool, too, of course. What I really want to know is how to empty the self, exit the world, and so on, as a family man, not a monastic. You can sacrifice yourself, and that is heroic, but sacrificing your children and their future is cowardice. And the real difference between the (ancient Hebrew) Moses Option and the (later) Christian one is that the Hebrews were fiercely determined to be fruitful and multiply and live in the world, not escape it.
Well, not being a Hebrew I don't have to worry too much about that ;-)
We've talked about the sacrifice thing a bit here recently. It's been useful. You can only ever sacrifice yourself - not anyone else. Since we're also called upon to defend the weak, we have to defend our children, and anyone else we can. Obvious cliched example: if the Nazis arrive, you may choose to practice non-violent resistance to them (which will probably get you killed) but you are, I would say, mandated to save as many Jews as you can while you're at it.
We only live in the world for a short time! The question is what happens next. If your answer is 'nothing' then you may come to all sorts of conclusions, from nihilism to hedonism to activism, I suppose depending on your personality. If your answer is 'the kingdom' then this could lead to anything from escapsim to self-emptying love. The first of those being much easier! But not really the point.
The question of how to do it as a family man/woman rather than a monk is the key. I would say that lots of Christians have offered answers though. I like what the Bruderhof people do, at least in terms of their lifestyle. And recently I've been thinking about the new Orthodox saint, Matushka Olga. I'd like to learn more about her. It seems that she has an answer to that question.
All very true! I've been reading both Nietzsche & NT Wright lately, so take this with a grain of salt, but we have all this immense world-building creative energy in us, too (which, yes, if not married to our capacity to be quiet, listen, and surrender, comes out chaotic and destructive), and this world-building energy must go somewhere! To turn it entirely within ourselves, to "building" the inner spiritual man, quickly slides into a world-weary, sickly, egoistic narcissism, as eloquently and devastatingly described by Yannaras, in his "Against Religion". You know I have no nostalgia for Byzantium -- and agree with people like Sherrard and Ellul who point out that the whole idea of Christian empire itself was incoherent and self-defeating -- but at least there was some ambition there! Some vast creativity! At least they tried to DO something! One of the great beauties of the early Christian vision, still very Hebraic in its outlook, is the idea that, even though whatever man builds is basically delusional, grass-like, and doomed to wither in time, still: In the transfiguration of the Earth to come (this was before "we're only here for a little while, and when we die, we'll be going somewhere else anyway" took hold), whatever the Creator deems good, true, and beautiful of ours -- that we created, as his little co-creators -- will be perfected and eternalized. This is symbolized in one crazy image in scripture -- of a Renewed Jerusalem coming down from the sky. The city -- civilization -- is man's idea, man's creation, not God's. But God will embrace it in the end and complete it, so it lasts forever -- on Earth! This Earth! You know?
Well, I've just come back from a few day in some of the monasteries of Romania - and boy, are those people busy! The astonishing architecture, the gardens, the beehives, the food being grown, the churches being built, the logs being cut for the winter ... all in the service of the contemplation of God.
I suppose it is always a tension. But as I said, everything is 'action'! There is no 'inaction' in the world. We are always moving, working towards something. I can't agree that 'building the inner man' slides into narcissism. That's about as anti-Christian an idea as I can imagine. Anti-any kind of religious practice really.
I keep coming back to the same observation: that only a well-builty inner man can produce a well-built external world. I think the state of things right now bears this out.
Quick clarification, or point of emphasis, or something --> what I said was "To turn it **entirely** within ourselves, to "building" the inner spiritual man, quickly **slides into** a world-weary, sickly, egoistic narcissism." Of course, building the inner man is essential -- agreed. But to redirect *all* of one's creative energy inward becomes a sickness. The monks, as you say, have plenty of external things to do with their bodies, in their little islands of refreshing human sanity -- building temples, gardens, beehives, cutting firewood, etc -- and that externalized world to construct is essential, too. And if the inner worlds and outer worlds being built are harmonious and reciprocally energizing to one another, wow -- there's human flourishing for you. I think part of the anguish and confusion of being a Christian non-monastic today is that the external world comes already pre-built and finished -- the Machine -- and totally at odds with the inner world that you are meant to work at it in your private prayers and the occasional church service. What's the external world that we non-monastics can be building now? (I have my own ideas on this, but I want to hear yours....)
(speaking of which, I'm off to our land up north now, to put in some cedar trim around the kitchen window, now that the glorious mega-chunk of a slab of black walnut kitchen countertop is done, and needs a beautiful window to rest beneath...)
I think that's all true. In my non-expert understanding, that is exactly why monastics have a strict balance between the inner and outer worlds. They spend the morning washing up or chopping wood or changing sheets, and the evening in vigil or prayer, etc. The stories of solitary ascetics going mad for lack of balance are legion!
Your point about the Machine and the inner life is well taken. I think Dreher's 'Benedict option' is not a bad approach, but it's also bascially a re-formmulation of the old idea of Christian communities. Seems like we have always needed support in a hostile world.
I also wonder whether we can all, in a small way, turn our homes into little lay monasteries of sorts. But I think about this every day and I wouldn't pretend to have some off-pat answer.
I think it was LM Sacasas (in his The Convivial Society substack) that addressed this idea that some people have that if only they could be free from the mundane chores of life they could pursue creative activities unfettered. As I recall his point was that often we need those mundane activities to keep us grounded and to be faithful to our family, friends, neighbors and ourselves.
I've had this thought for years too. If you'll excuse me changing the subject for a moment, I've noticed 'traditional catholics' mentioned a couple of times in your recent posts Paul. Each time I find my blood pressure rise! Catholics are all Catholics and there is nothing in the 'traditional' Catholic movement that is not also found in the messy masses (as in many) of peoples who attend Catholic Churches the world over. Further, in these seemingly 'lesser' or 'modern' parishes, you will find far broader racial, socioeconomic and educational backgrounds than are found in the Extraordinary form Latin mass. Every mass is a celebration of the same Eucharist, whatever the rite, and there are many, including Eastern forms. Vatican II is also widely misunderstood and misrepresented, although of course, as with any church, valid criticism can be made. To see it as an accommodation of the world though is simply incorrect. Anyway, excuse me, I really don't want to create the kind of polarising noise I see on the internet, particularly in the US, but if you're not Catholic, its easy to miss out nuances and realities that can only be understood when it is lived. Here I'm echoing what Constantinou pointed out in her book 'Thinking Orthodox' when speaking about the Orthodox mind. Likewise the Catholic mind. Anyway, back to the subject. I have had a desire for all of my life, having not become a nun, to see if I could make my home a monastery of sorts. I was in a Carmelite monastery in Bruges last week, staying in a hermitage in the walled garden. It had a bedroom and next to it a room for prayer, stripped of everything except a kneeler and a crucifix. It was like being in a kind of bridal chamber in the Old Testament usage. In the aloneness and the silence, I was afforded a momentary taste of what I initially thought must be what the consecrated people live. But then I thought no, this is the source of my own Christian life - the unknowable and unspeakable wellspring that is the Triune God, always there and yet not visible or always consciously experienced, but nevertheless the source and end of my own life. I was staying at the monastery with friends, together with whom I'd come for retreat, and unusually, in the evenings we decided to meet for a few hours in the town to eat. It was an opportunity for community that we also craved. I found myself feeling that this is it. I'm a lay person. Grateful for the consecrated friars who allowed for retreat, but so glad to be able to be a grain of salt, whose right place is to also be in the world. I have long been keen to visit the Bruderhoff. They seem to have managed something that works, although I wonder how it is for the children. As our monasteries have tended to shrink I have thought lay people could maybe move in with the monks or nuns (they might not be keen on the idea but needs must!) to sustain the grounds, with rooms for singles and small houses for families. We lay people have an essential place in the church. In modern times where we are more dispersed than the recent generations before us, it's not easy to find a way. Oh and sacrifice. Our own lives as Christians are sacrifice for sure as you said. But grieving my father some years ago I realised that I also had to let him go back to God. I found that I experienced this too, as sacrificial. In my heart I had to offer him back to God. All that I have, all that and who I know, all has been given, and all must, in the end, be returned to God. In a sense this is sacrifice beyond myself.
