When I first returned to Australia after being ordained – perhaps unusually, by an Orthodox Metropolitan in a Roman Catholic Church in Edinburgh, Scotland – a friend, with whom I had long been involved in a variety of social justice causes, expressed cynicism and not a little sadness at my new status. So, she said, you’ve decided to flee the city for the desert? It is almost inevitable that Orthodoxy will be seen as a museum, albeit offering an attractive and colourful display, of Christianity frozen in some far distant time and place, perhaps in the romanticized desert monasticism drawing equally on the style of Disneyworld and Cecil B. De Mille. Of course, it is seen to have little relevance in the modern city.

As one eminent Orthodox theologian reminds us:

The desert is a profound myth. It is a powerful symbol. These fourth-century elders are reminders of fundamental truths about our world and ourselves, which we tend to forget and which they translate for all generations throughout the ages. They should be considered as being prophets of another reality – in many ways, the only reality – rather than strange representatives of a remote past or inaccessible examples of former times.

Nonetheless, no one can lead us into the desert. Each one of us must find our own way. Each must look for the places where they are tempted, where we are lonely, thirsty for meaning and hungry for depth. Each of us will discover the areas that need to be purified, where we can encounter God and where God speaks to us. The desert is only one expression or translation of the truth, like art, music and beauty. Each of us must discover the ways of appropriating and appreciating this truth. We may question the truth conveyed by these desert elders, though we can never deny it.

John Chryssavgis In the Heart of the Desert. The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers 2003:109

For the Church in the modern world there is a new, and perhaps more intimidating desert: the urban wilderness which is the modern city. This view is reflected in the writings of one modern religious community, founded in 1968, which works in the desert of contemporary Rome: the Community of St Egidio. The Community declares its mission in these words:

The large modern city poses new and grave problems both for societal life and for the Church. Its huge dimensions, its structural unfriendliness, its sprawling peripheral areas (both in the urban and in the human sense), make the city into a difficult place to live, with little sense of community, where the individual, even in the midst of a crowd, is isolated and unable to become part of a shared human life. Poverty and dramatic events form part of the day-to-day experience of each one of us. Our own community, with the sensitivity born of the reading of Scripture, is aware that the city is like a desert, despite its multitude of inhabitants. The monastic fathers abandoned the city in order to serve the Lord with complete freedom. For Antony, the retreat into the desert was the beginning of the formation of a community of monks which surrounded his experience of searching for God. Benedict, too – according to St Gregory – left the city and retired to the solitude of the countryside to establish a monastic family. Today the place of testing for whoever would find God would seem no longer to be outside the city, but in the immense desert of human loneliness. This is the true desert of the search for God, where the disciple, like his Master, must fight against the triple temptation with the aid of the Word of God, just like our Lord did in the desert, when faced with the temptations of the Devil.

The Community of St Egidio “Orientations for Our Common Life”, quoted in Jeanne Hinton Communities. Stories of Christian Communities in Europe, Eagle, Guildford, Surrey:1993:153-4

Some are called to the physical desert or to the life of physical solitude. Most of us are not. We are called to live and work and undertake our spiritual journey in the midst of multitudes of buildings and vast crowds of people. In this city-desert we are rarely alone or in peaceful solitude.

This is not to de-value the life and spiritual work of those who are called to physical isolation, whether in the desert or in monasteries or lavras or sketes, as monks or nuns. It is, rather, to recognize that the vast majority of Orthodox Christians are called to live in towns and cities, in lives of business and busyness, where solitude is the exception rather than the rule, and where primary responsibility may, in practice, be to the needs of others and not to their own spiritual needs.

Does this mean we are denied the spirituality of the desert? Not at all. It means that we must discover new and innovative ways of discovering desert spirituality in the midst of the city.

In the USA there has been an increasing interest in the eremitic or semi-eremitic life amongst those who live and work in cities. Some have formally committed themselves to the life of the hermit according to the traditions of their churches.

Roman Catholic Canon Law (Canon 603) makes provision for those who wish to be consecrated to this state without living within one of the cenobitic or eremitical religious orders:

§2 A hermit is recognized in the law as one dedicated to God in a consecrated life if he or she publicly professes the three evangelical counsels” (i.e. chastity, religious poverty and obedience), “confirmed by a vow or other sacred bond, in the hands of the diocesan bishop and observes his or her own plan of life under his direction.

The Bishops of the Episcopal Church in the USA have been inspired by the number of those seeking to follow the eremitical tradition in their church to develop guidelines for hermits.

