The Disabled God

Reading disability theology is something new for me . It brought me face to face with the disparity between what the gospel says and what we actually practice. Did I ever think about Jesus as a disabled person. His hands and feet leave us with questions we may not have asked ourselves before. Why did Christ choose to come from the tomb, with nail scar still present. He could have risen in perfect form. He chose not to. What does that say to us about our theology. After working with persons with disabilities for a very long time I am approaching these questions with an interior shift of realization. I have Missed the Mark on this and need a change of heart. The new disability theology paired with a reading in the early church, made me realize how far off the path I have gone. Why are all the good deeds for the poor done for the poor and disabled outside the church. Sunday morning church. If I think there is something that needs change in this area ,what am  I willing to do about it.

The Disabled God

Towards a  Disability Theology

There is an essential question that frequently rises to the surface as I sit in church , any church , where are all the people with disabilities.It  is not a specific church but multiple churches over some 35 years of working in the field of persons with disabilities.There is a dissonance between who I know is in the community and who is not in church. Naively  when churches were being required to become more wheelchair accessible,we     thought that would solve a large part of the problem. It did allow more accessibility to a long time church members who had found the stairs a challenge, but overall I could see no major increase in the numbers of wheelchairs or persons with visible disabilities in the pew. There was not an increase in families with children or young people with special needs attending in large amounts in any specific place. Many parents had told me how hard it was to find a church where they could have the needs of their child met and often left the very churches which should have risen to meet their needs, disillusioned and weary from the rejection they felt at each new attempt to find acceptance for their child so they could worship together for one hour,once a week.

Opening a group home where part of the job requirement was to find a church home for four youth with multiple barriers in wheelchairs ,we experienced firsthand not only what it was like to find a warm and friendly church home for even one of them , yet alone doctors who would serve their needs, friendly neighbours, and school systems that had the resources to take them in. The experience of what it was like to find a church home where they welcomed was a transformational experience and not only for the clients but also for the staff and the people of the church. It became such a positive experience that it left me with a life time question of why? here and why not other places, including the church I attended . Eventually the why resulted in a class for adults with cognitive disabilities but it was soon lost in the demands of building a newer bigger fully accessible church.

Slowly over the years as all churches became wheelchair accessible the physical barriers could no longer be used as the reason why?. What then was the reason and why did it seem to be endemic across a wide expanse of churches with a very few recent few exceptions. It was a question that stayed unanswered . As people do not usually attend a variety of denominational churches to notice the similarity , most people just assume this is what is normal for their church and that is how it is. My search for a denomination that more fit my changing theology and a cross country move put me in a number of different churches. Consistently the same token few people with disabilities, showed up on Sunday morning church, whether it was a Catholic, Anglican, Pentecostal, Mennonite or other evangelical church. The two exceptions I found were Reformed churches that had a very active interest in this kind of work as a ministry, and a very progressive church called Fresh Wind. It seemed that these churches had something different in their theology from other churches. It was a question I would have left unanswered had I not had a dream.


 The dream was one of those life changing kind of transformational dreams that in the midst of a long search set me on a new path. I woke with the words "disability theology " in my head , new words with no knowledge of the meaning and sat down at my computer to see what kind of information would come up.My frame of reference for persons involved in theology and disabilities were Jean Vanier and Henry Nouwen . They had both challenged and comforted me with warm and kind thoughts that wrapped themselves like a wonderful inspirational blanket.


 Disability Theology is more like a sharp kick to the posterior. It rattles your comfort tree , it challenges all your well held belief systems , it tells you why there are so few disabled people in church. It exposes the theological and models and practices we had become so familiar with and never challenged. It teaches us that the idea of an autistic Jesus who I had met in my dream, was not some far flung almost sacrilegious idea but perhaps closer to a workable model then we dare to imagine.It took me places I had never ventured to go and left me in new and uncharted territory .

 Taking a course a Directed  Studies course in Church Traditions I had wanted to learn a bit more about Contemplative prayer and how perhaps I could connect my growing interest in contemplative prayer with Social Justice interests in the 21 century.  It took me out into the Desert and sitting for a long time with the Desert Fathers. The Fathers call us to prayer and silence. They used what we would consider extreme means of little food, little sleep, living in a place far removed from society with few resources to come away with God and pray. They used the psalms that worked its way by memory and repitition to work its way deep into their interior being and change their hearts. To guard their hearts from the onslauhts of evil and temptation they wrestled with in the desert. The Father realized that they first had to wrestle with their own interior darkness before judging the sins of others . When seekers came to hear a wise word from a Desert Father the words were marked with simplicity, unconditional love and a deep humility of their own limited abilities to rise above sin without the continual help of God. The Desert Fathers call us to interior change. Reading them one can get lost in the extremes of fasting, and competitive ascetic practices but when they finally speak it is interior change they desire." Stay in your cell and your cell will teach you all you need to know", is a common message throughout the directions from Desert Fathers to seekers. If we spend time with God and look deeply into our own lives with an openess to change what will happen in our "cell" is a call to repent. To change ,to a heart change. This is where the message of the Fathers meets with my search for how to bring Church tradions into the a social justice focus is my first call is to heart change. To repent.  

Where did the idea of the” perfect” person in the church come from . In his book the Theology of Down Syndrome Dr. Yong discusses how we view the perfectness of Adam and Eve within the garden and when cast out of the garden they encounter evil, disease , hardship and death. It seems that the perfect things close to God are within the Garden and the evil and dark things are outside , Over the years the church seems to have developed this idea of keeping things they view to be impure or less than perfect out. Some of this idea came from something called the Levitical Ban. The Levitical Ban was used in the selection of the lambs for sacrifices and the selection of priests. Only pure unblemished, whole not crippled lambs could be offered as sacrifices. This idea carried across into the selection of priests. This was Jewish law. The same rules seemed to carry over into the selection of priests in the corporate church, based on the idea that Jesus was the able bodied pure unblemished lamb selected for the sacrifice of the cross. The Levitical selection for priesthood stated that only men could be priests. He had to be between 25-50. He could not be blind, defective, hunchbacked or a dwarf. Injuries would make him ineligible. A skin disease or crushed private parts disqualified him to serve .( Leviticus 21). It puts the healing locations of the disabled in the New Testament in a whole new light. You start to notice that Jesus was healing the disabled outside the temple. 

 The Disabled God

Nancy Eiseisland in her book  The Disabled God suggests three models of disabilism in theology.

Model One 

That disability is a punishment for wrongdoing “and mars the divine image in humans has often banned those with disabilities from positions of leadership and  stigmatized them for their lack of faith. Having had a friend who was a paraplegic she had once told me that this was one of the irritating things about going to a church where people believed in healing. Sundays started to feel like she had somehow failed by not having enough faith to be healed or that it caused people who were praying for her a kind of spiritual discomfort because she did not get up and walk from her wheelchair. That she still continued to go at all was a credit to her faith and tenacity to stay a part of the community she had been with before a devastating accident.


Disability as Virtuous suffering
Eiesland defines that as “suffering that must be endured in order to purify the righteous. Teaching that encourages passive acceptance of social barriers “and obedience.