I'm probably going to get this story slightly wrong, but St. Anthony struggled constantly against his own pride in the desert, and once prayed fervently for God to show him true humility. An angel took Anthony not to some other desert monastic (Anthony not being the first), but back into Alexandria, the bustling heart of what Anthony had fled in the first place, the beating dirty heart of the "machine" of its own day.
The angel then took Anthony to the stall of a cobbler who made and repaired shoes and sandals. There Anthony witnessed the cobbler praying as he worked. He prayed for all who passed by "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on this person and save them. Let me be condemned if only they might be saved."
Saint Porphyrios, a 20th century Orthodox saint, tried himself to be a monastic on Mt. Athos, but through his own pride and disobedience he injured himself and had to return to civilization. Though he longed to return to monastic life, this was denied him for many years, and he was made priest at a busy city church, and made a hospital chaplain, where he served many.
There is a series of books call "Ascetics in the World", which is filled with the stories of the quietly faithful lay Christians, whose lives were blessings to others around them. They had jobs and families, and were in their times just ordinary people whose faith permeated what they did, often in difficult circumstances (but not always). I would also recommend quite strongly the collections of short stories by Fr. Joseph Siniari, which while fiction, are based on his time as the parish priest of a poor working class Philadelphia parish.
We can be overly tied up in the focus on the "inner life", when often what we're called to is simply faithful service in ordinary life. As a father and business owner, that means faithful service to my family, to my employees, to my customers and suppliers. It's also faithful service to my church and church family, to my friends and neighbors, and where else I might be of use.
"The city -- civilization -- is man's idea, man's creation, not God's. But God will embrace it in the end and complete it, so it lasts forever"
I'm not sure I agree with the idea that the city is man's creation not God's. Civilization is perhaps the corrupted version (or at least what we see of civilization now) of God's original intent for the Kingdom. The New Jerusalem comes down from Heaven to Earth complete. It's not something humans made or will make. It's, as NT Wright often says, the marriage of Heaven and Earth (just finished his commentary on the book of Revelation).
Unlike in the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the Creation myth of the Hebrew bible does not culminate in the construction of a city; the divine Kingdom is a garden (Eden), not a city. It is the son of Cain who first builds a city, and it's away from Eden, after the rebellion. I don't know how it could get any clearer that -- according to the Hebrew prophets -- the city is fallen man's creation, not God's.
Raising your children, spending your time and energy working to provide a good home for them, loving them, teaching them - surely all these are sacrifices of the time and energy that have been given to you. As a mother and grandmother that's how I know the idea of personal sacrifice as redemption is true. What you get for that "sacrifice" is so much greater and ore wonderful than what you give.
No, that's not the point. Neither this article nor my lecture was promoting monasticism. In both I was quite clear that I was talking about living in the world, and I gave examples of people doing so. Eg:
'But most of us are ‘in the world’, and so the world will challenge us. It will bring us evils like this. What are we to do with them? Stand up for the truth in love. Practice what we claim to believe. Loving our enemies implies that we have enemies - and we have them because we stand for something.'
I am not a monastic, and nor do I live in a cave. I'm talking about sacrifice *in* the world. Leaving the world *whilst* living in it. In some ways this is harder than monasticism, but maybe it's more necessary. I don't know how to do it, which is why I keep picking away at it. Because the alternative is inevitably going to be 'Christian civilisation.'
ah, right -- yes, sorry: You are of course not telling us to be monastics here, and you're acknowledging that we're living in the world -- right. I'm collapsing what *you* mean by "The Moses Option" into whatever *I* imagine it might mean. I guess what I'm wrestling with is that the idea of "leaving the world, while still living in it" offers a very clear, specific, content-filled path for people like Moses the Black here, who are not married and are not raising children: become a monk. A monastery is geographically located on Earth, but its culture is heavenly. The problem has been solved, the needle has been threaded. But for those still living out the original command to be fruitful and multiply, to subdue the Earth, et cetera, there is not a clear, pre-determined, content-filled path for leaving the world, while still living in it -- at least, not any obvious one in contemporary Orthodoxy (there are little pockets elsewhere; Bruderhof, as you mentioned). It would be difficult to write an essay called "The ______ Option," where the blank is filled by a happily married and happily child-raising Orthodox saint, who leaves his or her old thug life behind, to join a community of married and child-raising Orthodox brothers and sisters. Hence the need to wrestle towards envisioning what this might be, which I know you are trying to do, also...
Yes, I think this is spot-on. There is no clear path for us in the same sense that the monastics have. At least, not beyond the prayer rule, fasting, the liturgy, etc. Those are the core elements. But what are we to do about tech, about political engagement, etc? It is hard to fathom.
But you said you had some ideas, and now I want to hear them!
I've been following your comments here and appreciate very much the heart in them.
I have unpolished stones or frayed threads to share:
I'm thinking of a friend, a young man who just recently has begun an attempt at monastic life on Mt. Athos. My heart is so with him! The "straightforward, clear path" of monasticism is actually very gritty in its own way. Time passes at the same rate, etc. Some things clear but the heart always is the true battle ground:
I think of the Desert Fathers, the famous dialogue between a desert monk who approaches his Elder with something like this: "I keep my rule of prayers, keeps the fasts, attend services; is there anything more?" and the famous response from the Elder who stretches his hands to the heavens and they become as fire: "If you would, you might become all flame."
Both were living the monastic way. I see in this intimation of the invisible battleground.
And then the mesiness of (my own) life in the world, with kids, work, many cares etc. I think of my own spiritual father (a monk) who once said: Of course there are far more saints (departed) who lived lives in the world than monastic saints. Why then does the church hold up the monastic path for us? Because in the monastic image contains a striving for the ideal path, iconic of that that saves us all whether monk or married. (I think of this aspect, in St. Paul's preference and recommendation of the unmarried life for all).
