“… There is yet a time of rest in store for the world, when mastery has changed into fellowship – but not before.”

                                    — William Morris, News from Nowhere.

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Foundational to the American doctrine of rights is the concept of equality.  As Jefferson has it in The Declaration of Independence:  “All men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”

This is a purely political statement which has nothing to do with reality.

It should be perfectly obvious to even the most obtuse among us that all men are not created equal – that is to say, the same.  The “equality” envisioned in this time-honored, all-hallowed, never-to-be-questioned assertion is simply “equality before the law.”  One might even go so far as to call it a legal fiction.

Legal fictions, of course, are matters of little or no consequence to the Pilgrim.  That’s because the Pilgrim, as a stranger and sojourner in the kosmos, cares nothing about politics and law.  He takes his cues from another quarter altogether.

The purpose of equality before the law isn’t difficult to discern.  It’s a protective measure:  a defensive weapon to be used against enemies who seek to gain mastery over me and promote their agenda and interests at my expense.  It’s the hill on which I take my stand against hostility and aggression, the barricade behind which I hide in my attempts to fight off your ill-willed efforts to demean, enslave, or impoverish me.  “Step off!” it says.  “Get back!  Keep your hands off me and my stuff!  I’m every bit as good as you are!”  We cling to this doctrine of equality primarily out of fear.  We need it desperately because we operate on the assumption that ours is a world in which everybody is constantly trying to dominate everybody else.   Unfortunately, it’s a pretty fair assessment of the situation.

But the Pilgrim, as we have said, wants no part of all this.  He does not belong to the kosmos.  On the contrary, he lives his life as part of a community that operates on the basis of a very different set of rules and assumptions.  It’s a community made up of refugees and foreigners, people from another place and time, tramps and travelers encamped in the middle of an alien society who, in spite of adversity and criticism, continue to speak a different language and cling to the tenets of a different culture.  They are a colony, an embassy, a rebel outpost in occupied territory.  And within the context of this strange outlandish sub-culture they have no need for “equality.”  They have no need of it for the simple reason that they have no interest in dominating or mastering one another.  Instead of the law of “equal rights,” Pilgrims live by the rule of koinonia.

Koinonia means “sharing.”  It’s the state of “holding something in common.”   The Greek word is most frequently translated into English as “fellowship” – though, if it weren’t for negative historical, political, and social baggage, we might possibly understand it as referring to a form of voluntary “communism.”[1]  The basic idea here is summed up in the New Testament’s teaching that, in Christ, “we are members of one another” – parts of the same body – so that what affects and concerns you affects and concerns me.  Most importantly, koinonia takes it for granted that we are not all “equal” or alike – no more than a hand is like an eye or a head like a foot.  This is the assumption upon which it operates.  In koinonia we supplement, complement, fill up, and balance one another’s strengths and weaknesses.  You supply what is lacking in me.  I supply what is lacking in you.

“Bear one another’s burdens,” writes Paul, chief of sinners and Pilgrims, in his letter to the Galatians.  In another place, he says, “We who are strong ought to bear with the weak, and not to please ourselves.”  There is no question here of competition, no room for domination.  In the words of the Master Himself, “You know that the rulers of the nations lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them.  Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant.”

All men are created equal.  When you stop and think about it for a moment, this well-worn axiom begins to ring with near-Huxleyan overtones.  It’s the law of survival in the jungle of the kosmos:  a cold, impersonal rule calculated to ensure the peace, prosperity, and happiness of the Brave New World.  And so, perhaps, it must remain until the kosmos is no more.

As for the Pilgrim, he has ceased from all such strife, for he lives in a kingdom where the first are last and the last first, and where every member lives and thrives by lending to and leaning upon every other.

It’s a vision of an entirely different order.

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[1] It’s not without reason that the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer labeled Marxism “a Christian heresy.”  Pure Marxism is essentially a vision of Christian koinonia without Christian inspiration or motivation – in other words, without Christ Himself.  It’s no coincidence that there is such a striking resemblance in wording between Acts 2:44, 45 – “Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need” – and the most famous of the early communist slogans – “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” See also Acts 4:32-35.

     I am a Christian … so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’ – though it contains … some samples or glimpses of final victory.

 — J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter to Amy Ronald, December 15, 1956  

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A long defeat. Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Plantation, one of the most celebrated of all true Pilgrims, would have understood this way of looking at human history. He was intimately acquainted with disappointment and failure. He never knew his father. His mother died when he was seven. While still an adolescent he was forced to flee the land of his birth. He lost his young wife to the waves of the North Atlantic. Half of his companions on the Mayflower perished during their first few months in the New World. After enduring all these toils and sorrows, he watched his most deeply cherished dream – the dream of Christian brothers and sisters living together “in a most strict and sacred bond and covenant of the Lord” – wither and fade before his very eyes. But he bore it all with “answerable courage” and unyielding confidence in the faithfulness of God; so that in the end his “defeats” were transformed into something more than mere “glimpses of final victory.” In a very real sense they became “stepping stones unto others” for the performing of a great and enduring work.

Born in the spring of 1590 and baptized on the 19^th of March, Will Bradford was raised by two uncles, Robert and Thomas, in the agricultural community of Austerfield, Yorkshire. A long childhood illness proved to be the first of many instances of Divine Providence in his life: unable to work in the fields or play in the town square, Will became an avid reader. Of all the books he read, it was the Bible that most profoundly impacted his thinking.

By the age of twelve the scripturally savvy young Bradford was actively questioning the policies and practices of the state-sanctioned Anglican Church. In pursuit of the ancient purity of the New Testament ekklesia, he joined a small Separatist gathering that met in the home of Elder William Brewster, the Puritan postmaster of Scrooby. When the Scrooby congregation, under the persecution of King James I, made the difficult decision to flee to Holland, eighteen-year-old Will Bradford was among them.

In Holland, the Separatists discovered that religious liberty had a down side: doctrinal disputes, fostered by Amsterdam’s open-minded atmosphere, were destroying Christian unity among the various groups of English Protestants residing there. The Scrooby refugees escaped to Leyden, where they lived in comparative peace for the next eleven years. But rumors of war and concerns about the “liberalizing” effects of Dutch culture eventually compelled them to embark for America, where they hoped to live out their vision of Christian community undisturbed.

