Benedicamus Domino!
Last friday, I turned 35, and today, July 13 on the Julian Calendar, is the day on which the woman I took as a patron saint at my Baptism, Amma Sarah of Egypt, is celebrated. She was a desert mother: a woman who went out into the wilderness, fleeing from cities and such, in order to come face-to-face with the parts of herself that were not very pretty. She wanted, as did all these desert monastics, to strip away all the distractions which allowed her to delude herself into thinking that she did not have to make any improvements. We don't know anything about her life prior to her dwelling somewhere near Alexandria in a hermit's cell. We know she stayed there for a very long time, and we know that there are accounts of her meeting with other monks and talking with them.
This week, I've thought a lot about her and about what lessons she has taught me over the years. The biggest lesson is found in one of her sayings which was memorialized in the Patericon, or the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, which is: "If I prayed God that all men should approve of my conduct, I should find myself a penitent at the door of each one, but I shall rather pray that my heart may be pure towards all." This saying has shown me that even if people don't necessarily think that my conduct is something that they can get behind, that's not the most important thing. It's not up to me to please people, because I'll never please everyone. However, what I can do is try not to hold grudges and slowly learn to look at every person I meet as an icon of Christ.
The second lesson that she's taught me is that it is sometimes necessary to simplify one's life. Whether this means cutting back on work to make time for family or getting rid of actual physical stuff, or perhaps even finding a way to overcome an addiction, change is possible and simplifying is a good way to promote that change. So much of the spiritual life for a Christian really has to do with de-cluttering of one's thoughts and one's heart. Peace has no room to dwell in an overly care-worn soul, so I am slowly learning what a long-ago dream actually began to show me: climbing the mountain is difficult, but the going is easier if we can shed, little by little, the things that weigh us down. Why try to carry our homes on our backs when we can make wherever we land into a home? We can't truly set out on a journey if we're tied to our comforts and conveniences. Life is not really about comfort and convenience. Every so often, things come along to shake the worlds we build for ourselves into pieces, and this is why we have to learn to acknowledge all these comforts as temporary and thereby to take greater joy in them because we know that they will not always be here someday.
The third lesson is that you can't run away from who you are. No matter where you go or what you do, you take yourself and your ego along for the ride. You can chip away at the excess and non-productive parts of yourself, and God can even heal those parts. Amputation is sometimes necessary, it is true, but most of the nasty bits in the heart and the soul can be salved with the balm of His mercy if we let him. However, no work at all can be done if we do not face our demons and allow ourselves to know them. Knowledge in this case is power, because once we look our passions and demons in the face, we usually realize how pitiful and weak they really are in the light of Christ, and we find that we do not have to be slaves to them but can allow ourselves to be freed.
So, on this day, I think about my life and what has gone before and what will come next, and I find that much of my life has been spent in frivolity or in gloom. My even-temperedness has often masked these two extremes from the world, but they're there and they're a self-perpetuating cycle. Houses of cards tend to fall over at the slightest puff of wind, after all, and houses built on infirm foundations tend to crumble in the storm. It is time for me to start building my house on reality, on the pillars of charity, mercy, faith and hope, and I have to begin at home. I have to begin with myself. I have to allow myself to accept charity and to be ministered to in mercy. I have to go forward in faith and hope, if not for the future, then for God's continuing support through whatever comes. He is there in joy and in sorrow, after all, and it is my job to learn to be thankful for both things, because in a way, they are both illusions. Life on earth will eventually descend into night, but life in Christ has no evening! I have to learn to truly live that way, to both acknowledge life for what it truly is here on earth but also to look to Christ as my well-spring! There is a way to see the world as it is and yet to hope. There is a way to be in full acknowledgement of the horrors that occur in this world but also to transcend them. However, in order to transcend, we must do as Christ did, and we must descend. We have to meet life where it lives, on its own terms, and then ask God to carry us through it. Amma Sarah met life by getting rid of the daily cares of being a wife and mother. Others meet it by being wives, mothers, husbands, fathers and workers. Either way, the journey is the same and we all need the same map and the same pilgrim's staff to lean on: faith. We can't avoid temptations. We can't avoid troubles and trials. These build our characters. However, we can ask God to carry us through them. We can lean on Him. We don't have to be perfect all at once, but we have to allow ourselves to slowly be perfected, and this entails seeing the flaws which need to be smoothed out by the Master Artist's touch. Only then can the true beauty in the creation be uncovered! So, I shall try to live by the lessons that Amma Sarah has taught me, and I shall go forth into this new year of my life with zeal and with boldness!
