This
is the text of a lecture given at the Carmelite Centre, Melbourne, on Tuesday
August 7, 2018. It is an edited version of the first chapter of Simon Carey
Holt’s book Heaven All Around Us: Discovering
God in Everyday Life (Cascade, 2018).
He
was mad, an obsessive-compulsive given to freewheeling visions and the most
bizarre behaviors of self-harm. Voices told him things; at one moment they inspired
him and in the next condemned and ridiculed him. Today he would be diagnosed
and medicated, with a mental-health care plan to govern his days. But not then.
For all his manic eccentricities, he was widely revered as a holy man. “That
angel upon the earth,” they called him, “that citizen in the flesh of the
Heavenly Jerusalem.”[1]
Clearly, he was a man impossible to ignore. Even today he is venerated as one
of the Saints of the Christian Church.
Symeon
was his name, born in 388 in Sisan, a small town in the Roman province of
Cilicia on the border of modern day Turkey and Syria. Even as a boy, the son of
a shepherd, he was given to long periods of self-imposed fasting and the most
troubling dreams. As he watched his brother’s herds on the mountain slopes of Sis,
he was moved by ancient stories of sacrifice and imagined his own—a boys-own-adventure
with a religious twist. Not long after moving with his family to Antioch, by
then a teenager, Symeon heard the Gospel passage from Matthew read aloud: “Blessed
are they that mourn for they will be comforted; blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.” Struck by the force of the words but mystified by their
meaning, Symeon sought counsel from an old man in his village. The grey-headed sage
explained to him that true devotion was only found through suffering, and that
solitude was the most certain pathway to God. At just fourteen, captivated by
this prospect, Symeon pledged to become an anchorite. He made plans to leave
his family, his home and his shepherding for a life of solitude and separation;
“a spiritual hunter” they would call him, roaming the mountains “to stalk his God.”[2]
For
the next twenty years, Symeon stalked the monasteries of northern Syria, but
without finding the spiritual home he sought. In fact, he was routinely
expelled because of his excessive behaviors. Apparently he slept so little and
prayed so much, and so loudly, the other monks could barely cope. At the same
time his fasting practices became more extreme. Symeon developed the habit of
standing upright for as long as his body would hold him, for days and even
weeks on end. Finally, the monks judged
him unfit for communal life and expelled him to an isolated hut in the
mountains.
As
a hermit, Symeon became known as a solitary miracle worker, and a good one at
that. Such was his reputation that his beloved solitude evaporated. The endless
stream of human need overwhelmed him. It was in 423 that Symeon, then aged thirty-five
and desperate for relief, moved out to the desert of Telanissus where he found
a pillar among the ruins around nine feet high. He constructed a small platform
on its top and made it his home. Small boys from the local village would climb
up the pillar with parcels of flat bread and goats milk, but for the most part
he was left alone.
Much
to his dismay, Symeon’s isolation was short lived. Soon he was overwhelmed again
by need. Great crowds gathered with requests for mediation with God and each
other. A man of compassion, Symeon could not refuse them, but clearly his
pillar was too short. What’s more, his personal thirst for God now consumed
him. After six years on his pillar and with the aid of a small group of
disciples, Symeon set about renovating his home. It was an extension he had in mind.
The end result was a pillar some fifty feet high. An engineering feat, this was
the deluxe version with a small platform at the top, a wooden enclosure to keep
him from falling off in his sleep, and a very, very long ladder by which his
disciples could bring him food and water and dispose of his waste. Once
complete, Symeon moved in, or up as the case was, and there he sat, come wind,
rain and heat, for the next thirty years of his life. Tradition says he never came down once. His expired
body was found stooped in the position of prayer. He was seventy-one.
I confess,
I am quite taken by Symeon, or Saint Symeon the Stylite as he is better known—Simon
of the Pillar. Since first reading his story thirty years ago, his portrait has
hung in my mental gallery of saints. To be honest, they’re all a bit odd, but that
comes with the territory of sainthood. I have always wondered, what could
possess a man to sit on a pole for thirty-six years? Was he just mad, or is
there more to his story than that? Frankly, I am not averse to a bit of pole
sitting. To an introvert like me—though I have a terrible fear of heights—the
thought of solitude is appealing. What’s more, this drive to know God and to be
with God resonates.
When
I was twenty-seven years old, my brother gave me Psalm 27 for my birthday.
