Humility

Leo Tolstoy, as well as Fyodor Dostoyevski, was deeply influenced and moved by the eremitic legacy of the Russian startsy (elders), and they were all too familiar with tales of wondrous incidents in the lives of these Russian hermits.  Here is one of them.

Tolstoy wrote of the encounter between a Russian Orthodox bishop and three hermits.  The bishop was traveling by boat with other pilgrims from Archangel to the Solovetsk monastery.  On the way he heard rumors that on an obscure little island along the way there were three old hermits that had spent their entire lives trying to save their souls.  The bishop became intrigued and implored the captain to stop the ship so that he could visit them.  The captain reluctantly agreed and dropped anchor near the island.  The bishop was then placed on a boat and with a group of oarsmen sent ashore.  The three hermits were dressed raggedly with long white beards to their knees.  In total humility they welcomed the bishop, making deep bows.  After he blessed them he asked them what they were doing to save their souls and serve God.  They replied that they had no idea how to serve God.  They just served and supported each other.  The bishop realized that the poor hermits didn't even know how to pray, since all they did was lift their arms up towards heaven and repeat, "Three are ye, three are we, have mercy upon us."  The bishop considered it his ecclesiastical duty to teach the illiterate hermits the Lord's Prayer.  They, however, were poor learners and required a whole day of instruction.  At dusk and before returning to the ship, the bishop even offered them a short and simple lesson on Christian theology.

But lo and behold!  During sunset as the boat left the island, all the passengers saw a sight in the distance that filled them with fright.  The three hermits were running on water as if it were dry land.  When they came by the side of the ship they implored the bishop to remind them of the Lord's Prayer because, poor fellows, they had already completely forgotten it.  The bishop crossed himself in awe and told the hermits to continue their own prayers, for they had no need for instruction.  Then he bowed deeply before the old men and asked them to pray for him as they turned and ran back across the sea to their island.  "And a light shone until daybreak on the spot where they were lost to sight."

- from The Mountain of Silence, by Kyriacos C. Markides, p. 146.

Judging Others

Even in His pain on the cross, the Lord Jesus did not condemn sinners but offered pardon to His Father for their sins saying, “They know not what they do!”(St. Luke 23:34). Let us not judge anyone so that we will not be judged. For no one is certain that before his death he will not commit the same sin by which he condemns his brother. Saint Anastasius of Sinai teaches, “Even if you see someone sinning, do not judge him for you do not know what the end of his life will be like. The thief, crucified with Christ, entered Paradise and the Apostle Judas went to Hell. Even if you see someone sinning, bear in mind that you do not know his good works. For many have sinned openly and repented in secret; we see their sins, but we do not know their repentance. That is why, brethren, let us not judge anyone so that we will not be judged.”

from the Prologue of Ohrid

New Pastures

My understanding is that shepherds will move their flocks of sheep in order to find good pastures on which they can feed. As winter approaches, the shepherd takes the sheep to a lower altitude. When spring is in the air, the flocks head to higher ground. Getting to these new pastures may require a great expenditure of physical energy. Once in a new location, however, the sheep will stay in a certain valley or on the side of a mountain for a period of time - feeding, resting, giving birth to new lambs and growing stronger. The sheep aren't capable of making these decisions - when to move and where to go. The shepherd is the only one wise enough to chart out the paths and to know what the sheep need to thrive and stay healthy. Staying by a mountain lake for their entire lives is not the best thing for sheep.

For my husband and I, the past two years have been filled with continual travels to very different pastures. At various times, the journey has been frightening, delightful, inconvenient, exhausting, and exhilarating. There have been months where we were just resting by the mountain lake, absorbing the warmth of the sun and resting. But then we were off to new horizons. We still do not know what the Shepherd's plan is. And that's the whole point. We don't need to. Our contentment comes, not in our situation or our surroundings, but in being with the Shepherd.

Imagine a parent telling a child,

We're going on a long trip. There will be exciting times, difficult moments, confusing situations and interesting people. But don't worry or be afraid. I will be with you at every moment. You will never be out of my sight or care at any time. I will show you amazing and beautiful things, and you will grow strong and experience great joy. Just take my hand and walk with me.

What child would refuse and invitation like that?

Allegiance

"To whom do I belong? To God or to the world?"
Many of my daily preoccupations suggest that I belong more to the world than to God.
A little criticism makes me angry, and a little rejection makes me depressed.
A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites me.
It takes very little to raise me up or thrust me down.
Often I am like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves.
All the time and energy I spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from being tipped over and drowning shows that my life is mostly a struggle for survival: not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from the mistaken idea that it is the world that defines me.

~ Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son

Great Lent

I must admit that Great Lent is fast approaching, and I have been caught off guard. Ill health and other circumstances have prevented my being able to regularly attend services on Sundays, so I have, sadly, missed out on the wonderful preparation that is built into the Orthodox liturgy for this season of the year.  However, this week I am attempting to get back on track with the church calendar and allow God to begin plowing the soil of my heart, uprooting areas that are spiritually unhealthy and turning over tired ground. Fr. David Moser wrote a Lenten Meditation several years ago which I found very helpful. Here is an excerpt. The entire piece is posted at monachos.net.

The intrinsic merits of the Fast

Beyond simply the preparation for the feast of the Resurrection, Great Lent offers us many other benefits as well. Throughout the year, the focus of our lives tends to drift. While we are moved in our spiritual life by the love for God, there are many little variations that creep in and distract us, a little here and a little there, until the little variations finally add up to produce a drift from the true and central path to the Kingdom of God. When a spacecraft is sent towards a far off destination, even the smallest variation in its path can result in a huge error and missing the target by the end of the journey, unless that drift is corrected and the craft is brought back on course. This 'drift' in our spiritual life may seem small at the present, but over the whole course of life – and indeed the whole course of eternity - it may well lead us astray if it is not corrected.

Great Lent gives us the opportunity and tools to correct that 'drift' and set our soul again firmly in the centre of the path of salvation. All of the little passions for pleasure that have somehow found their ways into our lives are revealed by the discipline of Great Lent and their hold on us broken. Perhaps there is a new delicacy or food which we have learned to love or some new drink that we crave or a television program that we 'can’t miss' or some other little distraction that pulls at our heart, tugging it away from its pure and true drive toward Christ. During Great Lent, when we set all these things aside, the inordinate hold that such things begin to develop on the soul is broken by our ascetic labour and they can be returned to a place in our lives that is balanced and proper. We are reoriented and recentered on the path of salvation.

Bitter Roots

Our sins may be taken away, but it is likely that the source of our sins is still within us, and so more plant-root-systems of them are continually generated. There may be some defiling “bitter root” (Heb. 12:15) of sin within us that keeps producing rotten fruit. To live in righteousness consistently we have to uproot the unrighteousness buried in our souls. - Abbot Joseph, Uprooting Unrighteousness

This is right where I am today, this year - realizing the bitter roots that have grown deep and strong in my heart over the past 30 years of evangelicalism. It wasn't for lack of trying and pursuing those avenues which I thought would strengthen my faith and deepen my walk with Christ. These were the prescribed routes of evangelicals whom I respected and whose books I read with eagerness, whose lives I imitated with great hopes and expectations. But many evangelicals don't have an understanding or even ponder the Eastern concept of "spiritual struggle". Well, they would say that they do, but the phraseology used is "spiritual warfare" or "becoming more like Christ" or "living the Christian life". There is a great emphasis on knowing and understanding scripture and applying it to your life situations. But every year I seemed to deal with the same issues, the same weaknesses, the same failings.

[caption id="attachment_133" align="alignleft" width="190" caption="Secret Garden-book cover 1911"][/caption]

You know, in Dallas we have a terribly persistent and ugly weed that thrives in heat and tenaciously imbeds itself in the ground - dallisgrass. I'm not sure why the name is so similar or which came first! The most frustrating aspect of this weed (and most all other weeds) is that you can't just pull up what you see.  You have to dig down deep and pull everything up - plant and root - to get rid of it. And, guess what? The dallisgrass root is very deep!  Sometimes you don't get all of it the first time and it returns in full force. Some of oursins are like that. We'd like to have a magic tool to pull them out, but most of the time it requires persistence, an attitude of humility and much prayer.  I suppose the first step is asking God to show me what plants in my garden are weeds and which are healthy plants that will produce fruit.  Sometimes it's difficult to tell. As an evangelical, those weeds were spelled out rather clearly - lack of commitment, judging others, greed, lust, gluttony, anger, gossip, materialism, selfishness.  Living the Christian life consisted of keeping these in check and pursuing the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as if that would sort of counteract the ill effects of the other. In essence, it was sort of a grand behavior modification program. But now as I reflect upon it, it never really got to the source of the problem.  I was constantly monitoring myself and trying to keep things in balance. It was exhausting. I think that many of us turned to super involvement in church activities and ministries as one way to keep things in check, prevent failings in certain areas, and feel a lot better about ourselves. But these efforts oftentimes ended up being done in the flesh and of no value in regard to pulling up our own nagging roots. We weren't digging deep enough to make a difference.