Venerable Amma Sarah, pray to God for us!
Deo Gratias!
Friday, July 26, 2013
Thursday, July 4, 2013
The Power of Saying Thank You
Benedicamus Domino!
Today, I watched a movie called The Gratitude Experiment. It's a documentary designed to get viewers thinking in a different way about their lives. The speakers in the movie all talk about having a daily practice of gratitude and about how this has changed their lives in various and sundry positive and life-affirming ways.
The basic premise of this gratitude philosophy is that if we can learn to be grateful as we go through life, can learn to view ourselves in a constantly-receptive state and as therefore grateful for what we receive, then we will have a more peaceful mind, a more healthy body and a more fulfilling life in general. But my big question is: grateful to what? to whom? You have to have a 'you' to say thank you to after all. The movie talks a lot about being grateful to the universe. I suppose this can work if you really do feel that you are a child of that universe, but is the universe sentient? Is it aware? Is it personal? Some philosophers would have you think that it was. I, however, cannot think this way. Being a Christian, I have to believe that the universe as we know it (and even as we don't know it) is God's creation no less than we are. So, being grateful to the universe for the blessings in our lives would seem a little silly to me. The other problem about the universe is that people tend to treat it like a controlable thing. They say that we can control it and can direct it by our wills, and this is the other part of this gratitude philosophy. Be grateful for what you have on a daily basis and soon, your whole life will change. You'll get everything you can envision if you envision it with a grateful heart. Hmmm...
Another troubling part of this movie was that people tended to ascribe the gratitude we should feel to our own selves for creating the lives that we live. I think that it is important not to hate yourself or to despair about yourself, but I am troubled by the idolatry of the self which can occur if this is taken to its most logical conclusion. Basically, I don't really believe in the law of attraction. Think positively and all will be well? I agree that being more positive can give you courage and fortitude in the bad times, but in the end, that courage and fortitude has to break down if we do things on our own all the time.
I agree that gratitude has to happen. We have to, as Christians, be grateful to God for our lives and for what we have in this life. We should learn to be grateful to Him as often as we can, but it has to be organic. It can't be forced. We have to first start by acknowledging that we are, in fact, in His debt. We are the children of His mercy and not of our merit. Only then can we truly realize how great the gifts He has given us really are, and only then, in our knowledge of our own brokenness, can we begin to change our lives and begin to let Him fill us with His grace. The heck of it is that this is a day-to-day, minute-to-minute thing. It has to always be going on, even amid our distractions. It's one thing to be peaceful when we're in a peaceful place, but I think it behooves a Christian, especially one of a contemplative nature, to carry peace about with him or her. We should take the peace we find in prayer or in church or wherever we find it and learn to cultivate it, learn to recall ourselves to that place, and the quickest way to do that I've found is to say "Deo Gratias," or "thanks be to God." Take joy where you find it and let it fill you. Let it lift you and never forget to say "Thank you!" Will it change your life? Will you suddenly find your dream-job or your true love? I can't answer that, but I know that it will change yourself. I think a holy person is one who can rejoice in the Lord always and be grateful to Him for everything in life, whether it seems to be a positive triumph or a negative trial. Of course, I'm a very long way from doing this, from reaching this state, but it's something I'm aiming for with God's help. Gratitude is not about feeling happy. It's about being happy, and the difference between feeling and being is that feeling focuses on the self and is a constant struggle, while being is more about resting, more about letting go of the highs and lows of emotion and about finding a kind of all-pervasive contentment with life.
