Waiting for Honey

In his autobiographical account, Report to Greco, Nikos Kazantizakis tells of a time when his inner life had dried up so dramatically that he decided to seek counsel from a hermit who lived in a cave on Mount Athos in Greece. The hermit counseled faith and patient waiting but Nikos wanted answers. 

How long? he asked the hermit.

Who answered: Until salvation ripens in you. Allow time for the sour grape to turn to honey.

And how long shall I know, when the sour grape has turned to honey?

One morning you will rise and see that the world has changed. But you will have changed, my child, not the world. Salvation will have ripened in you. At that point, surrender yourself to God, and you shall never betray Him.

Nikos returned to his cell and one morning awoke to a medlar tree blossoming and giving off a sweet smell  even though it was the dead of winter. He wept. “I came here to the desert and buried myself inside this cell with its humble bed, its jug of water, its two stools. Now I am waiting. Waiting for what? God forgive me, but I really do not know very well.”

Wayne Simsic, who wrote of Nikos’ experience went on to say: Such open-ended waiting at a time of crisis is not reinforced in our culture; we tend toward impatience and a quick fix to take away pain and suffering. We may enter the desert willingly, but we want answers. Nevertheless, on the level of faith, we realize that we should trust this journey into the darkness. Like the Magi, depicted in the T.S. Eliot poem, we hear “voices singing in our ears” telling us that this journey into the night desert is folly but we also know that we have lost our taste for the old ways of security and comfort. Like the early Desert Christians, we intuit that the journey will be one of dying, dislocation from the usual way of seeing and understanding self and the world, but we realize that dying is necessary. Answering the desert call stretches the spirit but also opens the eyes, focuses attention on the one thing most important. (Weavings, Vol. XXVI, No. 1, pg. 13-15) Jesus says it this way: :"For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? (NRSV)

Simsic asks: “Are we willing to stay put long enough, to wait in the darkness, and to trust that the waiting will be fruitful? Do we believe that inner balance and even spiritual renewal can be found at a time of desolation and seeming loss of hope?” (Ibid. p. 15)

Peter and the disciples are moving into that uncomfortable place as they are confronted with the inevitable end facing their beloved teacher; they are moving with resistance toward the dark night of the soul written about with such clarity by St. John of the Cross, who knew it so intimately. John had been taken prisoner for his religious beliefs, was tortured, starved and left to die in his cell. Miraculously, he escaped imprisonment and wrote of his spiritual experiences in the midst of unimaginable physical and mental suffering. Simsic writes that when John’s teachings “concerning the dark path of the soul were found by a group of Carmelite nuts to be too harsh, he referred them to his poems and told them that in the metaphors they would find his original inspiration…. In the deep stillness of a dark night a hush comes over the soul and the Spirit has room to work.” (Ibid. p. 16) 

Peter is not there. We are not there. The world is not there. The hush has not yet come; the Spirit has not been given room to work. 

Peter, who was just a moment ago named by Jesus as the rock upon which the church will be built is now a stumbling block, focusing on worldly things and not divine things. Our attachment to worldly things is, will, and has always been, a stumbling block for us. It is the loss of these attachments, sometimes sudden, unexpected and unwanted that sends us deep into grief and misery. Many thousands of people in Texas are in this place now - many have lost all their worldly possessions as well as those they love. And yet, following all such disasters, years down the road will come the stories from a few of how such loss led to a spiritual awakening. It is the harder road most certainly. It is a harder thing to be transformed by tragedy then to do the work of change first so that no matter the storm that comes the soul is bonded not to earthly things; but is so completely graphed into the divine life that no loss, least of all the coming of death, can promote suffering. This may sound like Buddhist talk, but it is fact at the heart of Christianity. We perceive the releasing of our attachments through the eyes of world - as loss - but it is only gain. To have nothing is to have everything. To be free of the ties that bind is perfect freedom. Ram Dass once said, “Why do I need money when it is all around me?” When another guru was asked, “But where will the money come from?” He replied, “From where ever it is now.” God’s economy is not the economy we live by. It is altogether different and resistance to it is great and causes much suffering for us and for all those who cannot see another way. In response Jesus does not restrain himself in his reaction: “Get behind me Satan!”  Our attachments to false things, false idols, leads us daily from the Christ we deeply long to follow. The undoing of such attachments requires a gradual pulling away, a reconciliation with our inner world, our higher self, the divine within that calls us live quite differently. This is the Dark Night of the Soul. St. John wrote of this darkness:

O guiding night!

O night more lovely than the dawn!

Answering a desert monk’s request for spiritual guidance, Abbot Moses replied, “Go sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” (Ibid., p. 16)  “This counsel may have disheartened the monk because, after all, he had remained true to his cell and was being asked to return to it, stay put, and continue facing the death of his own self-interest, desires, and self-righteousness. As we retreat to an inner cell, our own encounter with divine presence through the day, we realize that it is a ‘place’ not of tranquility but of inner upheaval…. Eventually the dimensions of our cell grow to include more and more of our lives and we realize that we are being called to complete surrender to divine presence; nothing should be held back. Desert monks spoke of purity of heart, a single-minded focus on the divine image in every aspect of our lives, grounded in the intuitive awareness that we are called to lose ourselves completely in God.” (Ibid., p. 17)

The place of complete surrender is the spiritual location from which Paul speaks to the church in Rome. Paul has returned to the cell; writing this letter from his imprisonment and unsure if he would live to visit the church he founded but had not yet visited. Nothing was held back. Paul writes to the faithful Roman church: 

“Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”  (NRSV)

If we feel this is a tall order, then we see this only as a list of moral attributes, character traits we are to acquire for the perfection of the spiritual life. That is putting the cart before the horse. Paul is describing the transformation that comes from returning to and sitting in one’s cell for a very long time. It is not forced behavior that ripens the sour grapes, but rather it is the patient waiting that transforms them into honey. One does not do these things in order to be righteous, one learns righteousness and becomes all these things because there can be no other way. Discipleship is not about learning through action, that is the way of the world. It is about being in the world as gently as a leaf hangs on a tree, or a blade of grass comes up from the earth, or a bird flies through the air. It is not forced, it does not require more than what is necessary for life, it does not destroy the tree or the soil or the air in order to have its place there. It rests in its place among all created things. The hallmark of a rich spiritual life is harmony. Jesus teaches: Do not let your hearts be troubled. Fear nothing.

The world is in great turmoil, as it always is. It may be that we are, collectively, in the dark night as we witness to the suffering all around our nation and in so much of the world. What shall we do when there is so much to be done?

We do what we can do.

We trust in working of the Spirit.

We do what we can to relieve suffering.

We speak truth to power.

We take care of our neighbor.

And we return to our cell, day by day, hour by hour, and wait. We return to prayer and meditation and study. We wait for the hush to come. We give the Spirit room to work. We return again and again to sit in our cell who teaches us in the still hours of the dark night. How long? Until salvation ripens within us and the sour grape turns to honey. The world will not change. It is us who will change. And then, and only then, will we be at peace as we wade through the waters of chaos. Then we will be free.