In the Orthodox tradition things are less formal: there has been a long-standing tradition of the poustinik, the hermit living and working in the community. This was popularised in the West by Poustinia: Christian Spirituality of the East for Western Man (1975) by Catherine Doherty, a Russian Catholic and social activist. The book has gone through several editions and more than a dozen translations out of English.

The New York Magazine (January 13 2008) published a feature headed “A Hermit of the Heart”, focussing on one novice Episcopalian hermit living in New York, but exploring the wider interest in urban eremitical life, and concluding: “There may in fact be no better way to understand the spiritual work of a contemplative than in the tension between the crowded city and the contemplative’s inner life.”

http://nymag.com/guides/mindbody/2008/42818/\

Some living in the city-desert may seek the approval, support and guidance of their church; others may not. Such was the approach of the Desert Fathers and Mothers; some were blessed and approved, some simply adopted the lives to which they were called without asking for permission, and in some cases against the wishes of their Bishops.

For some, this will not involve fleeing the city for the desert, but living in the desert that is the city.

I often travel by bus into the heart of the city. A frequent fellow-passenger is a young woman who sits quietly reading throughout the forty minute journey. She always reads from what appears to be the same small black book. When I first found myself seated beside her I could not help (discretely, I hope!) looking to see what kept her attention so quietly focussed. It was a small Horologion (or Breviary). She employed her travelling time to unobtrusively read the Hours each day, sitting quietly in her own desert while in the midst of the city.

There are those for whom the spiritual life appears to be an Olympic sport. More prayer is better prayer, more fasting is better fasting, more ostentatious “holiness” is obviously holier. Quiet, unobtrusive asceticism, a true “interior life”, attracts no attention and wins no praise.

A young man came to speak to me about a sense of dissatisfaction with his spiritual life – he seemed to be experiencing what the Fathers called spiritual langour or aridity. This is described by Fr Matta El-Maskeen in Orthodox Prayer Life: The Interior Way thus:

Spiritual languor…. affects the will. Here, the attack is aimed even at our attempt to pray and to persevere in prayer. A man may stand to pray, but he finds neither words to say nor power to carry on. He may sit down to read, but the book in his hands turns, as St. Isaac the Syrian says, “into lead.” It may remain open for a whole day, while the mind fails to grasp a single line. The mind is distracted, unable to concentrate on or follow the meaning of the words passing before it. The will, which controls all activity, is impotent.

Although the desire to pray is present, the power and will to do so are absent. In the end, even the desire to pray may fade. Man becomes unable and unwilling to pray, adding to his suffering and sorrow. His problems seem entirely insolvable.

The young man who spoke to me was confused and depressed. He kept a careful and detailed record of what he called his “spiritual activities” and showed me the notebook in which he recorded everything on a daily basis: how many prostrations, how many hours of prayer, how many hours of fasting, how many Psalms recited….and so on. He could not understand, he said, that the more he did the less spiritually inspired he felt.

He seemed to assume that he was in some sort of “spiritual Oympics”. He had adopted what might be called the “spiritual accounting” approach. And it had drained the life, the light and the love from his spiritual life.

As one Orthodox website phrases it, rather confrontingly:

To perform 100 prostrations profits nothing; to finger prayer-ropes 40 times a day profits nothing; to light a box of candles from Bethlehem profits nothing; to ignite charcoals and douse them with frankincense from Ethiopia profits nothing; to read the Philokalia and memorize quotations profits nothing; to erect an expansive prayer-corner with hand-painted icons from Mt Athos profits nothing; to listen to liturgical music from Balamand or Decani profits nothing; to wear shirts with modern Orthodox-like logos and quips from the Desert Elders profits nothing; to dye Paschal eggs profits nothing; to follow the world tour of the Kursk-Root icon of the Mother of God of the Sign profits nothing; to decorate one’s own MySpace or Twitter or Facebook pages with Orthodox crosses and images and shiny flash profits nothing; to bury the dead facing East profits nothing; to kiss a priest’s hand or to genuflect before a bishop profits nothing. These are an iota of the theologoumena reducing our communities into braindead androids, communities falling away from Tradition, communities not knowing true communion in the Church, communities plagued by Pharisaic Delusonal Disorder. We’ve chosen to obsess on the iconography and forgot the True Icon. We’ve become enchanted by sentimental piety, with romanticized rituals, and abandoned the one thing needful: the heart.

http://www.syntheopoiesis.blogspot.com/

Is the recitation of a hundred Psalms better than the recitation of one? Is fasting for two days more spiritual than fasting for one? Is complete exhaustion after ten hours of Church services a sign of anything really spiritual?

