The Beautiful Year
As I exit 2023 and enter the year 2024, I am given a moment of perspective that seems a bit of a top-down look at the world from a place of contemplation.
The highlight of 2023, most certainly would have to be my pilgrimage to the Balkan nations of Serbia and North Macedonia, because it was there that I encountered a kind of beauty that had the effect of shifting and shaping my paradigms of the world. I encountered culture shaped by belief in God, His Son, and the Church.
One of these places was a monastery called Crna Reka and it was established in caves and used as a church with smaller caves as monastic cells and hermitages. Churches of this style are not uncommon in Orthodoxy. They began with monastics who seek to leave the world to pray and commune with God. They lived lives of extreme asceticism, limiting their food, laboring against the difficulties of living among the elements, and doing battle with demonic forces that would wage war against them and seek to destroy their souls. Stories are told of great hermits such as St. Anthony the Great (also known as the father of monasticism) who, after living in such a way for many years, were found to be so full of Grace that the people from the outside world would continue coming to them for help in their spiritual struggles. As others would desire to reach such spiritual maturity, monasteries were then established in the vicinity, and the work of God continued in remote places. These cave monasteries are sometimes called “lavras” and they represent a choice made by holy men and women who have chosen to give up everything that the comforts of the world provide in order to travel the hard path of following Christ.
In truth, we are all called to this path. We are all called to an ascetic life. We are all called to do battle with the forces of evil that wage war against our souls. Perhaps we are not all called to escape the world and move into a cave, but there is a place that we can go to fight. It is in the quietness of nature and the goodness of God’s world and beauty, and we are all certainly instructed by Christ in both word and by example to seek solitude and quiet for the purpose of communing with God.
On New Year’s Eve, 2023, I turned on the TV to watch a football game (a worldly weakness, I admit) between the Green Bay Packers and the Minnesota Vikings. Within about a 90-second span of time, I watched a woman with a skin tight dress, very long fingernails, and a voluminous hairstyle practically slither down a staircase while the camera panned up and down her body, drawing attention to her fine physique. Meanwhile she was speaking words that would best be spoken by a hungry lioness though I can’t remember what they were exactly. This was supposed to segue into thoughts about a pending football game, maybe. Then there was an advertisement. It was an ad for some kind of vacation getaway. There were quiet videos of flocks of geese flying overhead and scenes of natural beauty. Then a house, then suddenly, people were running and jumping off a dock and shouting “cannonball!” as they leapt into the water. A few more flashy ads of cars and the usual stuff and then the football game began.
All in a moment I had a flash of insight. It came from childhood memories of my mother waking me suddenly on fall mornings and driving me out of bed out onto the frosted morning lawn so that we could look up to see large flocks of Canada geese flying overhead and hear the distant honking.
The sequence I watched of the flying geese followed by the noisy, cannonball-ing humans caused an uncomfortable dissonance. For just a moment I was transported to a memory of beauty, quiet, and encounter with nature that lives in my head and heart, and I longed to regain access to that life. Then the moment was obliterated.
I don’t typically make new year resolutions, but in that moment, I may have made one.
My soul was struck by the contrast of human vanity against the quiet humility of nature, of lusty images against the meekness of icons, and of serenity of mind against the flashing barrage of media input, and I resolved to practice quiet, to seek nature, and to pursue asceticism apart from the world. I resolved to cultivate and contemplate beauty in what is certain to be a year of confusion and tumult, as election years tend to be. I resolved to seek God with my whole heart, in spite of what may come.
In the second chapter of his book, The Ethics of Beauty, Dr. Timothy Patitsas says, “The healing of the soul begins with noticing God’s many theophanies and with falling in love with them. In other words, it begins with eros for Beauty.” (p.79)
The Psalmist writes, “O Lord, I have loved the beauty of Thy house, and the place where Thy glory dwelleth.” (Psalm 25, Sept.)
Phillipians 4:8 reminds us “Finally,brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
In that moment I resolved to actively seek and participate in “theophanies” - the moments of divine Grace that are revealed through what is beautiful and true, where Christ is made manifest. I need to continue to seek the beauty of the House of God through attending the Divine Liturgy, vespers, vigils, and festal services. I need to confess my sins in that place where absolution and freedom is found. I need to avoid toxic input into my mind that poisons the wellspring of hope, joy, and faith in God’s goodness. Ideally, when I add all of this together, there is little time left for frivolous pursuits that would feed the passions upon which the demons would seize and make a feast.
Thought is the seedbed of both virtue and vice. If I cannot control my thoughts, then I ultimately am a slave to my passions and impulses, the very sources of sin. In Beauty there is only goodness, virtue, and life. Ultimate Beauty is Christ himself. If it means living in a virtual cave by removing social media or news, or stricter fasting from unhealthy things such as alcohol, sugar, junk food, physical laziness, then these I must do. As I grow in faithfulness I may be able to add or remove additional ascetic practices until I find myself in the place where theosis takes hold and I begin to pray with the Saints.
May the New Year be Beautiful. May we turn to Christ, the source of Ultimate Beauty, and may all Glory be to Him.
Amen.
What a beautiful year indeed! Your writing is wonderful. And I look forward to seeing that 2024 has in store for you. Many blessings to you and your family.