I am a Catholic Christian. My comments ought to make that pretty clear. I just thought I’d mention it at the outset in order to avoid confusion. Anyway, when one speaks of asceticism it seems to me to make a great deal of difference whether the audience for the story is Christian or not. The following comments may go some way to illustrating why I thing that.
For Christ the practice of asceticism, at least the kind which he proclaimed for his disciples, had no organic or necessary relationship to the ‘desert’. On the lips of the Master, the talk in this regard concerned three practical activities: prayer, fasting, and alms giving.
Moreover, Christ’s instruction on the nuts & bolts of these practices was clear and shocking. So, when you pray don’t make a public exhibition of it but go to your private room and shut the door. When you fast, don’t walk about the town in sackcloth and ashes, wailing and a-weeping; rather, get dolled up in your best clothes and smile like you just won the lottery. And, (best of all) when you give alms, ‘don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing’.
Each of these is an ascetic practice for the same reason; each practice represents one strand in the strategy aimed at the deconstruction of the culturally determined ‘self’. Prayer when undertaken under this sign is the great Amen by means of which God is recognised as God. It is praise and worship of that which is inexpressibly greater than any ‘power’ I might claim for my ‘self’. Fasting is a denial of the authority of sensual pleasure in a world of disordered desires. Alms-giving undermines the desire for material wealth and the power it is assumed to confer.
What Christ proposes is modelled on His own Incarnation. That is to say the downward dynamic of his birth on earth; his Kenosis, the second person of the Trinity ‘taking the form of a man’, a ‘bond servant’ for the sake of the salvation of all Creation.
The ‘humanity’ that Christ modelled was ‘self-emptying’. The purpose of such self-emptying is not to make one’s self feel better about how crappy the world is. It is not undertaken in order to make the world a ‘better place’. It isn’t even a practice that will make me a ‘better person’.
It is a self-surrendering to, a humility before God. And what is the point of this. None whatsoever when judged against the dominant values of our culture. It will not get you a good job. It will not make you popular. It will not make your house the envy of the neighbourhood.
The point of it is to discern more clearly the path we might walk in following Christ. The point of it is that we make of ourselves what Rene Voillaume called, ‘standing delegates of prayer’.
And it is this way because there can be no compromise between the Dark and the Light. Which everyone who has ever seen the Matrix knows; you take the red pill or the blue pill. Which is why, obviously, you never let you left hand know what your right hand is doing.
Jack, I am glad you are writing this substack. I did follow the link to FFatalism's essays and the comments there also -- good conversation. I think this is making me feel my lack of a church sorely. I have never had a good spiritual home since the shattering of our evangelical upbringing about 10 yrs ago. A community of fellow travelers is enlivening.
I actually felt moved to stand up and speak in Quaker meeting two weeks ago about how birth is painful and bewildering but miraculously brings joy and new life; wondering if the painful transition we are in now might not be a birthing. (Marks words are far more eloquent)
In response to the idea that we may all be "forced" into a desert so to speak by the converging crises of the anthropocene I feel some doubt. Like Mark writes, there is an opportunity for loss to bring transformation but it is not automatic. I'm sure you know that, but I also wonder this: if the unraveling of this mess is more protracted, less dramatic -- if the wealthy nations insulate themselves at the expense of others somehow -- what if it doesn't turn out to be "practical" to the worldly mind or necessitated any time soon. Isn't it still what we want? Aren't we hungry for God and aren't we sick and sad and broken-hearted about the devastation and corruption that we are living under and participating in? I don't pretend to know how world events will unfold, but for my part, even if we could keep the seemingly pleasant "gifts" of the machine and delay the reckoning for payment I still can't be happy. It's not self-loathing. It's not being ill adjusted psychologically as far as I can discern. I think it is the genuine hunger for God, for the Divine, for wholeness. Without this hunger, any sort of practical motive will probably fail eventually. I don't know the theology or philosophy behind what I'm saying, just my practical gut instinct. This motive will always be mistaken for insanity or delusion by atheists I guess.
"Is it easy to love God?"
"It is for those that do it."
(CS Lewis attributes this saying to 'a wise old christian')
Clara- I have been listening to the work of Peter Zeihan, who proposes the collapse of globalism and a return to something more regional and national. This would be, all things being equal, a start in the right direction. Zeihan is a very intelligent man and I take what he is saying seriously. As I say, I really hope I am wrong about where we seem to be headed. So keep dissenting from my gloomy doomy outlook! Dissent is more than welcome in the conversation here.
Yet even so, that would only (possibly) relieve some of the pressure we feel. It may increase it in other ways. But it would not alleviate the basic points of the Arsenios Option. In some ways, the need to found communities of asceticism and contemplation would only increase! So best to start now, before things get rougher in one way or another. Either way, the status quo has ended.
Jack, I don't really disagree with the doom and gloom. I was disagreeing with the thought that harsh circumstances will force people toward an acetic spiritual path for practical reasons. Maybe that isn't what you meant anyway.
Quaker meeting is the silent worship type. I like the silence in the simple old meetinghouse that is very much unchanged since the 1700s. I like the quaker heroes like John Woolman and others. But no, the meeting is not really a spiritual home I'm afraid. Most members are rather wealthy , liberal, highly educated retired people. During covid I became aware just how political the meeting is and how little spiritual life or insight we enjoy. I feel disconnected. A few people went so far as to shun my family for our unvaxxed status... which isn't surprising in this area but I don't think the community will be a real support when support is needed. I'm not optimistic about visiting around to churches in our area for a "better" one either. I need to pray more about this problem.
I only know a little about Dorothy Day, thanks for the tip. I have heard of so many good things to read and learn from on substack that I'll never get to all of it. Today I was re-reading Wendell Berry and it moves me to tears.... The work of local culture. I am just so sad about this place where I live being destroyed. I know the whole world is being destroyed but this place which is my home is the bit I can truly comprehend and grieve for.
I look forward to hearing further developments of the Arsenios Option. I don't think most of us disagree with the points you have made so far, just tinkering with the nuances and details to refine our understanding. You are surely right that we live in a decadent society that is destroying itself and we need to find out how to not participate, how to protest, how to resist, and how to obey Love's law in the midst of it.
Clara- I am definitely guilty of throwing around the term "desert" in various, unspecified ways. What I took Br. F (FFatalism) to mean in this case was a desert where the normal expectations of security and abundance were no longer reliable or some cases even available. I don't think I am stretching his meaning that this would be due to a collapse or partial collapse of our current economic situation.
But you are right not everyone, or maybe hardly anyone at all, would welcome this as an opportunity for asceticism and contemplation. More likely, I think, stoked by politicians and media there could be new types of scapegoating, mob violence and victimization in order to grab a larger slice of the shrunken pie. This might lead to increasing social disorder and/or a totalitarian clampdown. There are, of course, many other ways it could go.
For those who seek to carry the fire this would not be an option, needless to say. We would need to go, maybe quite literally, out into the desert wildernesses and live quite differently than we are accustomed. I don't see this as a bad thing.
Even if there wasn't a social breakdown, and many remained in the cities, etc., the need to live simply and prayerfully might become more immediate.
I can't really think of a downside to preparing for whatever happens in the ways we have been discussing.
Metanoia in Vermont is a lay Benedictine community. It would be interesting to know how they apply the Rule to their circumstances. The Rule of St. Benedict has withstood the test of time. From where I sit, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. We are probably way more influenced by the very situation we seek to get away from than we wouldliketothin. So it is no surprise when intentional communities get chaotic.
One of the things I hope to learn here at the monastery is how to concretely answer this question.
Clara- I am sorry to hear about both the destruction of your local home and for the uncharitable response of the members of your current church. It is as Paul and others have said a kind of apocalypse, an unveiling. What was (barely) hidden is now manifest. This hopefully presents us all an opportunity. It will take courage from us to walk through the door that seems open. -Jack
Clara- Thank you for being here and for your comments. The people who have gathered here have been a great gift to me. If we use it well I believe it can be a blessing to us all. That is my hope.
From some of the comments I have to wonder if the belief here is that I am proposing a hermit's life of radical solitude and silence. This is a vocation of a very small minority of people throughout history. I do hope, though, that I get the opportunity to live a semi-hermetical life for a season or two, but I don't think it is my life's calling.
That said, my experience with the current state of things is that many people probably don't get enough solitude, but rather too much isolation. And not nearly enough community. I think of it in the paradoxical terms of solitude in community; silence in deep, extended conversation. I don't know how it can be done, but maybe small experiments with this can be tried. Who knows?
But you are right about the need for community. Have you found that at all at your Quaker meeting? How do you find the balance of silence and community? Does one enhance the other? Unfortunately much of my experience with Church groups is a kind of show and go mentality. Which is sad, but often the reality.
I am working on a post about silence (plank 2 of the Arsenios Option) and God willing that will come next. But I do think it would be worthwhile to have a discussion about solitude, silence and community. Though, from my experience, that is a tough nut to crack.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember that Dorothy Day was not exactly welcomed and understood by the catholic church at least at first. Maybe this is the way church attendance will be in a time of renewal? Maybe we won't find a great, flourishing group to join with but will have to be the voice of authenticity or of dissent in the midst of a lost church?
I am curious how community works at the monastery. How do different personalities and quirks of individuals manifest and work out? I have some friends who were big time into the idea of communal living and they recently gave up. Marina said to me, "it was like we were running an insane asylum". I supposed with the long history of monastic tradition some of these things have been worked out.