The decision to leave Leyden was fraught with pain and stress. Among other things, Bradford and his wife, Dorothy, were forced to concede that their little son John was too young to make the trip. The process of arranging the logistical details was far from simple. But after three years of delays, disappointments, and strained negotiations with potential financiers, the first group of Leyden emigrants finally sailed on the Mayflower on September 6, 1620, under the sponsorship of Thomas Weston, a profit-minded London entrepreneur. Thanks to Weston, the Separatists’ Christian ideals were compromised from the very beginning: at his direction, they were joined by a contingent of fifty “Strangers,” selected by the company for the commercial advantages they could bring to the new colony.

It could have been a recipe for disaster. But during course of the Mayflower’s tempest-tossed 66-day crossing, William Bradford emerged as a leader capable of addressing both groups’ needs and concerns. When the ship landed at Cape Cod, he played a key role in quelling the spirit of division that already threatened the colony’s survival. Together, he and Brewster drew up a “contract” by which Saints and Strangers agreed to “combine themselves together into a civil body politic” with the goal of promoting the glory of God and advancing the Christian faith. The Mayflower Compact, as “the first foundation of their government” in the New World, made every member of the community equally responsible for the welfare of the entire group. As a result, dangerous dissension was averted and Plymouth colony was granted a hopeful beginning.

Their agreement held good throughout the hardships of the first bleak winter. The few settlers who remained healthy during the days of starvation and disease that followed attended tirelessly to the needs of their sick companions. Bradford, whose wife had drowned within six weeks of the Mayflower’s landing, was himself among the ailing. By the end of March, half the company had perished. When John Carver, Plymouth’s first governor, succumbed to the lingering effects of his illness the following spring, the colonists elected Bradford to be his successor. It was a post he would hold for the greater part of the next three decades.

Through the years that followed, Governor Bradford bore the heavy responsibility of managing a relentless barrage of discouraging setbacks and disheartening circumstances, including Weston’s broken promises; fire, famine, and drought; disciplinary problems with “untoward persons;” threats from the hostile Pequots and Narragansetts; trade disputes with the Dutch and French; and, later, border conflicts with the Puritan settlers in Massachusetts Bay. In addition, he and his fellow Pilgrims had to contend with a long list of unsuitable “pastors” – men like the Reverend John Lyford, an English preacher who upon his first arrival in Plymouth appeared to be “made all of love,” but who was eventually implicated in a plot to undermine the Separatists’ plans for a unified and holy Christian commonwealth.

But none of these adversities and obstacles left Bradford as thoroughly cast down in spirit as the unexpected enemy he had to face during the final phase of his career: success. Within two decades of the sufferings of that first harsh winter, Plymouth Plantation was thriving and its inhabitants were growing rich. And the richer they grew, the less they valued the “sacred bond” that had brought them to the New World and preserved them through so many trials. “As their stocks increased,” wrote Bradford, “there was no longer any holding them together … Those that had lived so long together in Christian and comfortable fellowship must now part and suffer many divisions … This I fear will be the ruin of New England, at least of the churches of God there … ”[i] In many respects, his words proved tragically prophetic. In a short time, as he tells us, “wickedness” of the most unspeakable sort was breaking forth among the people: theft, murder, adultery, sodomy, and even bestiality.

From a certain perspective, the story of Plymouth Plantation is the story of America in a nutshell. It brings to mind the stern words of Puritan divine John Owen, penned in England some thirty years after these ironic events: “Prosperity hath slain the foolish and wounded the wise.”[ii]

But in another sense, it’s vital to remember that the tale doesn’t end here. For these disheartening developments, both past and present, are part of a bigger picture – episodes in an ongoing narrative that is still being written. Bradford, says biographer Gary Schmidt, did not realize that he had left the world “a great account not only of the planting of a colony, but of God’s loving and providential care of a people who had tried to carry out a vision that they had found in the Scriptures. Bradford thought he had failed in this vision; he did not understand how much he had succeeded.”[iii] His vision is still worth pursuing today.

William Bradford spent his final years in quiet retirement, writing poetry, reading Greek and Latin, and learning Hebrew. He died May 8, 1657, “lamented by all the colonies of New England as a common Blessing and Father to them all.”[iv]

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[i] William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647 (New York: Modern Library College Editions, 1981), 281-283.

[ii] John Owen, “Of Temptation,” in The Works of John Owen, vol. VI, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1967), 112.

[iii] Gary D. Schmidt, William Bradford: Plymouth’s Faithful Pilgrim (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 1999), 182.

[iv] Rev. Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, 1702.

    “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.”

                                    — Jesus; John 12:24

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What do we do when barbarians come knocking at the gate?  Pilgrims of the past have responded by way of costly personal example.  And the answers they’ve left behind can be as tough to chew as they are to swallow.

Similar to the tale of Boris and Gleb is that of Edmund, king of East Anglia (mid-ninth century).  His history comes down to us from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Aelfric’s Lives of the Saints.

The Christian Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of eastern Britain were no strangers to the terror of foreign invasion.  Again and again during the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries the people of Northumbria, Anglia, and Kent suffered cruelly at the hands of ruthless Viking raiders.  Edmund knew exactly what to expect, then, when word came that a Danish sciphere or naval force under the command of two bloodthirsty leaders, Hinguar and Hubba, had landed in the north, and was at that moment cutting a swath through the country of Northumbria, wasting fields, looting villages, and killing men, women, and children indiscriminately.

It wasn’t long before Hinguar’s envoy arrived in King Edmund’s hall.  “Hinguar is going to winter in your land,” he arrogantly announced.  “He demands your gold and your allegiance.  You will bow the knee to him at once if you value your life, for it is clear that you do not possess the might to withstand him.”

Despite his bishop’s warnings and pleadings, Edmund gave the Northman an uncompromising reply:  “Worthy of death as you are, I will not defile my clean hands with your foul blood.  I follow Christ, who has left us a very different example, and I will gladly be slain by your people if that is God’s will.  Now go quickly and tell your cruel lord that Edmund will never bow to Hinguar while he lives, for his allegiance is due to Christ alone!”

Aelfric describes the sequel as follows:

     So then:  when Hinguar came, King Edmund stood within his hall, mindful of the Savior, and threw his arms aside.  He wanted to imitate the example of Christ, who forbade Peter to use weapons against the Jews. 

The Vikings’ response?  They bound Edmund, mocked him, beat him, dragged him out of doors, and tied him to a tree.  There they shot him with arrows until the shafts piercing his body resembled “a hedgehog’s bristles, just as it was with Sebastian” (swa swa Sebastianus waes).*  Aelfric testifies that the king did not cease calling upon Christ until the end.  After he was dead, the “impious heathens” (Aelfric’s term) cut off his head and hid it in the woods.

