Reeds

Abba Arsenius on one occasion went to the brethren in a certain place where there were some reeds growing, and the wind blew upon them, and they were shaken. And the old man said, "What is this rustling sound?" and they said unto him, "It is that caused by the reeds which are being shaken by the wind." And he said unto them, "Verily I say unto you, if the man who dwelleth in silence heareth but the twittering of a sparrow, he shall not be able to acquire that repose in his heart which he seeketh; how much less then can ye do so with all this rustling of the reeds about you?"

from The Sayings of the Holy Fathers in The Paradise or Garden of the Holy Fathers vol. II translated by E.A. Wallis Budge.

At that time,
all those centuries ago,
long before cellphones,
social media,
blogs and Substacks,
when even books were relatively scarce,
then,
just as now,
men's attention was easily drawn away.

Yet many will be surprised by the insistence of the Sayings on what seem to be incredible feats of physical endurance. Are these at the centre of a spiritual life? Why not tell us more about the secret, inner life of these men and women? Because the life of the Spirit cannot be conveyed, except in images and analogies which are deceptive: those who know do not need them, and those who do not know are only led by them to partake imaginatively, but not really, in a world which to many is still out of reach. Many can live either by the Word of God or by deriving his precarious existence from the earth, which ultimately will claim back what is its own; the more one is rooted in God, the less one depends on the transitory gifts of the earth. To describe to what degree the dwellers of the Desert were free from our usual necessities is the only way we possess to convey both how perfectly rooted they were in the life-giving realm of God, and also how different the world of the Spirit is from what we imagine it to be when we confuse the highest achievements of the psyche with the life which God the Holy Spirit pours into the soul and body of the faithful; 'among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist, yet he who is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he’.

Anthony of Sourozh (Bloom) from the preface to Benedicta Ward’s translation of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers

I wish you a blessed Lent.