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SPIRITUALITY - THE REALITY OF LIMITATION: (4)

 

by Fr Douglas Robertson

 

To deny imperfection is to disown oneself, for to be human is to be imperfect. Spirituality, which is rooted in and revealed by uncertainties, inadequacies, helplessness, the lack and the failure of control, supplies a context and suggests a way of living in which our imperfections can be endured. Spiritual sensibilities begin to flower when the soil is fertilised with the understanding that “something is awry”. There is, after all, something “wrong” with us.

 

Throughout the centuries, spiritual writers and thinkers have expressed this experience of “awry-ness” as a sense of being off balance, out of kilter, ungrounded, fractured, broken, twisted, or torn apart.

 

Perhaps the clearest exploration of this paradox can be found in the Desert Fathers. These ascetics went out into the desert in search of a setting that would allow them to explore the nature of the human be-ing that their faith told them had been “redeemed”; the desert became a laboratory for studying what it means to be human.

 

In our quest for spirituality, a chief danger is the temptation to change the rules. We attempt to escape our imperfection by redefining or lowering the standards necessary for “perfection” or by blaming our flaws and errors on someone else. The tradition of a spirituality of imperfection reveals such attempts for what they are - unnecessary. True healing follows the example of the early Christian church, which, rather than redefining the rules to allow anyone to declare himself perfect, sought to provide “a vision of life in which imperfections could be endured.”

 

Following the heyday of the desert hermits, who so strikingly explored the implications of this insight, Gregory of Nyssa, described the only perfection that human beings can achieve as a “progress” that is never-ending, for the goal is ever-receding. Gregory’s imagery paralleled that of the monk Macarius, who vividly portrayed the journey that had become the main monastic metaphor for the spiritual life as a process of falling and getting up again, building something up only to have it knocked down again. According to Macarius, our imperfection - the weakness within us that allows sin - is beneficial, for it assures that we must “toil and struggle and sweat.”

 

Spirituality begins as an expression of what in human be-ing is incurable by human efforts. And it is an expression: not a philosophical or psychological description, not a theory, belief, opinion, or judgement, not dogma or doctrine or creed but expression - a howl of pain, a cry for help squeezed out of one’s human core. “Lord, save me, whether I like it or not,” one of the desert denizens prayed. “Dust and ashes that I am, I love sin.”

 

But if spirituality begins as a cry for help, it becomes a way of living with - of putting up with - our human imperfection. The saints and sages insist that imperfections be accepted as imperfections because such acceptance is necessary if we are to develop a vision of life and a way of living in which those imperfections can be endured and lived with creatively. And so the “second step” along that way involves accepting the uncertainties of life, refraining from asking for absolute assurances, and abandoning demands for perfection.

 

The ancients knew something that many moderns, in their pursuit of “the perfect life, have forgotten. A critical error in the history of Western spirituality arises from the out-of-context quotation of the words of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Gospel according to Matthew 5:48 “Therefore be ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” The term perfect is translated from the Greek teleios, which means more accurately “fully complete.” Verses 43 and 48 form a unit, the theme of which is the breadth of the love of the Father, who “lets His rain fall on the just and the unjust alike.” When taken in context, then, the point of the admonition to “be perfect” is to be compassionate in a way that treats all others fairly, equally.

 

You have learnt how it was said: You must love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say this to you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; in this way you will be sons of your Father in heaven, for he causes his sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest men alike. For if you love those who love you, what right have you to claim any credit? Even tax collectors do as much, do they not? And if you save your greetings for your brothers, are you doing anything exceptional? Even the pagans do as much, do they not? You must therefore be teleios as your heavenly Father is teleios.

 

As the very concept of a “Heavenly Father” or any kind of “Higher Power” implies, spirituality is founded in the recognition and acceptance of one’s creatureliness and finitude. There is, of course, “something wrong” with us. Finite beings, we thirst for the infinite. “Man is the creature who wants to be God,” as Sartre sadly observed. But we are not God, and given our human nature, spirituality suggests not “I’m okay, you’re okay,” but “I’m not okay, and you’re not okay, but that’s all right.”

 

This presents a difficult challenge for the modern mind, which tends to view problems from the perspective: “If it’s wrong, it can be fixed.” The corollary runs: “If we cannot fix it, then there must be nothing wrong.” But if “nothing is wrong,” then there is no need for spirituality. In a perfect world, there would be no spirituality at all. The perfected is completed, that which is finished, ended. But because we are human, we are not and cannot be finished or ended while we are still alive. Imperfection is related to limits. As humans, we do not “have” limits; we are limited. Something is wrong and it cannot be “fixed.” Whenever that reality of limitation is denied or rejected, spirituality suffers.