She wasn't, as I recall, and she was an anarchist after all. Which is part of her appeal. Of course, NOW they accept her. She's safely dead. (and I know what you mean by being overwhelmed by reading recommends. There is so much! I try not to add to the burden. I wish I could just find the quote I am looking for, as it is very beautiful. That would be enough!)
Speaking of monastic community, it is a few minutes to teatime here, so I must be off. I will try to respond more fully later. But in short, there are the normal human tensions and personality conflicts. The long Benedictine experience and the Rule of Benedict help immensely and resolve these in ways a lay group would find difficult. How to negotiate these tensions have been worked out, more or less, through nearly 1500 years of tradition. Without that new groups are probably facing nearly impossible odds. I think it is possible to learn, but otherwise a new/old way must be found. It will probably take a lot of failure.
Firstly technology always does two things. It separates us from our earthly source, the Creation and reorders our relationship to 'her', in so doing it also changes us. I guess that in some sense all the talk of post-human / AI etc. is where this change effectively enters our self conscious. This is so very dangerous. We have internalised and owned the technological paradigm and thus have lost touch with that which is not us. Ironically it is the collapse into self, solipsism, narcissism etc.
Second, and to a degree unrelated. The only way back as always is 'coming to our senses', so hard when we have been taught that what we see is not what we see. But it is to return to our source, and our true being. This is where I think the Arsenios option is so very necessary. for the 'We' of which we have both spoken is humanity together, but if there are those amongst us / within humanity who are outside of this madness, then there is hope. I'm reminded of Merton saying somewhere that there are probably only two people in the world who pray, but they hold us in place, so to speak.
The lost vocation is not to make space for God - something which when we prioritise our life over the Life from Above - we readily speak of in so many ways, such as the brief prayer before business, even in the church. No it is that for which we were made, to be the space for God. there is a sense in which in the centre of things, any of us can choose this path of doing nothing but empty of all else to be space for God.
Maggie Ross somewhere tells a story with a contemporary sound. I don't recall it exactly, but in the midst of a terrible drought a village were all rushing around, trying desperately to hold things together when a dishevilled stranger came to them seeking shelter. They had no time for him and simply directed him to a filthy barn where he locked himself away. Shortly thereafter the clouds began to gather and the rain to fall. the villagers rememebred the stranger and saw him wandering off down the road from the village. When asked what it was he had done, he replied he had only made space for the rain, or for God. It matters not.
I wrote a brief course on Silence and The kingdom of God a couple of years ago for Lent. In it I spoke of the great space within each one of us, that we are created to bear God in the world. But that we only enter that space when we come to the end of ourself. Going into the desert is going to the entry place, where it is God or nothing. The Boundary between Life and death, and indeed the distinction and definition of them becomes less clear
Eric- I have been working on a post about silence, hopefully it will be forthcoming. Unsurprisingly it is somewhat difficult to say anything about it. My time out here has brought it to the center of my life--at least for a time. So I feel the need to try and point out its importance and what it seems to be doing in me. I would love to hear your thoughts on silence!
I very much like your distinction between "making space for God" and "being a space for God". It reminds me of the quote, "the Christian of the future will either be a mystic, or not at all." There is a dark hope in this which means, as I see it, letting go of optimism. Others have warned about the end of "comfort Christianity" to which I can only agree. This is a time, dare I say, of a great and unavoidable silence. The apophatic tradition of unsaying and unknowing is all there to be revived and put into "practice". It is, as I see it, one of the great tasks of these difficult times.
In just reading the blurbs on "Silence--A User's Guide" I can confirm, by my time here in silence, what she is saying. I intend to order it in my next round of book purchases. Thank you, Eric, for the recommend. -Jack
"A good portion of the comments acknowledged the goodness of withdrawing, at least for a time, from distractions or even in undertaking a mild form of asceticism. This group saw doing so as, at best, only a temporary measure. One in which we hopefully find rest and renewed purpose. Ultimately, though, if it wasn’t directed back towards the world, broadly conceived, it was a kind of escape or indulgence. In other words, the default mode in our spirituality is that of the active life, which the contemplative should serve. "
I recognize myself in this group, to a degree. The literal flight to the desert is a vocation and I acknowledge this whole-heartedly. Turning back towards the world is inevitable, however. Even if one remains in the desert - if you attain a certain wisdom, people will flock to you. Do you turn them away?
I for one believe that the prayers of monks and nuns keep this world from falling apart. Vocation, vocation, vocation. My vocation is three-fold: husband, father, contemplative.
How do we face our demons in the dark, in solitude, in silence? How do we combat ego?
From "Learn to Be Alone" in New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton"
"We do not go into the desert to escape people, but to learn how to find them; we do not leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good. But this is a secondary end.
The one that includes all others is the love of God."
"However the truest solitude is not outside you, not an absence of men or of sound around you; it is an abyss opening up in the center of your own soul.
And this abyss of interior solitude is a hunger that will never be satisfied with any created thing.
The only way to find solitude is by hunger and thirst and sorrow and poverty and desire, and the man who has found solitude is empty, as if had been emptied by death.
He has advanced beyond all horizons. There are no directions left in which he can travel. This is a country whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. You do not find it by traveling, but by standing still.
Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity."
I could keep going, but at this rate I'd have to type out the whole book. Then I would have a whole team of lawyers on my case!! Who needs that kind of trouble?!
We haven't really addressed the role of community in the contemplative life. It would be good to discuss this in the future more directly as I think it might clarify a lot. We all need community and there is little assurance that you can find it in the world. To the contrary, the world is a kind of organized loneliness for increasing numbers of people. The last thing Contemplation should do is isolate us further. Rather it connects in suffering, in joy, with the actual human person in front us. Contemplation is the antidote to loneliness, or it probably isn’t Contemplation.
As per that quote from DBH, the ascetic does not strive for any benefit that can be measured or weighed, that is profitable or practical - it is the supremely "unpractical" path.
And on one level, I would say that all spiritual paths are a call to the "unpractical" and a rejection of the "survival concerns" that dominate secular society - and inevitably lead to gloom, anxiety, and depression, a loss of the sense of the sacred and the divine.
Perhaps secular society can be characterized by an obsession with practical survival concerns, where the magic, wonder, and beauty of life gets smothered and lost, where the sacred and divine become obscured - and spiritually is a call to a return to a deeper, fuller, richer Life, centered on the sacred.
That is the logic behind the injunction "you must lose your life to find it" - man has a propensity to lose sight of the magic of life, it's beauty, it's sacred divinity, under a welter of "practical" survival concerns - and it is only by surrendering ones "life", (deprioritizing the "practical") that one recovers the vision of the Divine and thus true Life.
Jesus tells us explicitly to not be preoccupied or obsessed with survival concerns, and Taoism is full of that kind of exhortation - and both traditions say that to the average practical man, the mainstream man of civilization, what they are saying sounds crazy. To the Greeks it is foolishness, and when the inferior man (average civilized man), hears of the Tao, he laughs at it.
Benjamin- When someone says asceticism is self-loathing it surprises me. Obviously there are extreme forms, but the vast majority of us see that as harmful. With all this talk on how to reenchant the world the answer, at least the beginning of one seems simple. Asceticism and contemplation. That and go take a walk in nature from time to time. The enchanted world is already there waiting for us to see. -Jack
Thank you very much for bringing the subject of ascetcism into the forefront - the backlash is very characteristic of our times, which has lost its belief in spirit and believes only in material things.
I am however encouraged by the sympathy for ascetcism, solitude, and contemplation - this perhaps points towards a recovery of the spirit and a downgrading of materialistic interests.
I was recently reading a brilliant essay by David Bentley Hart on "Thrift" (which he does not regard as a primary Christian virtue), and found some fascinating remarks on asceticism -
"...The ascetic is never moderate, nor does he or she strive to conserve material resources as such, nor certainly should he or she ever be conscious of cost. The austerities of Simon Stylites or Evagrios Pontikos or John of the Cross were every bit as exorbitant in their way as the decor of Versailles. Asceticism is a giving of the self without reserve: it should be jealous of nothing but purity; it produces nothing profitable; it contributes nothing that can be weighed, measured, or stored; it is a pouring out of one’s entire substance into the sands of the desert or the chill of an isolated cell. Its principal fruits are spiritual progress, bodily inanition, and prayer. The Christian ascetic does not merely deny himself certain pleasures so as to be certain that his goods will not vanish prematurely; he denies himself even the just wages of his labor and even necessary things, in order to place himself in a—quite precisely—“exorbitant” relation to all normal society, all common responsibilities..."
"....There is something in the doctrinal, metaphysical, and moral language of Christianity that seems at times jarringly incompatible with attempts to make the realms of civic and domestic responsibility spheres of spiritual achievement in and of themselves, rather than mere occasions for the exercise of charity, justice, or temperance. We look in vain if we go searching through the works of Christian antiquity and the Middle Ages for warm disquisitions on “family values,” or fiery exhortations to sound and scrupulous stewardship of our possessions, or lustrous portraits of home, hearth, and the hushed sanctity of the dining-room table. The early church’s view of marriage, to be perfectly honest, often verged upon the mildly hostile; 14 and even those church fathers who had indulgent or kind words to say of the domestic sphere still never suggested that it provided any unique opportunities for Christian virtue or that it was comparable to the monastic life as a. path of holiness....."
Benjamin- I have meditated a bit on Matthew 6, particularly 6:24-34. Or Luke 12:23 onward. It seems to me unavoidable that Jesus is asking of us something quite radical. Monasticism is one way to try to do that. But overall it appears Christians, myself included, have strenuously avoided seeing that. Anything but that!!!