Disability as Charity
Charity. “For Persons with Disabilities at times means creating justice . It subverts justice when it segregates Persons with disabilities and keeps them out of the public eye rather than empowering them as full, social economic and political participants. “

The Image of God

The idea of the broken or disabled body marring the image of God runs runs into difficulty when we see Christ on the Cross and after his resurrection when he showed his glorified body to his disciples. The Last Supper and the words of the Eucharist say “ This is my body that is broken for you.”  The Lamb of God is a broken lamb. Christ appeared after his death by crucifixion bearing in his body the marks of a Roman crucifixion. His hands were pierced, his side was pierced, his feet were pierced and his closest female friend did not recognize until him till he spoke her name. This is not a  unspotted physically whole person we are to worship in the resurrected Christ. This is in fact a disabled Jesus. Again his friends did not recognize him on the road to Emmaus , and did not recognize him until he broke the bread the symbol of his broken body on the Cross. Christ tried to tell us time and time again in his healing of the sick, the lame and the blind. In fellow shipping with the outcasts . Touching the lepers. Healing women who were considered the dregs of society. The majority of the time we see Christ performing a great miracle there are Pharisees and Saducees in sharp contrast enraged and actively hostile that Jesus has upset their system and healed on the Sabbath day. In thinking about this it seems Jesus healed a frequently on the Sabbath Day, with the spiritual leaders in proximity. Scripture records these healings across all four gospels. In all instances Christ was healing people who had some form of disability outside of the temple of the day. Levitical Ban?

 The early Church

The new church in Acts 3 continues with the one of the early miracles by Peter and John outside the temple with the healing of the Blind man. The famous words “Silver and Gold have I none but what I have I give you in the name of Christ rise up and walk. “ This stir of the crowds disturbed the Pharisees and Saducees of the time and netted Peter and John. a beating being thrown into prison. Again the tension between the standards of the church of the day and the call of the gospel in the hands of the apostles. Again the blind man is sitting outside of the temple. Have we moved very far in 2000 years of Christianity. The early church provided deacons to take care of the widows and the orphans and make sure a fair distribution of food was made to the poor. Christ had left them with the admonition that when you feed the hungry, clothe the naked and minister to the prisoner, you indeed minister to Christ himself.Church History shows that we have done just that. Outside the church almost all early social justice kinds of activities were rooted in activities started by the Church.

 In each era of the church there are voices within the church that call the church to minister to the needs of the less fortunate St.Anthony of the Desert one of the earliest of the Desert Fathers headed the call of the gospel to sell all he had and give to the poor and went off to become establish the quintessential model of a desert Father.  In the writings of the desert Fathers we find they bring themselves into a oneness with the poor and marginalized by becoming like them and giving their resources away so they can identify with the poor. In inhospitable parts of the country such as the desert a lack of hospitality to others could result in certain death, so hospitality has long been a standard of the desert.  The poor” are also often the disabled who for physical reasons cannot work. In the writings of John Chryssavigis (Theology of Disability ) Abba Agathon cared for a man with cerebral palsy and served him as requested. At the end of the story the disabled man said" Agathon you are filled with divine blessings in heaven or earth". Raising his eyes Agathon saw no one at all it was an angel of the Lord ." His hospitality to the poor and disabled had resulted in his serving"an angel unawares". 

Pilgrims
Travelers to Jerusalem and the Holy Land were taken care of in hospitals that were started by religious orders and many of these travelers would have disabling conditions early pilgrimages to the Holy Land
One of the earliest orders was that of the Knights of St. John where the St. Johns Ambulance history comes from. Paula the friend of Jerome who wrote the Latin Vulgate started both a hospital and a convent to care for travelers who had become disabled by sickness near Bethlehem. In the Orthodox church deacons we have sainted women who cared for the poor. St. John Chrysostom homilies rich in gospel truth called the rich to live simpler lives , set aside their extravagant lifestyles and care for the poor and disabled in their midst. St. John having spent years learning from the Desert Fathers was a key bridge between the move from living a life geared to social justice in solitude or remote communities to meeting the needs of the less fortunate in city centers. He supported social justice causes that were not popular and his clear stand won him enemies.He drew the displeasure of the Empress who had been a donor to his causes and found himself banished to the far ends of the Empire. His letters to Saint Olympia a wealthy noblewoman turned nun encourage her to continue her good causes and care for herself and others.    

Monastic Traditions
Hospitality became a key factor in the development of monasteries and the rule of St. Benedict in the early 400’s discusses entertaining strangers and pilgrims as Christ. Monasteries developed infirmaries and herbal gardens to treat not only the monks but also to treat the travellors and strangers who came knocking at their door for refuge. In female monasteries there were women from royal families, women who felt called to be nuns and women who sometimes had nowhere else to go and both were served by the monastery and served in it. Hospitals for the sick grew from these traditions many of them started from religious orders. Cathedrals in this time had pilgrimages and relics that drew pilgrims and the sick for the healing powers of the relics . The wide spread practice of incense in the church although a sacred concept carried over from Jewish temple worship had a practical application in churches with so many pilgrims present. Still lepers and people with certain disfiguring diseases, and disabilities that were confused with demonic possession were not welcomed in the church. As people did not understand how disease was spread, knew little of the reasons for hygiene and held superstitious beliefs as truths exclusion of those that were different from the community was rooted in fear and lack of knowledge.

St.Francis and St.Clare 

        In the middle of this fear and lack of knowledge, deep poverty and sharp classes differences between the peasant poor and the elite rich, rose the mendicant Orders. St.Francis the son of a wealthy merchant, heard the call of God to repair the church of his day. His actions to gather a group of men to repair one church resulted in the creation of a communities of both male and female Franciscan followers who lived a life of  poverty and care for the poor and disabled. Francis is famous for calming wolves, preaching to the animals and being a man of piece. One of his touching stories that was a pivotal moment in his ministry was his kissing of the Leper. Lepers were not touched in this time and kissing one was unthinkable but Francis met this Leper in the place of his need and in doing so met Christ in the Leper.This idea of Christ being the met in the " Leper" the poor and the stranger is a constant that carries through to Franciscan ministries to modern times. 

Saints in the City

 Modern luminaries such as Mother Theresa, call us to meet Christ in the poor and disabled. Mother Theresa states that when she serves the poor she serves Christ. To Mother Theresa the poor are the disabled, the dying the disenfranchised persons of society. She echoes the history of the Saints of the past and calls us from our comfortable pews to what she would call the ministry of the Gospel.She calls us just as we are, from where we are to meet that need in front of us. One person at a time. For her that one person is Christ. No matter what disguise He wears. The poor, the disabled , the lonely, the homeless, the dying. They are all Christ.

Although Mother Theresa does not answer my question of where are all the persons with disabilities on Sunday morning she does tell me what to do. She skips the academic models, dances past the politically correct language , and leaves pondering social service agencies in the dust.She was called while riding on a train , she had few resources, was confined by the restrictions of her order,and faced overwhelming needs. When faced with the current cuts in spending to persons with disabilities, huge rending holes in service needs, and economic cutbacks in all areas of government social spending , the action of one person would seem meaningless. What could I do in the face of such great need. Yet all these people. The great saints and luminaries of the past, the liberation and disability theologians of the present meet in one clear point. We create change one person at a time. If the present question of my life is a why is something the way it is. If the answer to that question is not satisfactory . Perhaps we are the one to change it. One person at a time.

References.
Creamer Theology of Disability
Eiesland Nancy The Disabled God
Young Amos. Theology of Down Syndrome.

