Desert Mamas

Pastor, I know you are busy...

About every fourth or fifth email I receive and about half of every phone conversation I have, I hear something like, “I know you are busy, but…” I cannot speak for every pastor but I believe that this modified story from the spirituality of the desert story might speak for many clergy - including myself:

There was a student who went to a teacher and asked for a word. The teacher shared a word with the student who went back home. The next day the student forgot what the teacher had said, so the student returned to the teacher.

“I am sorry teacher, but I have forgotten what you said yesterday. Can you share a word with me?”

The teacher spent a little more time with the student this second time, and then the student went back home.

A week later, the student returned and said, “Teacher, I am so sorry to bother you and I have asked now two times, but I have forgotten and would you share a word?”

The teacher sat all day with the student before the student returned home.

After two weeks, the student returned to the teacher. The student felt ashamed and was embarrassed to ask the teacher, yet one more time, “I know you are busy, and I know that I have taken a lot of your time already, but I have forgotten what you said. Could you remind me again?”

At this point the teacher took the table lamp that was to his right and asked the student to pass him a candle that was on the entry table. The teacher lit the candle, handed it to the student, and asked the student for a second candle from the entry table. The teacher lit the second candle, handed it to the student who was asked to retrieve a third and then a fourth candle.

The teacher lifted the lamp up and looed at the student who was now holding four lit candles. The teacher said, “Is the lamp diminished because it gave some of its light to the four candles?”

The student understood and said, “No.”

Never again did the student hesitate to visit the teacher and both of their homes became full of light.

Tears: Helping Us See Clearly

Like a lot of men, I have very little experience with personal tears. I bet that I have such limited experience with tears that I can name 90% of the times I have had tears (not as the result of being kicked in the groin or allergies):

  1. I “sports cried” when I watch Dirk hold up the 2011 NBA championship. Yes, I joined the rest of the human race in tearing up watching the opening sequence in “Up”.

  2. I was caught off guard when tears came over me when I was talking about the beauty and brokenness of the UMC after returning from General Conference 2016.

  3. When I was appointed to a new church and had to say goodbye to a dear friend, I was grateful that she was shorter than I was so she could not see me ugly cry when we hugged for one of the last times.

  4. Seeing my children for the first time was a big tear moment. So was waiting at the end of the center isle when those doors flung open and there stood the one person who I was about to make covenantal vows with. Then there was those two times where I sat in a parking lot and heard a song that made my eyes so red that I drove around the block just to try to minimize my eyes puffiness.

  5. I suppose there where those three Easter sermons over the years where I was so moved by the story of light and hope and resurrection accompanied by images of love and delight that were also very tearful.

That is it.

There are many stories of ancient desert Christians (called the Abbas and Ammas) that feature tears or weeping. Often in these stories, tears and weeping come with of some understanding of sin or awareness of truth or revelation of love. In fact, it might be argued that tears did not come as a result of new awareness but the new awareness was the result of tears.

Meaning, it was the tears that helped the ancient one see more clearly than they had before.

We are told that tears in our eyes cloud our vision, however, that is not always true. Many times tears allow us to see more clearly by washing out what was clouding our vision to begin with. Tears are not the product of, but the initiation to new sight.

Maybe this is why so many of us (and I am talking to myself here) are blind. We have little experience with tears to wash out our blind spots and ignorance.

The Good Little Giants “Birdsong” has a stanza that goes:

Sometimes a grown man cries
To grieve the years he spent believing lies
He sees more clearly now through tears in his eyes
Maybe sometimes, baby, sometimes

And so, may we be blessed with tears.

Can We Learn From the Secularist?

One of the great things I appreciate about the desert spirituality of the late antiquity period of Christianity is the deep humility of the Ammas/Abbas. They were sought out for their wisdom but several stories of these wise teachers show that it is they who are the ones in need of learning. Here is among one of my favorites taken from Tim Vivian’s book “Becoming Fire”:

A person of devout life who was not a monk came to see Abba Poemen. Now it happened that there were other brothers with the old man, asking to hear a word from him. The old man said to the faithful secular, ‘Say a word to the brothers’.

When he insisted, the secular said, ‘Please excuse me, abba; I myself have come to learn.”

