Let us be Armor Bearers

Consider 1 Samuel 14:6-7

Johnathan said to his armor bearer: "Come let us go over to that outpost of the enemy. Perhaps the Lord will help us, because it is no more difficult for the Lord to grant victory through a few than through many."
The armor bearer replied, "Do whatever you are inclined to do; I will match your resolve."

Can we say as much? Do we, as disciples of our Lord, strive to match the resolve to trust and serve with the faith and obedience of Jonathan's armor bearer? We are the children of the New Covenant. We wield the Spiritual Armor of our Lord Jesus Christ. I think we all need to reflect on the humble response of the nameless armor bearer.

Today, let you and I try to say to our Lord, "Do whatever you are inclined to do; I will match your resolve."

Jesus, I trust in you.

Guest Post: Abandoned

I needed to hear the words Steve spoke here. He discusses the topic with beauty. -Anna

"Abandoned"

by Steve the Builder

I’m going to talk about something I rarely talk about because when I do sometimes it means something to a few people, not everyone, and frankly, hardly anyone at least in the Orthodox convert internet realm seems to talk about it, maybe partly because they’re all so happy to be here.

I suppose I could talk about this from an academic perspective and quote books to you and talk about other people’s experiences and stand with the listeners as outsiders looking in on other people’s lives, but I’ve decided to avoid the omniscient professorial point of view and just be personal. So, I guess I’ll just have to jump right in…

You probably wouldn’t have guessed it listening to my podcasts, but I have wrestled with an ever present emptiness and lack of a sense of the presence of God throughout my Christian life. Dealing with this was particularly difficult in certain churches when personal heartfelt spiritual experiences and overt happiness was deemed to be the mark of the “true” believer. In that environment, Christians were supposed to be chipper as a sign of the “joy joy joy joy down in your heart”, and if you weren’t happy welll, I got this feeling people were looking at me and thinking….(Darth Vader). So, I tried to conjure up spiritual feelings and do things to bring about a spiritual experiences. There was the pressure to fake tongues in the Jesus Movement to fit in, and in other churches, to talk certain ways and use certain phrases and language to express that I was “glad in the Lord”. But, I have to confess, to this day I have never had a spiritual experience, and I just found it impossible to make myself fake being anointed by the Holy Spirit to fit in.

But, I will say I’ve enjoyed spiritual activities, fellowship and worship at times. Over the years, I’ve participated in spiritual disciplines and have read and heard things that have brought me closer to what I understand God wishes me to be, but I’ve never had a clear spiritual experience or feeling that I can look back on and say, “That was clearly God speaking to my heart, or that was a transformative spiritual moment in my life.” As an Orthodox Christian I accept the dogma of a sacramental world view and, intellectually, I can account the sacraments as grace filled events, but in terms of having an emotional or heart felt spiritual event connected to them, it hasn’t happened yet. And I admit, sometimes I still feel like a defective Christian when I see other people who seem to enjoy emotional responses to prayer, the sacraments and the presence of God in their life. But, as dry as my spiritual existence has been for nearly 50 years of living consciously for God, I look back on it and count it a blessing, not a defect.

But before I go on, I need to define some terms. When I talk about this dryness or emptiness, I’m not talking about situational sadness in reaction to the problem of evil and pain. In my 56 years I’ve seen my share of extraordinary evil that made me doubt God’s love and power. I’ve lived in existential crisis, I’ve been clinically depressed, and I’ve experienced desperation sometimes as a consequence of my sins and sometimes from other people’s sins, and sometimes either from the hand of God or perhaps from Satan. Sometimes I don’t think it’s important to know which it is because it all hurts and basically either way I have to overcome myself to get over it no matter where it came from.

