Mother Theresa

~

“Imagine you’re walking through a forest.

Full of tall strong beautiful trees

Resilient against the wind and the rain

Beneath the soil

They are tied together

Intertwined

Beneath the soil

There are millions of roots

Connected

And they are better together

And when I think of these trees

I think of us

And how we try to go through life by ourselves

The times we’ve felt broken

The times we felt left

The times we’ve been hurt by someone else

We proclaim this loud and bold

But unlike the trees

We decide

To go it alone

I marvel at the pain

We can too easily shut out

I marvel at the years

We choose to lose sight

Everyday we see people’s wounds

But we never see past them

We never see through

We pick up our pace

We pick up our stones

We cross the other side of the road

We say there is no more room at our table

We love at a distance

We are only fair weather friends to weather the storms of this life

Because loving people’s imperfections is inconvenient and messy

Yet there’s no line of Scripture where Jesus commands us to seek our ease

No line where He commands that we seek our self

We look at people’s broken behaviours

ignore,

belittle

condemn

judge,

Look for quick cures but we do not see

Every broken behaviour comes from an unmet need

Behind every broken is someone who looks like our saviour

We go it alone

But alone is not what we were created for

Alone is not what the church was created to be

Isn’t it the one who cares for the poor and needy

The little and the least

Whom Christ will say come sit at my table

Come sit with me

When I hear this my immediate thought is

Where can I find a hungry

thirsty

naked

foreign

sick

imprisoned

stranger

Whom I can relieve

But In my attempts to love the needy

I discover my own poverty.

In clothing the naked,

I discover am naked of all virtue

In visiting the prisoner

I realise I am imprisoned by prideful thoughts

In visiting the sick

I learn I am sick with selfish desires.

I am who Jesus is referring to

I am the Least of These

It is not that poor guy on the street corner

Or the lonely girl in the corner,

who are the least of these.

No, it is me.

I am the least of Christ’s brethren.

I may not be poor naked sick or imprisoned in body

But I am poor naked sick and imprisoned in soul

I am starved of loving kindness

parched by lack of forgiveness

Sick with the disease of lust

Naked of compassion

Imprisoned by habits of self-indulgence.

And if I am the least,

If I really know that I am the least

Then the least that I can do

Is not go it alone

The least I can do is share my bread

When I am the one who hungers for righteousness

The least I can do is share my cup

When I am the one thirsting for Life.

The least I can do is share my stuff

When my I am so poor of anything valuable

The least I can do is sit with the lonely

When I am too lonely of the Father’s house

I have no clothes to cover my own sinful nakedness,

I have no medicine to heal my own blindness

I have no key to liberate my imprisoned soul.

Yet

He calls us His temple

Because we are pieces that come together to build and hold up one another

He calls us His body

Because we are all different parts and no purpose or function is like the other

He calls us His vine

Because we are only living when we are connected to one another

In Him

Like the trees

We were made to stand tall here

We were made to be a part of this forest here

Standing firm against all odds

Creation representing creator God

But our own fears of being hurt

Casts a shadow on the reality

That the fissures I see in my neighbour

Are the same fractures that covers me.

Wrapped tight in this fear, we act out against love.

And when we act out against love

We act out against the One Who loves us. “

“God is love.”

1 in 3

3 in 1

A community

Just as love is meaningless without something to love.

So we are meaningless without our brother

When our brother is our life

Just as one God exists as three Persons in one,

So we were created to be wholly ourselves

When we are wholly one with the other

We don’t pray my father

But our father

We are His children

Our husband

We are his bride

Our shepherd

We are His sheep

He is the one who never leaves the one behind

No one is saved alone.

Everyone’s freedom is tangled

Everyone salvation tied up

Roots beneath the soil

So there can be no fences

There can be no hedges

No neat marked out lines

Of what is yours and what is mine

Because where my life ends

Yours can begin

When we need each other to survive

So let’s close the distance between you and me

Trade in our fear for curiosity

Tear down our fences to build bridges

Open our door for those who have no place of their own

Step into each other’s darkness with kindness as a burning lantern

Love others through their brokenness

Because our brokenness makes us more alike than unlike.

The powerless, the wounded and the weak

All those who cannot speak

Come sit beside me and tell me your story

Tell me of the million and one ways a soul can bruise

And I can tell the million and one ways a soul sees the Light.

The Light loves with abandon

His wounded hands love the wounded with no bounds.

