Poustinia of August 21st, 2019
I feel as though I’ve been missing out by not coming to Saint Herman’s all these months [the dedicated poustinia of MH’s farm]. It sits at the top of the hill of which, naturally, the farm is at the base. Once you’re up there, however, the view of the farm itself is cut-off as the cabin sits far enough backwards at the top to allow for this, creating a lovely 360 degree panorama unmolested by buildings or towers… and this of course includes the whole lower half of the hill which slopes away from the farm, of which is dotted with large trees that provide good shade for reading and prayer.
So far it’s been a splendid day; I awoke around quarter past 9 and was greeted by the cooing of two sandhill cranes that were stalking around the base of the hill. A half-second would pass between their calls and when these would echo off the hills to the left and right. I found it to be a very enchanting effect.
I had my breakfast of a slice of bread and an apple and walked down to one of the large, shaded ash trees for rosary and quiet. Eventually, I made my way to the bottom of the hill and explored the woods for a good two or three hours, the only noteworthy thing I discovered being a small brook where I rested for a time, perching on a large, flat stone. When I returned at 1, I had lunch and napped until 4, you know, like an elderly person. It is now 5 and I can finally sit down and record some of my thoughts.
The most obvious aspect of today is that I see the world in a strange and wonderful new way. Plants and animals and light and water and leaf and breeze and scent all have a fresh, sweet new effect on me. I feel as though I were six years old again when the intrinsic purity of the earth had met my soul in full, unmitigated splendor. It’s a flavor of life I’ve been searching for for years… and now here it is again, beautiful like a melody long-forgotten.
No longer does the sight of beauty feel as a gale that dispels the mist of my peace. Now it only enhances and distinguishes it. For years it had the opposite effect: beauty exposed my incapacity to contain it, and left me wanting in that emptiness. Today it fills me. Heals me. I half expect that calm to vanish at any moment but it doesn’t. There is a new, silver pool of peace in my spirit and I pray it is here to stay.
. . .
This is going to be one of those thoughts where the idea has sprung days before along with all the central points, and as such my recounting it here might waver in thematic consistency. But as usual, I do my best and hope the thought takes shape again once prompted forth. I wanted to talk about a lesson I have learned here. Maybe a better way to put it would be that it is an attitude I held that was exposed, and would honestly venture to say that it is not all that uncommon among other Christians.
The attitude is a sort of pretentiousness we have in respects to our relationship with God. You feel really comfortable around him, you know, because you two have something special going on, and so do you pull all these sideways glances and subtle winks (so to speak) amidst your daily interactions in life. You project those qualities and mannerisms you would consider the fruit of a healthy human relationship onto the one you have with God, and only because you do—in fact—have a wonderful relationship with him.
When you pray, you are sure to pitch your voice and inflect in such a way that signals the presence of those emotions and sentiments you have associated with your own idea of sanctity. When you talk about Him, you are sure your whole body—face, hands, voice—communicate outwardly that you are one who is seeped in the depth and the knowledge of Mystery. You know God. You have a relationship with Him. You can speak so easily of life’s greatest questions because you have been one so blessed to have been baptized into a realm of secrets. There is much that you already know.
This is starting to sound like arrogance, and that is not what I think this is. Nor do I think it is because of pride or complacency. I think they are the symptoms of naivete. The entire Christian endeavor might be summed up as the very process by which we learn to relate to God, but we do not start out with a built-in template of what that might resemble. So do we invent or emulate what we think that rapport should look like as we move along. Forgivable enough, save that that visible rapport tends to be secretly (or in some cases overtly) anthropocentric.
The focus is on the glory, credit, satisfaction and admiration that comes with perfection. Virtue becomes an asset and vice—ironically—becomes a vice. The mere fact of your faults is a blemish on your interior image, not an inextricable element of your humanity. You are oblivious to how weak and small you really are before God, and much of these dispositions result from that. Of course, you know you are weak and small, in your head. You just haven’t given Him permission to show you what that really means.
…and what that means is drowning. Clawing, scraping, sucking, gasping for air in a lightless sea of ineptitude. It means wandering in an imponderably black night, seeking respite for the immortal ache baying at the very bottom of your soul. It means an intensity of doubt, confusion and longing you never dreamed were possible. What it means, my friend, is to bend low and drink deep of the starless depths of death.
Only then will you know you are weak, when after countless nights of tears and an endless span of suffering have imploded every notion of sufficiency or competency or importance. After that inferno of helplessness has swept through every corner of your being and left your sense of power in ashes. After every limb of your capability has been wrenched away and impaled to a cross.
Once this happens, you’ll at least know where to begin regarding prayer: on the ground, splayed-out, vulnerable. You are a beggar, and anything you receive from that point on was because you asked for it while your spirit wept. There is nothing you have done, nothing you can do. Everything you know of comes from God. Your prayers, your insights, your virtues… it all comes from Him. You knew that before, but now you believe it.
This is what the narrow way actually looks like. It is narrow in that you can easily leave it if you reject its inherent painfulness. On this path, you have one power: to choose. Here you can choose to submit, or you can choose to flee from submission. To spend yourself in treading it, or to cling to your illusion of wealth… and in my experience, the only true wealth I found was in my habitual choice to accept being taught how to be poor.
Excerpts from my Poustinia Days 