Saturday after Ash Wednesday

Once again, as promised and as part of my Lenten discipline, I'm posting a small portion of my life's story that I hope to publish later this year. Here's an excerpt from the Introduction:

When I began working on An Emptyful Chair, my expectations as to what might be accomplished were quite modest. They still are. Having kept books of jottings, journal entries, scattered notes, photographs, and assorted papers in any number of boxes, file drawers, and notebooks, I assumed I could piece things together in some kind of narrative, a wee memoire of sorts. Little did I know how difficult that would be. To help gather up memories and recollect things, I’ve spent hours and sometimes days fingering my way though old scribblings, notes, and diary entries that I hoped would provide some groundings and assistance. Scattered piles of calendars, old archived manuscripts, newspaper clippings, photographs, and coffee-stained scratchings have more than once seemed too disorganized to manage. Much was thrown into the waste can. Some saved.

My awareness of the difficulties eventually became acute when I read what Wendell Berry, Kentucky’s poet laureate, said as he described the shocking truth about what we think we remember as we look back on our lives:

We know almost nothing of our history as it was actually lived. We know little of the lives even of our parents. We have forgotten almost everything that has happened to ourselves. The easy assumption that we have remembered the most important people and events and have preserved the most valuable evidence is immediately trumped by our inability to know what we have forgotten. The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays (Berkely, CA: Counterpoint, 2005), 54.

Well ware that Berry describes my own not-knowings, I can only promise to you that I’ve now scratched out and gathered up things as best I can despite dis-rememberings extensive as they may be.

Friday after Ash Wednesday: Something from Chapter 1

As promised and part of my Lenten discipline, here's one more excerpt from the book I'm writing for my children. This little piece is from Chapter 1:

On the second floor of our house, the parsonage, in York, Pennsylvania, were the bedrooms where in one of them all three of us boys slept in one bed. I remember one episode that to this day gives me a mild sense of memorable terror. It happened a few days before Christmas during the last year of World War II. It was dark outside, and we boys had been put to bed. Apparently, Gordon, Art (or “Butch” as we knew him for years) and I were misbehaving in bed, making a lot of unnecessary noise instead of falling quietly off to sleep. To the left of the bed, the room’s single window opened up to a long second-story porch leading to a door in my parents’ bedroom. As we were cutting up and jumping around, we heard a tap on the window. The blind being down, I slipped off the bed, raised the blind, and stood in abject horror as Santa Claus stood in full red and white regalia, his beard flapping, waving his righteous and angry finger at me, his eyes piercing mine with a look of disgust. I screamed. All of screamed as we rushed out the bedroom, raising one hell of a bellow, rushing down the hall yelling for mom! From the inside of her bedroom, she told us to wait; it would a minute or two before she could appear. After what seemed like far too many minutes, dressed in her nightgown, she came out, innocently wondering what was the matter. We told her about the apocalyptic vision. It was then that she explained that bad little boys sometimes are visited by Santa Claus, and that we’d better learn to be better if we expected anything for Christmas. Lesson learned. Mom walked us back to our bedroom, we climbed back into bed, pulled up the covers, and were good and mostly silent for days. It was years later that mom explained the incident. Dressing from the waist up in the parish’s Santa Claus party costume, she was herself the finger-wagging apparition who scared the hell out of us.

Who would have thought that the lovely lady on the sofa could wag such a scary finger behind a white beard?  

The Fourth Commandment (as Lutherans count them) tells us that we should honor our mothers and fathers.  With this posting I wish to honor my mother whose imaginative discipline that Advent night long ago taught me a lesson. And hopefully helped me develop something of a conscience.

On Thursday after Ash Wednesday: A preview of my soon-to -be published book

As I promised yesterday on Ash Wednesday, here's a wee bit from the book I'm writing for my children. It's an excerpt from Chapter 1 that lets you in on the wonder of my baptism as a baby:

Ever since I can remember, I've always thought, “I have always been a Christian” ever since God took me by holy baptism into his family, the Church, the Body of Christ. O yes, I had to learn how to live as a Christian, what sort of manners we Christians observe, how we love one another and other people, how we worship our adopting Father, Son, and Spirit, but all of that came “naturally” and spiritually as the Holy Spirit of God led me on my journey and cultivated my growing faith and trust in the mercy of God. My wonderful mother, dad, and and an obstetrician, gave me a first birth on October 21, 1937, in Pennsylvania's Harrisburg Polyclinic Hospital. And then a forty days later I was adopted by God into his family and presented to the Body of Christ, the Church. God took me into his trifold Name, lifted me to the cross of Christ and, as St. Paul says, “immersed me into the death and resurrection of Christ” (Romans 6). How wonderful always to know that. Like any child adopted into a good family, I was delighted at being a Christian. I learned to pray, clean my room, read Scriptures, do my homework, ride a bike, manage a newspaper route in the sixth grade, and let Jesus meet me Sunday after Sunday in Holy Communion. I learned what forgiveness, grace, and mercy is all about--beginning in infancy.

What a life God has given me! I wouldn’t have it any other way. Thank you, mom and dad, for bringing me to the baptismal font. Thank you, Church, for welcoming me into your blessed family. And thank You, Most Holy Trinity, for baptizing me into your Name, the best name I ever got and will always have: Christian.

In the picture below my mother, Helen, holds me in her arms as she gets us ready to let God hold me in his arms at Holy Baptism.

My Lenten Discipline

It’s been quite a while since I’vd posted anything here, and you deserve the following explanation.  Since January 5 I’ve been pouring myself into writing a book for my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Tentatively titled An Emptyful Chair: GrandDad’s Contemplative Path to God, the book has been in the making for well over twenty years. It’s my prayer that I may at last complete the manuscript sometime during this Lent, hopefully before Easter so that I can send it off to a publisher. This means that my Lenten discipline will now involve lots of writing, editing, and proofreading.

But writing is not a stand-alone discipline.  Co-joined at the pen’s dib and at the ink well, there will need to be a good bit of daily solitude, good sleep at night, letter writing and lots of phone calls for fact checking.

I hope to include lots of photographs, several in each chapter.  Here’s one for Chapter 2, a boyhood pix of my brothers Arthur and Gordon with me wearing a cap:

You can help me.  I ask that you pray for me so that each morning, during the quietest time of day, when I pour myself a cup of coffee and settle into the crafting of sentences, paragraphs, pages, and chapters, I have your spiritual support.  Much has already been written, but so much more needs rewriting, lots of special attention given to style, and a generous impulse to delete all that is self-serving, innocuous, and banal.  As things progress, I’ll do my best to share some of my scriblings and sentences, giving you some idea as what the book may look like. Pray that the Spirit of God will be my dear muse as together—you, the blessed and Holy Trinity, and me—can do some creative composing for my children and whomever else may wish to read what Granddad writes about the contemplative life.

As many of you know, my daughter Chelsea was killed in an auto accident early in the morning on New Year's Day. The shock was horrific, and we still do not know the details as to what happened. Along with her wonderful mother Paula, I'm only now coming fully to experience what the loss of my daughter's lovely presence will mean for me and all her big family and many friends. Please pray for all of us who love her. Chelsea's memorial service at St. Mark Catholic Church in Richmond, KY, was beautiful, attended by hundreds who knew and loved Chelsea. Please be assured that Chelsea, as throughout her life and even in her death, is now deep within the heart of God who holds her to his arms. As always God is loving her. All the many heartfelt hugs and expressions of sympathy helped heal the hurt and ease the pain we are experiencing. To all who have written and sent cards and letters, from the bottom of our hearts we say, "Thank you." As the new year unfolds, we hope you will stay in touch with us. We will long need your support and love.

Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God.

Today June and I spent most of the morning and a good part of the afternoon at the Harry P. Leu Gardens in Orlando, FL. It's a fifty-acre botanical oasis just minutes from downtown Orlando. Inasmuch the entrance fee into the garden is waived on the first Monday of each month, the paths and by-ways into speciality nooks of lovely garden enclosures were filled with families, especially mothers and their children, visiting the rose, butterfly, herb, palm, cycads, bamboo, vegetable, wildflower, and bog gardens, among many others. As I wended my way along the many paths and detours, I could help but be overwhelmed with the fragrance of plants and flowers. St. Paul must have experienced much of the same sensation when he wrote to remind us that we are "a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God" (II Cor. 2.155).. Vigen Gurion in The Fragrance of God says that "with the proper discipline even our earthly senses may assist us in the journey to God." When we allow our five senses to complement our faith, God comes ever nearer to us as he uses the visual beauty of flowers, the taste of honey, the sound of breezes blowing through fields and woods, our touch of petals and leaves, and the smell of honeysuckle to remind of us God's pervasive presence. So when I get a chance--as I encourage you to do--I stick my nose into a lilac bush or to sit under a tea-olive tree, and whisper to myself, "Smell the presence of God." It's like the incense about which the Psalmist wrote when he said, "Let my prayers rise before you as incense, the lifting of my hands as the evening sacrifice."