This past year, as I continue in my journey in the Orthodox faith, I have come to realize that I have some weeds, some roots, in my life that have never been dealt with...really...deeply. I have to admit that I don't really know what bitter roots I have hidden in my life over the years. It's scary to ask God to reveal them to me. But I believe that is where he has me right now. He has some serious weeding to do in my life. I had convinced myself through all my Christian involvements and activities that my garden was lush and beautiful. In reality, over time it has become more like the "secret garden" described in Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1911 book by that title.  It has become overgrown and dark.  Light hasn't been able to get to it for years. But the seeds are there. The plants are waiting to grow and spread their leaves and produce beautiful and fragrant flowers. An expert gardener needs to spend intensive time in amongst the brambles and thorns, pulling out dead wood, creating beautiful borders and pathways, and fertilizing the starving vegetation. The birds need to return again and earthworms need to begin making their wonderful tunnels that bring air and nourishment to the roots. The balance needs to be returned. And I know the perfect Gardener!

Unceasing Prayer

Oh, the depths and riches of God’s Word! There can be so much treasure in a word or two: “In the beginning, God…” or “In the beginning was the Word…” In the first line of Psalm 69, we discover another treasure chest of gold.

O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me.

Fr. Patrick Reardon offers some wonderful background and insight into this earnest prayer in his book, Christ in the Psalms.

PSALM 69 (70)

Except for a few very minor variations, Psalm 69 is nearly identical to the final verses of Psalm 39. A plea for help in distress, it is a prayer appropriate to a great many circumstances in life. In fact, it is safe to say that the psalm’s opening line…has been prayed, over the centuries, more than any other line of the Psalter. There is a reason for this. In the sixth century, the great monastic code of the West, the Rule of St. Benedict, prescribed that each of the seven “day hours” (as distinct from Vigils, the midnight service) should begin with this verse, thus guaranteeing that it would be prayed at least seven times each day.

This usage became common in the West, even for nonmonastics. One finds it in the traditional roman Breviary, for example, and Archbishop Cranmer placed that verse at the beginning of the Anglican daily Evensong.

The roots of this usage, however, go back earlier to the Christian East, especially Egypt. A century before the rule of St. Benedict, the popularity of this prayer among Egyptian monks was observed by St. John Cassian, a Romanian monk who traveled extensively around the Mediterranean and finally settled in southern Gaul. The tenth book of Cassian’s great work, The Conferences, which is the second conference of Abba Isaac on prayer, most marvelously describes the efficacy of this psalm verse in all the circumstances of life. Whether in temptation or calm, says Abba Isaac, whether in fear or reassurance, whether in pain or pleasure, joy or sorrow, there are no circumstances in life when it is not supremely proper to pray: “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me.” This prayer, he goes on, should never be absent from our lips.

As a simple doubling and slight expansion of the “Lord, have mercy,” this opening line of Psalm 69 became, then, one of the most important early formulas in the quest for constant prayer. It served as a kind of historical forerunner to the “Jesus Prayer” (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living god, have mercy on me a sinner”).

After stating that this formula - “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me” – had been handed down through the Egyptian monastic tradition from its most ancient fathers, with a view to attaining purity of heart and constant prayer, Abba Isaac continues:

Not without reason has this verse been selected from out of the whole body of Scripture. For it takes up all the emotions that can be applied to human nature and with great correctness and accuracy it adjusts itself to every condition and every attack. It contains an invocation of God in the face of any crisis, the humility of a devout confession, the watchfulness of concern and of constant fear, a consciousness of one’s own frailty, the assurance of being heard, and confidence in a protection that is always present and at hand, for whoever calls unceasingly on his protector is sure that he is always present. It contains a burning love and charity, an awareness of traps, and a fear of enemies.

Then several pages of Abba Isaac (as narrated by Cassian, in what may be counted among the most eloquent and carefully crafted paragraphs in all of Latin patristic literature), are devoted to the sundry and manifold circumstances in which it is proper to pray: “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me.” Prayed from the heart, it places the mind constantly in communion with god.

The quest of the ancient Egyptian tradition, Isaac insists, was to make this formula a permanent invocation:

This verse should be poured out in unceasing prayer so that we may be delivered in adversity and preserved and not puffed up in prosperity. You should, I say, meditate constantly on this verse in your heart. You should not stop repeated it when you are doing any kind of work or performing some service, or are on a journey. Meditate on it while sleeping and eating and attending to the least needs of nature….Let it be the first thing that comes to you when you awake, let it anticipate every other thought as you get up, let it send you to your knees as your arise from your bed, let it bring you from there to every work and activity, and let it accompany you at all times.