Walking in Valleys of Darkness

by Albert Holtz

  Sacred Scripture

  Peith, “to trust” is used a few times in the psalms: Ps 2:11; Ps 25:1–2; Ps 118:8; and Ps 125:1.

  Rule of Benedict

  [The monk] shall imitate by his actions that saying of the Lord: I have come not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me (Chapter 7, “Humility,” v. 32).

  7. Seeking God

  I WAS SLUMPED IN MY ARMCHAIR in my room in the monastery. Beside me, leaning against the wall, were the crutches that I would need for the next eleven weeks. While I had been in the hospital, workers had sandblasted the exterior of the monastery, causing a fine gritty dust to filter into all the rooms. I stared helplessly at the disaster around me: everything was covered with grit—windowsills, floor, desk, books, everything. And there I sat with my leg immobilized in my new bulky cast, completely unable to do anything about the mess around me. Opening a door was a major challenge, getting to the bathroom down the hall was a project, and sweeping my floor an impossibility. I felt life starting to overwhelm me.

  Suddenly my eyes filled with tears and I pounded the arms of my chair. “Damn! How am I supposed to get anything done? How am I supposed to get around? What about all the work I’m supposed to be doing?”

  Frustration quickly turned to anger: “Fine! Then I’m just going to sit here and not do a thing! I’ll just be like one of those crippled beggars in the gospel sitting at the side of the road!”

  Wincing, I shifted my weight, trying to find a more comfortable position for my aching knee. Then I just sat still for a while feeling sorry for myself, doing my crippled beggar routine.

  Soon, though, despite my dark mood, and because I couldn’t really do anything else, I began to smile at my comical exaggeration of my woes, and admitted that maybe I was getting a bit melodramatic. Little by little, helpless and confined to my chair in my grit-covered room, I began to see things differently. The lesson started to sink in: There were other ways of living besides constantly running around and doing things.

  It occurred to me that I had always been very good at organizing projects and bringing them to completion. I got a real sense of satisfaction from my hard work in our school, where I usually accomplished whatever goals I’d set. I started to realize, however, I tended to reduce most things in life to projects, even my relationship with the Lord, which I thought of as my monastic project of seeking God.

  The Rule of Benedict says that the main thing to find out about someone applying for admission into the monastery is “if he truly seeks God.” In fact, “seeking the Lord” is actually a familiar part of the Christian spiritual tradition. The idea of chasing around after the Lord is really attractive to people like me who run around too much anyway and who love pursuing and accomplishing goals. The New Testament is filled with people seeking Jesus: Herod searches for the infant Jesus,6 Joseph and Mary look for him in Jerusalem when he is twelve,7 and Simon and the disciples tell Jesus “Everyone is looking for you.”8

  But as I sat there glowering at my useless left leg, which looked like a pale yellow log wrapped in molded fiberglass mesh, I found it hard to picture myself chasing after anything—including God. I began to suspect that something crucial was missing from my conveniently one-sided image of seeking God.

  Then it struck me that it’s just as true to say that God is constantly seeking me! I began to picture myself not as a crippled beggar on the side of the road, but as the tax collector Zacchaeus perched on a tree branch. He was a successful and competent man who one day made a project out of seeking God.

  The story, as you know, is that as Jesus was passing through Jericho, a wealthy tax collector named Zacchaeus wanted to see him, but being short, Zacchaeus had to climb into a tree to catch even a glimpse of him. When Jesus spotted him up there he called to him, “Zacchaeus, come down. I must dine with you today.” With that sentence the initiative switched from the tax collector to Jesus. The tables were completely turned, and Zacchaeus’s project of seeking Jesus was forgotten. The story had begun with Zacchaeus seeking to see Jesus, but now Jesus was seeking him.

  Luke points up this reversal with a clever wordplay based on the word zte, “to seek:”9 At the beginning of the story Zacchaeus was “seeking [zte]10 to see who Jesus was” and so climbed into a tree. But at the end of the story when pious people complained that Jesus was eating in the house of a sinner, the Lord answered them, “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek [zte] and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:9-10). Here is the verb zte11 again. This time, however, it is not Zacchaeus but the Lord who is doing the seeking. The story started with Zacchaeus seeking Jesus, but it ended with his finding out that all along it was Jesus who had come seeking him.

  While it may look as if Christ was eating at Zacchaeus’s table, the play on the verb points to a deeper reality: Zacchaeus was now eating at Jesus’ table, being nurtured by the intimacy of God’s forgiving love. Jesus had successfully sought out the seeker.

  I shifted in my chair again. “Ouch! That hurt! I have to learn how to sit still. Humph! That should be interesting.”

  The story of Zacchaeus teaches us that no matter who we are, whether a monk whose vocation is to “truly seek God” in the monastery, or a layperson seeking to find God in everyday life, our spirituality cannot be based solely on chasing around after the Lord. For all of our impassioned, ceaseless effort of seeking God, it is ultimately God who is searching for us in hundreds of ways, but especially in people who love us.