Because we were created for one another

We belong to each other

No matter the weather

Like trees in a forest

Stronger

Taller

Together”

~

That One Thing

I remember finding the following verse under the heading ‘Miscellaneous Laws’  in the Pentateuch before getting married and desiring and praying to have an opportunity to live it out:

“When a man has taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war or be charged with any business; he shall be free at home one year, and bring happiness to his wife whom he has taken.” (Deuteronomy 24:5)

Well God answered my prayer in the most unusual way and taught me something in the process: In order to do something well you have to completely and unconditionally dedicate yourself to just that one thing. God moved us from familiar people, places, culture, and even language in order to have us build a strong foundation for our marriage for as many years as God gives us together.

Oneness of Purpose

When your attentions and desires are divided you will do nothing well. As Christ said, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.” I remember a conversation I had with a monk as I visited a monastery while here in Korea; I remember asking him, “Why are you here in the monastery, what do you hope to achieve?”

“Deification” came his concise reply. I was impressed not so much with his answer as the fact that he didn’t have to really think about it to respond. There was someone who knew what it was they wanted! He had dedicated himself to the monastic life to pursue union with God – to become by grace what Jesus Christ is by nature. Isn’t that the calling of each one of us? Shouldn’t that be our sole purpose as Christians? Of course, we all have different means of reaching the same goal but in order to reach the goal we first have to make it our one aim, our one focus. In all that we do, whether in eating or drinking, rejoicing or suffering, giving thanks to God for His goodness and provision or giving ourselves over to repentance we should have a goal: union with our God.

Oneness of Being

This concept of ‘one thing’ goes much deeper than it’s superficial appearance. To demonstrate this I want to reference how tears are valued in the spiritual life because they show that man has only one thought and desire – that of God:

in our natural fallen state, we are divided: we think one thing with our mind, we feel another with our senses, we desire yet another with our heart. However, when mind and heart are united by the grace of God, then man has only one thought–the thought of God; he has only one desire–the desire for God; and only one sensation–the noetic sensation of God. That is why repentance and tears are so much appreciated: they help us to find that healing, that state of integrity, because no human being can weep having two thoughts; we weep because of one thought that hurts us. If we are hurt by the thought that we are separated from God, that ‘salvation is far from the sinner’ (cf. Psalm 119:155) and all those things that inspire this pain in our heart, then, of course, we can cry; but if we have two thoughts, we cannot cry -Archimandrite Zacharias

St John Climacus recounts something similar about how it is important to call all of oneself to the worship of God:

Noticing that one of the brothers stood during the Psalm singing with more heartfelt feeling than many of the others. . . I asked him to explain. . . I have the habit, Father John, at the very beginning, of collecting my thoughts, my mind and my soul, and of summoning them, I cry to them: O come, let us worship and fall down before Christ, our King and God.

Blessed is the man who presents himself and worships God with his whole being united as one! Our Orthodox Church allows us to move towards this way of worship as “the Divine Liturgy acts upon the entire man… sight, hearing, smelling, feeling, taste…” (St John Kronstadt). The icons, chanting, incense, candles, kneeling, breast-beating, kissing, partaking in the Body and Blood of Christ … everything is meant to help us worship God with our entire selves. We offer all of ourselves in exchange for all of Him.

Oneness in Spirit

You can also look at doing ‘one thing’ in such a way that it does not need to be done again. There are several saints that model this idea of doing something in the power of the Spirit once and for all. For instance, it is said of St Ephraim the Syrian that he celebrated Liturgy only once and did not celebrate it again. “Once was sufficient for him because he lived the mystery in the power of the Spirit.” Imagine that! Just like the entire life of  Christ – every act that He did – was done once and for all, the saints of our Church leave us the same example.

Another such example is St. Mary of Egypt. From what we know of her story it seems as though she only partook in the Holy Eucharist once. This should change our mentality from how many times I can go to liturgy and take communion to how in His Presence can I be if even for a shorter time. How deeply and with how much of myself can I pray? How much will I let Him increase in me? How much can I become like Him?

Community Is Everything

“Our life and our death is with our neighbor.” -St. Anthony the Great

Another precious lesson that I learned while in Korea is that community is everything. I am not referring to the small talk had with acquaintances from work in coffee shops, but rather the discussions with other believers centered on the word of God and worshipping and partaking of the Word of God Himself in the Divine Liturgy.

