The tranquility born of stillness is the grace of God present in a person’s life. This leads us away from the vanity and futility of material pleasures, unhealthy relationships and the struggle of our egos to control our lives. How does this happen?
Abba Moses said to Abba Poemen, “If a man’s deeds are not in harmony with his prayer, he labours in vain.” The brother said, “What is this harmony between practice and prayer?” The old man said, “We should no longer do those things against which we pray. For when a man gives up his own will, then God is reconciled with him and accepts his prayers.” The brother asked, “In all the affliction which the monk gives himself, what helps him?” The old man said, “It is written, ‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble”‘ (Ps 46: l). 15
Stillness is the venue for the attentiveness that leads a person to union with God in prayer. As we offer our hearts to God, our prayers are “accepted” because reconciliation has taken place in which our wills become congruent with what God desires. In this way our prayer and daily life become united. Stillness leads to simplicity of needs and cares. We are no longer distracted by the demons of the unrestrained ego’s desires for pleasures, unnecessary possessions, honor, revenge or impure relationships. Abba John Klimakos said, “Let your prayer be completely simple.” 16 Abba Moses reminded Abba Poemen that “God is our hope and strength.” When we are freed from the multiplicity of cares that can dominate our lives, we experience a freedom that opens our hearts to love God and our neighbor. Rather than isolating us from others, stillness leads to a union with all beings.
Abba Isidore of Pelusia said, “To live without speaking is better than to speak without living. For the former who lives rightly does good even by his silence but the latter does no good even when he speaks. When words and life correspond to one another they are together the whole of philosophy.” 17
Prayer, born in stillness, unites every person with what is most fundamental in life rather than what is peripheral and futile. Like the continuum of space/time in cosmology, stillness and prayer weave a seamless garment that wraps us in an awareness of the unity of all things in God, rather than the loose and unconnected threads of the “many.” Stillness slows the treadmill of events and desires that distracts us from the One who is essential. Prayer turns a person’s mind away from all that distracts and scatters it from its home in God. Life’s periphery dissipates and isolates, while prayer bonds and unites. The stillness/prayer continuum removes both stillness and prayer from becoming ends in themselves. Stillness for personal gain rejects the world. Prayer as an end in itself rejects the body and mind for an otherworldly experience. In union, stillness and prayer guide the whole person to a new understanding of both the world and human behavior in it. “Abba Poemen said, ‘If Nabuzardan, the head-cook, had not come, the temple of the Lord would not have been burned: (2 Kgs 24:8f.) that is to say: if slackness and greed did not come into the soul, the spirit would not be overcome in combat with the enemy.”‘ 18
Stillness/prayer reconnects a person to her or his authentic center by freeing her or him from the centrifugal force of attachment to material things. God responds to this prayerful desire by filling the world with a new meaning and delight, free from the limitations of unrestrained desire and the need to control what a person acquires. Abba Moses said, “The monk must die to everything before leaving the body, in order not to harm anyone.”19 When a person is no longer imprisoned by attachment to anything he or she becomes free to enjoy them for what they truly are. This is interior stillness.
One day Abba John the Dwarf was sitting down in Scetis, and the brethren came to him to ask him about their thoughts. One of the elders said, “John, you are like a courtesan who shows her beauty to increase the number of her lovers.” Abba John kissed him and said, “You are quite right Father.” One of his disciples said to him, “Do you not mind that in your heart?” But he said, “No, I am the same inside as I am outside.”20
~David G.R. Keller, Oasis of Wisdom: The Worlds of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
15 Ward, Sayings, Moses 4, 141-42.
16 John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. Lazarus Moore (London: Mobrays, 1959) 28, 5.
17 Ward, Sayings, Isidore of Pelusia 1, 98.
18 Ibid., Poemen 17,169.
19 Ibid., Moses 2, 141.
20 Ibid., John the Dwarf 46, 95-96.