  Still feeling miserable and overwhelmed, I didn’t feel in any shape to be climbing onto a tree branch. But my dusty chair, I figured, would serve the purpose quite well. I would just have to keep sitting here, like Zacchaeus on his branch, and not lose heart; I would have to believe that Jesus would catch up with me in his own good time.

  I started to relax as I began to sense that the Lord was already close by, looking for me.

  For Reflection

  1. What does it mean for you to “seek God?” Does this seeking change in times of trial?

  2. Have you ever had the feeling that God was pursuing you but you were running away? If so, what did you do when you realized that you were avoiding God?

  3. Sit and pray quietly, imagining yourself to be Zacchaeus sitting on his tree branch waiting for the Lord to come by. How does this feel?

  Sacred Scripture

  All of the following passages contain zte, and each is well worth meditating on: 1 Chr 16:10-11; Ps 27:8; Matt 6:33, 7:7, 18:12; Luke 24:5; and John 5:30.

  Rule of Benedict

  The concern must be whether the novice truly seeks God (Chapter 58, “The Procedure for Receiving Brothers,” v. 7).

  Seeking his workman in a multitude of people, the Lord calls out to him and lifts his voice again: is there anyone here who yearns for life and desires to see good days? (Prologue v. 14).

  8. A Work in Progress

  “SEVEN . . . EIGHT . . . NINE . . . TEN! Ouf!”

  Lying on my back in gym shorts and a tee shirt, I tried to lower my foot gently onto the exercise mat so that the five-pound exercise boot wouldn’t dent the floor of my room in the monastery. Then taking a deep breath I began the last set of straight-knee leg raises.

  “One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . ”

  The surgeon had given me two pages of daily exercises for rehabilitating my knee. This was going to be a long process.

  A few months before this as I hobbled off the touch football field, I had said good-by to my left anterior cruciate ligament and to the image of myself as “young.” At the age of thirty-eight I’d had to face the undeniable fact that I was no longer able to do all the things I used to do as a teenager.

  “Five . . . six . . . seven . . .”

  But lying there that afternoon I saw that this knee injury had put to the test something that some wise friends had already been teaching me: that it was okay to be imperfect, and that people managed to love one another despit
e everyone’s faults, foibles, and imperfections. Well, for the past several weeks people around me had been putting up with my crutches and cast, with my inability to carry anything in my hands, or even drive myself to the doctor’s. I had to admit that so far my being terribly imperfect had not seemed to make anyone run away in horror. In fact a lot of folks had been going out of their way to be of help to me.

  Realizing that it is okay to be imperfect had some good side effects. For one thing, I no longer had to waste energy and effort trying to hide the fact that I was imperfect. And secondly, if it was okay for me to be imperfect, then that meant it was okay for everyone else to be imperfect, too—an idea that would definitely make me a more patient teacher and a better community member, not to mention a wiser Novice Master.

  “Eight . . . nine . . . ten! Ouf!”

  Not many months before hurting my knee I had finally concluded one last piece of unfinished business that had been nagging me for some time. It was that troublesome command of Jesus, “You must be perfect—just as your heavenly father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). I had finally come to admit that I did not need to be perfect, and I also knew that only God was perfect. So Jesus couldn’t have been asking me to be perfect. Fine, that was what he had not meant; but then just what had he meant by his curious command?

  I undid the straps on the metal “boot” and then turned and lay on my right side. Carefully following the directions on the paper given me by the surgeon, I slowly brought my leg forward, parallel to the floor, in a kicking motion, trying to keep the knee straight. I stretched it as far as I could and then let my foot rest on the floor. “Now count to ten. . . . Ready? . . . One . . . two . . . three . . . ”

  Despite the fact that Jesus’ command to “be perfect” was so odd, it was a surprisingly long time before I thought to look up this confusing command in the original language. The very first time I read the Greek, though, I saw right where the problem lay: with the adjective teleios that was being translated as “perfect.” Teleios, you see, is based on the noun telos, “an end or goal,” and so actually it means “having attained its end or purpose, complete.”12 Often in the New Testament it simply means “mature” as opposed to “immature,” as it does, say, in the verse “You need milk, not solid food . . . solid food is for the mature [teleios]” (Hebrews 5:12–14).

  Teleios has a dynamic feel and suggests a process of growth and development, of striving toward the goal (telos) of fullness and moral maturity. In any case there’s nothing here about a frozen state of “perfection.”

  “Eight . . . nine . . . ten.” Now I had to slowly bring the leg back, keeping my knee straight. The final piece of the puzzle had come when I looked at the verses immediately preceding this sentence in the Sermon on the Mount. Evidently many Jews at the time of Christ had been ignoring the precepts laid down in Exodus concerning obligations toward foreigners and enemies13 and had narrowed their interpretation of the command, “love your neighbor,” to include only their fellow Jews, and surely not their enemies. In the Sermon in the Mount, Jesus challenges their way of thinking:

  You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. (Matthew 5:43–45)

  The heavenly Father, instead of setting limits on divine love, “makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust,” and our love must imitate God’s way of loving. It is at this point that Matthew concludes with a summarizing sentence, the notorious “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

  The command “Be teleios as your heavenly Father is teleios” urges us to keep striving to achieve our innate goal of being conformed to the image of God in us, a God who loves everyone with no limits and no conditions. The New Jerusalem Bible’s free translation of the command captures this point nicely: “You must set no bounds on your love just as your Father who is in heaven sets no bounds on his love” (Matthew 5:48 NJB).