True community, deep friendship is founded upon the mutual pursuit of the God of love. What’s more is that a genuine community is founded on persons who mutually give of themselves and receive of others. Yes, we should celebrate one another, encourage, rebuke, weep and rejoice with our brothers and sisters but we are called to much much more than that. We need to offer ourselves to the point of death for one another because there is no greater love. Oh that we would say with St. Paul that we could wish ourselves accursed from Christ for the sake of our brethren! Let us labor in love for one another till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Let us pray the first word of the Lord’s prayer with sincerity of heart united to our brothers in our heart.

And let us not forget the words of St. John Chrysostom:

“I do not believe that he can be saved who does not labour for the salvation of his neighbor. It profited that wretched servant nothing that he had not diminished his talent, but he perished through not increasing it and returning it twofold”

Fight Everyday

How are we to live up to the lofty calling we have received? How are we to honor the royal image that we bear? How are we to become even as He is?

We must struggle everyday

Let us not waste or lives on trivial pursuits but spend them in repentance!

The first couple of Sundays that I attended St. Nicholas Korean Orthodox Church in Seoul, South Korea the Metropolitan spoke his sermon in Greek and it was translated simultaneously into Korean and thankfully also into English. At that time I was developing the habit of taking just one main point away from the sermon and applying that to myself for that next week (see first lesson :)). Looking back, the first Sunday’s lesson was simply ‘pursue holiness’ and the second Sunday’s was ‘fight everyday.’ I put these two together and it was the general theme for the entire rest of my time there. Even in confession, His Eminence would encourage me to ‘fight everyday,’ to ‘struggle,’ to practice ‘ascesis,’ for that is the secret to the Christian life he would say – to fight everyday.

Fight to remain salty. Fight against following the crowd away from Him. Fight to give away that which you have freely received. Fight to love your wife. Fight to act on the word of God. Fight against your passions knowing that they bring about all kinds of destruction on you. Fight to help those in need. Fight to be humble as it is the foundation for true love. Fight against making excuses for yourself. Fight to cultivate within yourself a deep desire for Him. Fight to remain faithful and to persevere to the very end. Fight to have a holy marriage, to have a little church in your house. Fight to go from death to life. Fight to see the good in people. Fight to become great by keeping the gospel and obeying the commandments. Fight to be full of joy. Fight to read your Bible and go to church. Fight to pray. Fight despite your fear. Fight your self-love. Fight because the road of the cross is an exceedingly beautiful one. Fight to let Him fight for you.

Thank you to all our family at St. Nicholas for a year not soon to be forgotten.

Sometimes we think that we are in need of a perfect home with everything neatly in place to show hospitality. And sometimes we think we need a perfect heart that has it all together to invite someone in and build that home. But there are homes we build with our friends not with hands but with conversations of openness and honesty, with the comfort to be as we are, who we are, where we are now. With all our sins and struggles and all our questions and doubts. Sharing death and grief, sex and desire, our needs, deepest inadequacies and regrets. We uncover the demolition in our hearts, unafraid of displaying the rubble, unafraid of leaving the keys to the doors we’ve always locked for someone else to walk in. In the face of each other’s rubble, there is no space for judgement, only the realisation that we all stand on the same levelled ground, a holy ground, where our pain and our struggles are communally felt, without measure, without degrees. Hospitality is the fearlessness to offer others a key into your warzone, and the fearlessness to choose to be present with another.

Many of us were raised strictly associating spiritual growth with the attendance of bible studies, worship evenings, quiet time and locking our bedroom doors in prayer. But there is spiritual growth at 2am at the back of a pickup truck, with seven hearts drawn in laughter and in love. There is growth in 6am swims through the river and in sharing water shoes when the rocks become too harsh beneath your feet. There is growth in conversations over eggs benedict and in sharing the words of people who have previously hurt and condemned us, and the relationships that have left us feeling less than who we were. There is growth in reconnecting with old friends and learning the hearts of new ones, because where there are people, there is God, and that is where we grow and self discover. There is growth in the daily victory of waking up and trying, trying, and trying again. There is growth in struggling through loss to believe that God is good, and there is also growth in firmly believing through the tragedy that God is good.

When we let God out of the man-made spiritual boxes we have created, we need not look far or deep or wide to see His face, but to the heart next to us to realise that He is here. For long we have found Him in foreign mission fields and in retreats, yet now we are awakened to find Him in His people, the church, the home that is built without hands.