So the spiritual shadowland I’m talking about is not clinical or situational depression as a reaction to extraordinary events or even piled up ordinary life. Nor is it what the spiritual Fathers call despondency, the absolute rejection of hope due to unrepentance that leads to spiritual or sometimes physical suicide. It is not a heretical or philosophical rejection of the beauty of creation, the blessings of life and human or divine love. On the other hand, it is not psychological anger and narcissistic depression at the world’s incapacity to fill the void in one’s soul with happy and passionate experiences. And these are two important ones: It is not a “spiritual” excuse to avoid life and normal relationships and responsibility. Nor is it a sad face on the street corner badge of super-spirituality. These are extremely important distinctions because these symptoms are all rooted in either the biological consequences of the fall as in the case of clinical depression, or in the other cases, the psychological and emotional consequences of evil or sins done to us, and sometimes its just overt sin, pride, delusions and lies. As a caution, I’ll have to say here that the discernment of which it is is the job of a competent spiritual director or in some cases a good therapist, not this podcast…though I may unpack some of these issues in future episodes. Suffice to say for now, the true experience of the spiritual desert is rooted in a clear understanding that God is love, that all creation is good, and we are created to be united to Him.

At the beginning of Matins we hear what the Psalmist says, “My soul thirsts for Thee in a waterless land”. There is a state of spirituality that is life in a spiritual desert and there is a thirst for God that is never quenched in this life, or perhaps even in the next because as created beings we can never fully apprehend all that God is. The spiritual desert is a life characterized as the Beatitudes say, by a kind of spiritual poverty and an undercurrent of perpetual mourning even during the best of times. But it isn’t a sad face while everyone else is enjoying a good meal together, it isn’t a doom and gloom cloud over a birthday party or life’s normal joys. It is life in which there is an underlying melancholy, in a sense, a homesickness, that brings one back to the truth about the reality of what the fall has done to all things, that we are missing something, and perhaps it is ourselves that are missing. Ultimately it is about longing to return to our true home where our Beloved awaits to see our true face. It is life where the experience of spiritual joy and contentment is an occasional respite but is, for the most part, elusive.

Unfortunately, no one likes to talk much about this kind of thing. “Victory, Joy, Light, and being Spirit filled,” are the measures of the modern Christian’s depth of faith. I know most people know what I mean when I say they put on the “Church face” on Sunday morning because there is a cultural expectation within the walls of the sanctuary, but it’s a different story in the parking lot. When I was part of that culture, I sometimes wrestled with a kind of twisted guilt for faking the happy Christian life in public while having a hollow place within that no sermon, no prayer, no Scripture, and no spiritual exercise, and no fellowship has ever filled, not even in Orthodoxy. But that empty place has not and does not keep me from serving God, giving alms, or praying, or listening to sermons or reading books or fasting, because all these things are a light to my soul, even if my soul is incapable of perceiving it fully. Amid all my spiritual activity done out of a sincere love for God for all these years, there is still a constant and dull aching sorrow that I know only death will end, not so much as an escape from life but an apprehension of my true life. Imprinted on my heart are St. Pauls words: To live is Christ, but to die is gain.

Lest you get the wrong idea, I don’t sit around and pathologically ruminate about this 24-7. I’ve lived with it for decades and frankly, I consciously thought about it a lot more 25 years ago when I began to understand that perhaps it was not I that was defective, but perhaps it was my understanding of what the spiritual life is “supposed to look like” that was lacking something. One of the books that introduced me to what is called in the popular spiritual literature, the “dark night of the soul” was Martin Marty’s “The Cry of Absence, Reflections for the Winter of the Heart” in 1983. It was the first time I encountered the idea that God sometimes withdraws spiritual warmth from us and that, like in nature, the cold and dark winter is part of the natural cycle of spiritual growth.
Grasping that concept intellectually and working through it spiritually was a long, hard and dark time for sure, but now on the other side of that time, it’s seldom in the forefront of my thoughts. It is kind of like living with the dull aches and pains of doing construction for 26 years, its just part of the fabric of my existence now.