Though at the time I judged it to be an especially cheap gift, it has been one
of the most lasting of my life. It is a psalm attributed to David and one clearly
composed in adversity. David describes
God as his stronghold, his shelter and his rock. Danger lurked in his life and enemies
were numerous. He found in God the strength he needed to persevere. No matter
how many times I read this psalm, I am stopped in my tracks by the fourth verse.
“One thing I ask of the Lord,” David
says, “and this is what I seek; that
I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the
beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple.” David’s “one thing,” his one
desire that trumped all others, was to dwell in the presence of God each and
every day, to gaze upon God’s beauty forevermore.
As
a person of faith—a person steeped in the Christian tradition—I have spent my
life seeking to know God and to live in response to God’s presence through
Jesus Christ. As a pastor, I have given my professional life to leading others
in the same pursuit. Further, through twenty-five years of research and
teaching, I have wanted to understand the nature of the spiritual life, how it
has been lived through history and what is has meant to know God. Even more, if
God is to be our “one thing” today, I want to know what that means and how we
pursue it.
When
I gaze up at Symeon sitting on his pillar in the Syrian desert, I may well
shake my head in disbelief. At the same time, I cannot help but see in him the
most tangible expression of David’s prayer. Indeed, he might have been mad, but
he was mad for God. David’s “one thing” was Symeon’s. They shared a spiritual
longing as deep as longing can be. While
l cannot fathom Symeon’s choices in life, his resolve is extraordinary. Though
I share with him his yearning, Symeon acted upon his in the most peculiar way.
His “one thing” had him sitting on a pole for more than half his life.
Symeon
is not alone in the history of the church. Indeed, countless women and men
through history have gone to extraordinary lengths in pursuit of God. Symeon
may have been the first pole-sitter, but so many others have sought the same
goal through different means. There are those who have lived alone in caves;
those who have chained themselves to crosses and circled the desert for years
on end; others who have confined themselves to secluded monasteries, living by
strict vows of silence and separation; and those who have passed their years
isolated on rugged pinnacles of granite in the middle of the ocean. Whatever
course they have chosen, these spiritual eccentrics have lived with a passion
for the presence of God through Christ. In the grip of this desire, they have been
compelled to relinquish all ambitions, possessions, and relationships judged peripheral
to their pursuit: “One thing I ask of the Lord, and this is what I seek …”
As
much as I am enthralled by Symeon and captivated by these extraordinary men and
women of faith, I am equally frustrated. The truth is, if people like these are
the exemplars of real spirituality, then frankly, it’s a journey from which I am
excluded. It is not a pathway I can follow, not even in a moderate sense. Why?
Because the spirituality of Symeon and his companions hinges almost entirely
upon one thing: withdrawal. To pursue
the presence of God, one must leave behind the pursuits of ordinary life. It is a spirituality of the desert, a journey
to the margins. As a way of life, it centers upon practices of solitude,
isolation and retreat, and has almost nothing to do with the busy ebb and flow
of my every day.
I
am not an ascetic or desert recluse. What’s
more, as much I long for a little solitude, I will never be one. The desert is
not my home. The margins are not my neighborhood. I am a husband and a
father. I have made certain life-choices
that mean acts of withdrawal will always be the exception and never the
rule. I cannot run off to the desert or
climb an isolated peak in the middle of the ocean. I certainly cannot live perched on a pole for
the next thirty years. I have a marriage
to nurture, a family to provide for, children who need my presence and support,
and an ageing father who needs a son. What’s
more, I have responsibilities in the workplace, friendships to maintain,
neighbors to relate to, a mortgage to pay, groceries to buy, and lunches to
make. Because of this, the spirituality
of Symeon will always draw my attention as an admiring observer but never as a
full participant. If I am to pray David’s prayer with conviction—if I am to
name my “one thing” as devotion to God and God’s world—I need a different way.
Of
course, I may be advised to simply brush this frustration aside, to honor the
stories of these eccentric aunts and uncles of the faith, but then move on. The
trouble is, if I have a heart for a deeper experience of God, moving on is a
challenge. It’s a challenge because the way the church understands the spiritual and our pursuit of it continues
to be deeply tied to practices of separation. No matter how much has changed in
our understandings of God, mission, and the sacredness of creation, once we shift
the conversation to spirituality, we revert back to images of private prayer, mountaintops,
and solitude.
In
my Baptist tradition, the usual measure of one’s piety is the daily “quiet
time:” a period of personal solitude for bible reading, meditation, and prayer.
