Friday, April 25, 2003
Today, Christ goes to his passion. There has never been, is, or will ever be a more humble act done by a person. At church last night, we listened to the "passion gospels" being read. Among many things, it was made clear that Christ went willingly to the cross. Even though His human will cried out against it, He said, "not my will, but your will be done." He incorporated the will of His Father into His own.
As I watched Father James carry the cross of Christ through the Church, I couldn't help but sense that I was present, observing Christ in His passion. Then, I watched in agony as the Icon of Christ was placed upon the cross. Today, I will see him buried. This just is not an event that happened 2000 years ago, but an event that trancends time. As my friend Frank would say, "Today". Today, Christ has left His mortal body. It will be placed in the shroud. It is strange, but I feel that I have witnessed, in real time, the death of Jesus. I feel loss for His death. And shame, as did Peter, for denying Him; more than three times have I denied Him. I weep. Father, forgive me.
"Glory to Your Holy Passion, O lord. O lord" As sung during the reading of the Passion Gospels.
9:42 AM
Thursday, April 24, 2003
Repentance. This is where my humble journey has led me. More and more I am finding that in order to for me to even begin an attemplt at humility, I must first begin with repenatnce. Now, repentance has always been for me, feeling sorry for the things that I do. I get jealous, I see that I am being sinful, I feel bad. What happens the next time I get jealous? The same thing. Seems like a vicious cycle to me. What do I do to break the cycle? Again, Schmemann has been a wealth of insight for me. I think I have pretty much established why I look so much to him; I certainly do not have the spiritual answers. He speaks of repentance, in relationship to the Prodigal Son story. The Prodigal chose to go to a foreign land, to live frivilously, living without a care. He soon realized that he was in a very horrible place: feeding, and eating with, pigs. He convinces himself that if he were to return to his father as a servant, begging for forgiveness, he would have a much better life. He decided to return with this attitude: sorry for his actions, but also looking to make ammends without expecting much mercy from his father. What he received was much more than he expected. I do not want to focus on what happened between him and his father when he returned, which has always been my focus. Rather, the attitude in which he returned.
Schmemann points out the fact that the Prodigal realizes he is in a foreign land. He wishes to return to what he had. He is no longer satisfied. But the dilemma: he rejected his father to do what he wanted. How can he expect that his father will ever want him back, let alone as a servant? He returns with great sorrow in his heart and a desire to please his father, promising never to return to that foreign land. This foreign land is a willful alienation from his father.
I do see that this foreign land can be likened to a state of being. The road that leads there is a road of sin. A willful act on my part to be alienated from God. I am beginning to see that when I feel bad for my sin, it is this sense of my alienation from God. But just like my approach to the parable, I always focus on God's mercy: oh, He'll forgive me. I do not focus on my willful rejection of Him. In fact, I mean to take advantage of His grace to wipe the slate clean. I go right from sorrow to the celebration. In a sense, I cover the sorrow because I do not feel capable to face it. Sorrow immediately turns to self-condemnation, to self pity. I want to shout, "Leave me alone! I'm so horrible, please let me off the hook! I am not responsible..." It could go on. I don't see this in the Prodigal's attitude. In fact, it seems that he would have said that he was ultimately responsible, not his father. He took full responsibility for his actions, not only feeling sorrow for what he had done. He was capable of accepting responsibility. In this, he returns to his father.
So what of my return from this foreign land of sin? I do not really have the attitude of the Prodigal. I want to return, expecting to be fully forgiven and feeling no sorrow because I can't handle the sorrow. I DEMAND to be forgiven, regardless of what I have done. "What's the big deal? If you don't forgive me, it's your problem!"
Am I capable? I can tell you what the easy answer is: the wide gate, the broad path. Much to ponder for me. I leave with a quote from Schmemann: "Repentance is the beginning of humility."