As you say elsewhere we call ourselves followers of Christ and yet may not turn away from what you call survival needs, comfort and security along with status and achievement. The ascetic and contemplative path, as far as I can tell, is learning how (and maybe even why) to let all that go. John's comment elsewhere in this comment section expresses it beautifully.
Benjamin- This is a great quote! DBH is quite a thinker. He has clarified many things for me.
We do live in strange times and I often find it difficult to discern trends. But I agree that there does seem to be signs of downgrading material interests, as you put it. My hope is that these type of online discussions can be a way of helping each of us to make a contemplative, ascetic life more of a concrete reality in the world.
Mark K. makes some very interesting observations about the different paths of men and women. I am on the domestic devotional path myself. Since I was a young woman I've had this notion that one could be a housewife with the spiritual strength of a St. Paul. No one need see or understand it but God. I don't claim to have achieved such status but I felt the dignity of the calling.
Clara- I fervently hope that there can be a recovery of the full dignity and spirituality of motherhood. Women, in particular, have been sold a passel of lies. To their detriment and to us all.
Have you ever read--read about-- Dorothy Day? As I recall, her giving birth to her daughter was a large part of her conversion from atheism to faith. There is a beautiful quote about it somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. She went on to cofound the Catholic Worker Movement to work with the poor. An amazing woman.
I found this about her, which may be a good start, if you are interested:
I'm certain some paths are more suited to women or to men, however ascetcism, solitude in nature, and contemplation is a path that since ancient times has been pursued by both men and women.
But certainly regardless of gender, the insight expressed in ascetcism - that one achieves a deeper, fuller, and richer Life by - paradoxically - "surrendering" ones prioritizing of physical survival (comfort, security, pleasure, etc), can and should be expressed in a variety of ways, and to a variety of degrees of intensity, in an individual life.
But thank you for pointing out how this basic insight may find expression for women in ways significantly different than for men - at least sometimes.
Good on you, sister! I am constantly in awe of my wife, and my own mother before her, at the time, energy, and patience put into children. This reminds me of Ellsberg's "Blessed Among Us", a book of saints, official or otherwise.
I will have to get back to this comment at a later date for a proper response. If we are speaking about bourgeois "family values", then this dates to the Reformation and beyond, but there are other, more ancient notions of family that are much healthier. Thank you for the impetus, kind Benjamin!
I’ve just finished reading The Matter with Things, by Iain McGilchrist. The final very lengthy chapter on The Sense of the Sacred, is as one of my fellow readers said ‘devastating’
I couldn’t but hear the words of Gandalf on the bridge of Khazad-Dûm, ‘Fly! You fools!’
I’d had these words on my mind regarding Jesus’ words on Mammon. We are fools if we think we can overcome such Balrogs.
In McGilchrist’s terms- our entire societal discourse is built on the foolish idea that all there are are ‘things’ and we know what we’re doing.
Eric- Yes. It won't be surprising that I agree. I think Iain McGilchrist is clarifying a lot for our times.
We will probably need to get knocked around a bit more before people are more willing to live differently. It is still too comfortable, even for those who are waking up to what people like McGilchrist are saying. But the way out is unclear.
Do you have any thoughts on that? How do you see the way? -Jack
Well I guess the first thing is especially for those of us who confess Christ to own up to our own sense of lostness. Faith draws us forth rather than is a fixed point to which we cling (in Left Hemisphere fashion) It will be in many ways the Way of Paradox, only the Lost are Found. (Luke 15:4)
Second, whatever the Way is it will appear as foolishness, not only I suspect 'to those who are perishing', but given how lost we are, it will also appear to us as some form of madness. This is an inevitable consequence of our false comfort / security. [True Comfort is of course a strengthening, a prodding from death to the blinding light of Day]
It will appear foolish for we are clinging to survival - yet on a sinking ship. A recurring image is that of good waters rising. there's only so far you can go up the hill!
(It may be tangential, but a conversation a woman I know had with a woman from the church in Sudan is that kind of jolting awake. She found herself ased to talk about something that had brought her to tears, in one of those 'let's have a nice conversation about a bible theme. The Sudanese Christian woman recounted how the Muslim Militia had turned up her village, dragged out her brother and shot him in full view of his family . . . she cried so much that when her son died she said, she had no tears left . . . My friend had nothing to say. Our Comfort is a form of euthanasia)
It will be a Way marked by the witness of Silence in a world of words.
I cannot see how we can begin to move in any Way, whilst we are fundamentally glued to screens . . . (yup, I know :-) )
The Way will be small and local, for we are. It will be truly humanly scaled (John 14:6, 19:5)
We need to understand that God is 'gentle and humble for heart' and stop projecting our own lust for power onto our idols.
One final thing, which in a way sums this up, with much remainder; I had lunch with a friend who lectures in Hebrew today. We were pondering Abraham as the blundering, encountering, disciple of God - the one who learns God. Coming to Gen 22 I gave him my take on this. He told me that if you change the vowels of 'On the mount of the LORD it will be provided', it is said, 'You will encounter the LORD on the Mount' (not dissimilar to what I was driving at) We then entered a discussion on how 'hearing was far more ambiguous than reading' Sight being so very powerful, it clothes us with a most unhelpful 'certainty'
(My take on Gen 22 FWIW is that when we come to the end of ourselves (you cannot go higher than the mountain top) you encounter the God who is approaching you from the other direction.).
Ponderings
thank you for the question - a previous answer, which was perhaps more elusive, but far more concise disappears in a technical glitch
Eric- I am currently working on something along very similar lines as what you say here. Starting from where we are--in other words that we are lost is the only true beginning. The machine offers us comfort and it allows us to "criticize" all we want as long as we stay with the small circle alloted us. As you say this is a form of euthanasia. It is also toothless and ineffective.
We shall see what I can come up with. More importantly I hope it can be a small part of a much larger conversation.
Although here in the Southern Hemisphere we’re deep into pollen season so a little constricted :)
Another thought in the same thread which I think is another way of considering kenosis, is that The Way is utterly non-egoic. Fortunately no one will try to thank you for it, so that helps
The ego (LH) wants to close the circle
Receive its reward
Rather we look to a far larger circle
That of provision and gratitude to God
To our perspective it doesn’t seem like a circle it is too vast
Again, apophatic
I’m fairly sure that the Ego (LH) is the Devil when it has lost touch with the RH
Eric- I have said a few times--actually out loud, and perhaps immoderately-- that I believe that McGilchrist is a new and altogether different Aristotle. As Christians we are waiting for a new and altogether different Aquinas. Emphasis, at first, on *new and altogether different*. But really, not so new, but new/old.
Be that as it may, I do think that McGilchrist offers Christians a way to reinvigorate our contemplative tradition(s) and put it/them in a deeper framework. The Matter with Things is so vast that many different and contrasting traditions could likely do the same. Of course, the rest of us don't have to wait for our Aquinas, or St. John of the Cross, etc. We can start now in whatever small ways we are able.
I reread The Book of Privy Counsel again yesterday, for the first time in years. I usually stick to the Cloud of Unknowing. But it's all there. I am also putting my pinky toe into the vast ocean that is St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Meister Eckhart, maybe a little Nicholas of Cusa, St. Julian of Norwich etc. All that, yes, but the actual practice of silence comes first.
I hope for small communities of practice--more or less outside of the machine as they can. Though I wonder if that might be too ambitious for the moment. Something to move towards, perhaps. Soon?
Aug 22, 2022·edited Aug 22, 2022Liked by Jack Leahy
It's also worthwhile remembering that there are forms of ascetcism that are merely world weariness and disgust. As in everything, discernment is key, and religion contains many corrupt strands of spirituality.
That being said, ascetcism has a tremendous social value as well as personal value. This relates to what Fat Caps was saying. The ascetic, the hermit in the mountains, reminds society that the most important things are not the getting of money or the mundane takes of physical survival, but something far higher.
The society that honors it's ascetics is one of much greater spiritual health and one that has retained at least some connection to the right spiritual priorities.
For instance, the weary laborer in the city should derive spiritual sustenance and refreshment from the thought that, say, poet-hermits live in the mountains and deserts celebrating the magnificence of God's nature, and even if he cannot, or lacks the courage to, focus on the most important things in life, he is reminded that the true ends of life are not the mundane tasks of survival, the getting of money, but God.
The ascetic orients society to higher ends than mere money making or surviving.
Benjamin- I am grateful for this exchange. Flat Caps aka Brother F has been very helpful. I will only add that I believe he is saying not only is the ascetic a reminder, but that he will serve as a guide for the cultural/political/economic desert that awaits us. In this, rather than in political movements we can find a hope, a dark hope, but still hope.
In this the Tao Te Ching offers an example. It isn't in *trying* to be a guide that one qualifies oneself, but to the contrary. Doing nothing and all things get done. In being emptied we show the way. Which isn't of our own doing. This, more than attempts at cultural preservation, might get us through. Whatever that means at this point.
Aug 22, 2022·edited Aug 22, 2022Liked by Jack Leahy
Jack - thanks for your responses to me on this thread, which contains some good insights.
I'd like to add a few more points about ascetcism, as well as another DBH quote :) While ascetcism is specifically suited to our crumbling historical moment, properly understood (as a form of love not hate) it is important even during ideal civilizational conditions. (In Tang China, it was common for mandarins to become poet-hermits in the mountains)
Related to this, ascetcism has to be seen as something joyful and life affirming and life expanding, not a merely "defensive" reaction to bad social conditions.