For me then its to say... the very "messiness" of my life in the world struggling to sacrificial love and the cross and selling all to follow Christ, not having anything clear or certain or dependable. This *is* the saving cross; it is the orientation of the heart that attracts grace, which is "other worldly" and invisible and unlike anything that can be held as a sure indication- anything created.
Some of this I think might be about God's transcendence and impassibility, and Christ's comment to St. Peter not to worry about his neighbour's path (the beloved disciple), and about taking no care for tomorrow.
I think this stumbling and groping without assurance which, clearly by God's providence, is the lot of most Christians who live married or at least 'in the world' lives, somehow trains us to take our eyes off ourselves and look to Christ as the only holy one.
Sorry frayed threads and dull stones as promised. :)
One more just musing on the city versus the garden:
I deeply sympathize with the outline of your argument here. I do wonder though about humanity being "immature" in the garden; I think I'm more leery of legitimizing the 'world-building' energy in us; it feels like solving something that's meant to be a bit raw.
So I was thinking then in a different way- that the Church which exists from the beginning as a creation of God- is "the city."
Anyway thank you Graham for stimulating my own heart to mull over and attempt to articulate some of the very things that concern me most.
Just a quick point I like to make. If you are married you are a monastic. If you are a monastic you are married. There is no difference between them, except for what your “old eyes” see.
Thank you for the thoughtful piece. Regarding this:
'Loving our enemies implies that we have enemies - and we have them because we stand for something.'
A valid observation, yet who are the enemies in the post-Christian west, where it seems harder to have "enemies" than other places that do not have some Christianized root to its culture? It's easier to envision persecution for living faithfully in, say, China, than it would be here in the US...?
Lately I have been re-reading the autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul. Her way is called the “little way” because she didn’t do anything spectacular. In fact one of her sisters, a Carmelite nun like St. Therese, was surprised when Therese was beatified. She asked, “What did Therese do?”
Perhaps busyness or active-ism is the disease of the 20th and 21st centuries. Do something! But what does that mean? Is a monk or nun shut up in a cell meditating doing something? Not in the view of modern people. Catholics have fallen into this fallacy as well and that is why monasticism has all but died in the West. Meditating and praying are not “productive” as if there’s a GDP meter on top of every monastery gate.
Yet Jesus did tell us to go into our room, shut the door and pray. I don’t think our blessed Lord was concerned about the utilitarian value of prayer or GDP.
I love where St Therese laments that she is so little and feeble that she could never be a great or dramatic saint. So instead, she does what she can and decides to scatter little flowers of love throughout her day so that all who may encounter them are reminded of God.
> In fact one of her sisters, a Carmelite nun like St. Therese, was surprised when Therese was beatified. She asked, “What did Therese do?”
A friend once wrote that this one of the central aspects of Orthodoxy. You don't need to do anything "special" to become a saint. It's not a competition, and it's not about some great deeds.
You can be a law-abiding citizen or a lowly murderer like Moses. You can be someone that flees from power or a power hungry emperor like Constantine. You can devote yourself to charity and serving others, or you can stay still upon a pillar and pray. There's no career path and precondition to sainthood, only freedom. What it takes is merely honestly grasping for it (for God, not for sainthood), and it's open to Grace, and to common people testifying for your fitness.
But isn’t difficult to get rid of the urge to “do something” especially in the spiritual life? So one ends up piling devotion upon devotion, as if the person who dies practicing the most devotions wins. We are always trying to measure things, to count things. As if the only things that matter are those that can be quantified.
From stories I've heard, practicing monks have all kinds of tricks against this trap. It's part of the fight against temptations, including the temptation of pride and of making devotion a contest. It's not always working perfectly of course, but that's ok too.
This is the deep knowing I have had as of the last few years as well. It reminds me of the popular Mother Theresa quote: "if you want to change the world, go home and love your family." Although I know it's not quite the same sentiment, it's in the same vein. When you see the upside down way of Christ for what it really is and it grabs you by the chin, it's hard to go back. The way you've articulated this actually helps me feel less alone while finding my way along this narrow path.
Ah, THAT. The option I turn from time after time, even as my soul ceaselessly whispers its truth. Thank you again Paul for laying out the case for peace and brilliantly enumerating and neutralizing my objections, each word you write ringing so true just beneath each of them. You have given me the very guidance I prayed for not an hour ago, bless you.
I’m a red blooded American man, steeped in the mythos of fighting the good fight, but there seems no end to good fights nowadays, and it confounds me unceasingly and makes me anxious, reactive, and divides me from friends and acquaintances, but mostly within myself. I find no answers through the endless scroll of modern “life”.
Your words have just potentially changed the course of my remaining days, should I have the courage to reel in the endless projections and scapegoating that I’ve become addicted to. I have no idea how to “do” what you’ve proscribed, but when I survey my inner landscape and consider it, I see for the first time the possibility of some peace, and some relief from the overwhelming task of fixing the world.
As a young woman I read Alice Walker's quote about activism being the rent you pay for living in the world, and that made sense to me: it is a duty of ours to make things better. Yet I was always uncomfortable with the confrontational, fist-in-the-air style of activism that so many of my compatriots on the Left romanticized. Later in life, I also sensed wisdom in the spiritual teachings that tell us in various ways that "what you resist, persists." So much street activism now seems to be about moral smugness and antagonizing others.
Here's the rub, though: activism or political/social action is often undertaken on behalf of others. It is going to bat, if you will, for those who have little power. It is all well and good if one wishes to allow oneself to be eaten by lions, but in doing so does one abandon others? In the human realm, acting on behalf of The Oppressed can be patronizing, and marginalized human groups may not need or desire one's help. But I am thinking, as I always do, of animals, of the biota, of rivers and mountains that are endlessly plundered. Is my meditation and prayer any kind of response to that destruction of others? I long for the luxury to engage with this line of thought for longer, but now I have to get ready for work...
Well, hm. It is a good question. I'd say two things just in response, but others might have better thoughts.
First off, the problem with acting on behalf of others is that you don't ask them first! As you say yourself. Look at the state of leftist activism today. Speaking on behalf of all the various opporessed minority groups they have identified/made up is often a way of simply trying to control the debate. They don't in reality speak for anyone: but claiming to can be the fast lane to domineering pride and arrogance. The Bolsheviks claimed to speak on behalf of 'the workers' and ended up herding them into prison camps.
Secondly, the point, as I said in the essay, is not that we should 'do nothing.' It is that we should do things informed by our self-change, and our attempts to follow God. It seems to me, looking at the lives of the saints, that the more they surrender themselves, the more they feel the pain of the world. Then they may be more able to do useful work, but work which is not primarily about their own ego or anger.
In France, right now, I sometimes think that I am resisting just by saying "hello" to people whose paths I cross in the street, or the park.
Saying "hello" can be a form of resistance right now, as we are pushed into more and more anonymous ? faceless ways of being together. Taking the time to engage in conversation with someone, for example. This seems to me to be the kind of "activism" that is not ideologically oriented, or not so much ideologically oriented.
