There is an peninsula in Greece known as Mount Athos. The “Holy Mountain” or “Garden of the Virgin”—as it is also known—is peppered with monastic houses, kelli (small groupings of individual monastic“cells”), and caves for hermits. Each gathering of monastics has its own “rule of life”; its own way of living together.
Some monks gather often for meals and prayer. Others only weekly. Still others only for major feasts or sporadically. Some monks live their rule alone; completely by themselves.However they are organized as communities the goal is the same.The monks seek to perform some sort of spiritual practice and also to enter “hesychia”—the stillness/silence of God. There are as many forms for this as there are monks. They truly live in cairn-space.
In the Western Church, Saint Benedict and other “Rule” writers, focused more directly on the pattern of living that monks shared with one another in their monastic enclosures. The “Rules” looked at the apostolic notions hidden in a common life together: how much should people eat, how many items of clothing should they have, how often should they pray, how should they treat guests. Although these “rules” inhabit the communities on the Holy Mountain, they are not the focus of Eastern monasticism. The focus of the Eastern Orthodox monk is tending the heart and making it a place for the Divine meeting. Spiritual practiceand stillness: prayer and hesychia. The writing of “Rules” and the living of rules does not predominate.
The work that the monastics perform in their spiritual struggle is seen as therapy. It is what restores them to full health in their lives in the Spirit of God. In Classical times, spirituality and religion were seen as daughters of medicine. The spiritual life was a journey in the healing of the soul. It was a medical science. Today we have all but lost that diagnostic approach to faith.
As you begin to unpack the writings found in the Philokalia—the monastic guidebook second only to the Holy Scriptures—you do get a sense that the writers were addressing illnesses within man. Their spiritual athletics in the arena of asceticism were directed at helping believers to find the antidote and cure for their spiritual illnesses. All of the writings approach spirituality with an eye toward removing the things that block us from becoming whole and healthy in the Spirit.
The writings speak a lot about getting back to a simple practice when we have lost sight of the silent stillness of God. Return to a simple method when you are distracted and start again. Fall and get up. Fall and get up. Fall and get up, again.
This was what they taught as a model for growth. This perpetual return to purification in the life of the ascetic moved them into a place where enlightenment and union could unfold without interruption.
Where much of the Church today has been at a lack for an organized schema or anthropology of man—one that permeates the denominational traditions—the Orthodox Monastic Tradition has maintained a consistent and growing body of knowledge of what it means to be human and how to bring human beings back into rightful homeostasis; centered in God. The path toward wholeness clearly requires spiritual practices and the stillness/silence of God—“hesychia.”
The Holy Mountain continues to be a place in space and time in which men still hear the cry of God, “Flee, hide from men, be silent.” The monastics believe it is this medicine that will heal the world.
This peninsula is cairn-space. These monks are cairn-space.
Ciao!
TJM+