Though many of us today will find this hard to accept, that wasn’t the end of Edmund’s story.  For when the raiders departed, the people of East Anglia found the king’s head and buried it with the body.  In time, a church was raised above Edmund’s grave in recognition of the fact that “many wonders and miracles of healing took place at his tomb, that is, at the chapel where he was buried.”

We may perhaps doubt these miraculous tales.  But whether they be mere embellishments or not, they nevertheless highlight and illustrate a truth that is of critical importance to every Pilgrim:  the truth that death is the prelude to life, and that grace and supernatural power are released whenever we choose to lay down our lives in emulation of the Master.

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*St. Sebastian, a captain in the Roman army, was martyred during the persecution of the Emperor Diocletian after it was discovered that he had been leading other soldiers to Christ.  He was shot by a firing squad of archers and left for dead in the year 288.  His martyrdom is clearly reflected in Tolkien’s description of the death of Boromir in The Fellowship of the Ring.          

“At this hour, to send [the Ring] in the hands of a witless halfling into the land of the Enemy himself, as you have done … that is madness.”

                                    — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

* * * * * * * * * * * *

If the wisdom of God is foolishness to men, it follows that a certain type of holy insanity must and will turn out to be the health and salvation of the world.  This is implied in everything we have said thus far about Pilgrim values and the Pilgrim path.

There is indeed a fundamental sense in which the kingdom through which the Pilgrim makes his progress strongly resembles the wild and topsy-turvy land of fairy-tales.  Like Dorothy in Oz or Alice through the Looking-glass, those who travel in this strange and perilous realm encounter inversion, conversion, paradox, oxymoron, and surprise at almost every turn in the road.  This is a place where the first are last, the poor are rich, and the weak are strong.  Where children and beggars are kings and lords, where nobodies are somebody, and where death and failure become the pathways to victory and life.  Where to lose one’s life is to save it, and all the power, prestige, and prominence the kosmos has to offer are worth no more than a pile of dung.  Where fear is wisdom, contentment is wealth, and that which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.  How can the wise, the accomplished, the sophisticated, the rich, and the powerful ever hope to make anything of this maze of crazy contradictions?

Let’s face it.  In a world gone as desperately awry as ours, madness is the only way out of the labyrinth.  It’s the only possible solution to the dilemma.  What is madness after all except a complete overturning of the world’s expectations?  What better way to describe it than as a grand Rejection, a great Refusal?  It was this realization that led poet and painter Gabriel Gale, hero of G. K. Chesterton’s quirky novel The Poet and the Lunatics, to observe – while standing on his head – that “It’s a very good thing for a landscape-painter to see the landscape upside down.  He sees things then as they really are; yes, and that’s true in philosophy as well as art.”*

This is one of the fundamental messages of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, a story about how the destiny of the world is placed not in the hands of the great, the wise, and the mighty, but rather the small, the insignificant, and the defenseless.  That plan, as Boromir son of Denethor reasonably observes, is pure madness.  But what Boromir fails to understand is that, precisely for that reason, it is the only plan that has the slightest chance of succeeding.  It is the only strategy attended by even the faintest glimmer of hope.  In the end, it’s the weakness, incompetence, and vulnerability of the halflings that saves the day when all else fails.  What could be crazier than that?

Frank Schaeffer, son of apologist and evangelist Francis Schaeffer, has famously accused his famous parents of having been Crazy for God.  Perhaps Frank doesn’t realize how right he is.  Francis and Edith Schaeffer were not perfect people by any stretch of the imagination.  None of us is.  But they did follow a path that in many ways ran directly counter to the expectations of the system.

In this they were not alone.  On the contrary, they were part of a great daft madcap band that includes the likes of Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther, Boris and Gleb, Savonarola, George Eagles, John Bunyan, John the Baptist, and a host of other bona fide “Fools for Christ.”  These people were not afraid to turn the kosmos upside down by living according to a set of values that was the inverse of the world’s.  “They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated – men of whom the world was not worthy – wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground.”

Strange, isn’t it, that it was these rather than those others – the rulers of the earth who hounded them to death – who “gained approval through their faith.”

But then that’s the madness of the Pilgrim way.
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* G. K. Chesterton, The Poet and the Lunatics; Ch. 1, “The Fantastic Friends.”

“Follow the Gospel and suffer injustice to yourself and your possessions as befits true Christians.”

                                    — Martin Luther

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The first two saints to be canonized in the Russian and Byzantine Orthodox tradition were Boris and Gleb, younger sons of Vladimir the Baptizer, Christian ruler of the kingdom of Kievan Rus.  For more than a millennium Boris and Gleb, who died somewhere around the year 1015, have been revered in the east as “Passion-bearers” – innocent sufferers and exemplars par excellence of the Orthodox ideal of kenosis, the emptying of self in Christian humility and love.

Vladimir, who had many children, decided to divvy up the realm among his heirs before his death, granting a portion to each of his several sons.  After their father’s demise, Sviatopolk, eldest of the brothers, became Grand Prince of Kiev, the capital city.  But Kiev was not enough for the power-hungry Sviatopolk.

Thomas Jefferson’s astute observation concerning the kind of people who desire advancement in the political realm – his contention that “a rottenness begins in their conduct” as soon as they set their sights on the prestige of public office — was certainly accurate in the case of Sviatopolk, whose cruel deeds subsequently earned him the epithet “The Accursed.”  Desiring to expand his hegemony and rid himself of all rivals, he made plans to kill his brothers Boris and Gleb in order to gain control of their territories.

Boris learned of Sviatopolk’s accession to the throne upon his return from a field campaign with the Russian army.  Being well aware of his older brother’s hostility, he was not surprised to learn that the Grand Prince was plotting his murder.  But Boris was a Pilgrim, not a politician; and when his father’s retainers urged him to collect his forces and oust the unpopular Sviatopolk, he refused.  Mindful of the words of the apostle John — “If any man say, ‘I love God,’ and hate his brother, he is a liar” — Boris sent his soldiers away, saying, “Be it not for me to raise my hand against my brother.  Now that my father has passed away, let him take my father’s place in my heart.”

As night closed down, Boris retired to his tent with one servant to recite the vigil service and await the approach of the assassins.  As they burst into the tent, Sviatopolk’s henchmen heard him singing psalms and asking God to strengthen him for the suffering he was about to endure.  After that, he lay down on his couch and his murderers pierced him through with their lances.

