When you’ve chosen to sit in an ash heap for a while, don’t be surprised when it starts to get uncomfortable. Instead, keep sitting there.
It’s Lent–Go Find Yourself an Ash Heap
It’s Lent …
Yup–
enough said.
For those of us in Orthodox Lent, for those of us striving to take it seriously, striving to draw closer to God through repentance and prayer and a little bit of hunger we know every year that it’s going to be a long journey, a long difficult pilgrimage to Kristos Anesti … A long, drawn out, scraping and clawing pilgrimage.
For to get to Resurrection we need to go through death.
Before death is trampled down by death, we need to encounter death–
a small existential death,
if we want to.
The story of Job is an obvious parallel to Lent; this act of putting on sackcloth and sitting in the ash heap that is our ambitions, our desires, our comforts and vices …
Of maybe setting aside that diet regimen that got you physically jacked only to restrict your diet for the sake of becoming, in the words of one monk friend of mine, spiritually jacked.
Yes, getting jacked by sitting in an ash heap.
The Ash Heap or the Smoke Hole
Whether it’s an ash heap or a smokehole–it’s up to you. …
People will do all kinds of cathartic things to reach a state of ‘spiritual enlightenment. I finished reading recently Martin Shaw’s Smokehole–a brilliant look at myth, legend, story and their impact on spiritual life and growth.
Reading the back flyleaf of the book I see that he has been a wilderness guide for many years. And in the book itself he writes about a group of people he’s with out there in a wood somewhere, fasting, reflecting, and shifting their gaze from what he calls the Spyglass of the mobile phone to the Smokehole, the image of which is captivating in its poetic nuances.
The smoke hole is the hole in the tent that lets the smoke of the fire out–but also allows you to glimpse the heavens above in all their enchantment; to see something beyond yourself, to cast your gaze to the reality of what is beyond the ‘black mirror’ of your curated fake life and all its noise. To encounter Beauty.
But Shaw’s got these people out there in a wood somewhere fasting and reflecting and being in silence out in creation, and trying to find a story that is real, trying to find an internal narrative that is dug out of the ash heap of failure, regret, self-deception …
Shaw …
The reek of entitlement that rolls off occasional participants [in the vigil] is sometimes profoundly engrained. Frequently their first vigil is simply working on removing the encrusted husk of their unquestioned and now very tedious privilege. The remotest flicker of a boundary we see exactly the age they are–adolescent. So it saves us all time to wrestle like Jacob and the Angel with our issues of individuation and being endlessly witnessed ahead of time. Because, actually, what I look for in your eyes when you return is not victory. I’m looking for defeat (Smoke Hole, 58).
Lent As the Ash Heap
Is this not Lent?
Are we not on such a pilgrimage every year at this time?
Is this not the opportunity given to us by Christ and His Church–to get out in the wilderness, cast off all the baggage of the spy glass, all the fake news, fake information, AI slop, our dumb avatars, our weak curated lives, all the fakery, lies, deceptions of the simulation we live in every day, and open up the smoke hole and light some incense and raise our prayers, our repentance, through it to God and open ourselves to the great hierarchy of Being we are a small yet significant part of?
This is the time to sit in ash heaps and gaze at the stars above and just feel that discomfort, let that edginess, that crustiness, the aggravations of our failed sense of entitlement flake off as we apply the clay-shards of our repentance to them and bleed them out.
Ya, it feels like crap. It should.
Ya, maybe I should be joyful at all times, but let’s face it–I’m not. I’ve got a few more hours to wait before I get my first coffee of the day, so give me a break would ya? …
It’s not time for Cadbury’s easter cream eggs–forget Cadbury’s, how about just the eggs!
Resist that latte for black coffee instead–but where the hell am I going to get some protein?
Put away the spy glass for a while and open up the smoke hole and actually read the Bible and the Desert Fathers and not Dostoevsky or John le Carre–save the latter for after Bright 50 (that’s my own prescription, and I’m failing miserably at it).
For what?
To strive towards God, the Source, the Being, of all that is.
These are the words of St Maximus–to strive towards the Source of our being, the Source of what is. Because we live only when we’re united with Him, with Christ; and we are only united with Him when we struggle against our egos carefully fashioned and intentionally curated on our spy glasses–
catch that point of view?
Put Away the Spyglass …
The Spyglass could be pointed at you and gathering all this information about you. You can also call it the Black Mirror.
But it is also used by you to peer into the lives of others, to gather all their information and judge them, to cast yourself as judge, to have the view of a (fallen) god–that divine yet also potentially devilish view from nowhere.
But we are called to become
gods--yes,
But not by the spyglass,
Not by getting our bods
jacked and our diets in line to live
a hundred years,
but by that struggle,
by finding an ash heap to sit on,
preferably made up of all the
burned up ambitions,
all the failures,
all the self-deceptions,
all the sins ...
And just sit there.
And now the smoke hole becomes wider,
becomes the whole sky above you,
the whole cosmos,
and the smouldering wreckage
of your life,
the ash heap of your delusions
have open you to,
and emits a smoke that
rises to God,
a smoke that is a kind of
incense, a
burnt offering of your whole
life, all the bankruptcy of your
false self,
of all that you've tried to
accomplish away from God,
it all gets offered up as a
sacrifice, and you wince and
you don't want to look at the smoke
rising up, and you feel the pain of
the wounded boils you've scratched
off, and you wait for the
ointment,
for the healing,
to know and tase and
see that in it all, the Lord is
Good, and through the
rubble of your made up
stories, all the falsity of your
ego and ambitions, all the fake
stories you tell about
yourself, through this death,
the death of yourself, by the
Grace of God you will be
united to the True Story, the
True Narrative--
indeed you will participate in it:
You will drink from the Cup of
Immortality, and feast on the
Body of God Himself, and be one
with Him, Your Maker, the Source
of Life, and the Victor over
Death and Hell.
And you will be united to Life
Himself, with Beauty Himself
and with Truth and Goodness
Himself, and you will pilgrimage,
you will join the great procession
to His Cross, and maybe meet
Him there as the thief that you
are, bereft, bankrupt, stripped
naked, bruised, and you
will ask Him to remember you,
and you will pray that He does,
and you will yearn for
paradise, a rest from it all ...
And yes--Resurrection and a
Bright new brilliant day
and fifty more!
-----------
But hold up.
Hold your horses ...
Don't celebrate just yet ...
for right now is not that
time,
for right now it's time to
find yourself an ash
heap, find yourself a
heap of ash,
then you just ...
you need to just
in the ash heap
sit there,
just sit there,
for a good
long
while ...
