GOOD FRIDAY 25th March 2106
THIRD ADDRESS : Your cell will teach you everything 12.30
We don’t have too many details of how the monks lived in the desert, some lived in caves, some in ancient tombs, some is specially constructed small dwellings. Some would have been far away from other monks, living in solitude, some would have been living in groups. Their dwelling places were called ‘cells’ and that is still the word used today in large monasteries or convents where a monk or nun will have their own special room within a much larger building.
One of the most memorable of all the sayings of the Desert Fathers again concerns Abba Moses; ‘ In Scetis, a brother went to see Abba Moses and begged for a word. And the old man said: “ Go and sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.” ‘
Maybe the nearest I have come to understanding that saying is in the story of a Buddhist monk still alive. Ajahn Sumedho, an American who trained to be a monk in Thailand. Ajahn Sumedho wrote this:
‘ I remember one experience I had in my first year of meditation In Thailand. I spent most of that first year by myself in a little hut and the first few months were really terrible – all kinds of things kept coming up in my mind – obsessions and fears and terror and hatred...I’d never thought of myself as one who hated people but during those first few months of meditation it seemed like I hated everybody … (Then one morning) when I awoke from sleep and looked around, I felt that everything I saw was beautiful. Everything, even the most unbeautiful detail was beautiful. I was in a state of awe. The hut itself was a crude structure, not beautiful by anyone’s standards, but to me it looked like a palace. The scrubby looking trees outside looked like the most beautiful forest. Sunbeams were streaming through the window onto a plastic dish, and the plastic dish looked beautiful ! That sense of beauty stayed with me for about a week and then reflecting on it I suddenly realized that that’s the way things really are when the mind is clear. Up to that time I’d been looking through a dirty window and over the years I’d become so used to the scum and the dirt on the window that I didn’t realize it was dirty, I’d thought that that’s the way it was.’
It’s a moving story but we mustn’t imagine that the injunction to stay in our cell is an injunction to sit waiting for some kind of private divine revelation cut off from the suffering of the world. Isaac of Syria never tired of exhorting his hermits to heed the cries of those who suffer. Solitude is not there to make us insensitive to the suffering of others, indeed the reverse. And there are stories of monks who journeying to market find a brother who is ill and stay to nurse him for months until he is better. The monk is one, it was said, who is separated from all and united with all.
And the suffering to be confronted may well be our own suffering. Sometimes the monks write of their cell as being like a fiery furnace where they had to face the full force of their own negative passions, of anger, of hatred, of fear, of envy , of lust. Activities of the world can so often be used to hide from us the difficult truth we would rather not face.
The spiritual writer Eckhart Tolle writes in one of his works: “ Most people’s lives are run by desire and fear. Desire is the need to add something to yourself in order to be yourself more fully. All fear is the fear of losing something and thereby becoming diminished and being less.
These two movements obscure the fact that being cannot be given or taken away. Being in its fullness is already within you. Now.”
( Stillness Speaks p. 58 – 59 )
But in fear and desire most of us go searching for what we think is our true life. Against this temptation the Fathers of the Desert advise us simply – “ Go and sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.” That is, don’t believe that your true life, God’s true presence is somewhere else so that you have to go searching for all over the desert or all over the world.
“ Amma Syncletica said: ‘If you happen to live in a community, do not move from place to place, for it will harm you greatly. If a bird leaves her eggs, they never hatch. So also the monk and the nun grow cold and dead in faith by going from place to place.’ ” Japanese Sayings p.19
And what opportunities there are for our own going from place to place today. Not only opportunities to book another flight to see the world but opportunities to travel to distant planets and we can range the world with our computers and smart phone and of course our endless books.
Abba Anthony was once asked: “ How do you manage to carry on Father, deprived as you are of the consolation of books ?” He replied: “My book, sir philosopher, is the nature of created things, and it is always at hand when I wish to read the words of God.”
Monastic Way 18th September
The poet R.S. Thomas relates in one of his books an experience he had of God’s presence in the lovely Cathedral of St. David’s in Wales. What was it that gave him that experience he asked ? Was it the grandeur of the Cathedral, and all its architecture ? Was it all the flags hanging down in quiet splendour ? No he said, it was simply one small fern that he had seen growing out of a crack in the cathedral wall.
One lily of the field can be enough to open up a window into heaven if we let it, or one small fern growing from the stone.
The One who hangs on the Cross today is someone who cannot move, he allows himself to be held there in the embrace of love. He holds the passions of the world in his own passion and has chosen not to escape. Don’t run away from yourself in desire or fear, stay with yourself, stay in your cell for everything is already yours, is already offered you by the One who hangs on the cross.
Hymn: How sweet the name of Jesus sounds ( EH 374)