"Born around 251, Anthony was the son of Egyptian peasants" says Henri Nouwen in his book, The Way of the Heart. Saint Anthony became the first monk of a group called the Desert Fathers. Anthony was called a hermit as he spent years in the desert alone with God and the demons who preyed upon him. (As protrayed by Grunewald on the Isenheim Altarpiece.) But, after he emerged from that time of solitude in the desert, Saint Anthony became someone people flocked to "for healing, comfort, and direction" until in his old age he chose to return to the desert to experience his last earthly days "absorbed in direct communion with God" alone.
Thomas Merton, in Wisdom of the Desert, says "Society...was regarded [by the Desert Fathers] as a shipwreck from which each single individual man had to swim for his life...These were men who believed that to let oneself drift along, passively accepting the tenets and values of what they knew as society, was purely and simply a disaster."
Though monkish living is considered eccentric at best, and is often deemed psychologically unhealthy and even down-right unChristian by the more socially-shaped of our kin, still I find much wisdom in their assessment of society, though we live in a Society almost 1800 years their junior. One difference I notice, though. Those who recognize a shipwreck underway are exercising their right to free speech. They are commenting loudly on the shipwreck of society. Maybe pre-Dark Age society didn't have permission or opportunity to such prophecies to be heard. Maybe they were further along in the act of sinking and had traded talking for diving in and swimming for shore. But for right now in THIS society, the doom seems to be centered in the fact that many are flocking to opposite ends of the boat, finding gaping holes in both places, but only "believing" in the potential harm of the hole they can see. And, they only shout all the louder as voices at the opposite end of the boat become more compelling about the disasters found there. As action is taken to "fix" the boat on the opposite end, these ones scream, "No, the problem is here!" Soon everyone begins to believe the problem is with the people at the other end of the boat drawing attention away from this hole, the one they can see in their own end.
When we reach that place, I believe we are at the moment when judgment becomes our enemy instead of our guide.
What did these desert fathers learn about judgment from their own leap to survival, taking their chances in the icy waters when their sinking ship proved hopeless? They apparently attributed to Solitude with God two profoundly wise lessons.
The first is this: Solitude gives birth to compassion. "If you would ask the Desert Fathers why solitude gives birth to compassion, they would say, 'Because it makes us die to our neighbor.' " Henri Nouwen explains this enigmatic answer: "At first this answer seems quite disturbing to a modern mind. But when we give it a closer look we can see that in order to be of service to others we have to die to them; that is, we have to give up measuring our meaning and value with the yardstick of others. To die to our neighbors means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus to become free to be compassionate."
The second is this: Solitude gives birth to the humble self-awareness that is necessary for our forgiveness to be effective in the lives of those we forgive. Nouwen again comments: "The following desert story offers a good illustration: 'A brother...committed a fault. A council was called to which Abba Moses [a Desert Father] was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to say to him "Come, for everyone is waiting for you." So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water, and carried it with him. The others came out to meet him and said to him, "What is this, Father?" The old man said to them, "My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the error of another." When they heard that they said no more to the brother but forgave him." Nouwen took this quote from a book called The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. I see in it a person walking as nearly as one can to the story of Christ and the adulteress while yet remaining appropriately distinct from Christ.
So this is my prayer:
Dear God,
May I carry that jug, and may I feel that water sloshing down the back of my leg any time I step out to pass judgment passionately but unwisely. Otherwise, my words are at best brass and cymbals making annoying and distracting noise; my words are at best an aid to deciding which end of the boat will bottom up first while doing nothing to help the boat as a whole.
May it be the mud between my toes that helps me know to stoop and wash my brother's feet...
Amen.
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