 Start of the Paper on Disability Theology

There is an essential question that frequently rises to the surface as I sit in church , any church , where are all the people with disabilities. As I work for a large agency and a school I am familiar with the number of persons with Disabilities in the community and that is just persons with a cognitive disability I see very few of in church on Sunday morning. It is not just a specific church but multiple churches over some 35 years of working in the field of persons with disabilities there is a dissonance between who I know is in the community and who is not in church. Initially when churches were being required to become more wheelchair accessible I naively thought that would solve a large part of the problem. It did allow more accessibility to a few seniors who had found the stairs a challenge, but overall I could see no major increase in the numbers of wheelchairs or persons with visible disabilities in the pew. More disturbing I did not see an increase in able-bodied family members with children or young people with special needs attending in large amounts in any specific place. Many parents had told me how hard it was to find a church where they could have the needs of their child met and often left the very churches which should have risen to meet their needs, disillusioned and weary from the rejection they felt at each new attempt to find acceptance for their child so they could worship together for one hour, once a week. Opening a group home where part of the job requirement was to find a church home for four youth with multiple barriers in wheelchairs ,we experienced firsthand not only what it was like to find a warm and friendly church home for even one of them , yet alone doctors who would serve their needs, friendly neighbours, and school systems that had the resources to take them in. The experience of what it was like to find a church home where they welcomed was a transformational experience and not only for the clients but also for the staff and the people of the church. It became such a positive experience that it left me with a life time question of why here and why not other places, including the church I attended , which eventually started a class for adults with cognitive disabilities . Slowly over the years as all churches became wheelchair accessible the physical barriers could no longer be used as the reason why?. What then was the reason and why did it seem to be endemic across a wide expanse of churches with a very few recent few exceptions. It was a question that stayed unanswered . As people do not usually attend a variety of denominational churches to notice the similarity , most people just assume this is what is normal for their church and that is how it is. My search for a denomination that more fit my changing theology and a cross country move put me in a number of different churches and still the same token few people with disabilities , showed up on Sunday morning church, whether it was a Catholic, Anglican, Pentecostal, Mennonite or other evangelical church. The two exceptions I found were Reformed churches that had a very active interest in this kind of work as a ministry, and a very progressive church called Fresh Wind. It seemed that these churches had something different in their theology from other churches. My question however in the why not for everyone else was still unanswered.

         A dream one night of meeting an “autistic like” Jesus woke me with two new words “disability theology”. Wondering if this a real something or like Scrooge I was suffering from some late night snacking, I Googled in  these new words and found myself on the cutting edge of some of the latest thoughts on the same question I had been asking all these years.  Folks like Jean Vanier and Henry Nouwen had challenged and comforted me , and I had wrapped their warmth and kind thoughts around me like a wonderful inspirational blanket. Disability Theology is more like a sharp kick to the posterior. It rattles your comfort tree , it challenges all your well held belief systems , it tells you why there are so few disabled people in church.  It exposes the theological and models and practices we had become so familiar with and never challenged.  It teaches us that the idea of an autistic Jesus is not some far flung almost sacrilegious idea but perhaps closer to a workable model then we dare to imagine.

Let’s explore then in my attempt to answer my “why  question” and the challenge of my dream to discover how” disability theology” could  assist me on my journey.

Where did the idea of the” perfect”  person in the church come from . In his book the Theology of Down Syndrome Dr. Yong discusses how we view the perfectness of Adam and Eve within the garden and when cast out of the garden they encounter evil, disease , hardship and death. It seems that the perfect things close to God are within the Garden and the evil and dark things are outside , Over the years the church seems to have developed this idea of keeping things they view to be impure or less than perfect out. Some of this idea came from something called the Levitical Ban.  The Levitical Ban was used in the selection of the lambs for sacrifices and the selection of priests. Only pure unblemished, whole not crippled lambs could be offered as sacrifices. This idea carried across into the selection of priests. This was Jewish law. The same rules seemed to carry over into the selection of priests in the corporate church, based on the idea that Jesus was the able bodied pure unblemished lamb selected for the sacrifice of the cross. The Levitical selection for priesthood stated that only men could be priests. He had to be between 25-50. He could not be blind, defective, hunchbacked or a dwarf. Injuries would make him ineligible. A skin disease or crushed private parts disqualified him to serve .( Leviticus )***

Nancy Eisland in her book ++++ suggests  three models of disabilism in theology.

 That disability is a punishment for wrongdoing “and mars the divine image in humans has often  banned those with disabilities from positions of leadership pr stigmatized them for their lack of faith. 

Disability as Virtuous suffering

Eisland defines that as “suffering that must be endured in order to purify the righteous. Teaching that encourages passive acceptance of social barriers “and obedience. 

Charity.  “For PWD at times means creating justice . It subverts justice when it segregates PWD and keeps PWD out of the public eye rather than empowering them as full, social ,economic and political participants. “

The idea of the broken or disabled body marring the image of God runs  runs into difficulty when we see Christ at the Last Supper, On the Cross and after his resurrection when he showed his glorified body to his disciples.  The Last Supper and the words of the Eucharist say “ This is my body that is broken for you,” “ Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the World “. The Lamb of God is a broken lamb. Christ appeared after his death by crucifixion bearing in his body the marks of a Roman crucifixion. His hands were pierced, his side was pierced, his feet were pierced and his closest female friend did not recognize until him till he spoke her name. This is no pure unspotted physically person we are to worship in the resurrected Christ. This is in fact a disabled Jesus. Again his friends did not recognize him on the road to Emmaus , and did not recognize him until he broke the bread the symbol of his broken body on the Cross. Christ tried to tell us time and time again in his healing of the sick, the lame and the blind. In fellowshipping with the outcasts . Touching the lepers. Healing women who were considered the dregs of society.  The majority of the time we see Christ performing a great miracle there are Pharisees and Saducees in sharp contrast enraged and actively hostile that Jesus has upset their system and healed on the Sabbath day. In thinking about this it seems Jesus healed a frequently on the Sabbath Day,  with the spiritual leaders in proximity. Scripture records these healings across all four gospels. In all instances Christ was healing people who had some form of disability outside of the temple of the day. The disabled people were not inside the temple. Levitical Ban?

The new church in Acts 3 continues with the one of the early miracles by Peter and () outside the temple with the healing of the Blind man. The famous words “Silver and Gold have I none but what I have I give you in the name of Christ rise up and walk. “ This stir of the crowds disturbed the Pharisees and Saducees of the time and netted Peter and () a beating being thrown into prison. Again the tension between the standards of the church of the day and the call of the gospel in the hands of the apostles. Again the blind man is sitting outside of the temple. Have we moved very far in 2000 years of Christianity.

The early church provided deacons to take care of the widows and the orphans and make sure a fair distribution of food was made to the poor. Christ had left them with the admonition that when you feed the hungry, clothe the naked and minister to the prisoner, you indeed minister to Christ himself.

Over the centuries the church took up this view and started works of charity . In each era of the church there are voices within the church that call the church to minister to the needs of the less fortunate.

In the writings of the desert Fathers we find they bring themselves into a oneness with the poor and marginalized by becoming like them and giving their resources away so they can identify with the poor. In countries where there is no social services network “the poor” are also often the disabled who for physical reasons cannot work. In the writings of John Chryssavigis  (TheoDS) ## Abba Agathon cared for a man with cerebral palsy and served him as requested. At the end of the story the  disabled man said Agathon you are filled with divine blessings in heaven or earth. Raising his eyes Agathon saw no one at all it was an angel of the Lord .  

This is how the monastics moved in hospitality to follow the scriptures that by entertaining s

Travellers to Jerusalem and the Holy Land were taken care of in hospitals that were started by religious orders and many of these travellers would have disabling conditions early pilgrimages to the Holy Land

…. some had entertained angels without knowing it.

The monastic traditions of the early desert were deeply rooted in the desert idea of hospitality both from scriptural tradition as well as from the immediate needs for people travelling and living in harsh territory. Hospitality became a key factor in the development of monasteries and the rule of St. Benedict in the early 400’s discusses entertaining strangers and pilgrims as Christ.

Monasteries developed infirmaries and herbal gardens to treat not only the monks but also to treat the travellors and strangers who came knocking at their door for refuge. In female monasteries there were women from royal families, women who felt called to be nuns and women who sometimes had nowhere else to go and both were served by the monastery and served in it. Hospitals for the sick grew from these traditions many of them started from religious orders. Cathedrals in this time had pilgrimages and relics that drew pilgrims and the sick for the healing powers of the relics . The wide spread practice of incense in the church although a sacred concept carried over from Jewish temple worship had a practical application in churches with so many pilgrims present. Still lepers and people with certain disfiguring diseases, and disabilities that were confused with demonic possession were not welcomed in the church.