It is a practice through which I have been deeply formed and continue to value
in my daily routine. Across traditions, a
practice like this might be broadened to include prayer books and the daily
office, Eucharistic celebration, charismatic worship, or days of spiritual
retreat. In every tradition we have
learned the value of setting aside regular time for focused prayer and meditation,
whatever form they take. We do this with good reason. A spirituality
disconnected from such practices is foolishness. You need only scan the gospel
accounts of Jesus or examine the rich traditions of spiritual practice through history
to be reminded of the immeasurable worth of solitude and retreat for all people
of faith. But is there not more to
our pursuit than this?
David’s
“one thing” is a longing for depth with God. The spiritual shallows are no
longer enough. He articulates it again in Psalm 42. “As a deer longs for
flowing streams,” he says, “so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts
for God, for the living God” (42:1–2) It is this “deep calling to deep” (42:7) that
compels him, a longing for life in its fullness all the way down. But if the
only pathway to such a place with God is via practices of separation and
relinquishment, then where does that leave those who will never live in the
desert? By all means, let’s nurture such practices where we can, but my contention
is this: if the act of withdrawal defines our understanding of spirituality,
then many of us are sold short when it comes to our experience of God. We who will only ever withdraw occasionally
or momentarily end up feeling sidelined, having to content ourselves with being
observers while others play centerfield with God.
I am
a passionate cook and I love recipe books. My kitchen shelves are weighted down
with a collection that far outstrips my need. I am not alone. In the world of
publishing, food related books outsell most other genres. What’s more, the
production values of these tomes are extraordinary. A recipe book today is a
work of art. The sumptuous photography, the layout of text and image, the
covers and binding all combine to make an object of pleasure and
inspiration. However, research suggests the
degree to which our fascination with such books increases corresponds with our declining
presence in the kitchen. The truth is, these recipe books sit impressively on
our coffee tables as we cradle our containers of take-out Thai. We know that we can never reproduce the
stylized images contained in their pages, so we don’t even try. Somehow the simple
possession of such books enables us to live our culinary longings through
someone else’s expertise. It’s coffee table gastronomy and has an interesting
correlation with our current interests in the ancient arts of spirituality.
The
classic stories of spirituality in the Christian tradition are a most precious
resource. I have taught many classes in which students have been introduced to
these texts and I’ve seen hearts opened in transformative ways: texts like The Cloud of Unknowing, Augustine’s Confessions, and Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle. But all too often resources
like these become nothing more than coffee table spirituality, reminders to us
of a journey so different to our own, so removed from the daily realities of
our world.
In his book Journey
to the Inner Mountain, the Australian author James Cowan traces the life of Saint Antony, the third century Egyptian
ascetic known today as “the father of monks.” Orphaned at eighteen, Antony was left
with the care of his younger sister, a considerable fortune, and a large family
estate. Having heard the words of Jesus
read aloud in the town square, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you
have and give to the poor … and come follow me,” Antony was struck by a
profound sense of God. His response was immediate: he gave away his estate,
donated all his money to the poor, placed his sister in a “community of
virgins,” then moved out to the desert to live the life of a hermit. Indeed,
Antony spent most of his life a cave dweller in complete isolation. His story inspired
thousands to follow his lead.
At the very beginning of his book, Cowan entices the
reader to believe that this model of spirituality is more than an interesting
story from the distant past. “Few people inspire us more than those who take themselves
off to the wilderness,” he writes; “they
awaken in us an urge to abandon the normal constraints of society so as to
pursue a free and open life.”[3] Indeed, but all too often we leave such
encounters no more able to address that urge than when we began. The question
persists: how does an ordinary person with a job, a spouse, dependents, a
mortgage, and an overflowing diary give expression to this “free and open life”? The only hints that Antony and Cowan give us are
that we must “dispense with diversion,” and commit to the task of “renovating consciousness by a
deliberate act of withdrawal.”[4] Cowan’s account of his own stay in an ancient
monastery emphasizes the point:
“I am somehow
content. In fact, I don’t think I’ve known such contentment. In a place where there is nothing to do but
read and think, gaze into the distance, eat a simple meal each day in the
refectory, and sleep on a hard bed in a room that is bare of furniture save for
a stool and a desk, there’s something to be said for solitude.”[5]
As a teacher of spirituality, I have deep respect for
the contemplative disciplines and for the rich heritage of the monastic
tradition upon which Cowan’s book is a fine reflection, but I confess to scrawling
in the margin, “So who does the school run?” I do not mean to be flippant, but
I tire of feeling as though I, and many people like me, are left standing on
the spiritual sidelines when it comes to the real treasures of the spiritual
life. Honestly, accounts like this leave me feeling like an amateur in the
professional world of spirituality. Like a lavishly presented recipe book, the
story sits on my coffee table alongside the story of Symeon, testaments to my
spiritual interest and corresponding poverty. Yes, I am inspired but not invited,
intrigued but not empowered. At the end
of the day, the spirituality of such stories is one to observe, but not one
that invites my participation. Truthfully,
I struggle to find entry points, handles on which to grab hold as a citizen of an
entirely different time and place, and so I return to my everyday life
enlightened but really none the wiser. It’s back to the washing up.