Meanwhile, Sviatopolk sent word to Gleb saying that his father was very ill and desired to see him.  A guileless youth, Gleb set out with a small band of retainers by boat.  As he neared the city of Smolensk, he was met by emissaries bearing a letter from his sister Predislava.  “Do not come,” she wrote.  “Your father is dead and Sviatopolk has killed your brother.”  But it was too late; and when the assassins caught up with him on the river, Gleb urged his company not to offer armed resistance.  He was stabbed by his own cook and his body was thrown on to the shore between two trees.

Boris and Gleb received the Crown of Martyrdom in 1015.  Not long afterwards, a service was composed in their honor by St. John I, Metropolitan of Kiev.  But it’s important to note that Boris and Gleb were not really martyrs in the technical sense of the term.  They did not actually die for their faith, but rather because, in emulation of their Master, they chose not to resist evil with violence.  Like the One who, in spite of His divine claim to power, honor, and glory, humbled Himself and became obedient even to the point of death, they emptied themselves and laid down their lives as an offering to Love.

That is why, in the tradition of the Russian Church, they became known not as “martyrs” but as “Passion-bearers” (Russian strastoterptsy) – imitators of the sufferings of Christ.  And that is what we mean when we speak of the Pilgrim value of kenosis.

     “I know,” said the bishop, “that the king is not to live long.  For never before this time have I seen a humble king.  Whereby I perceive that he must speedily be taken out of this life …”

      – The Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation,                     Book III, Chapter XIV 

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It’s arguable that never at any time in the past have there been so many people wanting to become President of the United States.  As of this writing, the number of candidates on either side of the political ledger rivals the all-star college football lineup on one of those old Bob Hope Christmas specials.

One has to wonder – seriously – about people who have that much ego, ambition, and drive.  Think about it:  a field of maybe twenty or thirty contenders who haven’t the slightest hesitation about standing up and saying, “Yes!  I’d like to be the most powerful person in the world!”  What’s wrong with this picture?  Is it possible to trust anyone who thirsts for that much control over the lives of others?

We hear a lot about “leadership” nowadays – both in the secular realm and the sacred.  “Leadership conferences” are huge in the church right now.  Unfortunately, most of them major in principles that have more to do with success in the corporate world than progress along the Pilgrim path.  For the devotees of the contemporary “leadership” cult, it’s all about initiative, aggression, financial savvy, self-confidence, and a dogged “can do” attitude.  But it’s hard to see how any of this lines up with the “leadership style” of the Man who said “The first shall be last,” and who ended His days on earth as a beaten and crucified criminal.

This is a key area of conflict between kingdom and kosmos.  Kosmic or worldly leaders don’t put much stock in meekness and humility.  After all, in a race to lay claim to the highest office in the land, the humble don’t stand much of a chance.  If they can even get past the gate, they’ll probably end up being trampled by the go-getters in the crowd.

Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne in seventh-century England, understood this.  That’s why he actually broke down and wept when he saw the Christ-like meekness of Oswin, king of the province of Deira in Northumbria.  As the chronicler Bede tells the story, Aidan had never before seen such a thing as a humble king.  He didn’t know such an animal could exist.  It seemed obvious to him that this particular king wasn’t long for this world.  And so it turned out:  within a very short time Oswin was betrayed and murdered by his rival, Oswy, king of the Bernicians.

True Pilgrims have always taken a tack precisely opposite to that embraced by the current crop of political candidates.  In their intense desire to imitate their Master and to become “leaders” only in the sense of following His example, they have clung to humility and shunned the struggle to climb to the top of the pile.  As a matter of fact, there was a time when ecclesiastical tradition required church leaders to resist appointment to high office.  Nominees to the episcopate were supposed to decline the honor with the words nolo episcopari:  “I do not wish to become a bishop.”  Only the man capable of repeating this formula and really meaning it was considered fit for the task of shepherding the faithful.

Originally this seems to have been something more than just a polite formality.  When the apostle Peter, sensing the nearness of his own death, chose Clement to succeed him as overseer of the church in Rome, Clement tried to beg off:  “I knelt to him, and entreated him, declining the honor and the authority of the chair.”*  St. Anselm (eleventh century), seems to have been of a similar frame of mind:  according to some accounts, he had to be held down, his fingers pried open, and the episcopal staff forced into his hand when he was made Archbishop of Canterbury.  Chad (Ceadda), Bishop of York (seventh century), was unperturbed when critics challenged the legitimacy of his appointment:  “If you decide that I have not rightly received the episcopal character,” he said, “I willingly lay down the office.”**

In the secular realm, too, it has long been recognized that the person best suited to exercise authority is the one who wants it least.  That’s why the early Romans worshipped the memory of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (born about 519 BC), the legendary statesman who was twice called upon to assume the (temporary) office of dictator and twice returned the his farm when the state of emergency had passed.***  Cincinnatus was clearly a very different sort of person than Julius Caesar, that shrewd politician who preferred to hold on to absolute power once it was in his grasp.  Thomas Jefferson might have been thinking of Caesar when he wrote, “Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on [public office], a rottenness begins in his conduct.”****

Nolo episcopari!  Or, as one clever commentator translates it, “Not me, Jack!”*****  That’s the Pilgrim’s attitude toward “leadership” in the kosmic sense of the term.  It’s also the cry of the heart of every true leader – the kind of heart that perceives its own frailty and knows its true condition.  For distrust of self is the first step toward dependence upon Another.

(Adapted from Finding God in the Hobbit, “Reluctant Leader”)

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* Clement, Epistle of Clement to James, Chapter 3, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 8.

** New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. St. Ceadda, www.newadvent.org/cathen/03470c.htm (October 6, 2005).

*** Livy, The Early History of Rome, Book 4.  Under the constitution of the Roman Republic, consuls had the power to appoint a dictator during times of national crisis.  The dictator was granted absolute power for a period of six months.

**** Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Tench Coxe, 1799.  Cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 268.

***** David Mills,  “Take Me!”  Touchstone:  A Journal of Mere Christianity, August 9, 2003.  www.touchstonemag.com/blogarchive/2003_08_03_editors.html

     The book of Revelation knows all about the principalities and powers of arkydom – yet it knows nothing of the common arky-faith alignment that divides human arkys into two categories (the “good” ones sponsored by God and the “bad” ones by Satan) which are then pitted against each other in determining humanity’s future … 

Arkys have no ultimate significance or even lasting function.

     — Vernard Eller, Christian Anarchy.