Like you, DBH writes that ascetcism may be just the cure our troubled modern times needs, and describes it like this -
".....Christian asceticism is not, after all, a cruel disfigurement of the will, contaminated by the world-weariness or malice towards creation that one can justly ascribe to many other varieties of religious detachment. It is, rather, the cultivation of the pure heart and pure eye, which allows one to receive the world, and rejoice in it, not as a possession of the will or an occasion for the exercise of power, but as the good gift of God. It is, so to speak, a kind of “Marian” waiting upon the Word of God and its fruitfulness. This is why it has the power to heal us of our modern derangements: because, paradoxical as it may seem to modern temperaments, Christian asceticism is the practice of love, what Maximus the Confessor calls learning to see the logos of each thing within the Logos of God, and it eventuates most properly in the grateful reverence of a Bonaventure or the lyrical ecstasy of a Thomas Traherne....."
Benjamin- The is truly an excellent article. I feel like I am just now catching up (sort of) to where DBH was nearly 20 years ago. Better late than never! Thank you.
Asceticism is a kind of attunement. An attunement to a higher music. As we are incarnate beings, this attunement can, and should, take place on every "level" of our being. To quote St. Isaac the Syrian again, "There can be no knowledge of the mysteries of God on a full stomach." For example, if I overeat at a fast food restaurant, how likely am I to say, "okay, let's go meditate!" This is true of any indulgence of the passions. It detunes us. We trade a short term "gain" in pleasure for a kind of derangement. This is what addictions do. We are a society of addiction. We blind ourselves and then declare there is nothing to see.
Which is to say, despite dangerous and extreme forms of asceticism, it isn't a hatred of life, but the deepening, fullness and abundance of life. -Jack
I also suspect that fighting it on macine terms won't work and also agree that passivity and acquiescence isn't an anwer either. All I have is question after question and an increasing sense of powerlessness along with a foreboding about somehow being duped by placing hope in a return to an ascetic path which historically has already failed quite dramatically as well as a fear that a machine (driven by technology, capital and a will-to-power) is not manageable and consequently offers a potential explanation for what appears to doom advanced societies to the likelihood of extinction.
Is there such a thing as a heroism or sacrifice that is not on machine terms?
How, indeed, can we live to stop feeding this machine?
Thanks for offering a platform for such issues to be discussed.
Sunshine- I think it is a very central question, if not *the* central question. You are likely right that asceticism has failed and likely will fail to stop the machine. One can think of the Vietnamese Zen monks setting themselves on fire. Did that accomplish anything? Was it good?
As a way of non-answer, I think failure may be inevitable, if things go as we fear. But there may be a more fruitful kind of failure than other kinds of failure. But I think more needs to be done, or not-done. One thing I can do, or try to do, is de-machinify, de-functionalize my own life and heart. I can resist fully becoming a cog in the machine. And align and perhaps gather with those trying to do the same. This, regardless of what happens or doesn't, isn't a failure. It is hope, though a dark one.
The conversation, however, needs to continue. Dissent in conversation is welcome here. Thank you for being here and taking part. -Jack
Ah yes. I was on my annual retreat with the Trappists. I had just bought two books from the gift shop and I was walking back to the guest house. A young man, a fellow guest, caught me on my way back and introduced himself. Over a coffee we began to talk about the books we had read. At some point in the conversation I told him about my introduction to, The Seven Storey Mountain. Then he told me this story. He had been raised a Catholic but had lost his faith during his time studying art and drama at university. After university he spent some time in Paris with a group of radical, street performers. He lived on the top floor of a cheap rooming house. Life wasn't going so well. One day after a hard and unrewarding day, performing on the street he returned home. As he stepped into his garret room he felt the habitual dip in the floor as the loose board made its present felt. Every time he came home this happened. Today it annoyed the hell out of him so he marched down the stairs and asked the concierge for a screwdriver that he might make the necessary repair. Having rolled back the carpet he located the squeaky board and unscrewed it so that he might re-position it afresh. On lifting up the piece of floor board he found a book. And that book was The Seven Storey Mountain written in English. He began to read it that night. And so commenced his return to the faith.
Like I said, small miracle. Heads up, Jack. My wife and I leave for a holiday in rural Wales tomorrow. So I guess we will be off the radar for a couple of weeks. God Bless You, Dear One. And keep up the sterling work.
John- Maybe the small miracles can be the deeper ones. I don't know how I would do with witnessing bilocation or levitation. It might fry my brain circuits!
I hope you and your wife enjoy some silence and beauty in Wales. Say a little prayer for our little online gathering here, should you think of it! Thank you for your contribution. -Jack
One can say that if behind technology is the human will to power and if one wants to dilute such a will (and potentially interrupt major counter-productive tendencies in oneself and the world, asceticism offers an extremely worthwhile path. One could also say that it is looking more and more like technology is increasingly capable of consuming human beings through its complexity, increasing autonomy and maybe some type of weird, inherent machine-like desire.
If the extinction of human beings as we know them is what is now potentially at stake (is this simply my catastrophic thinking or a rationalization for my own aggressive instincts?} a significant portion of my being wants to fight back in a quite irrational glee, telling myself I at least I tried to do something to stop such an extinction.
I guess I am not yet convinced that this latter option is simply despair winning out.
Sunshine- How to respond to the totalizing reach of the machine is a troubling one to me. I suspect fighting it on machine terms won't work, even if it is a glorious failure. Passivity and acquiescence isn't an answer either. I wonder how we can live to stop feeding it, because it still needs our inputs to keep going. This is something I think about a lot. -Jack
Perhaps I will start from the last point of the Arsenios Option and work towards understanding the others. I certainly believe that an ascetic program is necessary for any progress in the spiritual life. All the major religions advocate such a program, and many cultures establish forms of monastic organization that encourage retreat, contemplation, and the embrace of poverty. Sometimes people enter a monastery for life, but sometimes this commitment is for a shorter time, as in traditional Thailand.
Both Orthodoxy and Catholicism have a wide variety of such programs. Even within the Evangelical tradition, Dallas Willard developed an ascetic program for Christ followers. However, for Christians (and I don’t think I’m just speaking for myself, although what follows is true for me) this program is undertaken to encounter the God of purity, beauty and being, not simply as a way of subduing the will.
Human beings are infinitely complex. We desire our own way, and we are greedy, selfish, cruel, and rapacious. But we are also loving, generous, artistic, and able to grasp, beyond the material world, what is spiritual and real. The Kingdom of God is both here now and lies in the future. Because of this complexity, anyone who embraces an ascetic program will inevitably experience tensions.
For the Christian tradition deeply influenced by the Greek/Hellenistic tradition, ambition is one of those tensions. The Greeks understood that life was fundamental tragic, yet citizens were expected to strive for glory and everlasting fame. Odysseus, when he meets Achilles in the underworld, reminds Achilles the ‘we Greeks respected you as we do gods, and you have great power among the dead.’ Achilles rejects the kind words. ‘I would rather be a workman, hired by a poor man on a peasant farm, than rule as king of all the dead.’ (Wilson translation). I do not think we can get rid of this tension.
What an ascetic program can do is build some defenses against the corrupting power of money, power, technology, and decadence, and help us focus on what all religions consider important: justice, mercy, service to others, the worship of God. The Sermon on the Mount can be a working plan, not an ideal. We know people of all ages have not turned away like the rich young man Jesus loved. We can follow their model and create a community of like-minded people.
A new a new political program or order will not save us, but we can recognize useful work and honor it. George Eliot’s last words for her heroine Dorothea seem right. “But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” It is such a life I wish to live.
Diana- Maybe experiencing the paradoxes of asceticism and contemplation mean we are starting to find the right way forward. If everything made logical sense is when we should worry!
We are taught largely that the public life, the life of achievement and ambition is the best life. But I am with that the hidden life is the more fruitful. A community of the hidden life! That is worth seeking. Thank you for your comment. There is a lot in it to meditate on. I hope all is well with you. -Jack
Rick- Thank you for being a part of this. All is well here. I am writing this from the Monastery Library. It is a beautiful sunny day. Very quiet at the moment. I hope all is well with you also. -Jack
To dwell on a 'convergence of catastrophes' is to be in alignment with that, to give agreement to it and to be part of the sustaining of that reality. Consciousness is not passive. We co-create reality. To live in a collective dream, believing ourselves to be what we have been taught to be by our ideas of history, culture, etc, is to deny the reality of the divine.
David- We will just have to disagree on this one. I agree up to a limited point. But your case is overstated. Reality is far from limited to my "co-creation" of it. To think it does is to deny the reality of the divine. -Jack
I am a Catholic Christian. My comments ought to make that pretty clear. I just thought I’d mention it at the outset in order to avoid confusion. Anyway, when one speaks of asceticism it seems to me to make a great deal of difference whether the audience for the story is Christian or not. The following comments may go some way to illustrating why I thing that.
For Christ the practice of asceticism, at least the kind which he proclaimed for his disciples, had no organic or necessary relationship to the ‘desert’. On the lips of the Master, the talk in this regard concerned three practical activities: prayer, fasting, and alms giving.
Moreover, Christ’s instruction on the nuts & bolts of these practices was clear and shocking. So, when you pray don’t make a public exhibition of it but go to your private room and shut the door. When you fast, don’t walk about the town in sackcloth and ashes, wailing and a-weeping; rather, get dolled up in your best clothes and smile like you just won the lottery. And, (best of all) when you give alms, ‘don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing’.