And you can say hello to the animals... I do. They usually respond, the ones that I feel like saying hello to.
I also tend to think that we have blinders on on the issue of who has power or not. There is a kind of... negative power that is very potent in the world. It has even more power since we won't, don't, or can't see it.
Any time you are acting on behalf of abstractions like 'the oppressed' you are in great danger of going totally sideways. If you act for Bill your brother or Sally the cashier or Tom who lives under the bridge, you can't go wrong.
In that famous prayer attributed to St Francis, he asks that God give him the strength not to be comforted but instead, to comfort. I can only imagine that this exhortation came from within, upon realising that he distinctly desired to be comforted on a day where his mendicant and ascetic lifestyle was paining him. Jesus makes it plain and your essay reminds us that whatever we want, we will only get by giving it away. May God give us the strength and courage to do so when the time comes.
No. Not by giving it away, but by accepting the possibility of losing it. There is a difference.
And I have qualms about even Jesus's remark that it is more blessed to give than to receive, etc, because the world we are living in shows us that receiving in gratefulness is action, and is necessary to make a harmonious world. Too many people are addicted to giving/acting, etc, and do not realize that receiving gratefully, in grace, is equally important. Receiving gratefully in such a way that one does not feel... painfully indebted to the point of having to cancel out all form of debt immediately.
Hey Paul, you are taking us all for a walk on thin ice. Following a Jesus who carries his cross, blooded, beaten up, humiliated scourged - and still silent, is very different from following a Jesus who laughs and smiles and blesses and possibly even sings and dances on rainbows! And yet he still loves us and loves the Father while in agony on that cross. Can we - could we ever - love the way He loves? Can we - could we ever - give up all voluntarily? I know I tremble at the thought....
I guess its fitting your named Paul. Maybe start writing letters to the Churches? Just kidding but who knows what's in store for you? God is Eternal but also Imminent, right here right now. No need to figure it out just take a step and then another. He leads us by the Heart.
Sometimes I get tired of EVERYBODY telling me how passion is a sin : the Stoics, the Greek philosophers before them, the Christians, the Enlightenment people, the modern spychiatrists with their reductionist diagnoses, everybody has it in for passion(s).
And I still believe that the Machine thrives on all of our continual activism... against passion.
At this late point in my life, I have come to see that the greatest sins are not those against the spirit, but those that are against the frail flower of the flesh. Ourselves as flesh.
Why ? Because we loathe ourselves as corruptible flesh. We would do anything to get away from our destiny as corruptible flesh. Anything.
And the Machine thrives on all that we do against our corruptible.. flesh.
I have decided to the best of my ability to accept myself as corruptible flesh, and to not try to wiggle out of my destiny as corruptible flesh.
After all, maybe accepting this destiny opens a door for a truly new ? way of living a living life ?
As an example of how radical I have become recently on this issue, I ended up in the Gospel of John, chapter 4, looking at what Jesus said about the living water, spring water vs well water to the Samaritan woman.
And it came to me... that I have spring water IN ME, this poor corruptible flesh. It is present in my pee, my saliva, the spring water that springs from my sex when I desire to welcome a beloved man inside me. All of this spring water that springs from my poor corruptible flesh, that is.. RENEWABLE for as long as I am living.
And... what is wrong with this ? Isn't it a miracle ? Isn't it the miracle of life itself, to be wondered at ? Isn't it.. enough to delight in ? WHAT MORE DO WE NEED ?
Why can we not, after all these millenia, take delight in ourselves as living beings ?
Well, I never said passion was sin! In fact, in Orthodox terminology, they are not the same thing at all.
The problem with 'delighting in ourselves as living beings' is surely that we are not entirely delightful. I mean - we can be, but we can also be awful and terrible. So the balance - which is the Christian balance - is between a kind of pagan self-love on one hand, and a gnostic self-hatred on the other.
I would actually say that the Machine can satisfy both of those.
Tricky balance though! That's why we need help, I suppose.
But there is no escape from being 'corruptible flesh.' Christianity is incarnational after all. Even God become corruptible flesh.
I forgot to add tears to the list of living water. Yes, tears. Important.
As for being entirely delightful, well... you know how I feel by now about the beauty of the fallen world, which I still love. It has sadness AND joy. There is no joy in the fallen world without sadness as a possibility. No love.. without the possibility of loss of love.
After all this time, and noticing that it is not easy to know when we are... delightful, and when we are not, I am content with limiting my action as much as possible. But this has never been a problem, lol.
There is a lot to be said for learning to see the kingdom of God behind the little acts of individual daily life. And in going easy on the flesh...
Several years ago I told you ? asked you ? about the danger of putting oneself up for sacrifice when it was not absolutely necessary. It may be salutory to discern when sacrifice is absolutely necessary, and when it is not, because sacrificing oneself when it is not called for could possibly be a tremendous sin, one with tremendous evil consequences for the world. Sacrifice, particularly self sacrifice is the most potent medecine around, and misusing it... is very destructive, in my opinion.
There are a lot of stories about early Christians desperate to be martyred who are refused by God, because they are operating from pride. A trap for us all!
Hello Debra. Please accept my best wishes to your good self as well. Life can be hard (as I know all too well) but I hope that you can feel some love coming your way.
Yielding, in a nutshell. Wonderful.
Perfect. I attended your Erasmus lecture. As to your comment: “How many of us can even see ourselves? Sometimes I get glimpses from the outside and I feel like hiding under the duvet for the next four days,” the person I was with and someone we met sitting next to us could feel in your presence that “special thing” that you only get a few times in your life—from people who by their mere presence affect you for the better, it’s something you feel from them. I know you hate this type of thing but others must have communicated this sentiment.
This piece was perfect. Sacrifice creates the future. Wonderfully said.
Oh, Paul, please, for the sake of my own precious delusions, stop confronting me with myself! :-)
Actually, don't stop! This is good medicine.
It's not me doing the confronting! I am just writing about being confronted myself. We all know who's behind it ...
Yep, we sure do. Let's me know I'm truly loved.
When I saw the title, Paul, I thought you meant the first Moses! And I thought of a skull-bashing fugitive who laid low for forty years in the mountains, marrying the pretty daughter of a pagan shaman and raising children and sheep, until coming face to face with the Holy One, in the fire-blossoms of some incandescent alpine flora, returning to the Empire, this time as a liberator and basically god-man, who went head to head with another god-man, the Pharaoh, and one-upped him ten times in a row, in terms of weather control, and led his people out in wild, fleet-footed droves, leaving the Empire behind them in smoldering ruins. So, that was confusing! Ha! But this other Moses is cool, too, of course. What I really want to know is how to empty the self, exit the world, and so on, as a family man, not a monastic. You can sacrifice yourself, and that is heroic, but sacrificing your children and their future is cowardice. And the real difference between the (ancient Hebrew) Moses Option and the (later) Christian one is that the Hebrews were fiercely determined to be fruitful and multiply and live in the world, not escape it.
