The Wonderful Tar Baby

Something I was reading this morning (Letters of Elder Macarius) caused me to think back over my life. This usually results in a little saltier oatmeal than I care for, but no sooner had a few tears started to leak out of my stony heart when the Uncle Remus story of the Wonderful Tar Baby came to mind.
"Huh?", I thought to myself. "I haven't thought about this story since I was a kid."
But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Try as I might over the years, my attempts to free myself of various passions, using passion itself as my "method" has resulted in a sticky mess with "Brer Fox" taunting me. It gave the story a whole lot more relevance to my life and also reminded me of another story.

I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, "What can get one through such snares?" Then I heard a voice saying to me, "Humility."

St. Anthony the Great

Constitutional Silliness

The following quote from the CNN website cracked me up:

"Saddam's attorneys have said that he should not be tried for anything because he is immune to all charges under the Iraqi constitution as it was written under his rule."

But then I thought, "This sounds a lot like those little metal signs hanging up in most every parking lot in America that read something like this."

"This establishment is not responsible for any damage to your vehicle while you're parked here spending money in our store."

WalMart et. al. seems to get away with it...I sure hope Saddam doesn't.

Get Behind me Satan!

We must act ruthlessly against this tendency we have to judge everything from the viewpoint of our little self. The first step on the way into the Kingdom is defined by Christ as 'deny thyself'. We could put it in harsher terms: when we see that once again, instead of seeing or hearing someone, we are wrapped up in ourselves, we must round on this obstrusive 'I' and cry out in anger: 'Get thee behind me, Satan (Satan in Hebrew means adversary), you think not of the things of God! Out of my way, I'm tired of seeing your face!' The publican knew he was evil in the eyes of God and in the judgment of men, he instinctively knew how to look away from himself, because there was little enjoyment to be gained from contemplating his ugliness. The pharisee could look complacently at himself because, at least in his own mind, righteousness and his person coincided exactly and he saw the law of God mirrored perfectly in his life. He could delight quite sincerely in this vision, marvel in the perfect achievement of the divine wisdom he thought he was. My pious reader, do not be too quick to laugh at him or to express your righteous indignation! Ask yourself whether you are so different from him: you the good churchman, you the law-abiding citizen, you the dutiful member of your conventional society!

-Met. Anthony Bloom +2003, taken from Meditations on a Theme

I can't add a damn thing - for once!

Heart Food

I was reading from Jesus' so-called "Sermon on the Mount" this morning and was contemplating:

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
-Matthew 6:19-21

Misplaced affections are our common and constant struggle. But other than disaster striking (divorce, health problems, etc.) I've found it really difficult to keep my heart consistently interested and attached to the "right" things. Elder Paisios suggests we participate in other folk's disasters:

Someone asked father Paisios:
-Elder why do we continuously forget what we read?
-It is because our heart does not participate. The same thing applies to our prayers. Before praying to God, we should prepare ourselves; we ought to be able to make the pain of our fellow men ours, and put ourselves in their position. This way, our heart softens and God listens to the prayer springing out of it. Our heart must participate in everything we do, in all our actions; then, we can never forget them.
-Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain, pg. 111

Apparently, suffering is "heart-healthy." A timid heart that avoids suffering is doomed to scrounge around for life by attaching itself to all kinds of trivial stuff. But a courageous heart that embraces the suffering it encounters with faith in God, is somehow mystically nourished. I don't know about you, but I find this somewhat counterintuitive and more than a little difficult to put into practice.

The Fragrance of God

What exactly is nostalgia, especially as it relates to a particular place? Why do you get that feeling in the pit of your stomach that is both pleasant and unpleasant simultaneously when you "go back?" I am continually fascinated by the phenomenon of going back to a place where something significant happened in my life and experiencing this feeling of nostalgia. I don't believe it is just emotional floatsam which is irrelevant. Somehow I believe it is more substantial than that - almost like a sweet wound of the soul that marks something important. Even though our bodies play a role in detecting the "place" through our senses - once detected our souls bend down and take a deep drink of the place and our minds are brought instantly "back there." We recall the lesson learned, the love found (or lost), the hope engendered (or dashed) in a profound way and it warms our hearts somehow, even when unpleasant. Maybe I'm fascinated by the experience mainly because I'm disconnected from my heart so much of the time. Maybe this "nostalgia" is a long, distant memory of what Adam experienced in the Garden as he walked with God in the cool of the evening. That is, maybe nostalgia is the fragrance of God that lingers in all the places we encounter Him along the way.

Long Weekends and Short-Sightedness

I was continuing to read The Ascetic of Love this morning and was contemplating my seemingly infinite capacity for anxious thoughts. Weekends, especially long weekends, bring this up for me. Weekends, with their hyperventilated promises of peace, productivity, and pleasure never deliver the goods. Why is that? Why do I always emerge from the other side of a weekend feeling disappointed, a little beat up and almost happy to go back to the routine that temporarily keeps my anxious thoughts in check? Mother Gavrilia wasn’t exactly thinking of this particular issue when she wrote the following – but somewhere in the depths of my soul I realized it applied:

We are in a hurry because life is short and because we believe we should have everything here. If we believed that going over there, to Eternity, is almost like going from here to the U.S.A., then we would not be in such a hurry. For we would know that we could do the rest… over there!
-from "The Ascetic of Love", pg. 203

God forgive me, because I am still a materialist. I don’t really believe in the continuity between my earthly life and the life I will lead after my body decomposes and is resurrected. I’m still trying to accomplish everything now – as if there is no Eternity. The older I’ve gotten, the more onerous this has become because I realize I’m running out of time (in this life). Death, wields time like a cattle-prod to herd all us materialists into a noisy crowd of frenzied souls. Time, which is given to us by a good God who wants us to come to our senses, becomes the enemy of materialists.

Mother Gavrilia stresses over and over again the need to trust in "God’s will" rather than "my will." Until that becomes the constant state of my heart - my anxious thoughts, which in reality are expressions of fear of death – will keep me perpetually materialistic. Pettiness, anger, frustration, cynicism, etc. are the bitter fruits of self-will, self-trust, and a lack of vision of God . Short-sightedness makes for very long weekends.