Each of these is an ascetic practice for the same reason; each practice represents one strand in the strategy aimed at the deconstruction of the culturally determined ‘self’. Prayer when undertaken under this sign is the great Amen by means of which God is recognised as God. It is praise and worship of that which is inexpressibly greater than any ‘power’ I might claim for my ‘self’. Fasting is a denial of the authority of sensual pleasure in a world of disordered desires. Alms-giving undermines the desire for material wealth and the power it is assumed to confer.
What Christ proposes is modelled on His own Incarnation. That is to say the downward dynamic of his birth on earth; his Kenosis, the second person of the Trinity ‘taking the form of a man’, a ‘bond servant’ for the sake of the salvation of all Creation.
The ‘humanity’ that Christ modelled was ‘self-emptying’. The purpose of such self-emptying is not to make one’s self feel better about how crappy the world is. It is not undertaken in order to make the world a ‘better place’. It isn’t even a practice that will make me a ‘better person’.
It is a self-surrendering to, a humility before God. And what is the point of this. None whatsoever when judged against the dominant values of our culture. It will not get you a good job. It will not make you popular. It will not make your house the envy of the neighbourhood.
The point of it is to discern more clearly the path we might walk in following Christ. The point of it is that we make of ourselves what Rene Voillaume called, ‘standing delegates of prayer’.
And it is this way because there can be no compromise between the Dark and the Light. Which everyone who has ever seen the Matrix knows; you take the red pill or the blue pill. Which is why, obviously, you never let you left hand know what your right hand is doing.
John- I am currently rereading New Seeds of Contemplation. What you say here resonates greatly with Merton. -Jack
This a deep and beautiful comment. To which I have nothing to add, except to say thank you.
Jack, I am glad you are writing this substack. I did follow the link to FFatalism's essays and the comments there also -- good conversation. I think this is making me feel my lack of a church sorely. I have never had a good spiritual home since the shattering of our evangelical upbringing about 10 yrs ago. A community of fellow travelers is enlivening.
Do you subscribe to Metanoia of VT? Sorry to keep bringing it up here but today Mark published an essay about rites of passage that relates so well to your thoughts...https://metanoiavt.substack.com/p/doorways-to-the-sacred-upheaval-rites/comments.
I actually felt moved to stand up and speak in Quaker meeting two weeks ago about how birth is painful and bewildering but miraculously brings joy and new life; wondering if the painful transition we are in now might not be a birthing. (Marks words are far more eloquent)
In response to the idea that we may all be "forced" into a desert so to speak by the converging crises of the anthropocene I feel some doubt. Like Mark writes, there is an opportunity for loss to bring transformation but it is not automatic. I'm sure you know that, but I also wonder this: if the unraveling of this mess is more protracted, less dramatic -- if the wealthy nations insulate themselves at the expense of others somehow -- what if it doesn't turn out to be "practical" to the worldly mind or necessitated any time soon. Isn't it still what we want? Aren't we hungry for God and aren't we sick and sad and broken-hearted about the devastation and corruption that we are living under and participating in? I don't pretend to know how world events will unfold, but for my part, even if we could keep the seemingly pleasant "gifts" of the machine and delay the reckoning for payment I still can't be happy. It's not self-loathing. It's not being ill adjusted psychologically as far as I can discern. I think it is the genuine hunger for God, for the Divine, for wholeness. Without this hunger, any sort of practical motive will probably fail eventually. I don't know the theology or philosophy behind what I'm saying, just my practical gut instinct. This motive will always be mistaken for insanity or delusion by atheists I guess.
"Is it easy to love God?"
"It is for those that do it."
(CS Lewis attributes this saying to 'a wise old christian')
Your internet friend, Clara
Clara- I have been listening to the work of Peter Zeihan, who proposes the collapse of globalism and a return to something more regional and national. This would be, all things being equal, a start in the right direction. Zeihan is a very intelligent man and I take what he is saying seriously. As I say, I really hope I am wrong about where we seem to be headed. So keep dissenting from my gloomy doomy outlook! Dissent is more than welcome in the conversation here.
Yet even so, that would only (possibly) relieve some of the pressure we feel. It may increase it in other ways. But it would not alleviate the basic points of the Arsenios Option. In some ways, the need to found communities of asceticism and contemplation would only increase! So best to start now, before things get rougher in one way or another. Either way, the status quo has ended.
-Jack
Jack, I don't really disagree with the doom and gloom. I was disagreeing with the thought that harsh circumstances will force people toward an acetic spiritual path for practical reasons. Maybe that isn't what you meant anyway.
Quaker meeting is the silent worship type. I like the silence in the simple old meetinghouse that is very much unchanged since the 1700s. I like the quaker heroes like John Woolman and others. But no, the meeting is not really a spiritual home I'm afraid. Most members are rather wealthy , liberal, highly educated retired people. During covid I became aware just how political the meeting is and how little spiritual life or insight we enjoy. I feel disconnected. A few people went so far as to shun my family for our unvaxxed status... which isn't surprising in this area but I don't think the community will be a real support when support is needed. I'm not optimistic about visiting around to churches in our area for a "better" one either. I need to pray more about this problem.
I only know a little about Dorothy Day, thanks for the tip. I have heard of so many good things to read and learn from on substack that I'll never get to all of it. Today I was re-reading Wendell Berry and it moves me to tears.... The work of local culture. I am just so sad about this place where I live being destroyed. I know the whole world is being destroyed but this place which is my home is the bit I can truly comprehend and grieve for.
http://storage.cloversites.com/harvest/documents/Work%20of%20Local%20Culture%20.pdf
I look forward to hearing further developments of the Arsenios Option. I don't think most of us disagree with the points you have made so far, just tinkering with the nuances and details to refine our understanding. You are surely right that we live in a decadent society that is destroying itself and we need to find out how to not participate, how to protest, how to resist, and how to obey Love's law in the midst of it.
Clara- I am definitely guilty of throwing around the term "desert" in various, unspecified ways. What I took Br. F (FFatalism) to mean in this case was a desert where the normal expectations of security and abundance were no longer reliable or some cases even available. I don't think I am stretching his meaning that this would be due to a collapse or partial collapse of our current economic situation.
But you are right not everyone, or maybe hardly anyone at all, would welcome this as an opportunity for asceticism and contemplation. More likely, I think, stoked by politicians and media there could be new types of scapegoating, mob violence and victimization in order to grab a larger slice of the shrunken pie. This might lead to increasing social disorder and/or a totalitarian clampdown. There are, of course, many other ways it could go.
For those who seek to carry the fire this would not be an option, needless to say. We would need to go, maybe quite literally, out into the desert wildernesses and live quite differently than we are accustomed. I don't see this as a bad thing.
Even if there wasn't a social breakdown, and many remained in the cities, etc., the need to live simply and prayerfully might become more immediate.
I can't really think of a downside to preparing for whatever happens in the ways we have been discussing.
-Jack
Metanoia in Vermont is a lay Benedictine community. It would be interesting to know how they apply the Rule to their circumstances. The Rule of St. Benedict has withstood the test of time. From where I sit, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. We are probably way more influenced by the very situation we seek to get away from than we wouldliketothin. So it is no surprise when intentional communities get chaotic.
One of the things I hope to learn here at the monastery is how to concretely answer this question.
Clara- I am sorry to hear about both the destruction of your local home and for the uncharitable response of the members of your current church. It is as Paul and others have said a kind of apocalypse, an unveiling. What was (barely) hidden is now manifest. This hopefully presents us all an opportunity. It will take courage from us to walk through the door that seems open. -Jack
Clara- Thank you for being here and for your comments. The people who have gathered here have been a great gift to me. If we use it well I believe it can be a blessing to us all. That is my hope.
From some of the comments I have to wonder if the belief here is that I am proposing a hermit's life of radical solitude and silence. This is a vocation of a very small minority of people throughout history. I do hope, though, that I get the opportunity to live a semi-hermetical life for a season or two, but I don't think it is my life's calling.
That said, my experience with the current state of things is that many people probably don't get enough solitude, but rather too much isolation. And not nearly enough community. I think of it in the paradoxical terms of solitude in community; silence in deep, extended conversation. I don't know how it can be done, but maybe small experiments with this can be tried. Who knows?
But you are right about the need for community. Have you found that at all at your Quaker meeting? How do you find the balance of silence and community? Does one enhance the other? Unfortunately much of my experience with Church groups is a kind of show and go mentality. Which is sad, but often the reality.
I am working on a post about silence (plank 2 of the Arsenios Option) and God willing that will come next. But I do think it would be worthwhile to have a discussion about solitude, silence and community. Though, from my experience, that is a tough nut to crack.
-Jack
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember that Dorothy Day was not exactly welcomed and understood by the catholic church at least at first. Maybe this is the way church attendance will be in a time of renewal? Maybe we won't find a great, flourishing group to join with but will have to be the voice of authenticity or of dissent in the midst of a lost church?
I am curious how community works at the monastery. How do different personalities and quirks of individuals manifest and work out? I have some friends who were big time into the idea of communal living and they recently gave up. Marina said to me, "it was like we were running an insane asylum". I supposed with the long history of monastic tradition some of these things have been worked out.
She wasn't, as I recall, and she was an anarchist after all. Which is part of her appeal. Of course, NOW they accept her. She's safely dead. (and I know what you mean by being overwhelmed by reading recommends. There is so much! I try not to add to the burden. I wish I could just find the quote I am looking for, as it is very beautiful. That would be enough!)
Speaking of monastic community, it is a few minutes to teatime here, so I must be off. I will try to respond more fully later. But in short, there are the normal human tensions and personality conflicts. The long Benedictine experience and the Rule of Benedict help immensely and resolve these in ways a lay group would find difficult. How to negotiate these tensions have been worked out, more or less, through nearly 1500 years of tradition. Without that new groups are probably facing nearly impossible odds. I think it is possible to learn, but otherwise a new/old way must be found. It will probably take a lot of failure.