Well, not being a Hebrew I don't have to worry too much about that ;-)
We've talked about the sacrifice thing a bit here recently. It's been useful. You can only ever sacrifice yourself - not anyone else. Since we're also called upon to defend the weak, we have to defend our children, and anyone else we can. Obvious cliched example: if the Nazis arrive, you may choose to practice non-violent resistance to them (which will probably get you killed) but you are, I would say, mandated to save as many Jews as you can while you're at it.
We only live in the world for a short time! The question is what happens next. If your answer is 'nothing' then you may come to all sorts of conclusions, from nihilism to hedonism to activism, I suppose depending on your personality. If your answer is 'the kingdom' then this could lead to anything from escapsim to self-emptying love. The first of those being much easier! But not really the point.
The question of how to do it as a family man/woman rather than a monk is the key. I would say that lots of Christians have offered answers though. I like what the Bruderhof people do, at least in terms of their lifestyle. And recently I've been thinking about the new Orthodox saint, Matushka Olga. I'd like to learn more about her. It seems that she has an answer to that question.
All very true! I've been reading both Nietzsche & NT Wright lately, so take this with a grain of salt, but we have all this immense world-building creative energy in us, too (which, yes, if not married to our capacity to be quiet, listen, and surrender, comes out chaotic and destructive), and this world-building energy must go somewhere! To turn it entirely within ourselves, to "building" the inner spiritual man, quickly slides into a world-weary, sickly, egoistic narcissism, as eloquently and devastatingly described by Yannaras, in his "Against Religion". You know I have no nostalgia for Byzantium -- and agree with people like Sherrard and Ellul who point out that the whole idea of Christian empire itself was incoherent and self-defeating -- but at least there was some ambition there! Some vast creativity! At least they tried to DO something! One of the great beauties of the early Christian vision, still very Hebraic in its outlook, is the idea that, even though whatever man builds is basically delusional, grass-like, and doomed to wither in time, still: In the transfiguration of the Earth to come (this was before "we're only here for a little while, and when we die, we'll be going somewhere else anyway" took hold), whatever the Creator deems good, true, and beautiful of ours -- that we created, as his little co-creators -- will be perfected and eternalized. This is symbolized in one crazy image in scripture -- of a Renewed Jerusalem coming down from the sky. The city -- civilization -- is man's idea, man's creation, not God's. But God will embrace it in the end and complete it, so it lasts forever -- on Earth! This Earth! You know?
Well, I've just come back from a few day in some of the monasteries of Romania - and boy, are those people busy! The astonishing architecture, the gardens, the beehives, the food being grown, the churches being built, the logs being cut for the winter ... all in the service of the contemplation of God.
I suppose it is always a tension. But as I said, everything is 'action'! There is no 'inaction' in the world. We are always moving, working towards something. I can't agree that 'building the inner man' slides into narcissism. That's about as anti-Christian an idea as I can imagine. Anti-any kind of religious practice really.
I keep coming back to the same observation: that only a well-builty inner man can produce a well-built external world. I think the state of things right now bears this out.
Quick clarification, or point of emphasis, or something --> what I said was "To turn it **entirely** within ourselves, to "building" the inner spiritual man, quickly **slides into** a world-weary, sickly, egoistic narcissism." Of course, building the inner man is essential -- agreed. But to redirect *all* of one's creative energy inward becomes a sickness. The monks, as you say, have plenty of external things to do with their bodies, in their little islands of refreshing human sanity -- building temples, gardens, beehives, cutting firewood, etc -- and that externalized world to construct is essential, too. And if the inner worlds and outer worlds being built are harmonious and reciprocally energizing to one another, wow -- there's human flourishing for you. I think part of the anguish and confusion of being a Christian non-monastic today is that the external world comes already pre-built and finished -- the Machine -- and totally at odds with the inner world that you are meant to work at it in your private prayers and the occasional church service. What's the external world that we non-monastics can be building now? (I have my own ideas on this, but I want to hear yours....)
(speaking of which, I'm off to our land up north now, to put in some cedar trim around the kitchen window, now that the glorious mega-chunk of a slab of black walnut kitchen countertop is done, and needs a beautiful window to rest beneath...)
I like the idea of building beautiful things to celebrate man and God ? and to be useful, too ? Why not ask for everything ?
I think that's all true. In my non-expert understanding, that is exactly why monastics have a strict balance between the inner and outer worlds. They spend the morning washing up or chopping wood or changing sheets, and the evening in vigil or prayer, etc. The stories of solitary ascetics going mad for lack of balance are legion!
Your point about the Machine and the inner life is well taken. I think Dreher's 'Benedict option' is not a bad approach, but it's also bascially a re-formmulation of the old idea of Christian communities. Seems like we have always needed support in a hostile world.
I also wonder whether we can all, in a small way, turn our homes into little lay monasteries of sorts. But I think about this every day and I wouldn't pretend to have some off-pat answer.
Now I want to hear your ideas!
That sounds like a good balance, the morning changing sheets, and the evening in vigil or prayer.
We are in danger if we are too much in our "minds", not yoked to our hands/bodies, in my opinion.
I think it was LM Sacasas (in his The Convivial Society substack) that addressed this idea that some people have that if only they could be free from the mundane chores of life they could pursue creative activities unfettered. As I recall his point was that often we need those mundane activities to keep us grounded and to be faithful to our family, friends, neighbors and ourselves.
Here's the essay: https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/waste-your-time-your-life-may-depend
I've had this thought for years too. If you'll excuse me changing the subject for a moment, I've noticed 'traditional catholics' mentioned a couple of times in your recent posts Paul. Each time I find my blood pressure rise! Catholics are all Catholics and there is nothing in the 'traditional' Catholic movement that is not also found in the messy masses (as in many) of peoples who attend Catholic Churches the world over. Further, in these seemingly 'lesser' or 'modern' parishes, you will find far broader racial, socioeconomic and educational backgrounds than are found in the Extraordinary form Latin mass. Every mass is a celebration of the same Eucharist, whatever the rite, and there are many, including Eastern forms. Vatican II is also widely misunderstood and misrepresented, although of course, as with any church, valid criticism can be made. To see it as an accommodation of the world though is simply incorrect. Anyway, excuse me, I really don't want to create the kind of polarising noise I see on the internet, particularly in the US, but if you're not Catholic, its easy to miss out nuances and realities that can only be understood when it is lived. Here I'm echoing what Constantinou pointed out in her book 'Thinking Orthodox' when speaking about the Orthodox mind. Likewise the Catholic mind. Anyway, back to the subject. I have had a desire for all of my life, having not become a nun, to see if I could make my home a monastery of sorts. I was in a Carmelite monastery in Bruges last week, staying in a hermitage in the walled garden. It had a bedroom and next to it a room for prayer, stripped of everything except a kneeler and a crucifix. It was like being in a kind of bridal chamber in the Old Testament usage. In the aloneness and the silence, I was afforded a momentary taste of what I initially thought must be what the consecrated people live. But then I thought no, this is the source of my own Christian life - the unknowable and unspeakable wellspring that is the Triune God, always there and yet not visible or always consciously experienced, but nevertheless the source and end of my own life. I was staying at the monastery with friends, together with whom I'd come for retreat, and unusually, in the evenings we decided to meet for a few hours in the town to eat. It was an opportunity for community that we also craved. I found myself feeling that this is it. I'm a lay person. Grateful for the consecrated friars who allowed for retreat, but so glad to be able to be a grain of salt, whose right place is to also be in the world. I have long been keen to visit the Bruderhoff. They seem to have managed something that works, although I wonder how it is for the children. As our monasteries have tended to shrink I have thought lay people could maybe move in with the monks or nuns (they might not be keen on the idea but needs must!) to sustain the grounds, with rooms for singles and small houses for families. We lay people have an essential place in the church. In modern times where we are more dispersed than the recent generations before us, it's not easy to find a way. Oh and sacrifice. Our own lives as Christians are sacrifice for sure as you said. But grieving my father some years ago I realised that I also had to let him go back to God. I found that I experienced this too, as sacrificial. In my heart I had to offer him back to God. All that I have, all that and who I know, all has been given, and all must, in the end, be returned to God. In a sense this is sacrifice beyond myself.
