Work, Rest, and the Desert Fathers on Humility

Well, school has certainly been busy the last month.

A lot has been going on, mostly good, certainly formative, but overwhelming at times (as in, several times a week).

And in the course of about two weeks, I heard this verse quoted three times, and I began to think it was something I needed to hear:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28

I’ve been realizing I need to learn how to rest.

I’ve been realizing that being overworked and stretched to the limits is less heroic, as I would like to think, and in reality more, well, wrong. Not how things are meant to be.

It is wrong not to recognize that my strength has limits.

It is wrong not to recognize that I can do nothing unless I abide in Christ, that the strength I have depends on him.

Dust returns to dust and the flower fades. I am subject to hunger, sickness, the need for sleep, aging, and one day I will die.

All men are sinners. There is darkness hiding in my heart.

So today, and this week, and in my life, do I trust that beyond me there is a strength of unfailing love that is made perfect in my weakness?

Can I trust that where I fail short Christ is victorious, and that his victory is a generous victory?

Can I rest in that grace?

Can I be defined by that grace?

What does that mean, for the posture of my heart, for my schedule this week, for the way I see others, for how I deal with business and failure and stress?

This, I pray that Christ will teach me, that I may slow down long enough to hear his voice, and that I may be humble enough to take his words to heart, about work and rest, and, again, about how to live life well, as he meant for me to live.

Well, since this all really has to do with the subject of humility, I think it would be good to share some of the sayings of the Desert Fathers (early monastics from the 4th century). We read these for class a couple weeks ago:

“A certain brother came to Abbot Poeman and said: What ought I to do, Father? I am in great sadness. The elder said to him; Never despise anybody, never condemn anybody, never speak evil of anyone, and the Lord will give you peace.”

“Abbot Alonius said: Humility is the land where God wants us to go and offer sacrifice.”

Babylon Besieged

(note: I actually didn’t mean to post this on the anniversary of 9/11. I didn’t write the poem with 9/11 specifically in mind and I did a double-take when I noticed this morning that I had posted it by accident on the hallowed date. Nevertheless, in a more general way I did write the poem in dialogue with a world that is filled with violence, that has been made weary and frayed by too many wars and bombings and genocides and lynchings and disappearings. It is in this world that I hold out my hands to Christ and ask him to give me a new song to play.)

Babylon Besieged

Children starve and nobles dance
But the poor weep
While we cannot
And I
I am a rich young ruler
Who has never known what it means to be alive
Though perhaps now
I am beginning to learn.

In such a world
I could have sung a brazen song, pretending
Life like a prop against the gate
Of Babylon besieged
But why
Should I disguise the sting of your poison?
My bloody heart.

I remember a day when
Golden sunlight anointed the dust
And I saw our future written in the clouds
The bombs fell so slowly
That the children played in the patterns
Of their shadows on the rooftops.
We have lived with death
And forgotten its meaning.
We have lived without life
And forgotten our purpose.

Today was born in smoke
I can’t see the city- I can’t see the street
Nevertheless, life has always been beyond my reach
And that is why I’m kneeling on the gravel
Here and now Friend
Reaching out my hands to you.
Will you fill them overflowing
With foolishness?
With a life I’ve never had?
I dream of a life
My city cannot understand
But I’ve heard your call
And I pray to you
Give me a heart.

My faith is kneeling in the bloody city
Beyond the irreversible stutters
And statics of the bullets
Of shells bursting in air
Beyond the dollars and dusts that numb the scars
Of souls malnourished
And overcoming all lonely tears and propaganda fliers
And overflowing dumps and empty hearts
Love cries a new song
Triumphant in death but never dying.

My Irreplaceable Friend,
In you I play a new song
Because you are the breath
That moves in me to love.
Here in Babylon the besieged
You are my breath
You are my love
You pick me up off the pavement
You set me on my feet again.
And for that
You have my love
And my devotion forever.

Timothy and Mary, part 2

Timothy and Mary live under the bicycle underpass five minutes from my house. A little-used bike path that runs alongside Escondido’s drainage canal suddenly dips down under a somewhat-more-used highway, and there in the shade, with the concrete of the canal yawning to one side, the couple has set up camp.

“It cost the city millions of dollars to build this underpass,” Timothy tells me, then laughs, “We were the first ones in.”

I laugh too. Its a quick moment of shared acknowledgment. There’s some sad irony here.

We have been accidentally generous to the broken people on our streets, have acted out an unintended grace. How sad that it was an accident, that it was not meant.

