Egyptian darkness

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    When pray­ing with peo­ple, we some­times have to pierce through with our prayer as if it were the hard­est wall — human souls, hard­ened and pet­ri­fied by earthly pas­sions — to pen­e­trate the Egypt­ian dark­ness, the dark­ness of pas­sions and worldly attach­ments. This is why it is some­times dif­fi­cult to pray. The sim­pler the peo­ple one prays with, the eas­ier it is.

    – St. John of Kro­n­stadt, “My Life in Christ”

    I couldn’t help won­der­ing as I thought about this hon­est reflec­tion of a godly man, how would it be for him if he was pray­ing with me? Sens­ing innately my soul’s con­di­tion (as I imag­ine all priests begin to do in time), would he feel as if he were try­ing to break down a wall? And what are the things that fight and fes­ter in my own “Egypt­ian darkness”?Lent is com­ing again. Am I ready to wade in, ready for the stench and all the rest of what comes when you take on your pas­sions, how­ever weakly?

    And besides all those ques­tions — for which I may never have sat­is­fac­tory answers (if I could even stand to know them) — there’s the mat­ter of how to respond to the dark­ness. The sec­u­lar world’s answer is to dis­be­lieve in it, learn to idol­ize your­self and eat, drink and be merry. Most of the Amer­i­can Chris­t­ian world seems to think the answer is to deny it, slap on a smi­ley face and sing some praise songs so that no one will think you’re a bad Christian.

    Only from Ortho­doxy, I think, do we get some­thing like Mpn. Philip’s answer in “Out of the Depths Have I Cried**” (empha­sis mine):

    … we want merely to relate to and make con­tact with our depths, so that we may see dis­closed through them the emerg­ing Divine Light. … The task is dif­fi­cult, to be sure. More than that, it is fear­ful; “It is a fear­ful thing to fall into the hands of the liv­ing God.” (Heb. 10:31)

    And yet we must! Saint John Chrysos­tom meant this when he said, “Find the door to the inner cham­ber of your soul, and you will dis­cover the door to the King­dom of Heaven.” And again, Saint Ephraim the Syr­ian knew that God placed in man at cre­ation “all the King­dom” for which he must dig deeply. Such men know this sim­ple truth; the way “upward” is the way “inward.”

    egyptiandark_2.jpgWe explore, then, the part that we can play in dis­cov­er­ing just what it is that flows from these depths, reveal­ing to us God’s pres­ence in whose image we are formed. It is, after all, from this deep­est level of our self, that we can also exclaim, “Out of the depths have I cried.”

    A lot to think about. Many ques­tions, and few answers. But as I’ve got­ten older, I’ve come to see the value in that, if it’s all I’m capa­ble of. The right ques­tions are worth a lot more than the wrong answers. Make sense? Maybe not. Still feels like the truth, though.


    Related posts:

    1. Feel the truth
    2. The cult of pundits
    3. Other quotes
    4. Keep­ing offenses in perspective
    5. The “Russ­ian Priest”: on pride — Part II

    January 28th, 2010 | Grace | 2 Comments |

2 Responses and Counting...

  • Ali 01.28.2010

    I love this post, and boy can I relate. This sen­tence par­tic­u­larly res­onated with me: “Most of the Amer­i­can Chris­t­ian world seems to think the answer is to deny it, slap on a smi­ley face and sing some praise songs so that no one will think you’re a bad Chris­t­ian.” When I look at most of the Amer­i­can Chris­t­ian world–especially in blog land–I won­der why I still strug­gle with so many issues. It is a com­fort to me to know that there are hon­est and true Chris­tians who admit that they still strug­gle and who don’t slap a smile on their faces all the time.

    If the world were only filled with those smil­ing Chris­tians, I would be dis­traught and think some­thing was wrong with me. Because, truly, I have turned to Christ in times of dis­tress and despair, and my life is not perfect.

    Thank you for you hon­esty with this post.

  • Grace

    You’re very wel­come. :-)

    I can remem­ber like it was yes­ter­day when I was a born-again Chris­t­ian (no, really!) in ’78, try­ing — really TRYING — to just make it all work out the way they said. When I went to work for a tel­e­van­ge­list, I saw many women who it seemed to me were scream­ing inside, but they were just smil­ing and singing for all they were worth. It broke my heart. I thank God I found out the Ortho­dox Church before I apo­s­ta­tized altogether.

    I’ve always under­stood, how­ever, that I didn’t delve very deep into what­ever Prot the­ol­ogy was out there (in ’78, prob­a­bly there wasn’t much). Never made it past the bumper sticker slo­gans, so it might have just been me.

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