Tag Archives: desert fathers

What If…

28 Monday Dec 2020

Posted by in Church, Death, Healing, Life, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

In the beginning of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series (Fellowship of the Ring), we read of the Hobbits living their everyday lives in a way we would consider normal: there is juicy gossip, a party with fireworks, mischievous kids…the things of normal life we all would recognize.  However, we are soon introduced to an enchanted world with Elves and other beings, and the Dark Lord Sauron.  Tolkien opens our eyes to a larger reality: against the background of the normalcy of the Hobbit’s lives, there is a battle underway for all of Middle-earth.

What if this were true for us.  Like Hobbits, we go about our daily lives concerned about our families, our jobs, our personal finances, the stuff we own or desire to own, politics, sports, the weather, etc.  What if, as in Tolkien’s Middle-earth, our world is actually enchanted, good and sinister beings exist, and there is a battle, of which we are largely unaware, underway.

To switch stories, in C.S. Lewis’ book, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, the wicked White Witch introduces Edmund to the addictive treat, Turkish Delight.  With it, she is able to distract Edmund from her true intentions to rule over Narnia as a cold and snowy land and to entice him to join with her.

What if this were true for us.  In the United States and the Western world we are easily distracted: our high standard of living, the internet, social media, the entertainment industry, sports, the never-ending news cycle, toys we have or want, computers, phones, tablets…it is a long list.  What if, as in Narnia,these things are given to us as Turkish Delight, used by an enemy to distract us and to entice us to acquiesce to or outright join the dark forces in the battle.

In the Bible’s New Testament, St Paul says this:
…we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

There is a indeed a battle raging.  However, it is not a battle for a geographical kingdom, such as Middle-earth or Narnia.  Rather, it is a battle for the Kingdom of God that exists within us.  In this battle, we are both the battleground and the prize!  The battle is for our very being and the battleground is raging right now around us and within us.

In Tolkien’s and Lewis’ fictional fights beings suffer wounds or delusion as a result of the battle.  It is true for us in our battle.  But what if each of us is born into our enchanted world with a wound, an illness that darkens our soul and blinds us to our enchanted reality and the battle around us and within us.

Each of us has a part of our being called a Nous.  Nous is an uncommon word to us modern people.  In classical philosophy, nous “is a term for the faculty of the human mind necessary for understanding what is true or real” (Wikipedia).  It is often believed to be the center of “reason.”  However, centuries ago, Orthodox Christianity re-purposed the word to mean “the eye of the soul, which some Church Fathers also call the heart, [it] is the center of man and is where true (spiritual) knowledge is validated” (Orthodoxwiki).  It is much more than “reason,” it is the faculty that allows us access to the immaterial world around us and to know things that are beyond our reason.  Most importantly, our nous allows us to know God.  (“The Limits of Human Reason” podcast)

Each and every one of us was born with and suffers from an illness of our nous.  This part of our being, originally given to us to know God, to “see” the enchanted reality all around us, and to recognize good and evil, has been darkened and blinded; we were born with this condition.  Consequently, we go through life focused on ourselves, we engage in survival of the fittest, just like all of the plants and animals of nature.

But God doesn’t leave us in this wounded state, He reaches out to each person to awaken us to the battle around us and within us.  And how He tries to awaken us is unique to each of us.  To one He speaks directly, to another He sends a messenger, to yet another He speaks through the circumstances of our lives.

Once awakened to the reality of the battle, we may choose to ignore it and try to live in a safe world of our own making, continuing to gather and feast on Turkish Delight.  Or perhaps we will choose to join the  rulers of darkness who are continually at work around us and within us to win us as their prize.  After all, joining the dark powers may bring us power, prosperity, and sensual pleasure, albeit only in this life on Earth; however, the price is the continued darkening of our nous.  

God longs for us to choose Him.  He longs to heal our wounded nous.  God has a hospital and a cure for us.  It is the Church.

You may strongly disagree.  Perhaps you have been to a church and found no help; rather, you have found only judgement because you don’t meet some standard of behavior.  That is like waking up one morning realizing you are very sick.  You go to the hospital only to be told you cannot enter until you are well.  That is not the true Church.

All too often a church focuses only on the “rules” for our spiritual life.  When the goal of a church is only on the “formulation” of man’s character, his ethical propriety, and his becoming a ‘good’ person and a ‘good’ citizen” then it is acting like a courtroom rather than a hospital.  In the Church-courtroom we experience only “empty moralism…a superficiality” rather than finding the love of God and His healing.  Sadly, many have experienced this Church-courtroom and revolted against God; but, who can blame them?  Why would anyone want to worship a God like that.

Sick people don’t need a courtroom.  Sick people don’t need to be told they aren’t acting like healed people.  Sick people need a hospital.  And, sick people need a cure.

The true Church has always been a hospital that exists to offer a cure for our illness, our woundedness, our spiritual blindness—our darkened nous.  The goal of Christianity has never been about making us into “good” people.  The world is full of “good” people who are still dead people.  The goal of Christianity has always been to make dead people alive!  The path to life is the path of the healing for our nous so that we can see God and join Him in His life.

In God’s Church-hospital, all are welcome.  The Church is filled with people who range from those who do not yet know the extent of their sickness and seriousness of their wounds to those who are well along the path to being healed.

What if you actually believed in the reality that an epic battle is raging, that your very being is both the battleground and the prize.  What if you believe that you can choose which side to be on in the battle.  What if you believe there is a hospital offering you both care and cure for your wounds.  And, most importantly, what if you believethis hospital’s Physician loves you more than you can ever imagine.

What if you believed all of these things…would it change your life?