I'm probably going to get this story slightly wrong, but St. Anthony struggled constantly against his own pride in the desert, and once prayed fervently for God to show him true humility. An angel took Anthony not to some other desert monastic (Anthony not being the first), but back into Alexandria, the bustling heart of what Anthony had fled in the first place, the beating dirty heart of the "machine" of its own day.
The angel then took Anthony to the stall of a cobbler who made and repaired shoes and sandals. There Anthony witnessed the cobbler praying as he worked. He prayed for all who passed by "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on this person and save them. Let me be condemned if only they might be saved."
Saint Porphyrios, a 20th century Orthodox saint, tried himself to be a monastic on Mt. Athos, but through his own pride and disobedience he injured himself and had to return to civilization. Though he longed to return to monastic life, this was denied him for many years, and he was made priest at a busy city church, and made a hospital chaplain, where he served many.
There is a series of books call "Ascetics in the World", which is filled with the stories of the quietly faithful lay Christians, whose lives were blessings to others around them. They had jobs and families, and were in their times just ordinary people whose faith permeated what they did, often in difficult circumstances (but not always). I would also recommend quite strongly the collections of short stories by Fr. Joseph Siniari, which while fiction, are based on his time as the parish priest of a poor working class Philadelphia parish.
We can be overly tied up in the focus on the "inner life", when often what we're called to is simply faithful service in ordinary life. As a father and business owner, that means faithful service to my family, to my employees, to my customers and suppliers. It's also faithful service to my church and church family, to my friends and neighbors, and where else I might be of use.
I love St Porphyrios. His story is so human.
I'd like to read that book. Asceticism in the world is something I want to find out more about.
"The city -- civilization -- is man's idea, man's creation, not God's. But God will embrace it in the end and complete it, so it lasts forever"
I'm not sure I agree with the idea that the city is man's creation not God's. Civilization is perhaps the corrupted version (or at least what we see of civilization now) of God's original intent for the Kingdom. The New Jerusalem comes down from Heaven to Earth complete. It's not something humans made or will make. It's, as NT Wright often says, the marriage of Heaven and Earth (just finished his commentary on the book of Revelation).
Unlike in the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the Creation myth of the Hebrew bible does not culminate in the construction of a city; the divine Kingdom is a garden (Eden), not a city. It is the son of Cain who first builds a city, and it's away from Eden, after the rebellion. I don't know how it could get any clearer that -- according to the Hebrew prophets -- the city is fallen man's creation, not God's.
The Bruderhof are great!
Raising your children, spending your time and energy working to provide a good home for them, loving them, teaching them - surely all these are sacrifices of the time and energy that have been given to you. As a mother and grandmother that's how I know the idea of personal sacrifice as redemption is true. What you get for that "sacrifice" is so much greater and ore wonderful than what you give.
I agree with that! But that's not the "Moses Option" being offered here, hence my question...
(or, I don't know that sensibility fits with the "Moses Option" being offered, which is a monastic, not family, one)
No, that's not the point. Neither this article nor my lecture was promoting monasticism. In both I was quite clear that I was talking about living in the world, and I gave examples of people doing so. Eg:
'But most of us are ‘in the world’, and so the world will challenge us. It will bring us evils like this. What are we to do with them? Stand up for the truth in love. Practice what we claim to believe. Loving our enemies implies that we have enemies - and we have them because we stand for something.'
I am not a monastic, and nor do I live in a cave. I'm talking about sacrifice *in* the world. Leaving the world *whilst* living in it. In some ways this is harder than monasticism, but maybe it's more necessary. I don't know how to do it, which is why I keep picking away at it. Because the alternative is inevitably going to be 'Christian civilisation.'
ah, right -- yes, sorry: You are of course not telling us to be monastics here, and you're acknowledging that we're living in the world -- right. I'm collapsing what *you* mean by "The Moses Option" into whatever *I* imagine it might mean. I guess what I'm wrestling with is that the idea of "leaving the world, while still living in it" offers a very clear, specific, content-filled path for people like Moses the Black here, who are not married and are not raising children: become a monk. A monastery is geographically located on Earth, but its culture is heavenly. The problem has been solved, the needle has been threaded. But for those still living out the original command to be fruitful and multiply, to subdue the Earth, et cetera, there is not a clear, pre-determined, content-filled path for leaving the world, while still living in it -- at least, not any obvious one in contemporary Orthodoxy (there are little pockets elsewhere; Bruderhof, as you mentioned). It would be difficult to write an essay called "The ______ Option," where the blank is filled by a happily married and happily child-raising Orthodox saint, who leaves his or her old thug life behind, to join a community of married and child-raising Orthodox brothers and sisters. Hence the need to wrestle towards envisioning what this might be, which I know you are trying to do, also...
Yes, I think this is spot-on. There is no clear path for us in the same sense that the monastics have. At least, not beyond the prayer rule, fasting, the liturgy, etc. Those are the core elements. But what are we to do about tech, about political engagement, etc? It is hard to fathom.
But you said you had some ideas, and now I want to hear them!
I've been following your comments here and appreciate very much the heart in them.
I have unpolished stones or frayed threads to share:
I'm thinking of a friend, a young man who just recently has begun an attempt at monastic life on Mt. Athos. My heart is so with him! The "straightforward, clear path" of monasticism is actually very gritty in its own way. Time passes at the same rate, etc. Some things clear but the heart always is the true battle ground:
I think of the Desert Fathers, the famous dialogue between a desert monk who approaches his Elder with something like this: "I keep my rule of prayers, keeps the fasts, attend services; is there anything more?" and the famous response from the Elder who stretches his hands to the heavens and they become as fire: "If you would, you might become all flame."