But he was urged on by the old man and so he said, ‘I am a secular. I sell vegetables and do business; I take bundles to pieces and make smaller ones; I buy cheap and sell dear. What is more, I do not know how to speak of the Scriptures, so I will tell you a parable: A man said to his friends, “I want to go to see the emperor; come with me”. One friend said to him, “I will go with you half the way”. Then the man said to another friend, Come and go with me to the emperor”. and the friend said to him, “I will take you as far as the emperor’s palace”. The man said to a third friend, “Come with me to the emperor”. The friend said, “I will come and take you to the palace and I will stay and speak and help you have access to the emperor”’.

The brothers asked what the point of the parable was.

The secular answered them, ‘The first friend is asceticism, which leads the way; the second is chastity, which take us to heaven; the third is alms-giving, which with confidence presents us to God our King’.

The bothers withdrew, edified.

Here is Abba Poemen divesting his privilege so another, presumably one who is seen as less than the Abba, can teach. The divestment of power by Poemen is not just humble but a humility that is inspired by the Christ.

The fancy Greek word is kenosis. It means to self-empty. It is what God does in Christ by becoming human. It is what Christ does on the cross by dying. It is was the Holy Spirit does by dispersing to all people. It is what the Church is supposed to be doing when it comes to our position of power by being quite so that others can be heard.

Divestment is not something that people in power are too keen on. I know that I struggle with it. However, divestment of power is the way of leadership that is most needed today. Divestment of power, the self-emptying and kenosis of Christ is what we are called to do but we in power resist it. We are threatened by it. We presume that our ways are not only the best ways but THE WAY. We think that it is we who should be heard because we have the education and people come to us, but until we in power learn that kenosis is our call we only contribute to the cycle of violence and blame.

Poemen divested his power in this position and protected the secular one (the stranger and foreigner). Poemen made the audacious claim that the scandalous one has something to teach, has something of value. Poemen modeled to the brothers what Arsenius said that he can know “Latin and Greek, but I (we) do not know even the alphabet of the peasant (the other).”

Many Church leaders tend to think that being in but not of this world means that the culture has nothing to teach or offer the Church. That the Church should in fact learn nothing but be the teachers of culture. It is assumed that if the culture teaches or values something that is contrary to the Church then it is the culture that is wrong.

And yet, Poemen and Arsenius thought it was good to learn from the culture and peasant. Almost as though the culture and peasant have something that is closer to the heart of Christ than the Church does.

What can we learn from the secularist?

Learning From Observation Over Conversation

The Lives of the Desert Fathers by Norman Russell opens with this little story expressing why people would seek out holy men and women in the deserts of Egypt in order to learn from them:

We have come from Jerusalem for the good of our souls, so that what we have heard with our ears we may perceive with our eyes - for the ears are naturally less reliable than the eyes - and because very often forgetfulness follows what we hear, whereas the memory of what we have seen is not easily erased but remains imprinted on our minds like a picture.

Russell adds, that these pilgrims desired to learn from conversation with these desert sages, but more so pilgrims desired to learn from observation.

It is not deeply profound to be reminded that actions speak louder than words. It is not new that we best learn from doing rather than listening. And yet we continue in the Church to lean very heavily on the spoken word to teach others.

Preachers are important, but not in the ways that preachers think we are. Preachers are important not just for the words they say (the conversation) but through the lives we live. People listen to preachers who live lives that are compelling, interesting, different and authentic. For all the sermon classes and preaching tips I have taken, I have yet to be in such a training that elevates the life of the preacher over the words of the preacher.

That is, we preachers still elevate conversation over observation.

The truth is that conversation is easier than observation. Teaching by conversation does not require one to be open to the Spirit of resurrection. Teaching by observation does.

So take a look at the Church we serve. Many people are learning from us not by what we say in sermons or doctrine, but by observing our lives. Maybe God was onto something when it was proclaimed that God desires mercy and not sacrifice (Hosea 6:6, also echoed by Jesus in Matthew a few times). God desires mercy and compassion over the dogmatic and orthodox sacrifices that our religion demands.

Oddly enough, one does not have to know anything about religious practices to be merciful but you need to know a lot of religion to practice the proper sacrifices.

Learning through conversation is good. Observation is better.