-Jack
How was your experience speaking at the Quaker meeting?
embarrassing. but they say you shouldn't speak unless you can't keep silent and I felt that was the case.
Of course, you never know who you might have reached. It's always interesting how that works out.
Hello Jack
I've been pondering this one for some time
Some brief thoughts
Firstly technology always does two things. It separates us from our earthly source, the Creation and reorders our relationship to 'her', in so doing it also changes us. I guess that in some sense all the talk of post-human / AI etc. is where this change effectively enters our self conscious. This is so very dangerous. We have internalised and owned the technological paradigm and thus have lost touch with that which is not us. Ironically it is the collapse into self, solipsism, narcissism etc.
Second, and to a degree unrelated. The only way back as always is 'coming to our senses', so hard when we have been taught that what we see is not what we see. But it is to return to our source, and our true being. This is where I think the Arsenios option is so very necessary. for the 'We' of which we have both spoken is humanity together, but if there are those amongst us / within humanity who are outside of this madness, then there is hope. I'm reminded of Merton saying somewhere that there are probably only two people in the world who pray, but they hold us in place, so to speak.
The lost vocation is not to make space for God - something which when we prioritise our life over the Life from Above - we readily speak of in so many ways, such as the brief prayer before business, even in the church. No it is that for which we were made, to be the space for God. there is a sense in which in the centre of things, any of us can choose this path of doing nothing but empty of all else to be space for God.
Maggie Ross somewhere tells a story with a contemporary sound. I don't recall it exactly, but in the midst of a terrible drought a village were all rushing around, trying desperately to hold things together when a dishevilled stranger came to them seeking shelter. They had no time for him and simply directed him to a filthy barn where he locked himself away. Shortly thereafter the clouds began to gather and the rain to fall. the villagers rememebred the stranger and saw him wandering off down the road from the village. When asked what it was he had done, he replied he had only made space for the rain, or for God. It matters not.
I wrote a brief course on Silence and The kingdom of God a couple of years ago for Lent. In it I spoke of the great space within each one of us, that we are created to bear God in the world. But that we only enter that space when we come to the end of ourself. Going into the desert is going to the entry place, where it is God or nothing. The Boundary between Life and death, and indeed the distinction and definition of them becomes less clear
Eric- I have been working on a post about silence, hopefully it will be forthcoming. Unsurprisingly it is somewhat difficult to say anything about it. My time out here has brought it to the center of my life--at least for a time. So I feel the need to try and point out its importance and what it seems to be doing in me. I would love to hear your thoughts on silence!
I very much like your distinction between "making space for God" and "being a space for God". It reminds me of the quote, "the Christian of the future will either be a mystic, or not at all." There is a dark hope in this which means, as I see it, letting go of optimism. Others have warned about the end of "comfort Christianity" to which I can only agree. This is a time, dare I say, of a great and unavoidable silence. The apophatic tradition of unsaying and unknowing is all there to be revived and put into "practice". It is, as I see it, one of the great tasks of these difficult times.
Thank you for your comment. -Jack
Regarding the lost tradition of Silence - I found Maggie Ross’s “Silence - A users guide” most illuminating
Interestingly it was her writing that put me on to Iain McGilchrists work
In just reading the blurbs on "Silence--A User's Guide" I can confirm, by my time here in silence, what she is saying. I intend to order it in my next round of book purchases. Thank you, Eric, for the recommend. -Jack
"A good portion of the comments acknowledged the goodness of withdrawing, at least for a time, from distractions or even in undertaking a mild form of asceticism. This group saw doing so as, at best, only a temporary measure. One in which we hopefully find rest and renewed purpose. Ultimately, though, if it wasn’t directed back towards the world, broadly conceived, it was a kind of escape or indulgence. In other words, the default mode in our spirituality is that of the active life, which the contemplative should serve. "
I recognize myself in this group, to a degree. The literal flight to the desert is a vocation and I acknowledge this whole-heartedly. Turning back towards the world is inevitable, however. Even if one remains in the desert - if you attain a certain wisdom, people will flock to you. Do you turn them away?
I for one believe that the prayers of monks and nuns keep this world from falling apart. Vocation, vocation, vocation. My vocation is three-fold: husband, father, contemplative.
How do we face our demons in the dark, in solitude, in silence? How do we combat ego?
From "Learn to Be Alone" in New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton"
"We do not go into the desert to escape people, but to learn how to find them; we do not leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good. But this is a secondary end.
The one that includes all others is the love of God."
"However the truest solitude is not outside you, not an absence of men or of sound around you; it is an abyss opening up in the center of your own soul.
And this abyss of interior solitude is a hunger that will never be satisfied with any created thing.
The only way to find solitude is by hunger and thirst and sorrow and poverty and desire, and the man who has found solitude is empty, as if had been emptied by death.
He has advanced beyond all horizons. There are no directions left in which he can travel. This is a country whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. You do not find it by traveling, but by standing still.
Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity."
I could keep going, but at this rate I'd have to type out the whole book. Then I would have a whole team of lawyers on my case!! Who needs that kind of trouble?!
Amen to all of that. I have no qualms whatsoever.
We haven't really addressed the role of community in the contemplative life. It would be good to discuss this in the future more directly as I think it might clarify a lot. We all need community and there is little assurance that you can find it in the world. To the contrary, the world is a kind of organized loneliness for increasing numbers of people. The last thing Contemplation should do is isolate us further. Rather it connects in suffering, in joy, with the actual human person in front us. Contemplation is the antidote to loneliness, or it probably isn’t Contemplation.
Community is indeed essential. How that is lived out varies due to vocation. The atomization of our atomistic culture is inevitable.
As per that quote from DBH, the ascetic does not strive for any benefit that can be measured or weighed, that is profitable or practical - it is the supremely "unpractical" path.
And on one level, I would say that all spiritual paths are a call to the "unpractical" and a rejection of the "survival concerns" that dominate secular society - and inevitably lead to gloom, anxiety, and depression, a loss of the sense of the sacred and the divine.
Perhaps secular society can be characterized by an obsession with practical survival concerns, where the magic, wonder, and beauty of life gets smothered and lost, where the sacred and divine become obscured - and spiritually is a call to a return to a deeper, fuller, richer Life, centered on the sacred.
That is the logic behind the injunction "you must lose your life to find it" - man has a propensity to lose sight of the magic of life, it's beauty, it's sacred divinity, under a welter of "practical" survival concerns - and it is only by surrendering ones "life", (deprioritizing the "practical") that one recovers the vision of the Divine and thus true Life.
Jesus tells us explicitly to not be preoccupied or obsessed with survival concerns, and Taoism is full of that kind of exhortation - and both traditions say that to the average practical man, the mainstream man of civilization, what they are saying sounds crazy. To the Greeks it is foolishness, and when the inferior man (average civilized man), hears of the Tao, he laughs at it.
Benjamin- When someone says asceticism is self-loathing it surprises me. Obviously there are extreme forms, but the vast majority of us see that as harmful. With all this talk on how to reenchant the world the answer, at least the beginning of one seems simple. Asceticism and contemplation. That and go take a walk in nature from time to time. The enchanted world is already there waiting for us to see. -Jack
Thank you very much for bringing the subject of ascetcism into the forefront - the backlash is very characteristic of our times, which has lost its belief in spirit and believes only in material things.
I am however encouraged by the sympathy for ascetcism, solitude, and contemplation - this perhaps points towards a recovery of the spirit and a downgrading of materialistic interests.
I was recently reading a brilliant essay by David Bentley Hart on "Thrift" (which he does not regard as a primary Christian virtue), and found some fascinating remarks on asceticism -
"...The ascetic is never moderate, nor does he or she strive to conserve material resources as such, nor certainly should he or she ever be conscious of cost. The austerities of Simon Stylites or Evagrios Pontikos or John of the Cross were every bit as exorbitant in their way as the decor of Versailles. Asceticism is a giving of the self without reserve: it should be jealous of nothing but purity; it produces nothing profitable; it contributes nothing that can be weighed, measured, or stored; it is a pouring out of one’s entire substance into the sands of the desert or the chill of an isolated cell. Its principal fruits are spiritual progress, bodily inanition, and prayer. The Christian ascetic does not merely deny himself certain pleasures so as to be certain that his goods will not vanish prematurely; he denies himself even the just wages of his labor and even necessary things, in order to place himself in a—quite precisely—“exorbitant” relation to all normal society, all common responsibilities..."
"....There is something in the doctrinal, metaphysical, and moral language of Christianity that seems at times jarringly incompatible with attempts to make the realms of civic and domestic responsibility spheres of spiritual achievement in and of themselves, rather than mere occasions for the exercise of charity, justice, or temperance. We look in vain if we go searching through the works of Christian antiquity and the Middle Ages for warm disquisitions on “family values,” or fiery exhortations to sound and scrupulous stewardship of our possessions, or lustrous portraits of home, hearth, and the hushed sanctity of the dining-room table. The early church’s view of marriage, to be perfectly honest, often verged upon the mildly hostile; 14 and even those church fathers who had indulgent or kind words to say of the domestic sphere still never suggested that it provided any unique opportunities for Christian virtue or that it was comparable to the monastic life as a. path of holiness....."
Benjamin- I have meditated a bit on Matthew 6, particularly 6:24-34. Or Luke 12:23 onward. It seems to me unavoidable that Jesus is asking of us something quite radical. Monasticism is one way to try to do that. But overall it appears Christians, myself included, have strenuously avoided seeing that. Anything but that!!!