 

Finite beings who thirst for the infinite, desperate creatures who “want to be God,” all-or-nothing people who go broke on perfection … given our limitations, and our tendency to strain against them, how do we learn to put up with ourselves? The sages and saints have not left us without some thoughts on the subject. The Desert Fathers, that marvellous group of imperfect human beings who struggled tirelessly with their own imperfections, discovered quite a bit about learning how to “put up with ourselves.” The secret, they determined, lies in compassion, which begins with “putting up with” others.

 

A monk was brought up before the brotherhood for having committed a grievous sin, and it was decided that he would be excommunicated. As the monk left the sanctuary, his head bent in shame, the esteemed Abba Bessarian stood up, fell into step behind his fellow monk and in a clear voice announced, “I, too, am a sinner.”

 

The very solitude of their lives as hermits led the Desert Fathers to discover that we are like others not in our virtues and strengths, but precisely in our faults, our failings, ou r flaws. As Evagrius Ponticus, one of the most influential of the desert monks, put it: The nearer we draw to God, the more we should see ourselves as being one with every sinner.

 

In their solitude in the desert, the monks confronted their own weakness and developed a deep sense of their own sinfulness. But their spirituality did not stop there - it only began there. For out of that awareness of their own weakness, they developed a compassion for the weaknesses of others, the outstanding virtue that all of their sayings highlight. One of the most respected of the Desert Fathers was Moses the Black. A story suggests the foundation of his greatness.

 

A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go. Then the priest sent someone to say to him, “Come, for everyone is waiting for you.” So he got up and went, taking a leaking jug filled with water and carrying it with him. The other monks came out to meet him and said: “What is this, Father?” The old man replied: “My sins run out behind me and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the faults of another.” When they heard that, they said no more to the brother but forgave him.

 

A similar story is told about Abba Ammonas, who was called upon by some monks to punish a local hermit who was thought to have a mistress living with him. Infuriated at their neighbour’s casual immorality, the monks asked Ammonas to accompany them to the monk’s cell, where they would confront the culprit and extract punishment for his sins.

 

When the hermit in question heard this, he hid the woman in a large barrel. The crowd of monks came to the place. As soon as he entered the monk’s cell, Ammonas realised that the woman was hiding in the cask. Strolling over to it, he sat down on the barrel and then instructed the other monks to search the cell carefully. When the monks had searched everywhere without finding the woman, they retreated, abashed and apologetic. On his way out, Ammonas took his fellow monk’s hand and said, “Brother, be on your guard; pay attention to yourself.”

 

“Pay attention to yourself!” Abba Ammonas was not primarily concerned with his fellow monk’s actions - even the most venerated of the desert monks tended to be rather casual about what would excite later generations as matters of morality. But Ammonas was deeply concerned by the monk’s apparent attitude of carelessness, of not facing up to what he was doing, of not being truthful with himself. What we do is important, but what we are is more important. Most important, of course, is that we understand the difference.

 

“Pay attention to yourself!” The emphasis is always and continually on self-knowledge, knowing oneself and honestly accepting - “owning” - one’s own imperfections. For honesty is first and foremost honesty with self, and true honesty concerns acknowledging and accepting our own imperfection. Pay attention to yourself and allow others to do the same, for other people can deal with their own imperfections. They don’t need someone else to point out their problems.

 

The main benefit of struggle and failure is that it helps protect against the ultimate bane of all spirituality, conceit - the self-centeredness that claims absolute self-sufficiency, the pride that denies all need.

 

The Desert Fathers and Mothers viewed temptation as their most valuable tool, for by observing their desires, they came to know themselves. Far from longing for freedom from their passions, these hermits used - even courted - temptation as a source of essential energy. The ascetic’s gravest danger was always recognised to be acedia - the boredom and self-pity that flourished when temptation disappeared.

 

From the central act of confronting the truth of one’s own weakness began the development of that characteristic most admired by these earliest saints - the sense of compassion, the recognition that other’s weaknesses render them not different from but like to oneself. Because the desert ascetics combined those deep awarenesses of their own sinfulness and of the weakness of all humanity, an almost exaggerated sense of compassion for the weakness of others comes through many of their sayings. When their stories are taken out of context, we tend to be shocked by their “weird” behaviour, forgetting that their weirdness was their way of calling attention to the need for compassion.

 

There is both good and evil in the world, but the line separating them runs not between nations or institutions or groups or even individuals; the line that separates good and evil runs through the core of each nation, each institution, each group, and, most tellingly, through the core of each human being, through each one of us. Cutting through each one of us is the reality of our own limitation. “There is a crack in everything God has made,” Emerson observed, and - not least of all - “in each one of us.”