Both were living the monastic way. I see in this intimation of the invisible battleground.
And then the mesiness of (my own) life in the world, with kids, work, many cares etc. I think of my own spiritual father (a monk) who once said: Of course there are far more saints (departed) who lived lives in the world than monastic saints. Why then does the church hold up the monastic path for us? Because in the monastic image contains a striving for the ideal path, iconic of that that saves us all whether monk or married. (I think of this aspect, in St. Paul's preference and recommendation of the unmarried life for all).
For me then its to say... the very "messiness" of my life in the world struggling to sacrificial love and the cross and selling all to follow Christ, not having anything clear or certain or dependable. This *is* the saving cross; it is the orientation of the heart that attracts grace, which is "other worldly" and invisible and unlike anything that can be held as a sure indication- anything created.
Some of this I think might be about God's transcendence and impassibility, and Christ's comment to St. Peter not to worry about his neighbour's path (the beloved disciple), and about taking no care for tomorrow.
I think this stumbling and groping without assurance which, clearly by God's providence, is the lot of most Christians who live married or at least 'in the world' lives, somehow trains us to take our eyes off ourselves and look to Christ as the only holy one.
Sorry frayed threads and dull stones as promised. :)
One more just musing on the city versus the garden:
I deeply sympathize with the outline of your argument here. I do wonder though about humanity being "immature" in the garden; I think I'm more leery of legitimizing the 'world-building' energy in us; it feels like solving something that's meant to be a bit raw.
So I was thinking then in a different way- that the Church which exists from the beginning as a creation of God- is "the city."
Anyway thank you Graham for stimulating my own heart to mull over and attempt to articulate some of the very things that concern me most.
with the Feast!
-mb
Just a quick point I like to make. If you are married you are a monastic. If you are a monastic you are married. There is no difference between them, except for what your “old eyes” see.
Thank you for the thoughtful piece. Regarding this:
'Loving our enemies implies that we have enemies - and we have them because we stand for something.'
A valid observation, yet who are the enemies in the post-Christian west, where it seems harder to have "enemies" than other places that do not have some Christianized root to its culture? It's easier to envision persecution for living faithfully in, say, China, than it would be here in the US...?
Lately I have been re-reading the autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul. Her way is called the “little way” because she didn’t do anything spectacular. In fact one of her sisters, a Carmelite nun like St. Therese, was surprised when Therese was beatified. She asked, “What did Therese do?”
Perhaps busyness or active-ism is the disease of the 20th and 21st centuries. Do something! But what does that mean? Is a monk or nun shut up in a cell meditating doing something? Not in the view of modern people. Catholics have fallen into this fallacy as well and that is why monasticism has all but died in the West. Meditating and praying are not “productive” as if there’s a GDP meter on top of every monastery gate.
Yet Jesus did tell us to go into our room, shut the door and pray. I don’t think our blessed Lord was concerned about the utilitarian value of prayer or GDP.
I love where St Therese laments that she is so little and feeble that she could never be a great or dramatic saint. So instead, she does what she can and decides to scatter little flowers of love throughout her day so that all who may encounter them are reminded of God.
> In fact one of her sisters, a Carmelite nun like St. Therese, was surprised when Therese was beatified. She asked, “What did Therese do?”
A friend once wrote that this one of the central aspects of Orthodoxy. You don't need to do anything "special" to become a saint. It's not a competition, and it's not about some great deeds.
You can be a law-abiding citizen or a lowly murderer like Moses. You can be someone that flees from power or a power hungry emperor like Constantine. You can devote yourself to charity and serving others, or you can stay still upon a pillar and pray. There's no career path and precondition to sainthood, only freedom. What it takes is merely honestly grasping for it (for God, not for sainthood), and it's open to Grace, and to common people testifying for your fitness.
But isn’t difficult to get rid of the urge to “do something” especially in the spiritual life? So one ends up piling devotion upon devotion, as if the person who dies practicing the most devotions wins. We are always trying to measure things, to count things. As if the only things that matter are those that can be quantified.
From stories I've heard, practicing monks have all kinds of tricks against this trap. It's part of the fight against temptations, including the temptation of pride and of making devotion a contest. It's not always working perfectly of course, but that's ok too.
yes, like Saint David of Wales (Dewi Sant) his command to his brothers - do the little things (pethau bychan).
This is the deep knowing I have had as of the last few years as well. It reminds me of the popular Mother Theresa quote: "if you want to change the world, go home and love your family." Although I know it's not quite the same sentiment, it's in the same vein. When you see the upside down way of Christ for what it really is and it grabs you by the chin, it's hard to go back. The way you've articulated this actually helps me feel less alone while finding my way along this narrow path.
I know, it is impossible to go back, isn't it? Then you ahve to work out precisely *how* you are supposed to go forward!
It is a very beautiful and profound article that lives in the mystery of kenosis (cf. Philippians 2:5 ff.).
Yes it is. I’m going to reread it several times to let it sink properly in. Hope he puts it in a book.
Amen. It's amazes me how often you speak the very thing that I am musing on.
Ah, THAT. The option I turn from time after time, even as my soul ceaselessly whispers its truth. Thank you again Paul for laying out the case for peace and brilliantly enumerating and neutralizing my objections, each word you write ringing so true just beneath each of them. You have given me the very guidance I prayed for not an hour ago, bless you.
I’m a red blooded American man, steeped in the mythos of fighting the good fight, but there seems no end to good fights nowadays, and it confounds me unceasingly and makes me anxious, reactive, and divides me from friends and acquaintances, but mostly within myself. I find no answers through the endless scroll of modern “life”.
Your words have just potentially changed the course of my remaining days, should I have the courage to reel in the endless projections and scapegoating that I’ve become addicted to. I have no idea how to “do” what you’ve proscribed, but when I survey my inner landscape and consider it, I see for the first time the possibility of some peace, and some relief from the overwhelming task of fixing the world.
Thank you and God bless you.
As a young woman I read Alice Walker's quote about activism being the rent you pay for living in the world, and that made sense to me: it is a duty of ours to make things better. Yet I was always uncomfortable with the confrontational, fist-in-the-air style of activism that so many of my compatriots on the Left romanticized. Later in life, I also sensed wisdom in the spiritual teachings that tell us in various ways that "what you resist, persists." So much street activism now seems to be about moral smugness and antagonizing others.
Here's the rub, though: activism or political/social action is often undertaken on behalf of others. It is going to bat, if you will, for those who have little power. It is all well and good if one wishes to allow oneself to be eaten by lions, but in doing so does one abandon others? In the human realm, acting on behalf of The Oppressed can be patronizing, and marginalized human groups may not need or desire one's help. But I am thinking, as I always do, of animals, of the biota, of rivers and mountains that are endlessly plundered. Is my meditation and prayer any kind of response to that destruction of others? I long for the luxury to engage with this line of thought for longer, but now I have to get ready for work...
Well, hm. It is a good question. I'd say two things just in response, but others might have better thoughts.
