desert fathers

When Insults Annoy You

Amma Dionysia gave alms to a beggar, but less than he wanted. The beggar began to speak harshly to her, and Dionysia took offense, wanting to strike back. Abba Zosimas corrected her, saying, “You are striking against yourself. You are chasing every virtue from your soul. Can you endure what Christ endured? My lady, I know that you have given away your possessions as though they had no value. But until you become meek, you are like a metal smith pounding a bar of iron and failing to produce a useful object. You will know you have become meek when insults no longer annoy you.” – Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Fiction vs. Non-Fiction

I know people deeply immersed in one or the other, and just a few immersed in both. The thing is, non-fiction gives us a direct dosing of ideas, seemingly without setting or apparatus. Fiction often doesn’t pay off what it promises, in terms of meaning. And our reading, really, is either a search for entertainment or a search for meaning.

Non-fiction, though, really does come with a substantial apparatus. In place of the normal aspects of fiction – plot, characterization, setting – we get the author’s presuppositions (e.g. about what the important questions are), his unaccountable absolutes (the unchallenged assertions inherent in his ideas), his biases, and the emotional impact of his own convictions, if any. In other words, there’s more weeding and processing to do than some readers acknowledge.

I’m a fan of both forms, but I confess I prefer fiction when I can get it. The thing that unites both forms is theme. If we refer to the theme of “the union of all men”, someone can suggest a non-fiction work, and I can suggest a work of fiction. But frankly, I find there are more subtle themes available in fiction that are as yet unexplored in non-fiction, and that would force me to look there, in any case.

One is not more important or significant than the other, but I think it’s easy for non-fiction lovers to deprive themselves of the real value of fiction by, if not careful, seeing everything as a prosaic proposition. There’s a kind of communication of through the whole soul available in fiction that seems only rarely accessible in its counterpart.

For me, sci-fi and fantasy are the unparalleled repositories of soul in modern art. …

To be Dead to the World

A desert father was teaching his disciple about humility. He told the young man to spend the day in the cemetery and to yell insults at the graves. The young monk then spent the day hurling rebukes and insults at the dead. The next day, the abba told him to spend the day praising the dead, and the monk proceeded to do so. At the end of the day the abba asked the monk how the dead reacted to being insulted and how they responded to praise. The monk replied that they evidenced no reaction at all to either. The abba then told the young monk that when he can show the same reaction as the dead to praises and insults, he will have learned humility. [source unknown]

Who Killed Christ?

CrucifixionA question was asked “In the Brother’s Karamazov, Fr. Zosima mentions that a man must realize he is responsible for all the sins of mankind. How is this possible?”

Answer: Every time I have sinned, I am again guilty of the entire fall of all creation into Death. Each time. When I sin, I bring death to the world again as the first time. Every child that starves. Every forest that dies. Everyone who anywhere suffers illness, want, or in any way. All suffering and pain is my fault. It is all my fault. My own most grievous fault. It is like the old catechetical question: “Who killed Christ?” There is only one answer, and every Orthodox person must learn it: I did.

So who brought death into the world, and every result of death, every frustration of man, every harm, and all sins, which result of death? I did.

Mine is the first sin. Which is why every liturgy, when with the psalter we pray “Deliver me from bloodguiltiness O God,” I know truly that I am speaking of my great crime. I am the original mass murderer. The original genocidal maniac. The willing destroyer of babes. It is a difficult answer to hear, and not easily digested by everyone. It is often thought such an answer is overstated, but it is confirmed again and again by our fathers in the desert. When they teach us, “consider yourself inferior to all men”, they aren’t being coy. I think they know that when one of us gives account for all the crimes of the world, he no longer thinks himself greater than his Master, but knowing his crimes, can make his life a metanoia before God.

Runway Lights in the Desert

“Angels are the light of monks, and monks are the light of men.”

Comment: Orthodoxy is not actually a belief system; it’s more closely understood as an asceticism. The essence of the Faith, in every aspect, is ascetic. Even our theology is apophatic – or negative theology – a theology of prayerfully removing from our minds all false images. In fact, standing in prayer is our most basic ascetic activity and study of theology, and the Church’s prayers are monastic prayers. Our fasts, likewise, are the monastic fasts. So it is with the many pious labours of the faithful. Our Bishop, who stands with us as our champion, like David calmly facing the giant Goliath, is usually a monastic. Unlike him, we may be married, but even marriage, lived out in an Orthodox manner, is an ascetic feat. With the monks, we are all engaged in a continual war with the passions, remembering that, in a war, it is possible to be defeated. The Orthodox are at war with Death, the ultimate affliction, the Enemy, the ultimate foe of creation, and the World, the ultimate delusional system. The monks are the warrior caste among us, training us in the strategies and tactics of battle. The monks go before us in theosis, as runway lights in the desert for all we “lay-ascetics’. We refer to the monks as earthly angels, the earthly hosts, surrounding us at all times with prayers, amid more angels than stars. There are banners in the invisible world, trumpets in this seeming silence, incense thick in the air, and the din of heroes. – DD

Intentional Inferiority Complex

“The way of humility is this: self-control, prayer, and thinking yourself inferior to all creatures.” – Abba Tithoes

Being a Goat

“I am one of the goats, but as for the sheep, God alone knows who they are.”  — Sayings of the Desert Fathers

St. Anthony on Deviance

A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, “You are mad, you are not like us.” – St. Anthony

St. Anthony burying St. Paul of ThebesThis is, in fact, the theme of every zombie-genre film from 28-Days to I am Legend: a race of people who are sick and who turn on any one who is not sick.

One could unpack many interesting things from Abba Anthony’s comment: thoughts on psychology, the union of soul and body, medicine and Holy Orthodoxy, prophesy and the progress of Death. But there is something there that, at the moment, I find particularly interesting – namely that his comment is also a commentary on deviance and the homogenization of culture.

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