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Morning in the poustinia. I get up like most other people, do the usual ablutions, having recited as I get going some favorite prayers (consecration to Jesus through Mary, another prayer for spiritual protection). There’s a fire to start about ten months out of twelve, some cleaning up to do, the bed to make.
Since there’s no running water or functional hand pump where I am, I have to haul water from the main compound. Sometimes I need to split the wood further, then bring it in here for convenient storage.
Steve Héroux and crew make sure the woodshed is well stocked for the use of the poustinias round about, of which mine is only one.
I’ve been living here “full time” for about three years now—”full time” meaning three days in poustinia all day and four days with the community. I’m here to pray and fast for the community, the Church, and the world in general—a tall order for someone coming up a bit short in spiritual stature.
But I do what I can, pray and fast as I’m able, and continue to learn about weakness. Catherine Doherty taught the first MH poustiniks that this was one of the principal gifts they would have to offer from their experience in the “desert”—knowledge of how weak they were!
Three years running, I can identify with that thought. I certainly am not growing in spiritual self-assurance! Rather, living like this makes me more and more certain that without God I can do nothing. Perhaps that sounds too much like a pious platitude.
“Platitude” comes from the French word plat, meaning “flat” or “dull.” The definition (of the English word) reads as follows: 1.) the quality or state of being dull or insipid; 2.) a banal, trite, or stale remark.
Nothing worse for a paper like Restoration than to sound platitudinous. Or to feature authors who are platitudinarian.
After all, life in poustinia is anything but plat. The triune God is anything but dull or insipid. And without him, I become banal, trite, and stale.
What could be worse for a priest who either writes or preaches? What could be more tragic, ecclesiastically, than mouthing platitudes and living a life of corruption?
And yet, the poustinia allows a person to experience these very things in a rather stark way: spiritual staleness, trite thoughts, corrupt nature, banal interests. In a word, weakness, so that without God, one descends into all of these and more.
“It must be peaceful there in your poustinia,” people say, kind of half asking.
“Yes, its very piecemeal indeed,” I want to reply, or rather, “I feel more and more piecemeal all the time,” as in pieces and fragments, as if something is being deconstructed for a future building as yet unrevealed.
In her writings on poustinia Catherine Doherty called this part “‘kenosis” or emptying of self. It might sound like a lot of self-absorbed spiritual mumbo-jumbo, adventures in cabin fever while the world and the Church of today are on the verge of a kind of disintegration.
But Catherine would contend—and I agree with her fully—that the poustinik’s experience is precisely what is needed to help throw light on what is happening today.
Seeing the fragments of self lying in tatters around this cabin is helping me to see what’s false (that is, what is of me) and what’s true (that is, what is of Christ). Slowly, almost imperceptibly, one begins to see what’s false and what’s true about others—individuals, groups, and so forth.
One can be tempted, having seen a little, to offer “plans of renovation,” “a vision for the future.”
The first attempt at this bright idea was called the Tower of Babel! Unfortunately, they ran out of resources to finish it, as happens when the Holy Spirit is not consulted as to what a real renovation is.
I wonder what God has in mind for these fragments of mine? Which ones get purged further, polished, sanded down? Which are ready for reconstruction?
Across the marsh, they are working feverishly on planning the renovations of the Main House. Nearly everyone involved has been through the mill as part of planning this (for us) immense project.
That could be taken as a sign that the outcome of all that labor before a shovelful of earth was even turned will indeed be part of a real “renovation” in Madonna House.
Kenosis is not for itself. It has a counterpart, another Greek word (naturally) called “theosis,” or divinization. In other words, being filled with God.
Once a person is emptied of self (doesn’t happen overnight, however), then God can live in him or her as He has always wished to. Such a person will be an offer of blessing upon the world. He will see with God’s eyes, listen with God’s ears and heart, speak God’s wisdom when he talks.
Out of profound and hard-won humility, he is a blessing of God’s presence, light, and peace for many. That’s why poustinia is seen as not only for the world, but as a necessity of human life, whatever form it takes in different places.
I wouldn’t know about all that, however, since as far as I can tell, I’m in fragments of deconstruction and the Renewal Plans have yet to come in!
I just need to keep doing the obvious and seek clarification when the obvious becomes obscure. I want to give the poustinia a good cleaning one of these days, instead of the quick sweep, rug shake, and dusting I usually give it.
But what am I to do, Lord, when cleaning gets interrupted by a phone call or a knock at the door? Someone in spiritual need seems more important to attend to than that lonely cobweb in the corner by the entryway.
I feel pulled here and pulled there at the same time. The answers are probably simple each time, but am I simple enough to hear them?
Then there’s what I’d rather do than, perhaps, what I need to do? And what about the undercurrent, like stubborn trickles within of irritation, distraction, gluttony, impurity, greed, boredom? How will it ever come apart without me coming apart with it?
You alone know, O Lord! but at this time in my life, all of this is my contribution to Church renewal, MH reno projects, and (while we’re at it) world peace.
For you truly do gloriously well in our human weakness, even as your touch makes of it something divine.
Meantime, night has fallen, and the work of this day is coming to an end. Time for compline and a little reading before bed. Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit, this day, and all people. Signed, your pitiable fragment.