      

Discovering Disbability Theology

To discover the world of Disability Theology I would like to invite your to take a mini five second survey of your church next Sunday morning.Gently like prayer beads use your fingers to count the number of wheelchairs and people with visible disabilities in the pews. You can even cheat and add the couple of kids you know are in the Sunday school if you need to.

Prophetic Voices from the Desert to the Cisty

Early Church Deaconess St. Olympia and Friends

Lately I have been reading the life of St.Olympia (368-404)  and role as a Deaconess and friend to John Chrysostom one of the great Church Fathers. There are seventeen letters extent between St. Olympia and John and that is a long way into their friendship after he was exiled and she fell into a deep depression in his absence. The fact that these letters were written in the fourth century and are important enough to still be held in the memory of the church are some indicator of the importance given to anything written by St. John. Unfortunately rather true to form for women of that period we do not have anything left written by St. Olympia. We do however have a a wonderful story of her life. St. Olympia was born to a wealthy and noble family and gifted with beauty and intellect. She was married young  and widowed early. Such was her family status that the Emperor wanted to marry her a man of his selection and she refused. One does not refuse an Emperor without impunity and he moved to hold all her possessions until she was thirty if she did not comply. She replied from her desire to be a celibate woman dedicated to the Lord that he had saved  her the trouble of having to dispose of all her goods and follow Christ. Eventually seeing the model of her life he returned her family wealth. She used this wealth liberally over her life to support monastics in distress, build a hospital, feed the poor,assist her convent for some 250 sisters and contribute to some of the similar causes favoured by St. John. The whole clergy of the church seemed to be in line for a portion of her generous donations and in one their letters St. John cautions her on the extend of her generosity as she is so free to give it all away and leave nothing for herself or her convent to support itself. 


The role of a Deaconess in the early church had a very specific purpose for being. One of their primary reasons for being was to perform roles that would put men or women at moral risk. The first duty was that of the Baptism of women. Catechumens in the early church were baptized in the nude and had the sacred oil of baptism rubbed on their bodies.Then after baptism they were robbed in a white gown and presented to the church. Obviously  rubbing oil all over the bodies of naked women was not the appropriate role for male clergy. So thus the deaconess. She also visited the houses of women who were alone, and an interesting note in orthodox church history mentioned the deaconess would preside at the doors of the church and keep out women of undesirable reputations. How some of the Harlots of the Desert"  who gained entry into churches during festivals and special events and were converted by hearing the word preached got past some of these female door keepers is an additional mystery of the church. The role of the deaconess performing acts of mercy and assisting in the behind the scenes  preparations of the liturgy, and the further training of female catechumens is rather universal across the descriptions of the deaconess role in the church. History has kept the memory of the deaconess in written record on tombstones in church literature and in the records of the liturgical ordination of a deaconess at the altar of the church.


 Coming from a church tradition with southern states roots where deaconesses were licensed as preachers, prayed for the sick, founded churches, and performed major missionary endeavors the role of the deaconess of the early church was a further confirmation of their important role in the church.  My surprise was finding the whole role of a female deacon greatly controversial in the Catholic church, not so popular an idea in some Orthodox churches and in broad dispute in others. It is only recently that the Catholic church had approved married permanent deacons. Male deacons. Apparently women can do all the roles assigned to a deaconess, care for the altar behind the scenes, become Eucharist ministers and take the Eucharist to the sick, perform deeds of charity and mercy, train the catechist, and raise large amounts of money for worthy causes but to be ordained to this as a calling is not on the list. Nuns are called to be consecrated to God and often fulfill these roles in the church but even they do not have the same ordination to the deaconess role that was present in the early church. However women have circumvented in some many ways the restrictions of some of the early women in the church as to jobs outside the church      they could perform. We have become professionals in roles such as social workers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, teachers and managers of NGO's. These help meet the needs of the poor and women at risk in society as the early deaconess did but they lack in secular society the spiritual direction that would also come with this role.               


The path to the altar to be ordained to perform these roles as a recognized vocation in the Church still seems to be barred by rules and regulations that mired in directives about "Jesus being male" and " all his apostles were male ". Other reasons are Tradition. I struggle with this as a woman with a brain. Tradition seems to reflect the opposite in women like St. Olympai. When found both in scripture and tradition we find women present in the group that helped support the apostles, at the cross , the tomb , the Resurrection and at the fall of Pentecostal fire. We find them present in letter of commendation by Paul as having churches meeting in their house and in their roles in the very infant church. Then again here they in the memory of the church , at the same time as the great councils of the church were being resolved, during the times we gained such essentials as the Nicene Creed, and the freedom of the Church in the Roman Empire to be a legal church we find the Deaconess. The Eastern Orthodox church has kept more of their names in the memories of the celebration of their liturgies and the life of St.Olympias is celebrated on Dec. 17. The Catholic Church has recognized her as one of the 140 Colonnade Saints surround St. Peter's square. Kudodos to Bernini. 


Some good links for Olympia and the roles of the deaconess are listed below:
   http://monasticmatrix.usc.edu/monasticon/?function=detail&id=4998

The Bridge of the Desert Fathers between Christ and the World

Reading the Desert Fathers brings one into ancient orthodox thinking that expands the mind into areas not explored within , say, and evangelical Protestant box which is my background. While going out to meet the Desert fathers in the Desert one has to go on a spiritual pilgrimage from our current way of thinking into a land that looks different from the way we think think of what Christian looks like in the 21st Century.

Think of the word North American Christianity on a Sunday morning. Generally something with a steeple comes to mind , pews, maybe a stain glass window. Depending on your tradition you are going to have either a lot of worship music or a lot of liturgy. If your really lucky you get both but rarely. Folks are over all well dressed, well fed, drive to church in a comfortable vehicle and seem to like to get together for fellowship dinners and coffee. There is a lot of chatting, if your in a high energy worship music church there is not a lot of quiet, and there are either a lot of Bibles in the pews, Bibles in hand or scripture in a prayer book or missal. There might be an offering for the poor, or a food bank donation , or a missions project. Maybe the church encourages people to be involved in social justice. Church is a few hours on Sunday, maybe some volunteer hours through the week and that is if you are really being good. Your trying that's what is important.

   The we have the Desert Fathers. They live way out in the wilderness , often in a cave or small one or two room dwelling, later monasteries but these were still very spartan. You eat a bit of dry bread, a few dates and some oil when you decide its a good day to eat. Fasting is how you bring your body into submission and your spirit follows course. You deprive yourself of sleep . You pray for hours at a time. You have memorized and internalized large sections of scripture which are few and far between. Sometimes you live in a community where you see each other on Sunday. Sometimes you may not see another face for years . The weather is brutal, your bath  may be a periodic desert rain, you have rags for clothes and harsh temptations test your mind and sap your spiritual strength. Strange things haunt your dreams. Bandits come and take away what little you have , visitors come and intrude on your privacy,and the work of your hands may be weaving the same mat over and over again. Markets to sell your wares may  be a long ways away, medical assistance even further. You have to rely on daily miracles to stay alive. This is the Desert Father of the third and fourth century. Pilgrims came to them across burning deserts for a simple word, a word full of life and the Holy Spirit. These men who had left all their goods behind and gave away to the poor the little they had left in search for a holiness and intimacy with God they felt only could be found in silence, poverty, fasting and coming out from the world.

        The contrast between what the average Christian type is today and the dramatic asceticism of the Desert Fathers is so sharp it is easy to think that perhaps one has no relation to the other. Before dismissing them it might be a good idea to ask a few interior questions. For safety margins on our theological quest let us take with us the boundaries of the Creed of the Church.Which Creed.?Which Bible, which books and  letters are going in the Bible which will stay out. How will we decide on the nature of Christ . What wording will we use to describe the Holy Spirit in relation to the other members of the Trinity. Who is in charge. Being a Heretic was something that bounced back and forth in the councils of the church for sometime. One day you weren't one day you were. Being on the wrong side could cost you your life or you reputation. It was a good time to find a quiet cave in the backside of the desert and stay there for seventy five years. What we now consider written in stone wasn't yet. People became tired of the ecclesiastical city life and wanted to live a simple life in a close relationship with Christ.The desert provided this. It provided the promise of a deep intimacy with God within the silence. The desert Fathers were able to share this assimilation of their wisdom in sayings taken by pilgrims like Cassian back to their parts of the known world and influence the foundation of monastic practice.
and the Christian world.