Tuesday, April 22, 2003
Humility. So what is Divine humility? Do I just go through life trying to be "humble" with really no clue how this is done? Oh, I know. I'll just wait until I feel humble. I can always just rely on my feelings. Unfortunately for me, my feelings are not very reliable. More often than not, I feel anything but humble. In fact, I am begining to wonder if humility has anything to do with feelings at all. So what do I do? Nothing? Ignore it? Pretend I know? Say, "I'll be humble" and leave it at that? Well...
Like I said yesterday, I was going to go back to Shmemann and see what he has to say about humility. I made good on that and I did receive a place to start. I did not bring the book with me to work, so I can't directly quote from it, but I will try to convey the general idea. Schemann, from Great Lent, says that to discover Divine humility, one must simply look at a man who defined Divine humility on earth: Jesus Christ. I was pretty taken aback by this because in a sense, it is simple. I try and always find a way to complicate matters when they aren't complicated. There is a wealth of information on Jesus' life for me to study. Now, that said, I have to say that it is a complicated matter; certainly not the complication I try to bring to the table, however. The complication arrises for me in that I have a hard time believing that I can model my life after such a great Man. I firmly believe that I am only capable of failure. Now, I "know" this is not a right belief, but I believe it, nonetheless. This brings me to a completely different topic, but not unrelated.
During my journey to Orthodoxy, I became aware of a school of thought that dates back to the early 4rth century, discovered by monastic communties in ancient Egypt. And that is, is that there are three "eyes" of contemplation, or ways to experience life. According to the above Fathers, a person is trully complete in his living in the world if all three "eyes" are used in a balanced way. They are: 1-the eye of the senses, 2-the eye of the intellect, and 3-the eye of spirituality. For a more complete description, please see The Mountain of Silence by Kyriacos C. Markides. The eye of spirituality, however, being the primary focus. This "eye" is also referred to as the "nous", Greek for the eye of the soul, written about by ancient Church Fathers. The Fathers write that when we are born, our eye is able to see clearly Divine Spirituality. In other words, is able to discern Godly wisdom. Now, as time goes on and sin increases in a person's life, the eye becomes darkened, or blinded. Thus, after years of sin, the eye is no longer able to discern Godly wisdom. However, when a person is Illumined through baptism and belief in Christ, the eye is miraculously cleared to see. Unfortunately, the eye can again become blinded by sin, if the Christian does not follow the narrow path. This is something that fascinates me because being a very sinful person, I constantly find that my "spiritual eye" is very blinded as to what is sin, and what is not, in my life. I find constantly that what I consider to be "sinless" is in reality, sin. I also am easily prone to believe false things about myself to relate to the above paragraph.
Now, this relates to my understanding, or lack thereof, of Divine humility. I have a very distorted view of what it is. Fortunately, this does not mean that I am in a hopless situation, certainly troubling thouch it is. There is a way to free the eye of darkness and begin to see the wisdom of God no matter what my state is. Now, I must stop here because work calls, but what I am finding is that the way is repentance. I will continue tomorrow exploring this and its relationship to humility.
Monday, April 21, 2003
I thought I would attempt a poem about some of the things I am feeling about humility:
a small, walled off area
full of holes, washed away
pierced by sudden intimidation
memories forgotten, remembered
given over to lawlesness
annhilated, invalidation
emptiness is a cancer
11:59 AM
Humility. I have often struggled with this topic, but I think on a much grander scale this time. Like I have already mentioned, humility has been more of an act for me, not a perpetual state of being. It is not something that I try to live. It is more like a concept that I apply to past actions. In other words, instead of "acting in humility" towards events that happen "now", I tend to "react in humility" to events that have already occurred. Let me explain.