How thoughts tempt us, how they lead to sinning, and what we can do with them

How thoughts tempt us has  long been a study of contemplatives.  With constant vigilance and unceasing prayer, the Desert Mothers and Fathers sought above all to free themselves from the ascendancy of harmful thoughts or the logismoi, that is, the "passions," as they called them.  The practice of such vigilance allowed them to recognize evil before being tempted to commit it. Here's how fifth-century St. Hesychios the Priest describes the progress of a thought (which at first may be neither good or bad) so that it eventually it  becomes a serious moral problem:


The provocation comes first, then our coupling with it, or the mingling of our thoughts with those of the wicked demons. Third comes our assent to the provocation, with both sets of intermingling thoughts contriving how to commit the sin in practice. Fourth comes the concrete action – that is, the sin itself. If, however, the intellect is attentive and watchful, and at once re-pulses the provocation by counter-attacking and gainsaying it and invoking the Lord Jesus, its consequences remain inoperative; for the devil, being a bodiless intellect, can deceive our souls only by means of fantasies and thoughts. (The Philokalia, Vol. I, 170)

Straightforward as it is, Hesychios' description needs very little commentary.  He begins by reminding us that temptation comes to us through our thoughts, their attachment to our imagination, and subsequent development:

Just as it is impossible for fire and water to pass through the same opine together, so it is impossible for sin to enter the heart without first knocking at its door in the form of a fantasy provided by the devil.

Knowing this, we must be ever on guard for the first sign and provocation to sin and ceaselessly invoke the Lord through the Jesus Prayer. If we give ourselves over to the provocation, then comes our "coupling with it, or the mingling of our thoughts with those of the wicked demons."  Third, comes our assent to the provocation, with both sets of intermingling thought contriving how to commit the sin in practice. Fourth comes the concrete actions--that is, the sin itself.  Once the provocation is engaged, that is, once the serpent get his head in the doors, the battle is almost assuredly lost and the unholy minting of our own thoughts with those of the demons draws us quickly down the path to full consent.

St. Hesychios the Priest provides numerous insights as to how we may effectively “watch” our thoughts.  Among his suggestions are the following two which are especially helpful.  First, do some “thought watching” at dawn. In other words, get up a bit early and quietly, before you do your Centering Prayer, allow yourself to see what you are thinking. That practice, begun at dawn, can then be carried on periodically during the day.  One stops and looks as his or thinking and thereby get to know something true about one’s self.  Second, St. Hesychios recommends that we couple our watchfulness with fasting.  Strongly encouraged by Jesus himself, fasting (perhaps by not eating till satiation, but being just a bit hungry after eating) is to accompany prayer (see Matthew 6.5-18); the two complement each other.  

In his recently published Mountain of Silence, Kyriakos Markides' tells us how Father Maximos of Mount Athos describes five stages of logismoi as detailed in the teachings of the Fathers of the Church:

• Assault - the logismoi first attacks a person's mind

• Interaction - a person opens up a dialogue with the logismoi

• Consent - a person consents to do what the logismoi urges him to do

• Defeat - a person becomes hostage to the logismoi and finds it more difficult to resist

• Passion or Obsession - the logismoi becomes an entrenched reality within the nous of a person

Father Maximos carefully explains that no sin is committed until the third stage of Consent, though he warns that if a person is of weak temperment, they are unlikely to be able to resist the logismoi at this Interaction stage.  Father Maximos also teaches that the best way to combat logismoi is to be indifferent, to ignore them. He suggests that a person should pray to combat logismoi, but only when not overcome by fear.

The provocation comes first, then our coupling with it, or the mingling of our thoughts with those of the wicked demons. Third comes our assent tothe provocation, with both sets of intermingling thoughts contriving how tocommit the sin in practice. Fourth comes the concrete action – that is, thesin itself. If, however, the intellect is attentive and watchful, and at once re-