Sharing my frustration with this desert-obsessed
spirituality and its grip upon our understanding of devotion, the writer Ernest
Boyer Jr. asks a simple but revealing question: “Is there childcare in the
desert?”[6]
The answer is obvious. The simple fact is, desert spirituality requires a set
of life circumstances foreign to the vast majority of ordinary Christians, and
not just those with children. While we may be disciplined in our daily prayers
and bible reading, routine in our church attendance, even committed to periodic
practices of meditation and retreat, the lion’s share of our lives are taken up
with other things. We can no more climb a pole than we can fly to the moon.
Nor, frankly, do we wish to. The desert is not our home. Our lives are consumed
with being sensitive partners and devoted parents, good neighbors and reliable friends,
engaged workers and just employers, active citizens and carers for the
environment. The fact is, our primary responsibilities
are not to the desert but to the routines of domestic and community life.
Because of this, we need models of spirituality that lead us to embrace these
elements of our lives, not minimize them. We need daily practices of
spirituality that press into the stuff of everyday life with intention and
purpose, not require that we walk away from it.
We need a different way.
In
addressing this need, Boyer draws a contrast between two contexts for
spirituality, two pathways to a life of devotion. The first, the spirituality of the desert, he
calls “life at the edge” and the second, a spirituality for those who remain in
the routines of everyday life he calls “life at the center.”[7]
Key to this is that the worth of the desert calling is not minimized. Indeed, it
is honored as a valid and rich pathway in the expression of faith. The
consequence, however, is that life at the center is lifted to a place of equal
worth and opportunity.
Life
at the Edge
The “edge”
is the place of withdrawal. It’s at the edge that numerous men and women of
faith pursue that “one thing.” This edge spirituality is a rich vein within the
story of Christianity, easily caricatured but complex in its diversity and
depth. The historian of spirituality Philip Sheldrake describes the earliest
expressions of Christian monasticism as essentially “a movement to the margins.”[8]
From its beginning, it demanded of its participants the most decisive act of separation
from the traditional centers of life. And this for good reason.
The
early practices of Christian asceticism flourished in direct correlation with
Christianity’s movement from edge to cultural center, from fringe and
persecuted minority to sanctioned religion of the empire. It was in the fourth century, in fact, that church
and empire began to merge. The call to follow the way of Jesus was no longer a
call to physical martyrdom at the hands of the state, but to a spiritualized
death to self and “the world.” Faced with the possibility of a new laxity in
the expression of discipleship, the desert hermits stood apart from the world
in the most tangible way. Indeed, this was and remains their genius.
For
four years I lived with my family in the northern suburbs of Los Angeles. Next
door to our apartment complex in a quiet suburban street was a small Carmelite
monastery, home to a handful of nuns who lived according to strict vows of
silence and an unchanging cycle of daily prayers. Occasionally we would see the nuns walking
their dogs around the neighborhood, though the rate at which the large animals
moved pulling the stumbling nuns behind them, it was more likely the dogs were in
charge. These women would always smile warmly but never stop to chat. The only
public entrance into the cloistered community was through the doors of its
chapel. At particular times I could go and sit in this space to pray. In the
small narthex were some words of explanation about the Carmelite order. According
to the leaflet, the nuns’ primary vocation was “to pray for the city of Los
Angeles.” And this they did with rigorous discipline day after day, month after
month, year after year.
What’s
important to note is that the edge is never entirely separate from the center. Lest
we imagine the earliest ascetics hold away in some vast and distant desert, an
arduous journey from the edges of civilization, a little geography is
revealing. According to the historian of Late Antiquity, Peter Brown, the
deserts of Egypt and Syria were not as we imagine. To enter the desert was to
wander into the “ever-present fringe” of the village, not to disappear into
another world. The desert was right there, a “standing challenge” at the
immediate edges of daily life.[9]
At its best, this withdrawal to the edge was not a hiding from the world but a
vantage point from which to see it more clearly and speak into it with a
particular authority.