I have come to discover something rather profound about myself in the last six months or so: I am a very "reactionary" person. I have noticed that when I interact with other people, I dictate how I will respond by how they are "acting" towards me. I tend to go through life rather shell-shocked when it comes to my emotions and feelings. I have a few close friends who tend to have some pretty strong emotions about life, relationships, religion...etc.etc. I usually just go along with this until the emotions are so strong, they break through my "shell", and I have to "react". Usually, as is the case with my wife, I "react" rather strongly: with anger. Not a very humble trait I can admit. With my other friends, it usually has to be quite a bit more "actionary". This also spills over into other areas of my life. My interests, hobbies, what I think is important, joys, sorrows, pretty much anything that defines a person from another, are all very "reactionary" for me.
Now what does this have to do with humility? Well, this is all a part of my definition of humility. I become "humble" when a person in my life sees me as being prideful. I "react" with "humility" when someone "acts" by confronting a prideful situation they see in me. Now, I know this still does not define what humility is for me, but hold on; just a little more digging. Humility becomes a way to appease another's disappointment in me. If I "back down" in response to a confrontation, biting my tongue, then I am being humble. Humility has become a tool of appeasement, not a way of living or acting. This does not sound like a Divine quality to me.
It took me over fifteen minutes to write the above because every sentence I wrote, I had a million tangents springing forth in my head. This opens a huge can of worms for me: how I relate, how I give to others, my identity, what it means for me to love others...But I will focus on humility because I firmly believe that if I can incorporate a "right" understanding of Divine humility into my life, the rest will follow. Anyway, I am pretty overwhelmed right now, so I am going to stop here. I think tomorrow I am going to go back to Schmemann and read more of what Divine humility looks like and comment.
8:17 AM
Sunday, April 20, 2003
Humility. What is this strange concept. I just finished reading a section in Alexander Schmemann's "Great Lent", and am puzzled, if not troubled, by a few things. Here is a quote:
"But what is humility? The answer to this question may seem a paraadoxical one for it is rooted in a strange affirmation: God Himself is humble!! Yet to anyone who know God, who contemplates Him in His creation and in His saving acts, it is evident that humilty is truly a divine quality, the very content and the radiance of that glory which, as we sing during the Divine Liturgy, fills heaven and earth. In our human mentality we tend to oppose "glory" and "humility"-the latter being for us the indication of a flaw or defeciency. For us it is our ignorance or incompetence that makes or ought to make us feel humble. It is almost impossible tto "put across" to the moder man, fed on publicity, self-affirmation, and endless self-praise, that all that which is genuinely perfect, beautiful, and good is at the same time naturally humble; for precisely because of it's perfection, it does not need "publicity", external glory, or "showing off" of any kind. God is humble because He is perfect; His humility is His glory and the source of all true beauty, perfection, and goodness, and everyone who approaches God and knows Him immediately partakes of the Divine humility and is beautified by it. This is true of Mary, the Mother of Christ, whose humility made her the joy of all creation and the greatest revelation of beauty on earth, true of all the Saints, and true of every human being during the rare moments of his contacts with God."
Pretty long quote, and full of things hard for me to understand. I have always viewed humility to be the act of sacrificing for another. It may mean giving money to another, listening to someone in a time of need, serving someone, getting my wife her glasses from upstairs when we are comfortable and warm in our cold basement tv room...etc.etc.
But what I see here seems to be something much more deep and profound. It is in the very nature of the Trinity, and it is Divine. When I think of God, I think of glory, honor, majesty, awesomeness. These words would not fit into my understanding of humility. But central to Jesus' Passion, is His willingness to be humiliated and crucified by His creation. So, humility IS a Divine attribute of God, even in His splendor. Or as Schmemann puts it, "God is humble because He is perfect; His humility is His glory and the source of all true beauty, perfection, and goodness..."
Perfection and glory are words I do not associate with humility. Over the next few days, I am going to try and put into words what I think humility to be. I am also going to try and put into my own words, not Schmemann's, what Godly humility might be. Not to say I can put it any better. I mean, come on, this was a Saint who lived his life in humility much, much more than I ever have. Then maybe I can compare the two and see where my definition lacks or needs to be modified. Well, I am off to Church. Speaking of learning humility.
7:49 AM