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Sociologist Jacques Ellul was both incisive and prophetic when, in 1966, he contended that everything in the modern Western world is now understood and evaluated solely from a political point of view.  Nothing is allowed to escape the infection of what Ellul termed the “politization” of society.  “Politics and its offspring,” he wrote, “have become the cornerstone of what is good or represents progress.  Political concerns are thought to be inherently excellent.”*

On this day in history (September 25, 2015), much is being made of Pope Francis’s celebrated address to the joint session of Congress.  And true to Ellul’s observation, the whole thing is being given a purely political twist.  It’s a sign of the times we live in.

This Pope is worthy of our respect and admiration on a number of different levels.  On that point there can be no doubt.  There is one respect, however, in which he has made a sad departure from the example of his historic namesake.  For we can be sure that the Little Poor Man of Assisi would never have wasted his time talking to the Stuffed Shirts and Bigwigs on Capitol Hill.

The original Francis was entirely unimpressed with that kind of power.  The story goes that in September 1209, when the Poverello and his Little Brothers were living in a poor hut near the streambed of Rivo Torto, Otto IV, newly elected Holy Roman Emperor, passed through the neighborhood on his way to Viterbo to be crowned by Pope Innocent III.  With him traveled a dazzling retinue of horsemen, churchmen, soldiers, and retainers – all the political pomp and circumstance the thirteenth century was capable of mustering gathered together in one big parade.  Naturally, the entire population rushed out and lined the roadways in order to get a glimpse of this magnificent cavalcade.  But not Francis.  Biographer Julien Green writes,

     “What was an emperor?  Francis and his brothers remained in the hut, all except one, who was dispatched to the great man to remind him that all triumphs are ephemeral.”**

According to some sources, the message delivered by this single barefoot friar was simpler than Green’s account would lead us to suppose:  “Emperor Otto!  Take your crown and throw it in the river!”

Francis, of course, was not the first to adopt this kind of attitude toward rulers, “arkys” (Vernard Eller), and political hoopla.  He was only following the example of the apostle Peter, who told the rulers of the Sanhedrin, “We ought to obey God rather than men;” of the prophetess Huldah, who bluntly told King Josiah’s royal embassy, “Tell the man who sent you to me, ‘Thus saith the Lord …;’” and of Jesus Himself, who reminded the Roman governor of Judea, “You would have no power over me whatsoever were it not granted to you from above.”

This is the Pilgrim’s attitude toward kings, presidents, congressmen, candidates, and all the “powers that be,” of whatever description:  neither disrespect nor defiance, but rather pure indifference to the theatrics of small-time pretenders to the throne.

___________________________________________________________________________

*  Jacques Ellul, The Political Illusion, p. 17.

** Julien Green, God’s Fool:  The Life and Times of Francis of Assisi, p. 128.

  One time Snedgus and Mac Riaghta, clerks that were of the people of Columcille, got into their currach of their own will, and went out over the sea on a pilgrimage, and they turned righthandways and the wind brought them north-westward into the outer ocean.

      — From “the Voyage of Snedgus” in Lady Augusta Gregory’s A Book of Saints and Wonders.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Not all those who wander are lost.

You’ve heard the words before. They come from a snatch of verse found in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, but the thought they express is far older. It is in fact ancient and timeless and fundamental to the Pilgrim life.

“Wanderer” (as the reader may recall) is one of the primary meanings of the English word pilgrim. Its Latin precursor, peregrinus, denotes a person on the way – someone who makes a journey through (per) the land (ager). From this primary sense comes a secondary meaning: stranger or foreigner. A traveler who is simply passing through a place can never really belong to that place. He’s bound for some other destination. He’s on a quest to find his own true home, and that true home is elsewhere. He’s what the Greeks called parepidemos: a temporary resident, a refugee, one who lives among a people not his own.

The apostle Peter uses this word to address the recipients of his first epistle: “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the pilgrims (parepidemoi) of the Dispersion (diaspora) in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia …” He was writing to Christians – Jews and Gentiles – who had been driven out of Rome by decree of the emperor Nero and were now sojourning in the province of Asia Minor. It’s consistent with their character and identity that these people were strangers to the vicinity in more ways than one: later in the same letter, Peter acknowledges that their neighbors were surprised to find them unwilling to “plunge into the flood of wild and destructive things they do.” Apparently these wayfarers were outlandish not only in terms of their place of origin, but also in their customs, values, and behavior. They were odd both culturally and spiritually. As a result, the locals called them “evildoers” and labeled them “haters of mankind.” As history and current circumstances teach us, this is just part and parcel of what it means to be a peregrinus.

Put differently, the Pilgrim life is in many ways a restless, rootless, unsettled, and misunderstood life. It’s a life characterized by a certain amount of pain, strain, and tension – the tension that comes from not belonging, of being in-between. The Pilgrim is a stranger because, like the Master (who said He had no place to lay His head), he is caught between two worlds or two conflicting realities. He has one foot in the kingdom and another in the kosmos.

So important was this aspect of the Pilgrim path to some of the early Irish saints that they made self-imposed exile a central element of their personal spiritual discipline. Patrick, for instance, was not a home-born Irishman. He was in fact a transplanted Briton who came to Eire originally as a captive slave and later returned of his own free choice as God’s willing bondservant. By way of contrast, Columba (Columcille) was not only a native of Donegal, but a member of the royal household. Yet in spite of his deep Irish roots, Columba turned his back on the Emerald Isle in order to embrace his identity as a stranger in the earth and “make a journey for Christ” (peregrinari pro Christi)*. He went out singing,

    My foot in my tuneful coracle,

     My sad heart tearful …

     There is a grey eye

     That will not look back again upon Ireland:

  It shall never see again the men of Ireland nor her women.**

The result of his peregrination was the founding of Iona, the tiny island monastery from which the Christian message spread not only into Britain, but across most of the European continent, carried by successive waves of wandering Irish monks.

Brendan was one of these wanderers. Many have heard about his fantastical voyage in a hide-covered currach with twelve brother monks. Some have even suggested that he may have reached the shores of North America long before Leif Ericson’s Norsemen. But fewer are familiar with the underlying motive for his journey. For as it turns out, Brendan was no mere adventurer or explorer. He did not put out to sea in search of thrills, wealth, or fame. He was driven by a desire that ran much deeper than anything of that sort: “After that, then,” writes his anonymous biographer, “the love of God grew exceedingly in Brendan’s heart, and he desired to leave his land and his country, his parents and his fatherland.”***

When Brendan threw himself upon the bosom of Ocean, he was actually casting his lot with divine mercy. He was cutting his ties with the world and putting himself in a place of utter dependence upon God’s grace. At the profoundest level, he was seeking a homeland above, which he saw with the eyes of faith and hailed as if from afar.