             To step into the world of the Desert Fathers one has to step into what we now think of an Orthodox Way of thinking. Eternity is present. Angels, Demons, wild beasts becoming friends, miracles that were common place events and the ever present onslaught of temptation balance against the desire for God. The monks influence Orthodox thought today where the current monks of the desert in St. Anthony's monastery still see him appear from time to time on the high towers of their walls . Their ideas of how we deal with sin and how we battle forces of darkness still is reflected in penance and fasts in the Church.

The Desert Fathers found their strength in their time with God in their saturated lives of Prayer. This is where they did battle. They battled from inside their place of prayer . They were so inside the Presence of God that it was their wall and high tower, their refuge. They built periodically prayer towers . ladders up to prayer caves in the Syrian desert, high towers in the Celtic monastic villages such as Glendough reflected the monastic desire to find places removed and physical places of prayer , solitude and protection. These reflected their spiritual ladders, and refuge which was already built and hidden in Christ.  Scripture and the Eucharist when they could come together was as source of strength and power for the Desert Fathers in their battle. The Fathers became known for their apparent ability to sometimes defy the rules of nature in their ability to pray for long hours standing without sleep, little food and sometimes even go places that were far away , without apparently leaving such as an Abbot who did business in far of Alexandria without apparently leaving the monastery. Such events appear in saints of other periods over Church History and have the same marks of being able to be present in one place while influencing the events or appearing in another location.,
The Desert Fathers were extremely modest about their abilities won in prayer and often tried to cover anything unusual as an understandable event.

          These influences carried down into the monastic practices of the Benedictines, Cistercians and Carmelties in their rules and influence  hermitages of the present day. The core message of the Desert Fathers beyond their extreme eremitical practice was a consistent practice of the practice of poverty. The Life of Anthony tells of his hearing the word of Christ to the rich young man to sell all he has, give it to the poor and follow Christ. This is a core feature in the Rule of St. Benedict and the life of the Desert Fathers. This poverty held that not even a pen would be kept without the permission of the Abbot . The desert Fathers seemed to compete to see who could have less not who could have more. They were able to live with a mat, perhaps a hand woven piece of clothes , and the most basic forms of shelter. Yet still from this they practiced hospitality and gave of what they had in gracious hospitality. The challenge to live with less and simplify our lives rings loudly from the heritage of the Desert.

             Yet with all these gifts of grace I found myself sitting with the Desert Fathers asking them for a word for my current life. Beyond the importance of what the Desert Fathers had left in their legacy to Cistercians and thus to Lay Cistercians and contemplatives this focus on the poor touches the world I work in even more. The monks of the Desert pulled their desire to fillow Christ in his love for the poor from the Gospels. I understood poor in the face of the homeless , the street engaged and single parent moms standing in line at the foodbank. I knew I had come to the desert for  a reason and I knew the Fathers had one last thing to say to me before I left them and went on to another page in History. The current government in British Columbia is in
serious cutback to agencies and services to those who serve the poor and marginalized. Shelters, Womens's, Transition Houses and Services for the Disabled are directly affected. It is true that we do not really understand something until it affects us.

I came home a few days ago with a lay off notice for my job of seventeen years, along with all the staff in that particular home. Forty five group homes had been closed that year, fifty more the next, parents of disabled adults and children were marching in the streets. The wait list to get into programs for a family was 2600 people long. In this mindset I came and sat infront of my stack of Desert Fathers books, Thomas Mertons talks to the Novices , their influence on Pre - Benedictine Monasticism , the Wisdom of the Desert, Seeking God by Esther de Waal and and lines of similar books on library shelves. If I now had come to join the spiritual view of the coming with a listening heart to really hear a word from these saints. They who stand with the communion of saints in the presence of God could they beyond the books and the stories give me a Word. There was silence. Long painful silence. No voice from the past. It was hard not to be skeptical.
 
I had forgotten the rule of the Desert. You have to wait for the Word. Sitting on a city bus in the quiet early on a Sunday morning after a long night a word came " You can use this to enter into the suffering of those you are with". Without this feeling of being displaced you would not understand , Be an advocate...the Disabled are the Poor. The Disabled are the Poor. All the Gospels of Christ healing the lame, restoring the blind, curing the leper, rose up and hit me like a living word spoken directly to my heart. This was the bridge between my life and the Lives of the Fathers. The healing call of the Gospel of Christ to Broken people. The Disabled are the Poor. A simple word to light the direction of my life in time of  desert. A voice calling from the wilderness. The word of the Gospel has not changed over time. It still speaks to our hearts in our times of needed direction.

Merton and Cistercian Formation

On my coffee table are four of Merton's writings on the Desert Fathers.again. I have been sitting out in the desert now with the Fathers and Merton for about two months. Anything by Merton I dig into like a hungry dog on a bone and approached these with the same ardour. I found a different Merton then the one I am accustomed to in his journals.These books are the works Merton as a Novice Director used in the monastic formation of the Novices of Gethsemene Abbey. This is the Father Louis the Teacher. There is a different side of him reflected in the work he does as a formation director.

The Tom I got to know in his journals is not really all that pleased with parts of his Cistercian life. He complains about having to get away from the hussle and bustle of the Cheese Factory, he tell side splitting funny stories about trying to drive a tractor, his frustrations with being silenced in his pacifist anti-war activism and his ongoing muse about some other form of monastic life.  It is the realness that endears us to Tom or Louis or whatever the name of the day is. It is his honesty and willingness to expose his soul that wins us over. My favorite book of Thomas Mertons is one of his journals called Entering the Silence when he is still a fairly new monk caught up in the mystery of the Faith. I was moved to tears by his rendition of St. Bernards Amori Christi, where Christ leans from the Cross and embraces him. Toms mystical nature flares into hot and high flames in moments before the Eucharist and you can feel the heat over death and time.
So when one encounters several writings of Merton's as a Novice Director the difference is between the private self and the business self of Merton. In his work as a Novice Director he pulls out his best intellectual and research self, polishes off his love for the hermit life and presents his entering monks with a brilliant work of formation into the Cisterican life. As  Lay Cistercian involved in a pioneer work of forming a Lay Cistercian community online and forming some thirty people ( the average size of a monastery)in a community Mertons work as a Novice Director was exactly the insights I needed to learn from. Merton was dedicated to taking the Novices back to the origins of monastic life. He does this well in his deep research on the sayings and practices of the Desert Fathers. He lays down the foundations in his first book on Cassian and then  moves into Pre- Benedictine monasticism found also spread across from Egypt into the Palestinian deserts. Thinking about a the Desert Fathers topic we had for our Lay Cistercians I went back to check the talk by Dom Armand Veilleux. Dom Armand is out of Scourmont Abbey and has a large online resource reference library on monastic topics in his own right. He mentioned that the monastic life started more or less at the same time in all the early churches and was not necessarily started in Egypt and then Palestine and then the East. He also suggested that when we look back to a time for when the monastic movement started we can go to the Baptism of Christ. Interesting. We can go there  because John the Baptist was from the desert Baptism movement and when the Early Church wanted to adopt some of the radical gospel of Christ they followed this renounciation of the world in the gospel that called them to "Give all you have to the poor and come and follow me", and the follow for them was modelling  a solitary  or desert direction.