The
truth is, that small community of Carmelite nuns in suburban Los Angeles was
never meant to be cut off from its center, and neither was Symeon centuries
before. From the top of his pole he could see the daily happenings in the
village below and watch the farmers working on the nearby hills. From this
vantage point and at his best, Symeon understood his vocation not as
antithetical to society but marginal to it, and with purpose. History tells us
that a steady trickle of delegations from the surrounding villages made their
way to the base of Symeon’s pole seeking arbitration on matters as domestic as
water rationing, crop harvesting, financial loans and neighborhood disputes. Symeon’s
responses were often extraordinarily detailed and betrayed a man not of another
world, but uniquely present to the one around him. According to Brown, it is only when we see beyond
the bizarre feats of self-mortification in those like Symeon that we begin to
understand the social significance of their role. Theirs was “a solemn ritual
of disassociation, of becoming the total stranger,”[10]
standing apart from the institutions and obligations of family, village and
church so as to mediate the grace and calling of God back into them.
This
calling to the edge has been part of the Christian church since its beginning.
One of its more recent proponents was Thomas Merton (1915–1968) who lived his
calling as a Trappist monk at the Abbey of Gethsemane in rural Kentucky. In the
year of his death, he gave a lecture in which he described the essence of his
own vocation, and that of all monastics, as a call to the edge. It is through
this “marginality” as Merton called it, that the edge dweller seeks not only personal
transformation but the transformation of society.[11]
Indeed, as Bernard McGinn observes, this call to the edge is not, at its heart,
a self-centered, other-worldly expression of faith. Rather, it remains a noble
calling to a very different presence in the world.[12]
Life
at the Center
In
contrast to the edge, the “center” describes the contexts where most of us live
the majority of our days. While the edge dwellers are called to a very
different presence in the world, those at the center are called to a
comparatively ordinary one. The center is the place of our homes, neighborhoods,
and workplaces. It’s where we buy and sell, cook and eat, work and play. It’s
the context of family and friends, neighborliness and citizenship. It’s the
place that hosts all the daily transactions, conflicts and intimacies of life. While
the edge is never far away—we may see it from the center and go out to it from
time to time—the edge is not where we live and never will be. Our more pressing
need is to know God at the center of our lives, to hear God’s call with the
same clarity with which Symeon heard it at the edge.
The
language of the center necessarily differs to that of the edge. At the edge, it’s
the language of withdrawal: renunciation,
relinquishment, surrender, leaving, and denying. Though this language is not
exclusive to the edge, it is not as immediately helpful to those of us who
inhabit the center. Life at the center has more to do with the equally risky language of engagement: embracing, enfolding,
choosing, cleaving, and nurturing. The Catholic writer David Knight reflects on
this difference in language and its importance for those who live in the world.[13]
It’s a spirituality of involvement, not withdrawal; a spirituality of risk, not
renunciation; a spirituality of commitment that flows from our baptism, not
from a particular order or rule of life; and a spirituality attained not
through successive stages of prayer or purity but through successive choices
made each day amidst the chaos of life. It’s a spirituality that presses into
the tasks, places, and encounters of the everyday, believing that God is as
present there as God is anywhere else.
Despite
its ordinariness, life at the center is as much a response to divine call as
life at the edge. Typically, edge dwellers have embraced the notion of calling
with a good deal of conviction. It’s why they are there. Deserts and
monasteries have always been full of people for whom moments of epiphany and life-changing
redirection are standard. Frankly, life at the center seems too ordinary in
comparison. Dazzled by Moses and his burning bush or Paul and his divine
encounter on the road to Damascus, we’ve come to understand a good calling
story to be as rare as it is mystical. Epiphanies aside, the truly biblical
notion of calling is much less extraordinary. Importantly, it’s as real at the
center of life as it is at the edges. According
to the Bible, the call of God is part and parcel of our identity as the body of
Christ and the household of faith. It is not mine, nor is it yours. It is ours.
It does not separate us into different
strata of spirituality but unites us as one. Together we are called to be the people of God, to live in holiness
and to serve the purposes of God in the world. The challenge for each of us, at the edge and
the center, is to work out that calling in our particular circumstance.