The Fathers and Mothers of the Desert were like true athletes in training: they sought by careful, incremental and planned discipline to prepare themselves for the their true work. But it was not a competition.

The desert was not a gigantic gymnasium where athletes vied with one another in endurance tests. When one of the fathers went in disguise to a monastery during Lent, he outdid all the monks in asceticism. His name was Macarius the Egyptian and he was very tough. At the end of a week, the abba led him outside and said, “You have taught us all a lesson, Father, but now please would you mind going away, lest my sons become discouraged and despair. We have been edified enough.”

Benedicta Ward The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. The Alphabetical Collection 1975:xxv.

If spiritual discipline cannot be developed to mesh into the demands of a “normal” life it is of little value. Unfortunately, there is a tendency (especially in what might be described as “monk-heavy” churches) to act as if “real spirituality” requires lay men and women to act as if they were monks and nuns while fulfilling the demands of work and family. There is a tendency to assume that the religious life (i.e. being a monk or a nun – the unfortunate assumption being that they alone live a “religious” life) is a superior spiritual state. Works like the “Synaxarion” include very few examples of holy men and women whose sanctity was manifested in what might be described as ordinary life in the world.

We need to re-discover the spirituality of that life in the city – or we risk a form of anti-Incarnational Manichaeism and Donatism. We must undertake a re-discovery of what might be called the “sanctity of the ordinary”, a spiritual discipline of daily life.

Quietly and unobtrusively on a bus or train, sitting in a garden, walking along a busy street……we can reflect and praise and pray. Even in situations – like walking –  in which we cannot read from a book, we can still engage in silent prayer and reflection. And modern technology can provide other opportunities: I have recorded the Hours on my i-pod equivalent and can listen them anywhere.

If we are in spiritual competition with others, or even with some supposed ideal, we have lost the race. If we need to keep accounts, we are heading for spiritual bankruptcy.

It is the gentle and gradual transformation of the heart that the Fathers sought: less frenetic external activity, more internal growth.

The Fathers and Mothers of the Desert spent much of their time in prayer. The believed that prayer was as much a form of action as, for example, more visible works of charity. They did not need to be in the midst of those in need to offer fervent prayers for them. In their prayers they lifted up those in need – whether known to them or unknown – to the Throne of God.

In the desert of the city we all too often assume that prayer is not action, that our private prayers achieve nothing. Yet a person sitting quietly at home in the city, lifting up those in need before the Throne of God, surely labours against darkness and for the Light.

An elderly and inform priest, unable (as he saw it) to carry out an active ministry, lived in a flat on top of a busy shop. He told me, with a clear sense of inadequacy, that all he could do was to pray, and to pray especially for those who worked in the building. The image of the priest living “above the shop” and praying daily for those working below is one that will remain with me for a long time. Not the priest putting on robes and processing down into the shop (with incense and holy water!) to bless the workers (who would, in all probability, be either horrified or hysterical with laughter), but quietly, and unknown and unseen, praying for those who needed prayer, but didn’t know they needed prayer and didn’t know anyone was praying for them.

There is a remarkable (and, to me, deeply moving) story written by the English Roman Catholic Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914). Originally an Anglican he converted to Roman Catholicism and became a priest, and subsequently wrote a number of what might be thought of as (don’t let this put you off!) spiritual stories. His story, “In The Convent Chapel” [published in a collection called Light Invisible] describes the experience of a busy parish priest who goes on holiday, and stays in an ancient convent. He is rather dismissive of the old nuns who spend their days in prayer, unseen by and unknown to the external world, until, one night, he visits the chapel to pray, and observes a very old nun kneeling before the altar. As he watches her he is given a vision of what is really happening. In Benson’s story the old priest offers an account of his experience to a young friend (obviously Benson himself). I am adding part of the story as Benson wrote it, although the language may be a little old-fashioned now:

“And so,” said the priest, turning to me again, “I went on—poor ignorant fool!— thinking that the woman who knelt in front of me was less useful than myself, and that my words and actions and sermons and life did more to advance God’s kingdom than her prayers! And then—then—at the moment when I reached that climax of folly and pride, God was good to me and gave me a little light.

“Now, I do not know how to put it—I have never put it into words before except to myself—but I became aware, in my intellect alone, of one or two clear facts. In order to tell you what those facts were I must use picture language; but remember they are only translations or paraphrases of what I perceived.