Looking back, I think it is ironic that even though I could quote scripture backward and forward at that time, I never grasped that this is a state of being others have experienced as lovers of God. Now, every Sunday morning I’m reminded of it in the Psalms of matins when I chant, “I have cried out to Thee O Lord, in the morning my prayer comes before Thee…, O Lord why doest Thou cast off my soul why doest Thou hide Thy face from me, I am afflicted and ready to die from from my youth up, I suffer thy terrors and I am overcome.” St. Paul says to the evildoers in Hebrews it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God but the Psalm reminds us of what God told Jeremiah: it is equally terrifying for the one who loves God to fall into the Potter’s hands. It is truly a terrifying thing to be skillfully broken and shaped by God’s omnipotent hands, to be left in the dark by the light, and to be abandoned by the omnipresent one. In all my Bible study, I always assumed I knew what the Potter would do to the clay and what shape He intended for my life, and even in all my fantasies about submitting to the wheel, I never imagined God would do that. The reality is, none of us can imagine what God is really doing, and I think, until someone personally goes through a spiritual winter, it isn’t something that makes any sense. Some of the Roman Catholic faithful were scandalized to find out that Mother Theresa confessed to have lived in spiritual darkness and the sense of being abandoned by God for most of her ministry even though many of the Catholic saints have written eloquently about this spiritual state. When I became Orthodox I found that this is not just a “western spirituality” thing as some believe. St. Silouan the Athonite and many other saints of the Church describe the state of godforsakenness, the sense of abandonment by God that they experienced. I believe it was St. Gregory of Nyssa summed up what all the saints who speak about this tell us: There comes a time when God removes the breast, we are weaned from spiritual experiences, and we must learn to love God Himself from a pure heart, not the experience of God from a darkened heart.

So, it is truth that there is a joy that can only be had from believing in God, but it’s also truth that there is a holy sorrow that comes only from believing in Him.

In the end all TRUE spiritual experience is about loving God and being loved by Him. The saints unanimously tell us that our experience of godforsakenness is ultimately an act of the love of God. But the problem is we often define for ourselves what we want love to look like and what it should feel like and it is more about feeling good than about true love. The Song of Solomon speaks of the bright hope and the dark despair of loving God. In chapters 3 and 5 The Song says

On my bed night after night I sought him whom my soul loves, I sought him but did not find him. I must arise now and go and search the city, in the streets and in the squares I must seek him whom my soul loves. I sought him but did not find him. I opened to my beloved but my beloved had turned away and gone. My heart went out to him as he spoke. I search for him but did not find him, I called to him but he did not answer me.

The Song about the experiences of the passion of human love is universally understood by Jewish and Christian saints to be a metaphor of our relationship to God, it is the story of the Divine Romance, about love that is stronger than death. It tells us that just as in human love, there is a dark side to divine love. But it tells us that the darkness is not an evil thing that is the end of love, but it is a true witness to the very presence of love. We all understand that there is a certain joy we have in the arms of our beloved, and this affirms within us the strength of our love. But we also know that there are times that the pit of desperation deep in the night at the absence of our beloved bears greater witness to the depths of the love we share than the joy we feel in one another’s presence. Whose heart has not gone out into the darkness, night after night, blessing the closeness and cursing the distance between us? If love were not present, absence would be painless. If the light of love were not shining in our heart, the empty marriage bed would not be a darkness too great to bear.

This is true of human love and it is true of divine love. Who is a lover of God who has not desperately longed for his presence? Who has a heart for God that has not gone out into the black night seeking his face, longing for his voice and hoping to find him also seeking us. Who has not at some time, night after night, curled up in bed, face buried in the pillows and sought Him out in sighs and curses and tears. Who has not opened to God and found that He was not there, that He had mysteriously turned away. Who has not called out to him and his silence was as deep as the stars. Who has not wondered when God will return, or if He hears or perhaps if He even cares that we are calling.

It is not enough to just know intellectually that we are loved by him. “God loves you” and Bible verses and promises of future joy ring hollow to the heart that is ravaged by despair at the absence of God. Have faith we are told…But faith is not enough. Faith may be the assurance of things hoped for and it may give us boldness and confidence before the throne of God, but it is love that is the holy joy in His presence, and it is love that is the all-consuming darkness we experience when He is not there. Faith may be the assurance and knowledge that He is still out there somewhere, but love is the pit in our stomach as we stare into the void where we once saw Him standing.