In a word, he was learning by experience what it means to be a Pilgrim.

______________________________

*Adamnan, Prophecies of St. Columba.

** “Columba’s Farewell to Ireland,” tr. Kuno Meyer; in Celtic Christianity, ed. Christopher Bamford & William Parker Marsh.

*** “The Life of Brendan of Clonfert, the Navigator,” in The Book of Lismore.

A fine state for the church to be in when it has no support left but God! …

      – Blaise Pascal, Pensees 

* * * * * * * * * * * *

It’s a bad thing to be poor.  Right?

Of course it is.  A lot of very intelligent, conscientious, and compassionate people have thought so – with good reason.  The more eloquent among them have given moving expression to their ideas on the subject.

“Poverty,” says author J. K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame, “entails fear and stress and sometimes depression.  It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships.  Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts — that is something on which to pride yourself.  But poverty itself is romanticized by fools.”

Confucius, in the Analects, took a similar point of view.  “In a country well governed,” he said, “poverty is something to be ashamed of.”

“Where justice is denied,” wrote former slave Frederick Douglass, “where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”

South African statesman and civil rights activist Nelson Mandela dedicated his life to opposing this kind of oppression.  “We pledge ourselves,” he said, “to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.”

Jesus of Nazareth was as intelligent, conscientious, and compassionate as the best of them.  He put his concern for the poor into action as nobody else could when He miraculously multiplied the loaves and fishes to feed the hungry multitude.  He and His disciples had very little money, yet He placed Judas, treasurer of the small band, in charge of making regular contributions to the needy.  And when a rich young ruler asked Him what he had to do in order to be saved, He told him to sell all of his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor.

How strange, then, that Jesus never had anything to say about the evils of poverty!  Quite the contrary.  In one of the oddest of His many odd and paradoxical statements (the radical and nonsensical implications of which are usually piously overlooked), He actually called the poor “blessed.”  He even went so far as to declare them lords and proprietors of the heavenly kingdom.  In so doing, He suggested that the poor have a huge spiritual advantage over the rest of us.  Why would He say such a thing?  Because the poor, unlike the rich, have nothing to fall back on except sheer divine providence.  In effect, Jesus told us that we, who sometimes pride ourselves on being their kind and generous benefactors, have much to learn from the example of the poor.

Not many of Christ’s followers have taken Him seriously on this point.  Of the few who have, Francis of Assisi, true Pilgrim in the earth, was perhaps the most notable.  At the decisive turning point of his life – that moment of crisis biographer Julien Green calls “The Great Refusal” – Francis, crazed with an unearthly love, stood before his rich bourgeois merchant father, the man who had hitherto supplied all his needs, and declared his intention to abandon human support and live a new kind of life – a life of complete and utter dependence upon God.  Stripping off his clothes and throwing his money on the floor, the young man cried out, “Listen, listen, everyone!  From now on I can say with complete freedom, ‘Our Father who art in heaven!’”* Then he went off, as he put it, to marry Lady Poverty.  She was his closest companion for the rest of his days.

Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty.  He meant well, of course, and his goals made perfect sense from a strictly social, political, and human point of view.  But the Pilgrim knows that, for his purposes, it’s much better to wage war on wealth and affluence.  He understands that, all too often, our financial assets become our support, our comfort, and our confidence – in other words, a false idol.

The Pilgrim, of all people, lends generously to the poor.  But at the same time he is careful not to do the good he does out of a secret sense of superiority, skipping over the fundamental truth that giving is not so much a matter of helping as it is of identifying with the helpless – of becoming poor and destitute himself.

It’s a lesson the rest of us desperately need to learn.

__________________

*Julien Green (tr. Peter Heinegg), God’s Fool:  The Life and Times of Francis of Assisi (San Francisco:  Harper & Row, 1985), p. 82.

*  *  * *  *  *  *

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness …

     – Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence 

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“Forgiveness is surrendering my right to hurt you back if you hurt me,” writes psychologist Dr. Archibald Hart.*

This suggests that forgiveness, the most recent of the core Pilgrim values to be considered in this context, is closely allied with the next:  meekness.  The connection is in fact one of inclusive subordination:  that is to say, forgiveness is simply a sub-category or sub-species of meekness.  For in the language of the New Testament, meekness is all about surrendering rights – not just my right to hurt you back, but any right whatsoever.

“Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild,” cynically caricatured by the poet Swinburne as the “pale Galilean,” is not a popular figure with most of us.  We prefer the bold and brawny Christ of Ezra Pound:  the whip-wielding Cleanser of the Temple.  This is all well and good as far as it goes.  But it fails to take into account that the Master Himself used the word meek (Greek praus, “gentle or mild”) to describe the Blessed inheritors of the earth.  It was a rash, senseless, absurd thing to say in face of the kosmic wisdom which asserts that nothing is gained or “inherited” apart from self-assertiveness.

Give up your rights and gain the whole world.  What an idea!  This upside-down view of reality is difficult for most us to swallow.  After all, rights are the foundation and capstone of the American worldview.  Rights have been our Creed and Mantra from beginning to end.  We have a right to demand our rights because they are rightfully ours.  And we know – the lesson having been pounded into our heads time and time again – that rights and freedoms are not free:  no, they must be wrested violently from the hands of enemies, tyrants, and villains.  Rights have to be seized, preserved, and protected by sheer brute force.  Once secured, we have an obligation to fight and kill in order to retain them.  And why?  Because our rights, for reasons we’ve never even stopped to examine, are what human existence is all about.

Or are they?

Apparently Moses didn’t think so.  When his own brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam, stood up and questioned his right to lead the people of Israel, Moses spoke never a word in his own defense.  Instead, he stepped aside and let God plead his cause.  That’s why the writer of the Book of Numbers was able to say, “Now the man Moses was very meek, meeker than all men who were on the face of the earth.”

Paul of Tarsus, too, though not the sort of man anyone could accuse of being ”the meekest on the face of the earth,” had a firm grasp of this principle.  In his first letter to the Christians at Corinth, he wrote that, as an apostle, he had a right to expect physical and financial support from the church.  “Nevertheless,” he said, “we have not used this right, but endure all things lest we hinder the gospel of Christ.”

Forfeiting my rights for the sake of others and in service to a greater design — this is what it means to be meek.  And meekness is a vital feature of the Pilgrim way.  Can we possibly understand this – we who dwell in a land where children are regularly sacrificed in order that adults might secure to themselves the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?”  Can we ever hope to walk this path — we who believe so fervently in the practice of politics, which is in essence nothing but the active grasping, holding, and wielding of self-interested power?