As you say elsewhere we call ourselves followers of Christ and yet may not turn away from what you call survival needs, comfort and security along with status and achievement. The ascetic and contemplative path, as far as I can tell, is learning how (and maybe even why) to let all that go. John's comment elsewhere in this comment section expresses it beautifully.
I hope you are well. -Jack
Benjamin- This is a great quote! DBH is quite a thinker. He has clarified many things for me.
We do live in strange times and I often find it difficult to discern trends. But I agree that there does seem to be signs of downgrading material interests, as you put it. My hope is that these type of online discussions can be a way of helping each of us to make a contemplative, ascetic life more of a concrete reality in the world.
-Jack
for your consideration, an essay on birth as a path of holiness:
https://metanoiavt.substack.com/p/doorways-to-the-sacred-upheaval-rites/comments
Mark K. makes some very interesting observations about the different paths of men and women. I am on the domestic devotional path myself. Since I was a young woman I've had this notion that one could be a housewife with the spiritual strength of a St. Paul. No one need see or understand it but God. I don't claim to have achieved such status but I felt the dignity of the calling.
Clara
Clara- I fervently hope that there can be a recovery of the full dignity and spirituality of motherhood. Women, in particular, have been sold a passel of lies. To their detriment and to us all.
Have you ever read--read about-- Dorothy Day? As I recall, her giving birth to her daughter was a large part of her conversion from atheism to faith. There is a beautiful quote about it somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. She went on to cofound the Catholic Worker Movement to work with the poor. An amazing woman.
I found this about her, which may be a good start, if you are interested:
https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/abortion/dorothy-day-s-pro-life-memories.html
-Jack
Thanks, that was a very interesting essay.
I'm certain some paths are more suited to women or to men, however ascetcism, solitude in nature, and contemplation is a path that since ancient times has been pursued by both men and women.
But certainly regardless of gender, the insight expressed in ascetcism - that one achieves a deeper, fuller, and richer Life by - paradoxically - "surrendering" ones prioritizing of physical survival (comfort, security, pleasure, etc), can and should be expressed in a variety of ways, and to a variety of degrees of intensity, in an individual life.
But thank you for pointing out how this basic insight may find expression for women in ways significantly different than for men - at least sometimes.
Good on you, sister! I am constantly in awe of my wife, and my own mother before her, at the time, energy, and patience put into children. This reminds me of Ellsberg's "Blessed Among Us", a book of saints, official or otherwise.
I will have to get back to this comment at a later date for a proper response. If we are speaking about bourgeois "family values", then this dates to the Reformation and beyond, but there are other, more ancient notions of family that are much healthier. Thank you for the impetus, kind Benjamin!
Hi Jack
Just a brief comment on Arsenios.
I’ve just finished reading The Matter with Things, by Iain McGilchrist. The final very lengthy chapter on The Sense of the Sacred, is as one of my fellow readers said ‘devastating’
I couldn’t but hear the words of Gandalf on the bridge of Khazad-Dûm, ‘Fly! You fools!’
I’d had these words on my mind regarding Jesus’ words on Mammon. We are fools if we think we can overcome such Balrogs.
In McGilchrist’s terms- our entire societal discourse is built on the foolish idea that all there are are ‘things’ and we know what we’re doing.
Eric- Yes. It won't be surprising that I agree. I think Iain McGilchrist is clarifying a lot for our times.
We will probably need to get knocked around a bit more before people are more willing to live differently. It is still too comfortable, even for those who are waking up to what people like McGilchrist are saying. But the way out is unclear.
Do you have any thoughts on that? How do you see the way? -Jack
Well I guess the first thing is especially for those of us who confess Christ to own up to our own sense of lostness. Faith draws us forth rather than is a fixed point to which we cling (in Left Hemisphere fashion) It will be in many ways the Way of Paradox, only the Lost are Found. (Luke 15:4)
Second, whatever the Way is it will appear as foolishness, not only I suspect 'to those who are perishing', but given how lost we are, it will also appear to us as some form of madness. This is an inevitable consequence of our false comfort / security. [True Comfort is of course a strengthening, a prodding from death to the blinding light of Day]
It will appear foolish for we are clinging to survival - yet on a sinking ship. A recurring image is that of good waters rising. there's only so far you can go up the hill!
(It may be tangential, but a conversation a woman I know had with a woman from the church in Sudan is that kind of jolting awake. She found herself ased to talk about something that had brought her to tears, in one of those 'let's have a nice conversation about a bible theme. The Sudanese Christian woman recounted how the Muslim Militia had turned up her village, dragged out her brother and shot him in full view of his family . . . she cried so much that when her son died she said, she had no tears left . . . My friend had nothing to say. Our Comfort is a form of euthanasia)
It will be a Way marked by the witness of Silence in a world of words.
I cannot see how we can begin to move in any Way, whilst we are fundamentally glued to screens . . . (yup, I know :-) )
The Way will be small and local, for we are. It will be truly humanly scaled (John 14:6, 19:5)
We need to understand that God is 'gentle and humble for heart' and stop projecting our own lust for power onto our idols.
One final thing, which in a way sums this up, with much remainder; I had lunch with a friend who lectures in Hebrew today. We were pondering Abraham as the blundering, encountering, disciple of God - the one who learns God. Coming to Gen 22 I gave him my take on this. He told me that if you change the vowels of 'On the mount of the LORD it will be provided', it is said, 'You will encounter the LORD on the Mount' (not dissimilar to what I was driving at) We then entered a discussion on how 'hearing was far more ambiguous than reading' Sight being so very powerful, it clothes us with a most unhelpful 'certainty'
(My take on Gen 22 FWIW is that when we come to the end of ourselves (you cannot go higher than the mountain top) you encounter the God who is approaching you from the other direction.).
Ponderings
thank you for the question - a previous answer, which was perhaps more elusive, but far more concise disappears in a technical glitch
I hope you are well
- Eric
Interesting last word autocorrect. . .
Indeed!
Eric- I am currently working on something along very similar lines as what you say here. Starting from where we are--in other words that we are lost is the only true beginning. The machine offers us comfort and it allows us to "criticize" all we want as long as we stay with the small circle alloted us. As you say this is a form of euthanasia. It is also toothless and ineffective.
We shall see what I can come up with. More importantly I hope it can be a small part of a much larger conversation.
I hope you are well. -Jack
Thank you, as far as I am aware I am well
Although here in the Southern Hemisphere we’re deep into pollen season so a little constricted :)
Another thought in the same thread which I think is another way of considering kenosis, is that The Way is utterly non-egoic. Fortunately no one will try to thank you for it, so that helps
The ego (LH) wants to close the circle
Receive its reward
Rather we look to a far larger circle
That of provision and gratitude to God
To our perspective it doesn’t seem like a circle it is too vast
Again, apophatic
I’m fairly sure that the Ego (LH) is the Devil when it has lost touch with the RH
‘The one who dies with the most toys sins’
Eric- I have said a few times--actually out loud, and perhaps immoderately-- that I believe that McGilchrist is a new and altogether different Aristotle. As Christians we are waiting for a new and altogether different Aquinas. Emphasis, at first, on *new and altogether different*. But really, not so new, but new/old.
Be that as it may, I do think that McGilchrist offers Christians a way to reinvigorate our contemplative tradition(s) and put it/them in a deeper framework. The Matter with Things is so vast that many different and contrasting traditions could likely do the same. Of course, the rest of us don't have to wait for our Aquinas, or St. John of the Cross, etc. We can start now in whatever small ways we are able.
I reread The Book of Privy Counsel again yesterday, for the first time in years. I usually stick to the Cloud of Unknowing. But it's all there. I am also putting my pinky toe into the vast ocean that is St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Meister Eckhart, maybe a little Nicholas of Cusa, St. Julian of Norwich etc. All that, yes, but the actual practice of silence comes first.
I hope for small communities of practice--more or less outside of the machine as they can. Though I wonder if that might be too ambitious for the moment. Something to move towards, perhaps. Soon?
-Jack
First steps are but that
Yet every endeavour requires them
I’m travelling now for a few weeks
Have my Eckhart packed
Also slowly working on TMWT for Christians . . .
(BTW meant to suggest this but forgot- The Way requires one to get our heads out of the news cycle :) )
Blessings
Eric
It's also worthwhile remembering that there are forms of ascetcism that are merely world weariness and disgust. As in everything, discernment is key, and religion contains many corrupt strands of spirituality.
That being said, ascetcism has a tremendous social value as well as personal value. This relates to what Fat Caps was saying. The ascetic, the hermit in the mountains, reminds society that the most important things are not the getting of money or the mundane takes of physical survival, but something far higher.
The society that honors it's ascetics is one of much greater spiritual health and one that has retained at least some connection to the right spiritual priorities.
For instance, the weary laborer in the city should derive spiritual sustenance and refreshment from the thought that, say, poet-hermits live in the mountains and deserts celebrating the magnificence of God's nature, and even if he cannot, or lacks the courage to, focus on the most important things in life, he is reminded that the true ends of life are not the mundane tasks of survival, the getting of money, but God.
The ascetic orients society to higher ends than mere money making or surviving.
Benjamin- I am grateful for this exchange. Flat Caps aka Brother F has been very helpful. I will only add that I believe he is saying not only is the ascetic a reminder, but that he will serve as a guide for the cultural/political/economic desert that awaits us. In this, rather than in political movements we can find a hope, a dark hope, but still hope.