Armond Veilleux carries a fondness for the Pachomonian cenobic lifestyle as a cenobic monk while Merton tended to be more focused on the hermit an orientation he was finally able to realize within a monastic community in his hermitage. Merton restored to the Cistercian formation the taste of the desert in the souls of his Novices. Much Jesuit and pious teaching had been forming Cistercian novices and Merton in his typical way wanted to shake it up a little. In bringing the Desert Fathers back into the early formation of the monks Merton followed  the direction of the early Cistercian reformers such as Stephen Harding.He took a few monks into a desert like wilderness in France to struggle in the brambles and barrenes of the land to follow the Rule of St. Benedict in a deeper,stricter way then it was in some of the monasteries of the time. 
 There reformation was so difficult and their ability to survive in their harsh chosen existance was becoming desperate when St. Bernard with thirty of his friends and male family members came knocking on the door and saved the fresh new movement from faltering. There are over the history of the Church when hope seems to be lost of the faithful have lost their way a fresh voice in the dark like a light that says "go this way". Merton was such a voice. Merton in his role of Novice Master brings us the best of the Desert Fathers both the Egyptian and the Palestinian and the Eastern forms . He crosses the bridges from the Egyptian desert to mystics like Simeon the Stylite who sat on the top of pillars for a lifetime sometimes speaking to the masses below sometimes silent. The desert Saint are no less saintly be they Egyptian ,or Syrian or more Eastern yet. They are all Fathers whose words are to rembered internalized and respected. 


     It is helpful to put oneself inside the group listening to Thomas Merton and although he is an academic ask ourselves a question. Why am I here?. If I am a monk then I am not sitting under this direction for class credit, I am not writing a book on Merton, I am not getting academic credit. Cloistered away in a monastery I am certainly not trying to impress anyone. Why the Desert Fathers. Why for Novices and often when Thomas looked around the room he would find older monks and sometimes the prior. The Fathers taught on how to deal with temptation. They faced the hard realities of the monastic life pre-Vatican 11 and the Fathers helped them understand the "why's of a life of ascetic living. Cistercian's wanted to be spiritual warriors. The Desert Fathers had this as their model. The back of the Benedictian medal holds a liittle known secret sentence of exorcism write in Latin. It is a clear statement that as a follower of St. Benedict they hold no traffic with the devil and all his devices. After Christ and following Christ into the desert the Fathers prepared themselves for spirtual combat by fasting and prayer in a way that studying them would form the novice into a similar warrior of the desert. To leave a young monk uniformed that he is walking into warfare with darkness when he enters a monastery would be to leave him unprepared for the battle he is about to encounter. So Thomas who has battled through many of his own demons to find himself inside the Catholic faith and a monastery knows from experience that in order to succeed in their vocation the monks must be formed in the spirituality of the desert. 

Female Pilgrims

Following up on Desert Fathers and Mothers and Julia Bolton Holloway's magnificent site you won't want to miss her webpage on female pilgrims. Its on  http://www.umilta.net/egeria.html#Egeria . Egeria is a Spanish Nun who traveled to Bethlehem within a year of St. Jerome and Paula and her detailed reports on Church liturgical life show us a much more well developed liturgical life then we tend to think of this early in the church. Paula who later set up convents in a kind of "women's study group " with Jerome in Rome and when her husband died she took her daughter with her to Bethlehem and toured many of the sites of the desert fathers. Paula came from a wealthy Roman family and the expectation was that she would remarry and keep her wealth in the hands of the noble Roman circles. Paula had other ideas . We know about Paula from the letters written by Jerome to her daughter. You can find Jerome's extent letters on http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.toc.html .  This is the Christian Classics Ethereal Library . Bookmark this link because it has anything you ever wanted to know about the Fathers up to modern day Spiritual writers . If there is some long lost , hard to find Spiritual Classic you want to find the chances of you finding it here are quite high. They are adding books all the time . So put on your pilgrim shoes and take up your search staff because this site is a one of those pearls of great price that is actually free on the net. 

Interesting Hermits in the 21st Century

#1  Julia Bolton Holloway Most Interesting Hermit of the 21st Century. 

       The Desert Fathers left a legacy of spiritual life that echos down through history into the lives of monastic and contemplatives today. The words Hermit, Anchorite and Solitaire, Convent , Monastery tend to be often used now in a historical tone, past tense. Medieval studies leave us fascinated with knights, castles, lords and ladies, rich tales of brave deeds and evil sorcerers. These tales usually have a group of Gregorian chanting hooded monks to keep the mystical mood flowing. There is nothing like a bit of Gregorian chant to start a good Medieval mystery,the popularity of the Cadaefil Mysteries books, movies and TV shows. The recent Merlin shows are and example of that kind of fascination. But one could well ask“where did all the Hermit Desert Father types go. Where is that legacy of Desert spirituality?. We may see the occasional street person who looks like our image of a hermit . The kind of long bearded wild’ eyed end times prophet look. Maybe they even carry a sign. “Prepare! the Wrath of God is about to Fall”.  Well they are a kind of Hermit perhaps. But do we have any sane ones.  When going out to look for a Hermit you might want to differentiate between people who are simply reclusive and people who are religious hermits or solitaires. 

 As a child we used to have two “hermits” come into my father’s shop to get their shoes fixed. They were rather large men with a distinct body odor, fuzzy scraggy beards, well worn farm attire, and bad dental work. They lived high up in the mountains in a badly patched house with a few cows, pigs and sheep and bit of farm land.  I think they traded in vegetables for work done in town. We had another one that lived up in the Blue Mountain caves. A mountain man rarely seen that kept his food cold in the snow that lasted all year in the crevices of these unique caves. Most rural societies have a few of these recluses that keep the town folk talking. These people are interesting but if you are going on a Hermit pilgrimage you need to prepare like a pilgrim. You need to pray. Prepare your heart. Know that you are searching for religious hermits and be willing to spend some time looking and asking where they might be hiding out. Big Hint . Don't even think about looking for Hermits during Lent. No welcome will be extended. Best time to look for Hermits...Ordinary Time if you have a Liturgical Calendar handy. That's if you actually want to talk to one.  

 Modern day hermits living in both rural areas and the busy cities of the world. Some that live in busy cities also do some kind of work with the poor and many who live in rural or sensitive ecological areas are involved in some kind of environmental awareness work. Some live in their own cottage or hut on the far end of a monastery and come in weekly or at set times for Mass and supplies.Thomas Merton the famous Trappist monk had such an arrangement.  Some just keep to prayer and their gardens. Before the time of internet and email one had to go out to their place of solitude or write to a hermit. Now with the wonders of the internet some solitaires have made themselves, in ways of their choosing accessible on their terms. 

One such modern Hermit who is a kind of model to me of what a modern hermit or soilitaire should be and perhaps even more than one could expect to be is a woman by the name of Julian Bolton Holloway. Julian first came to my attention through a search for Julian Of Norwich an early medieval anchorite who was walled up in a few rooms on the side of a church and had wrote about her ecstatic visions of Christ . Julian of Norwich is one of the better known of the medieval mystics and Julian Bolton Holloway is a specialist of her manuscripts among others.

Her website http://www.umilta.net/ is a thing of beauty to behold and equals about twelve of the usual websites one would link to full of ancient writing, literature of English poets, stories of famous writers long passed that rest in the Swedish ( English ) Cemetery which is a she helped make a World Historical UNESCO site in Florence . Her lectures at Oxford, Medieval Studies Conferences, tours of Dante in on site Cathedrals in Florence are only a small part of her work. Her heart is with the Roma’s she helps raise out of poverty by teaching them employable skills, the books in the library she had put together by friendly book donors all over the globe and her grandchildren. Yes, because Julia at one time was a married woman with children and now grandchildren in the US.  Some solitaires are people who have lived whole other lives before the solitaire call beckoned. Julia although she keeps her prayer times and liturgical seasons like any other  religious solitaire has enough activity around her to keep a small monastery busy let alone one woman. Her Vita , with advanced degrees, published writings and books would be enough for anyone to gladly rest their laurels on . Julia in her seventies is a still very active  woman with a strong belief in the energy saving benefits of bicycles which she rides through the streets and countryside of Florence . Visit Florence, meet Julia who I correspond with periodically over at least ten years is on my Top Ten things to do before I die Bucket List. I am hoping she lives to be a Hundred . She is different then the afore mentioned ( prior post) Coptic Desert Father dubbed" the Last Anchorite" but epitomizes what a solitaire can be in the 21^st century and still keep the flavour of the Desert Fathers alive in her desire for quiet, prayers, hospitality, keeping herself by the works of her hands, genuine care for the poor and a deep wisdom that attracts a listening heart.