First off, the problem with acting on behalf of others is that you don't ask them first! As you say yourself. Look at the state of leftist activism today. Speaking on behalf of all the various opporessed minority groups they have identified/made up is often a way of simply trying to control the debate. They don't in reality speak for anyone: but claiming to can be the fast lane to domineering pride and arrogance. The Bolsheviks claimed to speak on behalf of 'the workers' and ended up herding them into prison camps.
Secondly, the point, as I said in the essay, is not that we should 'do nothing.' It is that we should do things informed by our self-change, and our attempts to follow God. It seems to me, looking at the lives of the saints, that the more they surrender themselves, the more they feel the pain of the world. Then they may be more able to do useful work, but work which is not primarily about their own ego or anger.
Others might have better answers though.
In France, right now, I sometimes think that I am resisting just by saying "hello" to people whose paths I cross in the street, or the park.
Saying "hello" can be a form of resistance right now, as we are pushed into more and more anonymous ? faceless ways of being together. Taking the time to engage in conversation with someone, for example. This seems to me to be the kind of "activism" that is not ideologically oriented, or not so much ideologically oriented.
And you can say hello to the animals... I do. They usually respond, the ones that I feel like saying hello to.
I also tend to think that we have blinders on on the issue of who has power or not. There is a kind of... negative power that is very potent in the world. It has even more power since we won't, don't, or can't see it.
Any time you are acting on behalf of abstractions like 'the oppressed' you are in great danger of going totally sideways. If you act for Bill your brother or Sally the cashier or Tom who lives under the bridge, you can't go wrong.
Yes, this!!
Maybe not act "for" but "with". Gotta be careful about thinking that you know what is good FOR others. Very careful.
I'm reminded of the the Peanuts character Linus, "I love mankind, it's people I can't stand"
In that famous prayer attributed to St Francis, he asks that God give him the strength not to be comforted but instead, to comfort. I can only imagine that this exhortation came from within, upon realising that he distinctly desired to be comforted on a day where his mendicant and ascetic lifestyle was paining him. Jesus makes it plain and your essay reminds us that whatever we want, we will only get by giving it away. May God give us the strength and courage to do so when the time comes.
No. Not by giving it away, but by accepting the possibility of losing it. There is a difference.
And I have qualms about even Jesus's remark that it is more blessed to give than to receive, etc, because the world we are living in shows us that receiving in gratefulness is action, and is necessary to make a harmonious world. Too many people are addicted to giving/acting, etc, and do not realize that receiving gratefully, in grace, is equally important. Receiving gratefully in such a way that one does not feel... painfully indebted to the point of having to cancel out all form of debt immediately.
Hey Paul, you are taking us all for a walk on thin ice. Following a Jesus who carries his cross, blooded, beaten up, humiliated scourged - and still silent, is very different from following a Jesus who laughs and smiles and blesses and possibly even sings and dances on rainbows! And yet he still loves us and loves the Father while in agony on that cross. Can we - could we ever - love the way He loves? Can we - could we ever - give up all voluntarily? I know I tremble at the thought....
"Can we-could we ever-give up all voluntarily ?"
But... do we really have the choice on this one ?
Looking at the world that I loved that is being destroyed under my eyes, am I not called upon to give it up ? voluntarily ? OR ELSE ?
I guess its fitting your named Paul. Maybe start writing letters to the Churches? Just kidding but who knows what's in store for you? God is Eternal but also Imminent, right here right now. No need to figure it out just take a step and then another. He leads us by the Heart.
I expect I'll end up beheaded one way or another!
Thank you so much Paul.
Might not new faiths emerge, in this time of creaking empire and information (& climate) chaos?
In Jesus name
I had a hard time with this one today, Paul.
Sometimes I get tired of EVERYBODY telling me how passion is a sin : the Stoics, the Greek philosophers before them, the Christians, the Enlightenment people, the modern spychiatrists with their reductionist diagnoses, everybody has it in for passion(s).
And I still believe that the Machine thrives on all of our continual activism... against passion.
At this late point in my life, I have come to see that the greatest sins are not those against the spirit, but those that are against the frail flower of the flesh. Ourselves as flesh.
Why ? Because we loathe ourselves as corruptible flesh. We would do anything to get away from our destiny as corruptible flesh. Anything.
And the Machine thrives on all that we do against our corruptible.. flesh.
I have decided to the best of my ability to accept myself as corruptible flesh, and to not try to wiggle out of my destiny as corruptible flesh.
After all, maybe accepting this destiny opens a door for a truly new ? way of living a living life ?
As an example of how radical I have become recently on this issue, I ended up in the Gospel of John, chapter 4, looking at what Jesus said about the living water, spring water vs well water to the Samaritan woman.
And it came to me... that I have spring water IN ME, this poor corruptible flesh. It is present in my pee, my saliva, the spring water that springs from my sex when I desire to welcome a beloved man inside me. All of this spring water that springs from my poor corruptible flesh, that is.. RENEWABLE for as long as I am living.
And... what is wrong with this ? Isn't it a miracle ? Isn't it the miracle of life itself, to be wondered at ? Isn't it.. enough to delight in ? WHAT MORE DO WE NEED ?
Why can we not, after all these millenia, take delight in ourselves as living beings ?
Well, I never said passion was sin! In fact, in Orthodox terminology, they are not the same thing at all.
The problem with 'delighting in ourselves as living beings' is surely that we are not entirely delightful. I mean - we can be, but we can also be awful and terrible. So the balance - which is the Christian balance - is between a kind of pagan self-love on one hand, and a gnostic self-hatred on the other.
I would actually say that the Machine can satisfy both of those.
Tricky balance though! That's why we need help, I suppose.
But there is no escape from being 'corruptible flesh.' Christianity is incarnational after all. Even God become corruptible flesh.
I forgot to add tears to the list of living water. Yes, tears. Important.
As for being entirely delightful, well... you know how I feel by now about the beauty of the fallen world, which I still love. It has sadness AND joy. There is no joy in the fallen world without sadness as a possibility. No love.. without the possibility of loss of love.
After all this time, and noticing that it is not easy to know when we are... delightful, and when we are not, I am content with limiting my action as much as possible. But this has never been a problem, lol.
There is a lot to be said for learning to see the kingdom of God behind the little acts of individual daily life. And in going easy on the flesh...
Several years ago I told you ? asked you ? about the danger of putting oneself up for sacrifice when it was not absolutely necessary. It may be salutory to discern when sacrifice is absolutely necessary, and when it is not, because sacrificing oneself when it is not called for could possibly be a tremendous sin, one with tremendous evil consequences for the world. Sacrifice, particularly self sacrifice is the most potent medecine around, and misusing it... is very destructive, in my opinion.
There are a lot of stories about early Christians desperate to be martyred who are refused by God, because they are operating from pride. A trap for us all!
Thank you for your attention and comfort tonight, Paul. I appreciate them. I need them.
Hello Debra. Please accept my best wishes to your good self as well. Life can be hard (as I know all too well) but I hope that you can feel some love coming your way.
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