In this the Tao Te Ching offers an example. It isn't in *trying* to be a guide that one qualifies oneself, but to the contrary. Doing nothing and all things get done. In being emptied we show the way. Which isn't of our own doing. This, more than attempts at cultural preservation, might get us through. Whatever that means at this point.
-Jack
Jack - thanks for your responses to me on this thread, which contains some good insights.
I'd like to add a few more points about ascetcism, as well as another DBH quote :) While ascetcism is specifically suited to our crumbling historical moment, properly understood (as a form of love not hate) it is important even during ideal civilizational conditions. (In Tang China, it was common for mandarins to become poet-hermits in the mountains)
Related to this, ascetcism has to be seen as something joyful and life affirming and life expanding, not a merely "defensive" reaction to bad social conditions.
Like you, DBH writes that ascetcism may be just the cure our troubled modern times needs, and describes it like this -
".....Christian asceticism is not, after all, a cruel disfigurement of the will, contaminated by the world-weariness or malice towards creation that one can justly ascribe to many other varieties of religious detachment. It is, rather, the cultivation of the pure heart and pure eye, which allows one to receive the world, and rejoice in it, not as a possession of the will or an occasion for the exercise of power, but as the good gift of God. It is, so to speak, a kind of “Marian” waiting upon the Word of God and its fruitfulness. This is why it has the power to heal us of our modern derangements: because, paradoxical as it may seem to modern temperaments, Christian asceticism is the practice of love, what Maximus the Confessor calls learning to see the logos of each thing within the Logos of God, and it eventuates most properly in the grateful reverence of a Bonaventure or the lyrical ecstasy of a Thomas Traherne....."
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/10/christ-and-nothing
Benjamin- The is truly an excellent article. I feel like I am just now catching up (sort of) to where DBH was nearly 20 years ago. Better late than never! Thank you.
Asceticism is a kind of attunement. An attunement to a higher music. As we are incarnate beings, this attunement can, and should, take place on every "level" of our being. To quote St. Isaac the Syrian again, "There can be no knowledge of the mysteries of God on a full stomach." For example, if I overeat at a fast food restaurant, how likely am I to say, "okay, let's go meditate!" This is true of any indulgence of the passions. It detunes us. We trade a short term "gain" in pleasure for a kind of derangement. This is what addictions do. We are a society of addiction. We blind ourselves and then declare there is nothing to see.
Which is to say, despite dangerous and extreme forms of asceticism, it isn't a hatred of life, but the deepening, fullness and abundance of life. -Jack
I also suspect that fighting it on macine terms won't work and also agree that passivity and acquiescence isn't an anwer either. All I have is question after question and an increasing sense of powerlessness along with a foreboding about somehow being duped by placing hope in a return to an ascetic path which historically has already failed quite dramatically as well as a fear that a machine (driven by technology, capital and a will-to-power) is not manageable and consequently offers a potential explanation for what appears to doom advanced societies to the likelihood of extinction.
Is there such a thing as a heroism or sacrifice that is not on machine terms?
How, indeed, can we live to stop feeding this machine?
Thanks for offering a platform for such issues to be discussed.
Sunshine- I think it is a very central question, if not *the* central question. You are likely right that asceticism has failed and likely will fail to stop the machine. One can think of the Vietnamese Zen monks setting themselves on fire. Did that accomplish anything? Was it good?
As a way of non-answer, I think failure may be inevitable, if things go as we fear. But there may be a more fruitful kind of failure than other kinds of failure. But I think more needs to be done, or not-done. One thing I can do, or try to do, is de-machinify, de-functionalize my own life and heart. I can resist fully becoming a cog in the machine. And align and perhaps gather with those trying to do the same. This, regardless of what happens or doesn't, isn't a failure. It is hope, though a dark one.
The conversation, however, needs to continue. Dissent in conversation is welcome here. Thank you for being here and taking part. -Jack
Ah yes. I was on my annual retreat with the Trappists. I had just bought two books from the gift shop and I was walking back to the guest house. A young man, a fellow guest, caught me on my way back and introduced himself. Over a coffee we began to talk about the books we had read. At some point in the conversation I told him about my introduction to, The Seven Storey Mountain. Then he told me this story. He had been raised a Catholic but had lost his faith during his time studying art and drama at university. After university he spent some time in Paris with a group of radical, street performers. He lived on the top floor of a cheap rooming house. Life wasn't going so well. One day after a hard and unrewarding day, performing on the street he returned home. As he stepped into his garret room he felt the habitual dip in the floor as the loose board made its present felt. Every time he came home this happened. Today it annoyed the hell out of him so he marched down the stairs and asked the concierge for a screwdriver that he might make the necessary repair. Having rolled back the carpet he located the squeaky board and unscrewed it so that he might re-position it afresh. On lifting up the piece of floor board he found a book. And that book was The Seven Storey Mountain written in English. He began to read it that night. And so commenced his return to the faith.
Like I said, small miracle. Heads up, Jack. My wife and I leave for a holiday in rural Wales tomorrow. So I guess we will be off the radar for a couple of weeks. God Bless You, Dear One. And keep up the sterling work.
John- Maybe the small miracles can be the deeper ones. I don't know how I would do with witnessing bilocation or levitation. It might fry my brain circuits!
I hope you and your wife enjoy some silence and beauty in Wales. Say a little prayer for our little online gathering here, should you think of it! Thank you for your contribution. -Jack
Thanks Jack. I think I would agree with what you say here. :)
One can say that if behind technology is the human will to power and if one wants to dilute such a will (and potentially interrupt major counter-productive tendencies in oneself and the world, asceticism offers an extremely worthwhile path. One could also say that it is looking more and more like technology is increasingly capable of consuming human beings through its complexity, increasing autonomy and maybe some type of weird, inherent machine-like desire.
If the extinction of human beings as we know them is what is now potentially at stake (is this simply my catastrophic thinking or a rationalization for my own aggressive instincts?} a significant portion of my being wants to fight back in a quite irrational glee, telling myself I at least I tried to do something to stop such an extinction.
I guess I am not yet convinced that this latter option is simply despair winning out.
Sunshine- How to respond to the totalizing reach of the machine is a troubling one to me. I suspect fighting it on machine terms won't work, even if it is a glorious failure. Passivity and acquiescence isn't an answer either. I wonder how we can live to stop feeding it, because it still needs our inputs to keep going. This is something I think about a lot. -Jack
Perhaps I will start from the last point of the Arsenios Option and work towards understanding the others. I certainly believe that an ascetic program is necessary for any progress in the spiritual life. All the major religions advocate such a program, and many cultures establish forms of monastic organization that encourage retreat, contemplation, and the embrace of poverty. Sometimes people enter a monastery for life, but sometimes this commitment is for a shorter time, as in traditional Thailand.
Both Orthodoxy and Catholicism have a wide variety of such programs. Even within the Evangelical tradition, Dallas Willard developed an ascetic program for Christ followers. However, for Christians (and I don’t think I’m just speaking for myself, although what follows is true for me) this program is undertaken to encounter the God of purity, beauty and being, not simply as a way of subduing the will.
Human beings are infinitely complex. We desire our own way, and we are greedy, selfish, cruel, and rapacious. But we are also loving, generous, artistic, and able to grasp, beyond the material world, what is spiritual and real. The Kingdom of God is both here now and lies in the future. Because of this complexity, anyone who embraces an ascetic program will inevitably experience tensions.
For the Christian tradition deeply influenced by the Greek/Hellenistic tradition, ambition is one of those tensions. The Greeks understood that life was fundamental tragic, yet citizens were expected to strive for glory and everlasting fame. Odysseus, when he meets Achilles in the underworld, reminds Achilles the ‘we Greeks respected you as we do gods, and you have great power among the dead.’ Achilles rejects the kind words. ‘I would rather be a workman, hired by a poor man on a peasant farm, than rule as king of all the dead.’ (Wilson translation). I do not think we can get rid of this tension.
What an ascetic program can do is build some defenses against the corrupting power of money, power, technology, and decadence, and help us focus on what all religions consider important: justice, mercy, service to others, the worship of God. The Sermon on the Mount can be a working plan, not an ideal. We know people of all ages have not turned away like the rich young man Jesus loved. We can follow their model and create a community of like-minded people.
A new a new political program or order will not save us, but we can recognize useful work and honor it. George Eliot’s last words for her heroine Dorothea seem right. “But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” It is such a life I wish to live.
Thank you, Jack, for your wonderful essay. Filia
Diana- Maybe experiencing the paradoxes of asceticism and contemplation mean we are starting to find the right way forward. If everything made logical sense is when we should worry!
We are taught largely that the public life, the life of achievement and ambition is the best life. But I am with that the hidden life is the more fruitful. A community of the hidden life! That is worth seeking. Thank you for your comment. There is a lot in it to meditate on. I hope all is well with you. -Jack
Thank you Jack, this is a really fruitful discussion. I hope all is well at the Monastery.
Rick- Thank you for being a part of this. All is well here. I am writing this from the Monastery Library. It is a beautiful sunny day. Very quiet at the moment. I hope all is well with you also. -Jack
To dwell on a 'convergence of catastrophes' is to be in alignment with that, to give agreement to it and to be part of the sustaining of that reality. Consciousness is not passive. We co-create reality. To live in a collective dream, believing ourselves to be what we have been taught to be by our ideas of history, culture, etc, is to deny the reality of the divine.
David- We will just have to disagree on this one. I agree up to a limited point. But your case is overstated. Reality is far from limited to my "co-creation" of it. To think it does is to deny the reality of the divine. -Jack