Only those who love God desperately can know the forsakenness of missing Him. To love God passionately is to suffer a holy longing for Him. When you face the nights with dread and seek His face through eyes clouded with tears you are not far from Him. He has not forsaken you, He has not abandoned you. And though your heart breaks with doubts and fears that you cannot name because of His absence, it is ultimately because of love that your heart is aflame with pain. The Song of Solomon and all the saints tell us this is the truest witness to love and the hardest to bear, but to have a great love is to suffer greatly for it. Even if it means going to a cross in hopes the beloved will some day return and see your face and weep for joy.

Visit his site here.

Thank you Steve.

God bless.

The New Name

(An adaptation of a work by George MacDonald)

To he that overcomes, I will give a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knows except he who receives it. Revelation 2:17

In the giving of the white stone with the new name in it, God communicates to the recipient His intimate thought about him. It is a Divine judgment, a solemn “holy doom” of a righteous man. It is God’s call of “Come, blessed one” spoken to the individual.

In order to understand this, we must first understand the idea of a name, that is, what is the perfect notion of a name. Since the mystical energy of a saintly mind is telling the story of God giving the gift of a name, we must understand that the essence of the thing is intended, not a sub definition or imitation.

In this world a name of the ordinary kind describes nothing of the true essence of the person to whom it is attached. It is only a label by which one person and a scrap of their history may be differentiated from another person and their life history. The true name is one that expresses the character, the nature, the being, and the meaning of the person who bears it. It is each person’s own symbol, his soul’s picture. In a word, the true name is the sign which belongs to each individual and to no one else.

Who can give a man this, his own true name? It can be none other than God alone. No one but God fully sees what each man is. No one but God could fully express in a “name-word” the sum and harmony of what He sees. To whom is this name given? To “he that overcomes”. When is it given? When he has overcome. Does God not know what a man is going to become? Yes, He knows as surely as he sees the oak that he put in the heart of the acorn. Why then does He wait until the man has become his true self by overcoming before he settles on what the man’s name shall be? He does not wait; He knows the name from the start. However, just as repentance comes to a man through God’s pardon, - yet the man becomes aware of the pardon only after he repents. So it is only when a man has become his name that God gives him the stone with the name upon it. It is only then that he can understand what the name signifies. It is the blossom, the perfection, and the completion of the man that determines the name; and God foresees that from the start, because He made it so. However, the tree of the soul, before it blossoms, cannot understand what type of blossom it will bear, just as the man, if shown his true name too soon, could not know what the word meant because the word represents an unarrived at completeness of self. The True Name cannot be given until the man is the name.

God’s name for a man must then be the expression in a mystical word of his own idea of the man. It is the very idea God had in his thoughts when he began to make the child, and that He kept in His thoughts through the long process of creation that went into the realization of the idea. To tell the man his name is to seal the success- to say, “In thee also, I am well pleased.”

We must however look deeper still for the fullness of the meaning of all this. We shall not look long before we find that the True Name is a mystic symbol which has for it’s central significance the reality of the personal and individual relationship of every man with his God. To him who offers to the God of the living, his own self as a sacrifice, to him that overcomes, to him who brought his life back to it’s source, to him who knows that he is one of God’s children, to him that is a person of the Father’s making, to him the Lord gives the white stone. To him who climbs on the stair of all his God-born efforts and God-given victories, up to the height of his being- which is to look face to face upon the image of his ideal self held in the heart of the Father, realized in him through the Father’s love – to him God gives the New Name (written on the white stone).

We leave this line of thought for now, because the following section embraces and intensifies the idea of the individuality of our relationship with God in a fuller development of truth. The name is one “which no man knows except he who receives it.” Not only does each man have an individual relationship with God, but also each man has a very particular relationship to God. He is to God a particular being, made after his own fashion and that of no one else; for when he is perfected he shall receive the new name which no one else can understand. Therefore, he can worship God as no other person can worship Him, can understand God as no other man can understand Him. This or that person may understand God more, may understand God better, but no other person can understand God as he understands Him.

I pray, God give me the grace to be humble before you, my brother and sister, that I not drag a false image of you before the judgment seat of an unjust judge, but look up to you for what revelation of God you and no one else can give.

