Stillness
A brother asked Abba Poemen, “How should I live in the cell?” He said to him, “Living in your cell clearly means manual work, eating only once a day, silence, meditation; but really making progress in the cell, means to experience contempt for yourself, not to neglect the hours of prayer and to pray secretly. If you happen to have time without manual work, take up prayer and do it without disquiet. The perfection of these things is to live in good company and be free from bad.”7
Abba Evagrius said, “Sit in your cell, collecting your thoughts. Remember the day of your death. See then what the death of your body will be; let your spirit be heavy, take pains, condemn the vanity of the world, so as to be able to live always in the peace you have in view without weakening.”8
Abbas Poemen and Evagrius give a vivid summary of the life of stillness (hesychia). They echo Antony, Syncletica, and Macarius. Stillness is a withdrawal from customary activity that enables a concentration on attentiveness and openness to God in prayer. This is not a rejection of life’s activities or of life itself. It is a “fleeing” from influences that are futile and that can distract or prevent a person from pursuing his or her path toward experience of God and authentic human living. The outer stillness in the cell becomes a venue for an inner stillness that makes prayer possible and becomes a pathway for the action of the Holy Spirit. As Antony points out, physical stillness removes the layers of noise, words, and attention that can hide and constrict the heart-the center of human will and experience of God. Evagrius reminds a brother monk that “the vanity of the world” can weaken the monk from “the peace you have in view.” And Syncletica warns how vulnerable a person’s senses are to the temptations present in city life.
These desert elders are saying that every person must be attentive to what is most important in human life and that conventionally accepted human activity should be avoided or limited when it distracts anyone from a path to holiness and charity. They are insisting that authentic human life is not compatible with a society that values materialism and unrestrained pleasure. The desert elders are not condemning basic human interaction, relationships and conversations. By being attentive to God in prayer and aware of one’s own limitations a person can live and work “in good company” and find peace. This interaction of outer and inner stillness is present in an incident in the lives of Abba Paul and Abba Timothy reported by Abba Sisoes the Theban:
The same Abba Paul and Abba Timothy were sweepers at Scetis and they used to be disturbed by the brothers. And Timothy said to his brother, “What do we want with this job? We are not allowed to be still the whole day long.” And Abba Paul said to him, “The stillness of the night is sufficient for us, if our minds are vigilant.”9
Stillness is not an end in itself, neither does it exclude a person from the responsibility of labor in the community. At the same time, Abba Paul is aware that the stillness he and his brother have in the night provides the “vigilance” for prayer and mindfulness. The primary virtue of inner stillness is to direct the monk to the transformation of his or her heart. Although stillness is the intentional limitation of external pursuits to devote focus and energy on internal transformation, it is not an avoidance of or indifference to activity. Stillness, for the self-centered sake of stillness, can produce an unhealthy insensitivity toward other people and an inwardness that imprisons a person in their own self-created world. This is not the intent of the abbas and ammas, as Abba John Cassian comments so clearly:
Self-reform and peace are not achieved through the patience which others show us, but through our own long-suffering towards our neighbor. When we try to escape the struggle for long-suffering by retreating into solitude, those unhealed passions we take there with us are merely hidden, not erased; for unless our passions are first purged, solitude and withdrawal from the world not only foster them but also keep them concealed, no longer allowing us to perceive what passion it is that enslaves us. On the contrary, they impose on us an illusion of virtue and persuade us to believe that we have achieved long-suffering and humility, because there is no one present to provoke and test us. 10
~David G.R. Keller, Oasis of Wisdom: The Worlds of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
7 Ibid., Poemen 168, 190.
8 Ibid., Evagrius 1, 63.
9 Gerontikon, Sisoes the Theban 2, 381B.
10 G.E.H. Palmer, P. Sherrard, and K. Ware, trans. and eds., The Philokalia (London: Faber and Faber, 1979) vol. 1, John Cassian, “On the Eight Vices,” 85.