“First I became aware suddenly that there ran a vital connection from the Tabernacle [in which the Sacrament was reserved] to the woman. You may think of it as one of those bands you see in machinery connecting two wheels, so that when either wheel moves the other moves too. Or you may think of it as an electric wire, joining the instrument the telegraph operator uses with the pointer at the other end. At any rate, there was this vital band or wire of life. Now in the Tabernacle I became aware that there was a mighty stirring and movement. Something within it beat like a vast Heart, and the vibrations of each pulse seemed to quiver through all the ground. Or you may picture it as the movement of a clear deep pool when the basin that contains it is jarred—it seemed like the movement of circular ripples crossing and recrossing in swift thrills. Or you may think of it as that faint movement of light and shade that may be seen in the heart of a white-hot furnace. Or again you may picture it as sound—as the sound of a high ship-mast with the rigging, in a steady wind; or the sound of deep woods in a July noon.”

The priest’s face was working, and his hands moved nervously.

“How hopeless it is,” he said, “to express all this! Remember that all these pictures are not in the least what I perceived. They are only grotesque paraphrases of a spiritual fact that was shown me.

“Now I was aware that there was something of the same activity in the heart of the woman, but I did not know which was the controlling power. I did not know whether the initiative sprang from the Tabernacle and communicated itself to the nun’s will; or whether she, by bending herself upon the Tabernacle, set in motion a huge dormant power. It appeared to me possible that the solution lay in the fact that two wills co-operated, each reacting upon the other. This, in a kind of way, appears to me now true as regards the whole mystery of free-will and prayer and grace. “At any rate, the union of these two represented itself to me, as I have said, as forming a kind of engine that radiated an immense light or sound or movement. And then I perceived something else too.

“I once fell asleep in one of those fast trains from the north, and did not awake until we had reached the terminus. The last thing I had seen before falling asleep had been the quiet darkening woods and fields through which we were sliding, and it was a shock to awake in the bright humming terminus and to drive through the crowded streets, under the electric glare from the lamps and windows. Now I felt something of that sort now. A moment ago I had fancied myself apart from movement and activity in this quiet convent; but I seemed somehow to have stepped into a centre of busy, rushing life. I can scarcely put the sensation more clearly than that. I was aware that the atmosphere was charged with energy; great powers seemed to be astir, and I to be close to the whirling centre of it all.

“Or think of it like this: Have you ever had to wait in a City office? If you have done that you will know how intense quiet can co-exist with intense activity. There are quiet figures here and there round the room. Or it may be there is only one such figure—a great financier—and he sitting there almost motionless. Yet you know that every movement tingles, as it were, out from that still room all over the world. You can picture to yourself how people leap to obey or to resist—how lives rise and fall, and fortunes are made and lost, at the gentle movements of this lonely quiet man in his office. Well, so it was here. I perceived that this black figure knelt at the centre of reality and force, and with the movements of her will and lips controlled spiritual destinies for eternity. There ran out from this peaceful chapel lines of spiritual power that lost themselves in the distance, bewildering in their profusion and terrible in the intensity of their hidden fire. Souls leaped up and renewed the conflict as this tense will strove for them. Souls even at that moment leaving the body struggled from death into spiritual life, and fell panting and saved at the feet of the Redeemer on the other side of death. Others, acquiescent and swooning in sin, woke and snarled at the merciful stab of this poor nun’s prayers.”

The priest was trembling now with excitement.

“Yes,” he said; “yes, and I in my stupid arrogance had thought that my life was more active in God’s world than hers. So a small provincial shopkeeper, bustling to and fro behind the counter, might think, if only he were mad enough, that his life was more active and alive, than the life of a director who sits at his table in the City. Yes, that is a vulgar simile; but the only one that I can think of which in the least expresses what I knew to be true. There lay my little foolish narrow life behind me, made up of spiritless prayers and efforts and feeble dealings with souls; and how complacent I had been with it all, how self- centred, how out of the real tide of spiritual movement! And meanwhile, for years probably, this nun had toiled behind these walls in the silence of grace, with the hum of the world coming faintly to her ears, and the cries of peoples and nations, and of persons whom the world accounts important, sounding like the voices of children at play in the muddy street outside; and, indeed, that is all that they are, compared to her—children making mud-pies or playing at shop outside the financier’s office.”

Ascetical theology is the study of the discipline of the Orthodox life: its title derives from the Greek ascesis, meaning exercise, deriving from the Greek for physical exercise such as is found in athletic or gymnastic training. Its traditional focus has been on prayer (including meditation), abstinence (including fasting) and what has usually been wrongly referred to as almsgiving, but is in fact detachment or non-possession (aktemosyne) which is often associated with an inner state of stillness (hesychia). All too often, unfortunately, asceticism has been associated with all that is negative about Orthodoxy, often assumed to be attractive only to the inadequate, the lonely or the guilt-ridden.