  The command to set no bounds on our love may be very challenging, but it is neither impossible nor discouraging. It calls us to keep on striving and growing, along with all of our imperfect brothers and sisters until that day when we all attain “the full stature of Christ” in heaven. It calls us to think of ourselves as works in progress and to be patient with others who are likewise works in progress. It challenges us to keep striving to be fully ourselves by learning to love as God loves—without boundaries. The fact that we are sometimes not very good at it simply shows that we are not yet in heaven, where all of us will one day be perfected. But God is not finished with us yet; and that’s okay. God loves us, just as our friends do, even when we’re not perfect.

  Still lying on my right side, I slowly brought my leg forward again in a kicking motion, careful to keep the knee straight. I stretched it out as far as I could and then rested my foot on the floor. Then I counted to ten again: “One . . . two . . . three . . . ”

  A quick glance at my injured knee told me, if I had any doubts, that I was certainly not perfect; and these exercises would be reminding me for the next four months that I was definitely a work in progress.

  Reflection

  1. How do you react to being a work in progress? Does it make you feel good? Disappointed? Impatient? Do you find it easier to put up with other people’s imperfections or with your own?

  2. The idea that even the church is a work in progress is expressed in the Letter to the Ephesians: “We should grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ . . . building up the body of Christ until we attain to full maturity (literally “to the mature [teleios] man”) to the extent of the full stature of Christ” (Eph 4:11–15). How do you react to the church’s imperfections, especially ones that affect you directly or that are pounced on by the news media?

  Sacred Scripture

  Teleios appears in these passages: Matt 19:21; Rom 12:2; 1 Cor 2:6, 13:10, 14:20; Phil 3:15; Col 1:28; and 1 John 4:18.

  Wisdom of the Desert

  One of the brethren had sinned, and the priest told him to leave the community. So then Abba Bessarion got up and walked out with him, saying: I too am a sinner!14

  1. Men (men´-o), to remain physically in one place, and (figuratively) to last over a period of time. The word is used some 38 times in the Fourth Gospel, triple the number in the other three gospels combined.

  2. Each of the italicized words in the following excerpt translates the verb men.

  3. Peith (p´-tho) has many meanings, among which are “to rely on, to have confidence, to trust.” It is used by Luke in its ordinary sense: “When a strong man fully armed guards his palace, his possessions are safe. But when one stronger than he attacks and overcomes him, he takes away the armor on which he relied [peith] and distributes the spoils” (Luke 11:21–22).

  4. In Phil 3:2 Paul warns against Jewish converts who “rely on” circumcision for salvation instead of on Christ.

  5. Luke tells us that Jesus addressed the parable of “the Pharisee and the Tax Collector” to “those who trust in themselves that they are righteous and despise the rest” (Luke 18:9).

  6. Matthew 2:13.

  7. Luke 2:48, 49.

  8. Mark 1:37.

  9. Zte (dzay-teh´-o), 1. “to seek, look for,” 2. “to attempt, seek to do something.”

  10. This is the verb zte meaning “to attempt,” as when “some men brought on a stretcher a man who was paralyzed; they were trying [zte] to bring him in and set him in his presence” (Matthew 13:46).

  11. This is zte meaning “to seek out,” as when Jesus asks what the good shepherd would do: “Will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of [zte] the stray” (Matthew 18:12)?

  12. The noun telos (tel´os), “goal,” is the basis for several words: the adjective teleios (tel´-ee-os), “perfect,
fully developed,” the verbs tele and teleio meaning to bring to completion, to end, and the noun teleia, “perfection, completeness.”

  13. One example is this: “When you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back. When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free. You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23: 4–5, 9).

  14. Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert (New York, New Directions, 1970), 40.

  CHAPTER THREE

  GETTING HOLLOWED OUT

  The Death of My Brother Bob

  I grew up in a family with two older brothers and a younger sister. The one I was closest to was my brother Bob, just sixteen months older than me. As youngsters we were inseparable, playing together, sharing confidences and ideas, and quarrelling the way close siblings do. Even after I joined the monastery, Bob continued to be my close friend and a dependable support.

  He had been suffering from mysterious back pain for some months when suddenly one December night in 1986, at the age of forty-five, he became terribly weak and dizzy. He was rushed to the hospital where tests showed that he was riddled with lymphoma. Although he battled bravely for several long, painful months, the cancer relentlessly wasted his body until it eventually took his life in early June. Bob left behind his wife and four young children.

  His death overwhelmed me, devastated me, and plunged me into a grief too deep for words. It shook the foundation of my faith and put to the test my most basic assumptions: that life makes sense, for example, or that God is infinitely kind, or that I need to be in perfect control of my emotions. To be honest, ever since that experience I’ve never been quite the same—but then, I’ve come to realize, maybe that was the idea: I wasn’t supposed to be the same.