Of course, gratitude is a part of living the eucharistic life. It is a very essential part. Indeed, the offering that we can make to God which He will transform and transfigure and return to us is ourselves, our broken and bleeding selves, and the only thing that we can render to Him is gratitude, since He is doing for us far more than we are worthy of receiving. We are children of mercy, not of merit, but we can become children of grace, children of love if we let Him change us as He sees fit and not as we with our limited vision would seek to change ourselves. Till next I write, I will say:
Deo Gratias!
Today, I watched a movie called The Gratitude Experiment. It's a documentary designed to get viewers thinking in a different way about their lives. The speakers in the movie all talk about having a daily practice of gratitude and about how this has changed their lives in various and sundry positive and life-affirming ways.
The basic premise of this gratitude philosophy is that if we can learn to be grateful as we go through life, can learn to view ourselves in a constantly-receptive state and as therefore grateful for what we receive, then we will have a more peaceful mind, a more healthy body and a more fulfilling life in general. But my big question is: grateful to what? to whom? You have to have a 'you' to say thank you to after all. The movie talks a lot about being grateful to the universe. I suppose this can work if you really do feel that you are a child of that universe, but is the universe sentient? Is it aware? Is it personal? Some philosophers would have you think that it was. I, however, cannot think this way. Being a Christian, I have to believe that the universe as we know it (and even as we don't know it) is God's creation no less than we are. So, being grateful to the universe for the blessings in our lives would seem a little silly to me. The other problem about the universe is that people tend to treat it like a controlable thing. They say that we can control it and can direct it by our wills, and this is the other part of this gratitude philosophy. Be grateful for what you have on a daily basis and soon, your whole life will change. You'll get everything you can envision if you envision it with a grateful heart. Hmmm...
Another troubling part of this movie was that people tended to ascribe the gratitude we should feel to our own selves for creating the lives that we live. I think that it is important not to hate yourself or to despair about yourself, but I am troubled by the idolatry of the self which can occur if this is taken to its most logical conclusion. Basically, I don't really believe in the law of attraction. Think positively and all will be well? I agree that being more positive can give you courage and fortitude in the bad times, but in the end, that courage and fortitude has to break down if we do things on our own all the time.
I agree that gratitude has to happen. We have to, as Christians, be grateful to God for our lives and for what we have in this life. We should learn to be grateful to Him as often as we can, but it has to be organic. It can't be forced. We have to first start by acknowledging that we are, in fact, in His debt. We are the children of His mercy and not of our merit. Only then can we truly realize how great the gifts He has given us really are, and only then, in our knowledge of our own brokenness, can we begin to change our lives and begin to let Him fill us with His grace. The heck of it is that this is a day-to-day, minute-to-minute thing. It has to always be going on, even amid our distractions. It's one thing to be peaceful when we're in a peaceful place, but I think it behooves a Christian, especially one of a contemplative nature, to carry peace about with him or her. We should take the peace we find in prayer or in church or wherever we find it and learn to cultivate it, learn to recall ourselves to that place, and the quickest way to do that I've found is to say "Deo Gratias," or "thanks be to God." Take joy where you find it and let it fill you. Let it lift you and never forget to say "Thank you!" Will it change your life? Will you suddenly find your dream-job or your true love? I can't answer that, but I know that it will change yourself. I think a holy person is one who can rejoice in the Lord always and be grateful to Him for everything in life, whether it seems to be a positive triumph or a negative trial. Of course, I'm a very long way from doing this, from reaching this state, but it's something I'm aiming for with God's help. Gratitude is not about feeling happy. It's about being happy, and the difference between feeling and being is that feeling focuses on the self and is a constant struggle, while being is more about resting, more about letting go of the highs and lows of emotion and about finding a kind of all-pervasive contentment with life.
Of course, gratitude is a part of living the eucharistic life. It is a very essential part. Indeed, the offering that we can make to God which He will transform and transfigure and return to us is ourselves, our broken and bleeding selves, and the only thing that we can render to Him is gratitude, since He is doing for us far more than we are worthy of receiving. We are children of mercy, not of merit, but we can become children of grace, children of love if we let Him change us as He sees fit and not as we with our limited vision would seek to change ourselves. Till next I write, I will say:
Deo Gratias!
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