As the fir tree lifts itself up with a far different need than the palm tree, so each person stands before God and lifts up a different humanity to the common Father. For each person God has a different response. With every man He has a secret- the secret of the new name. In every person there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of particular life into which only God can enter. It is not the innermost chamber, but a chamber into which no brother or sister can come.

From this it follows that there is a chamber in God Himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the particular person- out of which chamber that person is able to bring revelation and strength for his brethren. This is the purpose for which he was made – to reveal the secret things of the Father. By his creation then, each man is isolated with God. Each person, in respect of his particular identity, can say “my God” and can come to Him alone and speak with Him face to face, just like a man speaks with his friend. God does not lump men together. When He speaks of gathered men, it is as a spiritual body. For in a body every smallest portion is individual and therefore capable of forming a part of the body.

Each of us is a distinct flower or tree in the spiritual garden of God… precious, each for his own sake, in the eyes of He who is even now making us. Each of us is watered and shone upon and filled with life for the sake of his flower, His completed creation, which will blossom out of him at last, to the glory and pleasure of the great gardener. For each has within him a secret of the divinity; each is growing toward the revelation of that secret and so to the full reception, according to his measure, of the divine. Every moment that a person is dedicated to their true self, some new ray of light reflects off of the white stone and illuminates their (inward eye) mind, conscience and soul, some fresh channel is opened and made ready for the flowering of a soul, which is the conscious offering of the whole self, in all beauty, to the maker. In God’s sight each man has great worth. Human life and action, thought and intent are sacred. What a glorious end awaits us! To have an awareness of our True-self being flashed into us from the thought of God! Surely, to know what He thinks about us will dissolve any of our own opinions about ourselves. Thus, we should start holding our opinions loosely now, and be ready to let them go.

Some might say, “But is there not the worst of all dangers involved in such teaching – the danger of spiritual pride?” Are we to refuse the Holy Spirit for the fear of pride? Pride springs from supposed success when one has aimed high: with attainment itself comes humility. However, here there is no room for ambition. Ambition in the desire to be above ones neighbor: and here there is no possibility of compassion with one’s neighbor: no one knows what the white stone contains except the one who receives it. There is room for endless aspiration towards an unseen ideal: none for ambition. Ambition wants to be higher than others; aspiration just wants to be high. Relative worth is not only unknown, but to the children of the kingdom it is unknowable. Each mistakes others as being better than themselves. How can a summer rose compare itself to the snowdrop, who rises with hanging head from the snow? Both are God’s thoughts; both are dear to Him; both are needful to the completeness of His earth and his revelation of Himself. “God has cared to make me for himself” says the victor with the white stone, “And has called me. What does it matter whether I am called to be like the grass of the field, or an eagle of the air? A stone to build into His temple, or a great cloud to wield His thunder? I am His. His idea, His making; perfect in my kind, perfect in His sight; full of Him, revealing Him, alone with Him. Let Him call me what He will. The name shall be as precious as my life. I seek no more.”

All anxiety about what others think of us will be gone. It is enough that God thinks about us. To be something to God – is that not praise enough? To be a thing that God cares for and would like to have totally to himself because it is worth caring for – is that life not enough?

However, man will not be isolated from his fellow either. Each will feel the sacredness and awe of his neighbor’s dark and silent speech with his God. Each will regard the other as a prophet, and look to him for what the Lord has spoken. Each, as a high priest returning from his Holy of Holies, will bring from his communion some glad tidings, some gospel of truth, which, when spoken his neighbors shall receive and understand. Each will behold in the other a marvel of revelation, a present son or daughter of the most high, who has come forth to reveal him afresh. In God we each will come closer to each other.

* Lord help us. Make our being grow into your likeness. Despite times of strife and times of growth, let us at last see your face and receive the white stone from your hand. So we may grow, give us each day our daily bread. Fill us with the words that proceed out of your mouth. Help us to lay up treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust shall corrupt. Amen

Pet Rock

I was recently introduced to Moses' pet rock by a friend. Reference 1 Corinthians 10:3-4.
This LOLcat pic reminded me of it. Yeah, I have a strange sense of humor.