Despite misgivings about Cowan’s portrayal of St Antony, the gift of his
book is the author’s own immersion in the monk’s story. Cowan retraces Antony’s steps. He travels to the Egyptian desert where the
ascetic lived in isolation as a cave dweller on the side of a mountain. When Cowan arrives at of the edge of this
desert 1,700 years later, he is told there is now someone else living on
Antony’s mountain: “the last anchorite” they call him. Curious, Cowan seeks permission to visit
him.
With the recluse’s approval, a week’s supply of bread and
a clear set of instructions, Cowan makes the trek up the mountain to the foot
of a terrace carved out of its slope. Following
directions, he waits awkwardly at a distance.
In time, a man emerges in a black habit and a hood that covers his head and
casts a shadow across his bearded face.
After a long pause, the man lifts his weathered hand in the air, bidding
Cowan forward. Taking the final steps toward the terrace and with his heart
still pumping from the journey, Cowan introduces himself, expecting from the
aged man a strong Egyptian accent and broken English. Instead the man responds
warmly and in a distinctive Australian drawl. “Lazarus is my name, because I am
reborn,” he says as he invites Cowan to sit down. Over two mugs of tea, a loaf of bread, and
some honey for dipping, the two men talk. With some prodding, Lazarus tells his
story.
It turns out Lazarus was a teacher of literature in an
Australian university and happily ensconced in the suburbs when his mother was
diagnosed with incurable cancer. Moving in with her for her last months of
life, Lazarus was deeply affected and felt a growing sense of dissatisfaction
with his own life. Upon her death, he found himself wandering the streets of
Melbourne in deep distress. Overwhelmed with despair and a rising sense of
meaninglessness, he walked in through the open doors of a church. Amidst the
filtered light of the stained glass and the burning candles, he watched an
elderly woman lay prostrate before an icon of the Virgin Mary. In that moment,
Lazarus said, he heard a voice. He understood it as the voice of the Holy
Mother calling to him. He fell on his knees and called out, “I have nowhere to
go. Please help me!” The voice replied, “Poor man, place yourself in my care,
just as this woman has done.” As Lazarus exited the church into the stark light
of the afternoon, he knew his life would never be the same. What followed for
Lazarus were years of pilgrimage through the rituals and monasteries of the
Orthodox Church, culminating decades later in his retirement to this desert
home in pursuit of the same spiritual “exile” that Antony had sought.
In the weeks that follow this first encounter, Cowan
makes a number of return visits to the mountain and each time the conversation
with Lazarus is challenging. Eventually, though, Cowan has to say goodbye as he
begins his journey home. His final question to Lazarus relates to the
application of this anchorite way of life beyond the mountain. Lazarus is
clear: the spirituality of the future will not be a spirituality of the edge. “I
can’t imagine,” he says, “nor would I like to see it happen, that the desert
becomes once more populated by thousands of hermits living in caves. This would
be to repeat history rather than to honour its gift.”[14]
According to Lazarus, our task is to cherish the
stories of those who have preceded us while discerning new ways forward in the
spiritual journey, ways that reflect the realities of today and for those who
will never inhabit deserts or mount fifty-foot poles. The Catholic scholar in
spirituality Elizabeth Dryer says it well. “Not only must we know, critique, and
make use of the past,” she writes, “but we must also envision and create new
words and new categories that will reflect the experience of more black and
yellow and female and married saints; plumber saints and teacher saints, secretary
saints and mother and father saints.”[15]
As one such ordinary saint, I couldn’t agree more. My hope is that this book can make a
small contribution to that important task.
[1] Attributed to
Evagrius, a theologian of the fourth century. Quoted by Gannon and Traub, The
Desert and the City, 28.
[2] Brown, “The
Rise and Fall of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” 112.
[3] Cowan, Journey to the Inner Mountain, ix.
[4] Ibid., 6.
[5] Ibid., 33.
[6] Boyer, Finding God at Home, xiii.
[7] Ibid., chapters
1– 2.
[8] Sheldrake, Spirituality, 50.
[9] Brown, “The
Rise and Fall of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” 111.
[10] Ibid., 131.
[11] Quoted by
McGinn, “Withdrawal and Return,” 149.
[12] Ibid., 153.
[13] Knight, “A
Practical Plan for Lay Spiritual Formation,” 7–16.
[14] Cowan, Journey to the Inner Mountain, 171.
[15] Dreyer,
“Traditions of Lay Spirituality,” 210.