The Cell

12 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by in All, Life

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

In Scetis, a brother went to see Abba Moses to ask for advice. The old man said, “Go and sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.”

Nearly 1700 years ago the small vanguard of what would grow to more than 100,000 people left civilization and moved into the deserts of Egypt and Syria.  They were the first monks (from the Greek, meaning “single” or “alone”); we know them today as the Desert Mothers and Fathers.

When Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion the Roman persecution of Christians ceased.  Being a Christian became easy, even fashionable, so much so that these Christian women and men left for the hard living of the desert.

These early monks lived in caves or small dwellings, known as cells. They lived radically isolated and simple lives practicing a disciplined (ascetic) life that we would consider quite extreme by today’s standards.  Yet, their lives were attractive to many—even then people would travel great distances for a word of wisdom from these monks.

This kind of simple life can be attractive to us, particularly in our frenetic world.  We long for the slower pace.  But I’m not talking about seeking after a simple life for the sake of escaping the pace of the world.  What drove these women and men into the deserts was not their desire to escape society and live simply; rather, it was their desire to directly confront the root cause of all battles…ourselves…and this was their chosen battlefield.

You see, must have been from a the cell that Pogo’s creator finally met the enemy and discovered he was us.  It was from his literal prison cell that Solzhenitsyn came to understand that the line separating good from evil does not run between countries or classes of people or political parties but through the heart of each of us.

But to enter one’s cell without the Christian God is to join the path of a downward spiral to the nothingness of Sarte’s existentialism, the place of ultimate hopelessness.  By contrast, the great hopefulness contained within the writings of these early monks remains with as much veracity today as it had 1700 years ago.

Here is something I have learned: you do not have to become a monk living in the desert or a monastery to experience life in a monastic cell.  Life in a cell can be had in the desert or in the midst of a bustling, modern city.  There is a cell awaiting each of us if we would only seek it.

The path to eternal life is difficult.  The gate of entry is narrow and the path is hard.  I am coming to believe that eventually, in this world or the next, each of us must learn what our cell has to teach us; more correctly, to allow God to shape us into the image of His Son, Jesus, who is leading us into life with the Trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit.  There is no other path.

Perhaps you know of such a person, a monk-in-the-world; they can be recognized as ones who strive to live with God at a different pace and with a different set of priorities.  You might even envy their life.  Be careful of what you wish.

What is a cell?

A cell is more a state of being than a geographical place.  When we decide to respond to Jesus’ invitation to seek our true selves in Him we move into our cell.  But what does this really mean?  It means that we begin to learn to stop hiding from God in fear.  We begin learning to step out from behind the things that we believe define us or we let distract us; things, such as job titles, street addresses, school names on our diplomas, emails, the number of zeros on our paychecks, prior accomplishments, the shape of our bodies, names on the labels on our clothes, task lists, immersion in the lives of favorite celebrities, constant music, TV shows, 401(k)s, cell phones, texting, number of Facebook friends…these things and more feed our false identity and distract us with their allure.

What awaits us in our cell?

In our cell there are several beings present.  We often think of the monk living a solitary life.  This is not so.  God (the persons of the Father, Son, and Spirit) and the Devil and his minions are in our cell with us.

In our cell we discover that the battle takes place within the very being of the ourselves with God encouraging, beckoning, and strengthening and Satan taunting, accusing, and attacking.

In our cell we discover that in each moment we face a choice, “With whom will I side in the battle?”

In our cell we learn that we can choose poorly and there are consequences.

In our cell we ask the most profound questions of life.  Questions such as, Who am I?  What does it mean to be human?  What lies beyond this life?  From where does my worth come?  How do I really measure a successful and productive life?  In what (or whom) do I actually trust?  Where do I find hope for today?  What will tomorrow bring?  How do I know whether this path is the right path?   Am I really loved by God?  How much longer?

In our cell the lies we have believed all of our lives are gradually exposed.

In our cell we revisit the precipitating events for our deepest wounds.

In our cell we confront head-on temptation from the eight deadly thoughts that torment us: gluttony, lust, covetousness, anger, dejection, acedia, vainglory, and pride.

In our cell we experience physical, emotional, and spiritual hardship.

In our cell we learn that no woman or man can survive their cell without the presence of God; we are simply unable to withstand the company of our sinful selves on our own.

What does our cell teach us?

In our cell we learn to distinguish between the voices of God and Satan.

In our cell we learn how to choose God, and when we choose poorly we find God who is always calling to us, helping us, and urging us to turn back toward Him.

In our cell one by one the questions we had begin to dissolve as we draw closer to God Himself.  We ask. He answers, “I AM.”  Mysteriously, that answer begins to satisfy us.

In our cell we gradually begin to learn that Truth is a Person and not a set of rules.

In our cell we come to understand what it really means that by His wounds we are healed.

In our cells we find new memories of our past traumas in which Jesus was indeed present though we knew it not at the time.

In our cells we learn disciplines that help us cooperate with God as He gradually digs out the roots of all temptations and our heart of stone is gradually replaced by God’s heart of flesh.

In our cell we learn that mysteriously through the work of the Holy Spirit our perseverance in the trials changes our character, and we find real hope.

In our cell we learn that we are God’s beloved son or daughter in whom He is well pleased and we begin to hear Him singing over us.

The real beauty of the cell

Each of the lessons from our cell is the Holy Spirit’s way of teaching us a new step of the Divine dance with the Trinity.  As we are able to grow in our confidence in our ability to move with God to the rhythms of His grace we begin cooperate with God and allow Him to work in us, gradually we are stripped of all that we have learned to hide behind and we will once again stand before God, clothed in His righteousness and unafraid.  True self being led gracefully across the dance floor by the Trinity.