After years of living under the weight of expectations and who we “should” be, many of us have locked so many doors of our hearts away for the fear of being known, for fear of being perceived as not spiritual, as not a man or woman of God. When we have tasted the condemnation of a community, that labels and silences us, our fears can only be rational and our walk becomes heavy. We were never called to pretend a false state of perfection. We were created in the image of Community for community. A community that is real, that moves from individualism to a place where we can reach out and ask why we’re created in a fallen world or why it’s so hard to hear God’s voice sometimes.

We all naturally gravitate to the community that will accept us for all we bring to the table, so we find ourselves projecting the finished product of ourselves that we believe our community desires so that we can find our home. All the while we live with the fear of truly being known and found out. We live in fear that one day someone will tear down the door to our demolition and see the truth; to see our addictions and the tears that keep us up at night. But Christ was always interested in the real authentic version of ourselves. Christ was never interested in the finished product more than he was in our journey to wholeness. And community was only ever meant to be a place without fear. A place where all we ask is to see with loving eyes, instead of with defense or judgment, the person before us. All of the wonder, grace and godliness lying in the demolition that is yet to be restored. We hope in the yet to come but we love and live the now of each other – no matter how much is taken apart. Hospitality is loving without the need to put it all back together. And hospitality never demands an invite. It waits, it loves, it is patient.

To our friends on that August summer night, we are eternally grateful for your stories.

“Maybe we’re all just shiny balls of light inside human machines.

Maybe we’re all trying desperately to convince others that the noise they hear coming out of our mouths is an accurate reflection of the intentions of the shiny ball of light inside the machine.

Maybe it screams,

“I am real in here, I am real in here, I am real here.”

Maybe the light inside me just wants to know, if you’re real too.”

-Iain Thomas

Co-written with Makrina

a) the fear of knowing yourself

b) the power that it gives the person we are being vulnerable with

Being vulnerable, whether that’s apologising or confessing a fear, mistake or insecurity requires a level of self-reflection and it is terrifying to go into your own darkness.  By sharing that with another person we’re taking a huge emotional risk by placing this sacred piece of our soul in their hand. A piece that they may not know how to handle with care. A piece they can either be compassionate and gentle with or that they can totally break into fragments if they react in disgust or rejection to our vulnerability. So vulnerability is hard because knowing my own darkness is agonising and also because taking someone deep into that darkness means they can confirm our worst fear – that we’re too dark to be loved or worthy of love. And that is a kind of pain that can leave the most damaging of scars.

But I think there is also another part that we miss which makes vulnerability seem so dangerous and uncertain.

When I take someone into that darkness and I reveal a part of me that is wounded or hurting,  an unspoken level of accountability is forged. Especially if I deeply love the person with whom I’m being vulnerable with, which is normally the case, because love requires that I do whatever it takes to be the best for them. So it follows that if I am ready to share a shortcoming, I am ready to try to move away from it.

Most of the time, vulnerability in any relationship will happen when we’re apologising, trying to explain our actions to someone or trying to help them understand why we reacted in a certain way. It usually means that the very thing we’re being vulnerable about probably affects the person that we are being vulnerable to.

By sharing this with them and releasing it into the open and into the light, I can no longer say I didn’t know about my own inadequacies. I can no longer turn a blind eye or ignore it. More importantly, I can no longer hide from it because now another soul can see. I am faced with one choice – confront it, fight it and grow.

I think that’s an incredibly scary thing about vulnerability – more than the emotional exposure, it’s the place that the emotional exposure thrusts us. And where is that? A place that means we must choose to be different and change.

Vulnerability is hard because “despair is more comforting than hope.” In the pit of my own darkness I am free to languish in hopelessness and sorrow, but once I am vulnerable, whether I’m received with compassion or not, I have no excuse to remain in my tattered fig leaves rather than animal skin. The fear is that: ‘What if it takes me too long to change? What if they give up on me?’ This is when the shame creeps in and like our forefather, Adam, we want to run.

Vulnerability creates accountability and that’s a huge responsibility to shoulder.

Perhaps that’s why vulnerability can be much easier in retrospect, sharing wounds that have been and gone. Being vulnerable in the moment, being vulnerable about the very brokenness that still breaks you so well, really is the biggest risk. And here is the kicker: ‘What if, by revealing my shame or weakness, so that I may be known,  I’m actually giving them the reason to walk away from me?’

Maybe this is why vulnerability feels like weakness; not just because of the exposure but because of the position of responsibility it puts us in where there is no more space for blaming others and pointing fingers. I must own the story of my weakness.

Vulnerability doesn’t guarantee anything. It isn’t a miracle in a bottle. Yes, it is ultimately a risk that can leave us naked and alone, but without it we have no connection.