Sometimes one has to give up rights in order to do what’s right.

_____________________________

* Archibald Hart, Unlocking The Mystery Of Your Emotions. 

I understand not living with hatred.  I understand how that can be corrupting, I got that.  I don’t understand how you gun down my wife, my mother, my father, my child, and when I see you three days later I say that I forgive you – I don’t understand that …

     Forgiveness is a big part of – especially post-civil rights movement – is a big part of African-American Christianity, and I wasn’t raised within the Christian church, I wasn’t raised within any church.  Forgiveness is a huge, huge part of it, coming out of the civil rights movement, but I can’t access that at all.   

    – Ta-Nehisi Coates, speaking to Terry Gross on WHYY’s Fresh Air, July 13, 2015 

 * * * * * * * * * * * *

If my readers will permit me for the moment to slip into the first person, I have a confession to make.  Sorry as I am to have to admit it, I haven’t always found it easy to speak in complimentary terms of some of my fellow Christians.

Perhaps it would be more accurate — and more to the point — to say that I haven’t always found it easy to forgive them.  Especially American Christians.  Especially contemporary American Christians.  I haven’t found it easy to forgive them for the glitz and the glamour.  For the success schemes and the motivational hype.  For the patriotism and jingoism, the conformism and materialism, the politicizing power-plays and downright lack of compassion.  To put it another way, I’ve been hard pressed to reconcile their version of the faith with my own understanding of the Pilgrim Path.  (Just for the record, I haven’t found it easy to forgive myself, either.)

Now that that’s out in the open, I have another confession to make.  Over the past several years, a number of incidents have been played out on the national and international stage that have caused me to re-evaluate.  Shocking and terrible things.  Dreadful things that have happened to Christian people, to which those same Christian people have responded in such a meek, humble, unassuming, and Christ-like way that I’ve been forced, in spite of my innate cantankerousness and cynicism, to feel unabashedly proud of their witness.  These believers have shown themselves to be true Pilgrims in the earth.  I can only hope to be worthy of their example someday.

The first of these tragic incidents took place nearly a decade ago.  On October 2, 2006, Charles Carl Roberts IV, a milk truck driver deeply embittered over the death of his own infant daughter, walked into a one-room Amish schoolhouse in West Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, and told all the girls – ten of them – to lie down facing the blackboard.  After ordering the boys and the adults to leave, Roberts apologized for what he was about to do, explaining, “I’m angry at God, and I need to punish some Christian girls to get even with Him.”  Then he raised his shotgun and started shooting.  By the time the state police arrived, Roberts himself and two of the girls were dead.  Three more died later that night.

The Amish community’s response?  Incredibly, in the midst of their shock and grief, they extended grace and compassion to the killer’s family.  On the very afternoon of the shooting, the grandfather of one of the slain girls said he forgave Charles Roberts.  Later the same day, Amish neighbors visited the Roberts family to comfort them in their sorrow and pain.  As a result, the hundreds of reporters who descended upon Lancaster County to cover the brutal murder came away with a very different story – a story of forgiveness and suffering love.

The second incident occurred earlier this year.  On Sunday, February 15, 2015, the Libyan branch of ISIS released a video depicting their brutal murder of twenty-one Coptic Christians.  These men, who were drawn from among the poorest of Egypt’s poor, had been working as day-laborers in Libya when they were kidnapped by Islamic State forces.  They were their families’ sole support.  They had literally nothing except the thing for which they died – their belief in Jesus – and they died because they would not let it go.

The thirty-five days following the initial kidnapping were days of fear and silent torment for the families back at home.  When the news came that their sons, brothers, and fathers had been executed, they were shattered.  But that’s where this story takes an unexpected turn.  As these Egyptian Christians tell it, it was only a matter of hours before their grief gave way to rejoicing.   Somehow or other, they found themselves praising God for the martyrs’ homegoing.  Some of them actually felt a sense of gratitude towards ISIS for ushering their loved ones into Christ’s presence.  What’s more, they repeatedly expressed an earnest desire to pray for the terrorists’ spiritual enlightenment and salvation.  Their deepest wish was that the members of ISIS might also come to know the love and forgiveness of the Lord Jesus.

That leads us to Charleston.

On the evening of June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist, walked into a Bible Study at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina.  Concealed in his fanny pack he carried a Glock 41. 45-caliber handgun.  After receiving a warm welcome from the members of the church, Roof sat listening to Pastor Clementa Pinckney expounding the Scriptures for a full hour before producing his weapon and opening fire, killing nine of the fourteen people in attendance.  Pastor Pinckney was one of the first to die.  The motive for Roof’s unspeakable crime?  Pure, unmitigated racial hatred.  “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country,” he told his victims (six of whom were women themselves).  “You have to go.”

What can be done about this kind of senseless violence?  Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, one of the most notorious of all high-profile mainstream American establishment Christians, has the obvious answer:  more guns.  Things like this wouldn’t happen, insists Huckabee, if instead of welcoming strangers into the church with open arms, Christians would simply take the initiative to arm themselves against them.  “Frankly,” he maintains, “the best way to stop a bad person with a gun is to have a good person with a weapon that is equal or superior to the one he’s using.”

There’s sound worldly wisdom in what Huckabee says, of course.  Unfortunately, that wisdom is at complete odds with the way of the Pilgrim.  The Christians at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church took a different tack.  From beginning to end they responded to the hater with love.  As a matter of fact, Roof has admitted that he nearly abandoned his insidious plan because the church members were “so nice to him.”  And their “niceness” didn’t stop there.  When Roof appeared in Charleston County court via video conference at a bond hearing following his arrest, survivors of the shooting and relatives of five of the victims spoke to him directly, telling him that they forgave him and that they were praying for his soul.  Guns were the last thing on their mind.

Is this hard to understand?    Ta-Nehisi Coates, national correspondent for The Atlantic, thinks so.  On the July 13 edition of NPR’s Fresh Air, Coates told interviewer Terry Gross that he “can’t access” this kind of forgiveness.  And who can blame him?  From a certain perspective, what he says makes perfect sense.  After all, Coates, like Huckabee, is operating on the basis of the categories, assumptions, and parameters of the kosmos.  Like any self-respecting American, he takes it for granted that it’s sheer stupidity to be weak and vulnerable, to let people walk all over you, to endure pain, insult, offense, or loss without seeking revenge, to give love in exchange for hate.  As a stranger to the Pilgrim life, he is incapable of perceiving the in-breaking reality of the topsy-turvy invisible Kingdom of God, nor can he comprehend what it means to follow the Suffering Servant who said, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

Meanwhile, the Pilgrims at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church are working from an entirely different frame of reference.

