Cling Always to God

It was awful when I moved to Atlanta from South Bend in 1978. I had torn myself away from friends with whom I had shared my life to go to a place where I did not know a soul. I left a job I had loved for a new job. The children were traumatized most of the first year. Anna Grace had trouble in school while Benjamin, who was only four, lay on the floor staring at the ceiling. Even the cat refused to use the litter box. I knew that all the decisions I had made around the move were right. Still I grieved, and I was full of guilt for my failure to live up to the ideals of security I felt I owed my children.

My experience wasn’t unique. Moves are part of the fabric of modern life. Whether we work for corporations, follow spouses, teach, or pastor churches, an enormous number of us find ourselves moving, sometimes frequently. There is a lot of suffering caused by the losses that go with moves, wanted as well as unwanted. Moving away from old friends, losing our place in a community, leaving a beloved home—all are hard. Starting up again in a new place can be even harder.

The guilt we can feel about these changes in our lives compounds our difficulties tenfold. The church may inadvertently exacerbate our pain by holding up models of “traditional” and secure family life as the norm, if not the product, of Christian living. Children’s Sunday school rooms are often lined with pictures of happy children who “belong” in economically secure two parent homes, as well as in familiarly comforting schools and churches. Sermons often increase our guilt by subtly suggesting that the senses of loss and dislocation that go with major upheavals are somehow spiritual signs of our failure to be “Christian,” as well as signs of our lack of faith.

What Christian resources do we have to deal with all this? One source of help which I have found to be invaluable has been the writings of the earliest founders of monasticism in the fourth through the sixth centuries. These Fathers and Mothers of the Egyptian desert were convinced that Jesus never calls us to a secure life free from grief. Rather, they believed that Jesus actually summons us to give up a lot of the security we have for the sake of the Kingdom. This is why the early monastics regularly chose to uproot themselves from established places and patterns of family life to live as permanent “strangers” in their own world. Out of their own experience, then, the Abbas and Ammas are able to offer us resources for dealing with the guilt we sometimes feel over our own “instability.” Moreover, they also point out to us some real blessings we can seek in our living of the Christian life.

THE INEVITABILITY OF INSECURITY IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

To begin, Abba Poemen, one of the most insightful teachers of the desert, used to say, “Even if a [person] were to make a new heaven and earth, [that person] could not live free of care.”(1) Above all else, the early monastics were convinced that nobody’s life is actually finally secure. To be human is to experience disruption and the grief that goes with it.

In this respect, the early monastics believed that they were being true not only to their experience but also to scripture. The Bible witnesses to the fact that, just as the “rain falls on the just and unjust alike” (Matt. 5:45), so also is “all flesh as grass” (Isa. 40:6). Though we may (with our biblical ancestors) lament the fact, to be human in this life is to live with grief, disruption, and loss. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews confirms the experience of nearly all of us if we live long enough: “We are strangers and nomads on earth” (Heb. 11:13). The author of I Peter exhorts his readers to “live out your time of exile” (I Pet. 1:17). For good or ill, this is the human condition.

Over and above this “ordinary” insecurity, however, the early monastics noticed that Jesus himself, in fact, seems to have lived a life of radical insecurity by choice.

A scribe then approached [Jesus] and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.“ And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

Jesus was forever on the move, without even the comfort of a family that understood and supported him, and certainly without the comfort of a familiar place in the synagogue of his childhood.

Notice, furthermore, that whatever else Jesus teaches those who would follow him, he certainly does not suggest that the mark of the Christian is security in any of its commonly accepted social forms based in social status, money, religious status, or family. Most of Jesus’ original followers must not have given up everything to follow Jesus. Nevertheless, we see Jesus in the Gospels continually inciting all those who would come after him to set themselves outside the norms and expectations of their own culture and even their religion for the sake of the Kingdom. Jesus’ advice to Mary and Martha, who are told to give up their culture’s ideals of what women can and cannot do, is one outstanding example. His call to the rich young ruler to give up his secure place of honor and even goodness in his own society is another. (2)

There is something special about the radical renunciation to which Jesus calls his followers. It is not hardship for the sake of hardship. Jesus calls them to give up what they have because what he has to offer—the Kingdom of Heaven—is so much greater. This is the call heard by the desert Fathers and Mothers that led them to renounce even the ordinary securities of their age and gave them the grace to sustain their lives of radical insecurity.