So there will come a time, when we think of the past; every single time trust was offered to someone in vulnerability and was irretrievably broken, when we think of the present, the people in our life we are called to love as our own soul and when we think of the future, the kind of love we want our life to profess and we are compelled to ask: “is vulnerability worth it?”

What if staying and being vulnerable with those trusted souls in our lives breaks our plan? Everything comes at a cost, and though waters may rise and vulnerability may fail us along with those we trust, if love is the fulfillment of the law, then there is no cost that is wasted. Nothing is wasted for love – may our souls never forget to wear this God-breathed truth like second skin.

Click here to read part 1 of our vulnerability series!

Photo courtesy of  Zachary Snellenberger

‘To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude’
– Henri Nouwen

To young me,

I was a little worried about writing to you as I am not sure how you would take this. You never really understood what was going on inside your heart and mind. You were walking aimlessly searching for something but you didn’t know what you were looking for. You met Christ at a young age but you never really let Him right in. You never let Him into the deep parts of your heart because you didn’t really know where that was. You only ever met Him at the door of your heart. A passion was growing inside of you for your Lord but you didn’t know where or how to pursue that passion.

As I reminisce at your younger years and read all your teachers reports, they all seem to read the same. ‘Veronia is very sociable and popular among her classmates.’ Really? Was that really you? It sure didn’t feel like that when you would come home to an empty space within yourself. You were alone. The echo of your loneliness deafened your ears to your pain.

You read your Bible, prayed and did all your Sunday school homework. You were able to answer questions about God and stories in the Bible but did you really know Who your Maker was? You were quiet, spent a lot of time thinking but what were you thinking about? You kept avoiding your wounds and suppressed hurts. You walked about with a godly mask saying ‘It’s not okay to not be okay because I have God. A Christian can’t be sad or angry or feel any hurt.’ You tried everything you could to avoid confronting your loneliness because it was painful. You equated being quiet with being lonely, everyone was a stranger to you. Your heart longed for something or someone but you didn’t know what or who. Through your high school years, you became independent, you didn’t need anyone. Speaking about your thoughts and feelings became such an alien thing to you. This illusion you had, that not sharing or speaking about how you feel was normal and wasn’t really necessary, is what brought you more harm than healing.

I remember that time when you were 11 years old and your first best friend of 6 years, walked away from you. The one person you invested so much time in, the one who you did everything with, betrayed your trust. You do know that that had a huge impact on you. You tried so hard to ignore how you felt and as a result, hurt resided inside of you. The pain that you never felt is what lured you into your cave of isolation. From that time onwards, you began a journey seeking to find community and belonging. Your Lord was growing a consuming passion within the depth of your heart. He used this experience to call you to the throne of Grace to cry out in the time of need. I wish you had laid your loneliness at His feet to realize the work of Grace that He was bestowing in your life from when you were 15. He was calling you to partake of Who He is so you can be what He is.

Let me tell you something a little crazy. What if I told you that the desert, the place of emptiness, the place of loneliness, that place you made your dwelling place for many years, is the place where your Best Friend is waiting for you. He’s waiting to turn that desert place into a garden. A garden of fruit, a garden of peace and holiness. A garden of real community and fellowship. Turn to the One who you claim to sit with daily, you know why? Because He Himself is the One who dwells in community. Love cannot be love if He is alone. Enter into the Divine Eternal Dance and join the Triune God. He is whom you seek and deeply desire. Your soul is thirsty for union with it’s Lover. Please don’t believe the lie that you are incapable of loving others just because you are in isolation. Within you is the kingdom of heaven! You have the capacity to more than just love! It wasn’t out of your Heavenly Father’s loneliness that He created you for Himself but out of His Love. He who is Love is the One who dwells in community with the Son and the Spirit. Leave this emptiness to come to fullness, leave this isolation to come to abundance of Life.

O daughter of Jerusalem, turn your loneliness into solitude and you will dwell and dine together with the Holy Trinity. You will be seated at the royal table and partake of His Divinity while you feast and commune with the body of Christ, His Church and His bride. Once you enter into solitude you will experience a creative communion with your fellow beings. You must be willing to enter in order to be healed and become who you were meant to be.

Love,

Your future-self

“A union with Christ divinizes us while leaving our personality totally intact. It does not entail by any means the absorption of one’s personality but the full flowering of one’s own unique God-given personality by God’s grace.”

Anthony Coniaris