We, the outwardly clean, respectable world of Escondido, like to forget the broken people are around, hiding the night away somewhere ‘out there’, somewhere beyond the automatic lights and locks that mutely proclaim unwelcome at every door.
When sunlight returns, we would prefer and would insist if we could that they remain in those distantly close shadows and not follow the sun out to wait inconveniently with their cardboard signs at impatient intersections.
Perhaps we fear them like we fear the grit that spoils the delicate smoothness of the well-oiled machine. You see, we respectable people have a cardinal rule that keeps everything running on. It’s the very oil that slicks the mechanisms of our word.
The rule is this: “Like proper Victorian children, all problems must be kept hidden and under control.”

Scandalously, these people cannot hide their problems. They have committed the unforgivable crime of blatantly being needy for grace- because the one thing we cannot bear is to be reminded of the human brokenness that in pride we refuse to admit in ourselves, and that in fear we refuse to confront with trust in a God greater than ourselves.

We are not broken. We do not need.
(Smooth oil of pretending, greasing the death of souls…
Repelling against the sincere transparency of water, its cleansing honesty.)

Nonetheless, in direct violation of the unspoken rules Escondido has unwittingly provided a shelter for these people. Again, accidental generosity, unintended grace.

“It’s cool here all day,” Timothy explains, “Never gets above 80 degrees.”

Of course, the city is repentant for such a slip in judgment, and makes stern-faced atonement in the form of 4 AM evictions and laws banning bikes in the park.

But here I will end this self-implicating rant, such as it is, and attempt once again to start from the beginning, such as it is.

As I explained in part one, it had been my plan all summer to step out from my outwardly clean and respectable world into the shadows, to see what Christ might teach me there. As I also explained, my confidence in my own resolve to do so was more than it should of been.

And so it wasn’t until my last week in Escondido that anything happened.
On that morning, my friend Riley and I woke early, having resolved to make the best breakfast sandwiches we could and then head out into the streets to find people to give them to.
We made our way sluggishly to my kitchen, and with our rudimentary cooking skills set to work, hoping that good flavor would be an emergent property of the various elements we had assembled: a hefty loaf of bread, butter, eggs fried in an oiled skillet, salsa, brussel sprouts (for vitamins).

Half an hour later, sandwiches now made and wrapped, we approach the couple in the underpass with a bit of nervousness. The woman in the sleeping bag struggles to sit up, rubs her eyes. We say hello, apologize for waking her up, introduce ourselves, shake hands. Her name is Mary.

I say, “We’ve made sandwiches. Would you like one?”

This is the awkward moment. Here we are, with our desire to in some way be generous and loving to “those in need.” And, of all things, this desire has become incarnate in the form of an egg sandwich.

I Apologize for the Drought

Again, I must apologize for the drought of posts here…

Of course, this is provided I have any sort of regular readership. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter as much. Though you could say, in that case, that I am apologizing to myself. =)

I do have somewhat of an excuse, as in the last weeks I’ve finished up the last hectic two weeks of my church internship job, moved back to the city where I go to college, and begun a painting job that averages about 10 hours a day.

Regardless of excuses, however, I do realize that posting consistently is a key part of having a solid blog, even though the expected and unexpected immediacies of daily life often get in the way of that ideal (here’s a novel idea: I could write shorter posts. Not every post, after all, has to be some sort of masterpiece).

This thing is definitely still in its germinating stage. In other words, I’m still trying to figure out what kind of “publication” I want my blog to be.

Record of personal life?

A compendium of philosophical musings?

A commentary on the larger goings-on of the world?

Or pet project with a limited life span?

I don’t know yet, really. Hopefully some combination of the first three, and that ideally with more artful weaving than disjointed jumbling.

We’ll have to see

For now though, we’ll end not with that ambiguous sentence but with a disturbing fact: I said earlier that “I don’t really care if nobody reads this.” Turns out that I must care more than I thought I would, because I’ve been checking to see how many hits I have far more often than I’ve actually been writing anything on here. How’s that for a manifestation of the human narcissistic tendency?

Joseph

Joseph- Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

Joseph has come, the handsome one of this age,
a victory banner floating over spring flowers,

Those of you whose work it is to wake the dead,
get up! This is a work day. The lion that

hunts lions charges into a meadow. Yesterday
and the day before are gone. The coin of now

slaps down in your hand with the streets and
buildings of this city all saying, The prince

is coming! A drumbeat starts. What we hear
about the Friend is true. The beauty of that

peacefulness makes the whole world restless.

A Warning to My Readers

For this week, a poem from Wendell Berry, one whose message I can claim for myself as well… =)

A Warning to My Readers- Wendell Berry

Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.