Nonetheless, such gracious reassurance speaks only to a few, both then and now. Enduring the hardships that come as a result of answering the call of the Kingdom is one thing. But how do we resist the debilitating effects of the insecurity that is our daily lot in life or the disruption and brokenness we experience after a move that has nothing, overtly, to do with the Kingdom?

When we find ourselves in this position, the experience of the monastics suggests that there are very real benefits we can claim as Christians who have learned not to put our trust in worldly structures of security. The blessings that go with being strangers in whatever land we find ourselves are what one teacher, Euprepios, wished for his disciples with his words, “May fear, humility, lack of food and compunction be with you.”(3)

SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Abba Poemen said, “Vigilance, self-knowledge and discernment; these are the guides of the soul.”(4) The monastics believed that all Christian growth depends on self-knowledge and discernment. A major reason the early monastics left their former lives was their conviction that enmeshment in the ordinary world of family, work, and social position very largely renders us blind to the most basic realities that govern our lives. They often warned of the difficulties of sorting out ultimate Christian goals from goals that may have little to do with being Christian. Abba Poemen said, “Not understanding what has happened prevents us from going on to something better.”(5) If we choose to try to understand, being uprooted from our ordinary ways of living in the world makes the invisible visible to us in a special way. What is it that we are now able to see and newly evaluate?

Certainly, we are better able to see into and understand our own motivations. This story from the Sayings of the Fathers illustrates how, through moving his normal location, one fifth-century Christian gained painful but important self-insight.

In a village there was said to be a man who fasted to such a degree that he was called “the Faster.“ Abba Zeno had heard of him, and he sent for him [to come out to the desert]. The other came gladly. They prayed and sat down. The old man began to work in silence. Since he could not succeed in talking to him the Faster began to get bored. So he said to the old man, “Pray for me, Abba, for I want to go.” The old man said to him, “Why?” The other replied, “Because my heart is as it were on fire and I do not know what is the matter with it. For truly, when I was in the village and I fasted until the evening, nothing like this happened to me.” The old man said, “In the village you fed yourself through your ears. But go away and from now on eat at the ninth hour and whatever you do, do it secretly....”(6)

With the help of the Abba, the Faster quickly learned about himself and his own motivations. For him, a need for admiration and being at the center of attention which his fasting “fed” were actually getting in the way of his Christian goals. His new ability to see this enabled him to make real changes in his life.

In many cases, by looking at where we hurt when we move, we are able to see what we actually value most and evaluate what we see. This is the time we can ask if, in a manner that gets in the way of our deeper Christian goals, we are taking our self-worth from our social position, our possessions, our job, or even from our church life. Or have we floated along in our expected place without really making decisions about what we want? For us, as for the Faster, new knowledge of our own actual values offers us opportunities for serious growth in the Christian life.

Perhaps we, like the brother in the following story, have been assuming that our problems are caused by the people among whom we live rather than having their roots in ourselves.

A brother was restless in the community and often moved to anger. So he said: “I will go, and live somewhere by myself. And since I shall be able to talk or listen to no one, I shall be tranquil, and my passionate anger will cease.” He went out and lived alone in a cave. But one day he filled his jug with water and put it on the ground. It happened suddenly to fall over. He filled it again, and again it fell. And this happened a third time. And in a rage he snatched up the jug and broke it. Returning to his right mind, he knew that the demon of anger had mocked him, and he said, “I will return to the community. Wherever you live, you need effort and patience and above all, God’s help.”(7)

Perhaps I have been eaten away, for example, by resentfulness. Was I frequently resentful in my former community because I felt that I worked hard and was never appreciated? Can I establish myself in a different relationship to a new community, or do I quickly find myself in the same position in my new situation? Moving gives me a unique o pportunity to recognize my own patterns of being with others, patterns that are in need of God’s healing.