You can find more about her work on saving the Swedish Cemetery in Florence where such greats as Elizabeth Barret Browning are buried  http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com/2005/08/florence-and-st-petersburg.html

How are the Desert Fathers Relevant Today?

How are the Desert Fathers Relevant Today?

This was the question that seemed to resonate about me as I visited the Desert Fathers for perhaps the third time. They came to me well recommended by a friend who knew I loved Church History but had a thin spreading of in in a few years of Bible College. I visited them for the first time in Church History course and somewhat lost them in the dust as we breezed past them into larger monasteries. I struggled to remember the difference between Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine and Augustus and Peter naughty Appleyard or someone like that. Anthony made a brief appearance with a rather odd lifestyle but he be sunk to the bottom the list as I learned much more about Cluny and the Crusades working our way up rapidly to Dorothy Day and her work with the poor. Anthony and Dorothy has more in common then I was able to process at the time . Coming into Church History as a Pentecostal /Evangelical and emerging out the other end some twenty years later with an active interest in the how's and whys of a modern Contemplative life style the Desert Fathers kept popping up at every turn welcoming to come and find them. They started to shake off their dust, rise from the dry bones of the desert and join their written voices into a kind of living voice, initially hidden in language and symbols I could not quite understand. They required time. Monastic kind of time. The kind of time that moves slowly and requires patience and perserverence. I did not have that kind of time. I wanted the answers now. In Coles notes form all the better. There did not seem to be any Coles notes on the Desert Fathers. One had to actually go visit. One had to sit and wait. One had to be willing to visit places well off the beaten path of cosmopolitan living. Sell the field to buy the pearl. The Fathers knew well this truth and require their followers to have a taste of it just to find them.

My approach on what is relevant about the Desert Fathers changes radically on the day I stood over the grace site of Father Boniface a 90 year old monk , who had allowed me to take out many books on the Desert Fathers over a number of years as long as I brought them back in one piece. I had been reading the Desert Fathers then and even now as historical church characters, interesting, a bit odd, who had in many ways shaped the roots of monastic life over the centuries. My error was reading them as dead, dry, old men or women as the case might be. I wanted to hear what they had to say but I was blinded or hearing impaired to what they were saying.Yet they kept calling me back. Being raised Baptist / Pentecostal where the Communion of Saints is not a part of ones theology I came late to the idea. Late like Augustine...who says..Late have I loved you...that kind of late. I had forgotten that the Desert Saints were still present to us in the odd way that Saints are with the Communion of Saints and that the tug on my heart strings that I found when reading them was indeed there to impact my life today. As a struggling married working parent with an orientation towards Contemplative Spirituality the Desert had something to say to me. What I had to do was to sit quiet long enough to "Listen".

The first word of command in St. Benedict's instruction in his rule. So in a obedience to the repeated directions of the Desert Fathers " that all I would need in my spiritual life could be found in my cell", I sat down one more time with the Desert Fathers. This time I did not go our of curiosity to see their weird habits, or to wonder at their extreme fasts or to try to get the whole thing about eremetical living which in itself is a lifetime study. I went to see what they had to say that could help me understand Desert Spirituality or challenges of the Desert in my own life, here and now.

I became sharply aware that I had forgotten the Communion of Saints reality standing around the gravesite of Father Boniface. As each clot of dirt hit his casket. I could here a little phrase from the long list of desert fathers sayings I had been reading. They came as little rocks of living word being cast into my heart. Trying to grasp how I could express the Desert Fathers in language that did not smack of dust and parchment, somehow drag the Desert Fathers into the 21st century venacular I Listened . Gradually, I realized that it was them drawing me and that they were here already present and my job was do what they lived for. That was to change my heart. Have a conversion of life. To understand that is what they were about. They were a conversion sign. A turning from the old life to find Christ in the Desert. Denying their bodies to make their spirits stronger warriors in a daily battle with evil. Learning to become humble, non judgmental men and women who assisted the poor from their poverty, who kept their silence to keep God close and who showed hospitality to desert wanders from the little they had. If I came as a servant, one willing to change my heart and not simply as a desert tourist , I might this time on this visit find help for my life journey.

In this newness of quest I came once again to Anthony and the Hermit St. Paul. Having been given the Desert Fathers by Helen Wadell to read I made the grevious error of skimming through her introductory chapters to get to what one usually goes for like a squirrel after the meat of the nut in the middle. Listening brought me back to a something I had missed. There is a lovely story in the Intoduction about how Pontician in 386 a distiguished civil servant and friend of Augustine came to visit him . Earlier he had read the life of Anthony and had come struggled with the call of the Desert to give up all he had and follow .. Surprised to his intellectual friend reading the works of St. Paul he shared with him the life and words of St. Anthony and the "rich solitude of the Desert , to which so many men had been drawn. It was this meeting and preamble of desert word that flung Augustine into the garden in an"agony of will". In the Confessions Life of St. Augustine we read of the voice that sang to him take and read and the words of St. Paul that so changed his heart and life . These were indeed desert words. "Not in rioting and drunkeness not in chambering or wantoness , not in strife and envying: but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof. " This was the turning point in the life of the famed St. Augustine. Yes the prayers of his Mother, St. Monica , yes the Word of God, an no less and impact the Life of Anthony changed by hearing scripture and following the Word into the Desert reached helped to bring us one of the bright stars of the church. Again the voice calling from the Desert. Make a straight Path for the Lord. So what does Anthony have to say to us.

Anthony the Great born in Egypt in about 251 is called the "Father of Monks". Listening to the Gospel being read in church one Sunday morning the words" Go sell all you have and give to the poor and come struck Anthony with such directness that he followed the directions, made provision for his sister to live with a cloister of women and began to learn the Desert Life. Anthony seemed to spend a great deal of his early desert life directly wrestling with nasty demon figures that showed up sometimes bodily in his desert refuge. He came our for a brief time to to act as a spiritual father, do battle with heretics and live to one hundred and five. His Life was written by St. Athanasius, and is was a major inspiration in the spread of the monastic life. St. Anthony would not have taken this claim to fame by himself and would have given credit to some of the old men he sat with to learn the hermit existance . Sitting for many years in his refuge out in the desert he discerned there was someone even longer in the desert life then he and went off to find him Paul the Hermit. St. Jerome leaves us with this touching story of the meeting of these two great old men , pictures of which are carried down to the church through various icons and Holy Days especially in the traditions of the Eastern Fathers. Jerome himself a man of the desert understands the great joy of finding another of the same practice and their reunion is soon shortened by the passing of St. Paul in a heavenly ascent with St.Anthony for the rest of his life treasuring the simple handwoven coverings of St. Paul as his reminder of his Holy friend. Again we think of St. Anthony as past. There is today in the Deserts under the jurisdiction of the Coptic church a monastery in the area where St. Anthony lived. These monks hold high his memory and have as their sign of St. Anthony the periodic appearance of St. Anthony himself or odd lights floating around the high pinnacles of their monastery . You can find pictures of this monastery on http://egypttourinfo.com/saint-anthony-monastery.html .

