In the summer of 2002, I traveled to Austria for a meeting of the Theological Students Fellowship of Europe. About sixty seminary students from sixteen countries gathered at a retreat center called Schloss Mittersill, a castle about two hours south of Munich that dates back to the 12th century.

I have lots of fond memories about that trip, like my eleven-year-old daughter traveling with me, how she slept till the afternoon because of the time change, and our day trip to Salzburg to see Mozart's birth place.  But what I most remember, like it was yesterday, is a single sentence from a talk by the British theologian and Anglican priest Gerald Bray. 

I don't remember what his theme was, I just remember Bray saying that the Christian life can be difficult because (and here I quote verbatim) "there are so many things that we don't understand about ourselves."  I've thought about that single sentence long and hard since I heard it fifteen years ago.

Bray liberated me to move beyond a simplistic and horribly unrealistic view of my self, and to appreciate the many complexities of (my own) human nature.  He helped me to understand what the Trappist monk Thomas Merton called "the basic and most fundamental problem of the spiritual life," namely, "this acceptance of our hidden and dark self."  Stated positively, Bray helped me to develop a spirituality of imperfection.

Icon of John Cassian (360–430).

Consider the New Testament commentary on the story of Abraham for this week — that he "went out not knowing where he was going" (Hebrews 11:8).  His obedience was wrapped up in ignorance.

In this week's epistle to the Romans, Paul struggles with how and why he feels like a "slave" to the powers of death and darkness, even though he's been "set free" from them.  He says that we are "weak in our natural selves."  He sees in himself "every kind of covetous desire." 

And then his remarkable concession: "I do not know what I am doing.  For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate to do. I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep doing."

Society's holy grail of perfection — moral, spiritual, financial, physical, psychological, familial, vocational — is the voice of the oppressor, but later I discovered in the early desert monastics the liberating way of befriending my brokenness.

The early ascetics fled the corruption of church and society to seek Christ in the lonely solitude of the remote desert.  Sometimes they lived in communities, while others chose "open combat" as solitary hermits. They sought what John Cassian (360–430) called "integrity of heart" or "integral wholeness."

That's what they sought.  What they found was something far different.  With remarkable candor, brutal realism, unqualified empathy, and wry humor, the desert monks described how they experienced in the vast silence of the Egyptian desert a cacophony of voices in the interior geography of the human heart. They sought wholeness but discovered brokenness.

Their reports from the front lines of spiritual battle reveal a disarming transparency, "without any obfuscating embarrassment," as Cassian put it, and that never "despises anyone in belittling fashion." 

Here's a sampling of what I underlined in Cassian's two books Institutes and Conferences about their self-diagnosis — lethargy, sleeplessness, disturbing dreams, impulsive urges, self-justification, seething emotions, sexual fantasies, pious pretense that masked as virtue, self-deception, clerical ambition and the desire to dominate, crushing despair, confusion, wild mood swings, flattery, and the dreaded "noonday demon" of acedia ("a wearied or anxious heart" that suggests close parallels to clinical depression).

Cassian further admits that "there are [also] many things that lie hidden in my conscience which are known and manifest to God, even though they may be unknown and obscure to me."

He wondered why a monk who joyfully renounced great wealth later succumbed to intense possessiveness for a tiny pen knife, needle, book, or pen. He observed monks giving each other the "silent treatment." What provoked a brother's anger at a dull stylus? Consider his description of a church service that included "spitting, coughing or clearing our throat or laughing or yawning or falling asleep."

Icon of Saint Maximus the Confessor (580-662).

Or why is it, Cassian's friend Germanus asked, "that superfluous thoughts insinuate themselves into us so subtly and hiddenly when we do not even want them, and indeed do not even know of them, that it is very difficult not only to cast them out but even to understand them and to catch hold of them?" Where was the off-switch for a psyche in overdrive?

Despite their unrelenting realism about human nature, the desert mothers and fathers didn't live like helpless or hopeless victims. Far from it. They exuded confidence in God's unconditional love.  They exhibited tenderness and patience toward one another and to their own selves.  They avoided the faintest hint of judgementalism, they rejected every manifestation of extremist zeal, and chose not to compare themselves with others or even to be overly anxious about their progress.

"We all stumble in many ways" (James 3:2), and for many reasons. What we all need when we flounder and fail is not moral condescension but human compassion, not humiliation but empathy, not shame but hope.

I've always loved the tender wisdom of St. Maximus the Confessor (seventh century): "The person who has come to know the weakness of human nature has gained experience of divine power. Such a person never belittles anyone… He knows that God is like a good and loving physician who heals with individual treatment each of those who are trying to make progress."

For further reflection

George Herbert (1593–1633)

Affliction (IV)

BROKEN in pieces all asunder,
                 Lord, hunt me not,
                A thing forgot,
Once a poor creature, now a wonder,
         A wonder tortur’d in the space
         Betwixt this world and that of grace.

My thoughts are all a case of knives,
                Wounding my heart
                With scatter’d smart,
As wat’ring pots give flowers their lives.
         Nothing their fury can control,
         While they do wound and prick my soul.

All my attendants are at strife,
                Quitting their place
                Unto my face:
Nothing performs the task of life:
         The elements are let loose to fight,
         And while I live, try out their right.

Oh help, my God! let not their plot
                Kill them and me,
                And also thee,
Who art my life: dissolve the knot,
         As the sun scatters by his light
         All the rebellions of the night.

Then shall those powers, which work for grief,
                Enter thy pay,
                And day by day
Labour thy praise, and my relief;
         With care and courage building me,
         Till I reach heav’n, and much more, thee.

Image credits: (1) Wikipedia.org and (2) Wikipedia.org.