However, in the early Church, the exercise or discipline of the Christian life was treated with great seriousness: being a Christian was not about formal membership of or even regular attendance at church, nor did it involve merely following the disciplinary rules. It required an ongoing work of intentional, conscious and voluntary participation in a life devoted, whatever the circumstances of the individual, to striving after perfection. It was not a sort of living death they sought: it was a richer, deeper, more vital and spiritual life. The ascetics prayed to God, as Sarapion of Thmuis did in one of his prayers, We entreat You, make us truly alive.

For some, this involved journeying into remote places and living under harsh physical conditions in relative isolation. To describe such an approach as “withdrawing from the world” or “fleeing the world” would be to misrepresent what was, or at least what should, have been happening. The men and women who sought to pursue the Christian life in “deserts” were not escaping: they were confronting. And, it must be noted, that “desert”, although commonly referring to a geographical location, a harsh climate and few natural resources, could equally be found in the city, or in the wilds of Ireland or Russia.

It would hardly be surprising if men and women in the modern world, particularly those outside the Orthodox Faith, had no interest in ascetical theology, or asceticism, let alone those who sought to practice it so diligently in harsh and isolated places. And yet, the last ten years or so have seen a significant increase in the publication of books about the earliest, and often the most extreme, of the ascetics: the Desert Fathers. And although such publications have included the scholarly and the academic, they have – perhaps most remarkably – included even more popular and practical works.

A search on Amazon.com will reveal pages of works on Desert Spirituality; a search on Google will bring up numerous sites devoted to books about the Desert Fathers and Mothers, their sayings and their spirituality.

My father grew up in a goldmining town in the desert. When I was young he used to take me there for holidays and I acquired a schoolboy interest in gems and minerals. One day when we were wandering round a desolate area searching for specimens a wild-looking man carrying a shotgun appeared, quite literally, from a hole in the ground. He ordered us off his claim. My father placated him by saying: “My boy’s interested in rocks.” For rest of the day the eccentric miner guided us to find “rocks for the boy”. He’d dig up small lumps of what looked baked mud, and hit them with his hammer. As they split, so was revealed the extraordinary beauty of brightly coloured minerals and gemstones like agate. Some of these still adorn my bookshelves. Lumps of dirt in the desert sand concealed the brilliant glory of God’s creation to be revealed by a wild man with a hammer.

Some time ago I spent several years working with an indigenous community in semi-arid lands. An elder offered to take for a walk. At one point, in the midst of sand and dust, he stopped and pointed to the ground before us. “You know what that is?” he asked. The obvious answer was: a patch of desert dirt no different than the miles of desert dirt around us. I said I didn’t know. “Isn’t it obvious?” he responded. I must have looked confused. “You white fellas, you don’t know anything” he said and laughed. “It’s a water hole.” My untrained mind associated water holes with water and holes, not with indistinguishable patches of flat sand. “I’ll show you” he said as he dropped to his knees and began digging with his hands. About nine inches into the dirt water began to flow. He laughed even more. “Reckon you’d survive out here?” It was not a question I needed to answer because the answer was all too obvious. He took water into his hands and drank. “It’s good,” he said. “You try it.” And it was good indeed, strangely sweet and wonderfully cool. After he’d covered the small hole with sand we set off again. On our return journey he suddenly stopped. “We’re back at the water hole” he said. “Your turn to dig.” His wide smile and generous laughter made it clear he knew, as well as I knew, that I had no idea where the water was to be found. The desert is not a place without water, but a place in which water is hidden. Some know where to find it; most of us don’t.

This making a City of the Wilderness was no mere flight, nor a rejection of matter as evil (else why did they show such aesthetic sense in placing their retreats, and such love for all God’s animal creation?). It was rooted in a stark realism of faith in God and acceptance of the battle which is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual things of wickedness in the heavenly places. [Derwas Chitty (1901-1971) The Desert a City Crestwood, NJ, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995:xvi]

And he asks:

Has it not its challenge for today?

If there is a challenge for contemporary Christians, and one which, to use Chitty’s words is rooted in a stark realism of faith in God and acceptance of the battle which is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual things of wickedness in the heavenly places it is surely in the Desert which is the contemporary City.

This blog offers explorations of Eastern Christian spirituality in the context of modern urban living. It follows in the tradition of the illustrious Saint, John Cassian (ca360-cs432) who sought to translate the Desert Spirituality he experienced in the Christian East into the life of urban Western Christians.