BEING GOD’S STRANGERS

Abba Ammonas was one of Anthony’s first monastic disciples. In his later life he became a bishop. As bishop in his own Christian culture, he was expected to help maintain the standards of “decent” society. The following story shows how and to what effect he continued to maintain, instead, the monastic role of “stranger” or Christian outsider.

Having become bishop [after being Anthony’s disciple], someone brought a young girl who was pregnant to [Abba Ammonas], saying, “See what this unhappy wretch has done; give her a penance.” But he, having marked the young girl’s womb with the sign of the cross, commanded that six pairs of fine linen sheets should be given her, saying, “It is for fear that, when she comes to give birth, she may die, . . . and have nothing for the burial.” But her accusers resumed, “Why did you do that? Give her a punishment.” But he said to them, “Look, brothers, she is near to death; what am I to do?” Then he sent her away and no old man dared accuse anyone any more.(8)

This is a story of non-judgmental love. But it is also about the transformation of a community’s moral perceptions. According to the earliest monastics, the goal of the Christian life is to learn to love God with the whole heart and the neighbor as the self. Paradoxically, what makes Ammonas able to act as the agent of transformation toward love in this story is his status as monk-bishop, as “holy stranger.”(9) The non-monastic community that surrounded these ancient “holy strangers” understood that because the monks had chosen to give up a security based in job status, family, or possession, they could be relied on in a special way to bear witness to the Christian justice, truth, and compassion which the whole community wished to embody.

In fact, when we stay in one place too long, we run the risk of holding too closely to the safely familiar centers of our existence. Our everyday life and the assumptions about the world implicit in it become opaque to us. We lose sight of what happens on the edge of our communities, where the vulnerable God who calls us to love might actually live. (10) Moving gives us, at least temporarily, the possibility of being “strangers” in some important respects like the early monastics, so that our eyes also can be opened to see our own social and cultural engagements in a new light. When we are vulnerable, we can see the vulnerabilities of others. Becoming strangers enables us to gain this new vision both at the personal level and at the level of injustices we have previously not been able to see in society at large.

A United Methodist minister friend of mine in rural Alabama regularly changes congregations. A year or two ago he was out walking on a ridge behind the parsonage when he was appalled to find fourteen migrant workers, including little children, who had been sleeping under their trucks for a week. Hurrying to a nearby gas station, he phoned to tell his wife, “Get ready; we are having fourteen house guests for the next two weeks.” His status as stranger in his community simultaneously allowed him to disregard the town’s proprieties and to minister to the needs of the workers. It also gave him the opportunity to witness forcefully to his congregation about what they already professed to believe about justice and hospitality. Ministers who move frequently may have a particular blessing to offer by deliberately choosing this model of “holy stranger.” But times of change offer all Christians special opportunities to learn to live as “strangers“ in the midst of our world.

RELYING ON GOD

Abba Apphy, when he was a monk in the desert, lived a life of particularly arduous discipline. They used to say of him that when he became a bishop he was no longer able to find the strength to live according to the same disciplines he had observed in the desert. He could not understand his inability, and it caused him great pain. One day,

He prostrated himself before God saying, “Has your grace left me because of my episcopate?” Then he was given this revelation, “No, but when you were in solitude and there was no one else it was God who was your helper. Now that you are in the world, it is [human beings].”(11)

An ancient monk was a man or a woman who gave up the familiar support of family, jobs, property, status, and social position out of a deep desire for the sweetness of living his or her whole life utterly dependent on God. Those of us who dwell in the world cannot live so radically on an everyday basis. Yet it is amazing how many people who have come through experiences of loss, including those connected with moving, speak of the special way they were aware of God’s presence with them during those times of grief. The experience of our monastic teachers tells us that leaving our familiar places, for all its hardships, can be the time we truly learn for ourselves what the brother reported to Abba Poemen:

“I see that wherever I go I find support.” The old man said to him, “Even those who hold a sword in their hands have God who takes pity on them in the present time. If we are courageous, [God] will have mercy on us.”(12)

To be able to discover that “wherever I go, I find support”—this is a great gift.