While we taking this online pilgrimage out to the desert to hear a word from the Desert Fathers I found a current type of Desert Father in this very monastery who was willing to share with the world for a brief few minutes his wisdom . He is a Coptic monk who seperated himself from the world , all his status , his family ties and its distractions and lives deep in the desert in St. Anthony's Monastery. He has a few good words for us on UTube. Careful selection on UTube can sometimes net a few worthy gems and this is one of them . It is called the Last Anchorite.

They come in two parts..Be ready to Listen

Part one . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKXf_7Tt0-c

Part two. (the core) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag6WE__82Q8

Although these clips are called the Last Anchorite there are similar anchorite dwelling in hermitages either alone or in solitude with in a community. There is a such a monk within the higher steppes of St. Catherines monastery in Sinai and a female solitare I have contact with who is of a more Celtic traditon who lives high in the mountains of Slego in Ireland. You can also find Carthusians in Parkminster England living a type of desert spirituality within their communities .

BC has several Hermits. One lives on Oyster Creek between Victoria and Campbell River. He is the only existing ordained Hermit in Canada in the Catholic Church in the last two hundred years. His name is Father Charles Brandt. He has is published , appears in spiritual journals, gives talks on the Contemplative Life, is a specialist on the Winandy Hermits , and his work is both as a stream keeper and book binder. The Desert Spirituality lives on in such rare persons ,even more rare is to find access to them on via modern media . Father Brandt has left us some reflections in his: publications http://www.ariverneversleeps.com/backissues/october01/reviews.shtml. Father Brant is a living reflection of what the Desert Fathers spoke into being over millenia into today.

This is the first in a series of Blogs looking at the Lives and Sayings of the Desert Fathers. In the next few blogs we will look at the various sources that spread the stories of the desert fathers, their impact on monastic life and the marks of the Desert Spirituality in the Contemplative life. 

On Adult Learning

Dr. Zack Mezirow professor emeritus of Columbia Teachers College Believes the essential element of adult learning is to challenge our own ingrained perceptions and examine our insights critically. Dr. Mez says adults learn best when faced with what he calls a disorienting dilema - something that helps you critically reflect on assumptions you've acquired. ( Barbara Strauch New York Times)

In taking a Directed Studies Course with a close look at specific Christian Traditions I met my first " disorienting dilema " in re visiting the Desert Fathers. My disorientation was confusing at first. Something had happened to the Desert Fathers since my last visit. This time they had become friends. Dry, ascetic, weird men I had been told once lived in the desert and their sayings,practices and lifestyle had planted the roots for the monastic movement in the Church. The change was I had come to believe in the Communion of Saints. This changes how one studies people whose names begin with Saint or Blessed. Their words had started to life off the page and follow me around during my day. Standing at the gravesite of  an old monk the words of the readings and sayings of the desert fathers felt fresh ,appropriate , fitting for such a moment. Here was a living example of a life lived in
the shadow of their teachings. How could I view what they had to say as irrelevant and archaic. What were these men and women all about. They were about a change of heart. Changing ones life to follow a simpler more humble.less judgmental  path. Listening to the words they spoke with my heart instead of my head started to find their simple but deep saying creeping up in my daily life. They6 used a kind of physically austere hyperbole to make a point. They wanted to find a way to remove distractions from their life that seperated them from God and weakened their battle with darkness. They founded the monastic life.

Father Boniface

Wednesday was the monastic funeral of Father Boniface the former 90 year old librarian of the Westminster /Christ the King Seminary in Mission. Father Boniface was a librarian , teacher and deep listener of souls. His spirit was always too large for his body and although he seemed to be a fairly frail older man the light of his spirit filled his twinkly blue eyes and any room he was sitting in. I used to think he floated a few inches from the floor around the library. When I first started to be allowed to use his library , a grace I believe I was allowed because I was a seeker and a trusted someone referred me. The library is not a public use facility. In an all male monastery an extra special gift of trust. I borrowed books from there for almost ten years. Although I have taken other courses in religion and spend my days working in an educational setting as a support staff few other places have educated me as well as my time in the monastic library. I was like a child left alone in a candy shop. I could eat up all the mystics I liked. Which were many and abundant. It was here I got to know the desert fathers, female mystics, patrons of religious orders like St. Benedict , Bernard and Bruno. Here I found others like me , although often veiled in archaic language, ancient customs and often cloistered behind the walls of a convent their hearts were in love with Christ and they dared to try to express in words that for many sounded like the words of Lovers. This a reoccurring theme of female mystics in a kind of courtly love language as Christ was indeed their Lover.

Standing around the grave of a very old monk one is again reminded of how much Love kept him there. How promises of stability to a monastery he had served were kept , even when his heart longed often for the soil on the other side of Mt Angel. Father Boniface told me a little story once( he is famous for his little stories) of how when he was a very small boy his father held him on his shoulders so they could watch together the sad occurrence of the burning of the Mt Angel Monastery library. I believe this little vignette was a driving force in Father Boniface's compiling role of the wonderful Abbey library. Towards the last few years of Father Boniface's life I slowed down on my book borrowing and spend a bit more time just visiting as I sensed Father felt uncomfortable about letting his book children out the door in case perhaps he might pass and the books might never make it home to their right stall. He taught me that a misplaced book is a lost book and how to be very careful in my returning of them to their home on the shelves. One a couple of hot summer days I received access to the rare book room and thought perhaps I had died and gone to heaven. My early days in the library I was trying to tackle the big spiritual hitters like St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila's Interior Castles. He would give me a picture book of St. John of the Cross and a commentary to go along with Interior Castles. He knew what I needed when I didn't . After awhile of returning whatever I borrowed I could select something which he was happier with when it had double copies or more so the students would not be without a book. I found books in the women topics that were less read and not key seminary reading and it was garden of delights. It was like some long ago relative of mine had a thing for scriptoriums. I was born to be in one. When there I was perfectly content. By some coincidence a relative send us a well researched family genealogy and eons of relatives had lived within a stones throw of Glendough an ancient monastic village in the old country. So that might explain my love of monastic libraries. Except for one thing. Now that Fr. Boniface has gone and I know I will no longer see his smiling face and twinkly eyes among the books the library seems a much dustier and less pressing in interest place to visit. I have found my books in other ways and the doors of access seemed to have closed under the new monitor. While closing those doors other windows have opened and I am actually aware that my time of Grace there was something special and beautiful. As we stood around the grave side of Father Boniface each person tossed a bit of dirt on to his simple wood casket. Hesitant, I held back and composed myself for the final goodbye. There was something providing deep closure about tossing that clot of dirt on a box. I knew with all certainty that Father Boniface was not there. His frail little body might be in the box but that was all. A saint had gone home. An awareness that this was not a goodbye , but a Hello again in heaven swept over me and I look forward , one day in the words of St. Benedict "keeping death ever before my eyes , " standing with that great cloud of witnesses around the throne of God Fr. Boniface being fully restored among them . I am sure glad I took back all my books. Because , I am sure they will have Boniface on the gates. Checking out to see if your name is on the cards...." I think you have some fines here"....Awe. NO stamped Paid In Full. Enter In . I know that will be what was said to Boniface." Well done good and faithful servant. Enter into your rest. "Father Boniface has gone home and the world is an emptier place without him.

Shroud of Turin

We went to the Shroud of Turin exhibit today at St. Anne's Church in Abbotsford . I was awestruck. The shroud was presented in such a way as a replica that you felt you were looking a the actual shroud. The exhibits were informative and the speakers more so. But it was the shroud itself with its burn marks and face of Christ , hands folded with all the scourge marks and crown of thorns that held you. Science has come up with even more reasons to believe it is the actual shroud at least closing some of the gaps. Being a lover of history and particularily the history of the Shroud this was a wonderful gift, here in the middle of Lent just going into Holy Week to help us reflect on the Passion of Christ.