Consider which of the ways...

Consider which of the ways to happiness offered by society are truly fulfilling and which are potentially corrupting and destructive. Be discriminating when choosing means of entertainment and information. Resist the desire to acquire possessions or income through unethical investment, speculation or games of chance.

Quaker Faith & Practice 1. Advices and Queries:39

We find ourselves living in a society which seems to place more value on “means of entertainment and information” than any other. Actually it has probably always been so, from the taverns of ancient Rome, through the gossip and broadsheets of the 18th century, to the newsreels and gossip columns of the 1950s and 60s.

For years, now, I have had an instinctive aversion to some streams of “entertainment and information”, fictional as well as factual. I don’t mean a narrow-minded disapproval here, so much as a genuine and at times extreme discomfort with things as various as Eastenders, most television news programmes, crime documentaries, contests, reality shows, and so on.

Trying to work out what was going on, especially in company when not joining in with these things could seem eccentric or priggish, I gradually came to realise that what I was so averse to was having my emotions manipulated by outside forces, whether authorial, editorial or societal. If I am confronted with genuine pain or distress, then by God’s grace I shall have a genuine emotional response, which can lead to a genuine and perhaps useful action on my part - but there is not usually any useful response possible to the distress of someone publicly embarrassed on a singing contest.

Part of this is probably due to what is sometimes pejoratively called hypersensitivity; part to the result of long prayer, which tends to peel away the hardened layers from the heart. Part is due no doubt to a simple instinct for self-preservation. It is terribly easy - and in this the Internet is complicit! - to open oneself to things that, while not obviously wrong or corrupt, readily damage the membranes of the soul; if I would avoid inhaling chlorine, shouldn’t I try and avoid them?

Isaac of Nineveh wrote:

Let yourself be persecuted, but do not persecute others.
Be crucified, but do not crucify others.
Be slandered, but do not slander others.
Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep: such is the sign of purity.
Suffer with the sick.
Be afflicted with sinners.
Exult with those who repent.
Be the friend of all, but in your spirit remain alone.
Be a partaker of the sufferings of all, but keep your body distant from all.
Rebuke no one, revile no one, not even those who live very wickedly.
Spread your cloak over those who fall into sin, each and every one, and shield them.
And if you cannot take the fault on yourself and accept punishment in their place,
do not destroy their character.

A Bright Sadness…

I’ve been reading Irma Zaleski’s just-published book Living the Jesus Prayer, which I would encourage anyone interested in this way of praying to read.

She says (pp.44-45):

The Jesus Prayer, because it is a path of reality, is a way of learning and accepting the tremendous truth, too often forgotten, that “only God is good.” (Matthew 19:17) We cannot be good, because we do not really know what good is. We can never comprehend the nature of God’s infinite goodness and love. We cannot be, strictly speaking, like God. No effort of our own can make us so…

I think it is true to say that as we walk the way of prayer, as we become more open to God, as we grow closer to him, we become more and more aware of how great an abyss separates us from God…

This longing, this sense of separation from God, is the heart of all true repentance. It is often a source of sadness for us, at times even of tears, that we seem to be so far away from what we have been called to be, so disappointing to ourselves and God. The Fathers often called it “bright sadness,” and considered it a great gift to receive, for it brings us always before the face of God. It teaches us the meaning of mercy and fills us with joy.

These word’s of Zaleski’s say what I have been wanting so much to say here, and have been quite unable to describe in my own words.

These last few weeks have been a strangely painful time, and yet good also. Irma Zaleski says, in the previous chapter:

The way of the Jesus prayer has been called “white martyrdom.” It is the way of the Cross, because there is no greater pain than to stand in the total poverty of our human weakness,to see clearly our misery, our inability to be good. The temptation to judge ourselves, to hate ourselves, would be irresistible if we did not know and had not experienced the merciful, healing power of Jesus.

I think that what has happened has been that this year, with the pilgrimages both to Walsingham and to Medjugorje, I have come so close to the presence of God that I have really not been able to bear the sight of myself in that mirror of glory. It has taken a long while, and much—though perhaps not enough—prayer to come to the point where I can write these words.

God knows where we go from here. I do know that the call (back) to the Jesus Prayer has been growing stronger and stronger since our return from Medjugorje. (The arrival of Living the Jesus Prayer in the post from Amazon, where I had pre-ordered it months ago and then forgotten all about, was one of those striking “coincidences” that God loves so much.)

I will try to be less sporadic in documenting this odd journey, in case it might help anyone reading this blog. It’s often hard, as I said above, to find words for this kind of thing; perhaps Irma Zaleski has given me a lever to crack the door of speechlessness a little ajar…