(Originally published January 22, 2015)

The renunciation of power is infinitely broader and harder than nonviolence (which it includes).  For nonviolence allows of a social theory, and in general it has an objective.  The same is not true of nonpower.

         – Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity 

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the brave men and women who served alongside him as architects of the Civil Rights Movement were people of high ideals.  In every situation they strove to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of truth and virtue.  Their words and actions were chosen with grace.  They kept a constant eye on the quality of their witness for Christ.  They cared deeply about individual integrity and collective responsibility.  And yet it would be neither unfair nor inaccurate to say that their decision to make nonresistance the keystone of their social and political strategy was never a matter of mere principle.  It was also a pragmatic consideration.  They were convinced that nonviolence would work.  They knew it could work because they had seen it work for Ghandi.  They adopted it because, for all the pain and anguish it entailed, it was still the plan most likely to succeed.

The case is very different with the Pilgrim.  The Pilgrim has no good earthly reason for embracing weakness.  He embraces it because it is central to who he is.  He gets nothing by turning the other cheek – nothing but a lashing and a cross.  He has no worldly goals.  His only objective is to identify with his Master.  He belongs to that looking-glass kingdom where reality is a mirror-image of the kosmos and heaven simply the world turned upside-down.  He shuns force as a means to noble ends.  He rejects the notion that truth, in order to be true, must have the backing of the state, the validation of the law, and the endorsement of film stars.  He cares nothing for the pillars or powers that be.  Presidents and kings in his estimation are merely marginal.  He has no network, no connections, no lobbyists in Congress.  The definitions in his dictionary have all been turned inside-out:  loss is gain, debility is power, failure is success, ignominy is glory, and death the pathway to life.  He is the wisest of fools and the most foolish of the wise.

In the first century the oppressed inhabitants of Judea were still dreaming of Judas Maccabaeus.  In their deception they looked for a hero to smash the Roman yoke.  What they got was a baby in a manger.  They looked for a political strongman to set the world to rights.  What they got was an itinerant poet-preacher.  They looked for a king to lead a liberating army.  What they got was a convict on a cross.  Many never grasped the point.  But there were a few who eventually fell under the spell of the devastating, earth-shattering truth:   My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.

It was of such the poet was thinking when he wrote, “They went forth to battle, but they always fell:”

Their might was not the might of lifted spears …

            Their wreaths are willows and their tribute, tears;

            Their names are old sad stories in men’s ears;

Yet they will scatter the red hordes of Hell,

Who went to battle forth and always fell.*

This is why the Pilgrim, if he boasts at all, will always boast exclusively about his weakness.  In contradistinction to political operatives, cultural strategists, and ambitious men and women of every stripe, he understands that to fulfill his true destiny he must learn to be content with infirmities, insults, distresses, and difficulties; for when he is weak – and on no other occasion – then he is strong.

___________________

*  Shaemus O’Sheel, “They Went Forth To Battle But They Always Fell.”

       There are some who see clearly that man has no other enemy but concupiscence, which turns him away from God, and not (human) enemies, no other good but God, and not a rich land.  Let those who believe that man’s good lies in the flesh and his evil in whatever turns him away from sensual pleasures take their fill and die of it.  But those who seek God with all their hearts, whose only pain is to be deprived of the sight of him, whose only desire to possess him, who grieve at finding themselves surrounded and dominated by such enemies, let them take heart, for I bring them glad tidings …

                                             – Blaise Pascal, Pensees 

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Closely related to autarkeia, “contentment,”is enkrateia or “self-control.”  Enkrateia is the last of the nine bright gem-like words Paul uses to describe the Fruit produced by the indwelling Spirit in the life of the believer (Galatians 5:22, 23).  It’s also the next item on our list of fundamental Pilgrim values.

Interiority is the controlling concept here.  Inwardness is the link that binds these two mutually enhancing terms.  As the observant reader may have noted, en is Greek for “in”; and since the noun kratos denotes “strength, might, or power,” the resulting compound, enkrateia, can be interpreted either as “inner strength” or “the strength to draw or hold something in.” Autarkeia (as discussed in the previous entry) is the deep satisfaction that consists in knowing that everything I could ever possibly want or need I already possess within myself.  Enkrateia is the ability to rein myself in, to restrain, contain, and control my inner impulses.  The one refers to assets, the other to liabilities.  In both cases, it’s all about what happens on the inside.

That’s where Blaise Pascal enters the picture.  Pascal understood that interiority is essential to true spirituality.  It’s the place where Real Life happens.  This insight (which, of course, was not uniquely his own) provides a much needed corrective to the notion, so prevalent in our time, that the warfare of the Church Militant is a matter of beating back the infidels, the heretics, the persecutors, the atheists, the agnostics, and all the other human enemies of the Gospel message.  There is, in fact, no substantial threat to be anticipated from that quarter; for as Isaiah (29:7) says,

                                   And the multitude of all the nations who wage war

                                                against Ariel,

                                    Even all who wage war against her and her stronghold,

                                                and who distress her,

                                    Shall be like a dream, a vision of the night.

The only danger the Pilgrim need truly fear comes not from other people but from the temptations in his own heart and the pernicious allurements of his own internal tendencies.  There is indeed a good fight to be fought and a righteous war to be waged, but it is not a battle against liberals or conservatives, gays or homophobes, Republicans or Democrats, terrorists, tyrants, racists, cultists, or right-wing wackos.  It’s much simpler – and far more challenging – than that.

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds,” writes author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago, “and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them!”  We all face a subtle and perennial temptation to define our spiritual warfare in precisely these terms.  It’s a deception, of course; for the truth, as Solzhenitsyn goes on to say, is that “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

To put it another way, the most formidable opponent you will ever face in the battle for truth and goodness is … yourself.  The toughest battle you will ever endure is the one that gets played out on the field of self-discipline, self-control, and moment-by-moment reliance upon the indwelling presence of the Spirit.  And enkrateia is the only weapon you will ever need to win it.

To have what we want is riches, but to be able to do without is power.  To have shoes is a good thing; to be able to walk without them is a better.

– George MacDonald, Donal Grant 

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American essayist and poet, famously touted the virtue of self-reliance.  Paul the apostle, Pilgrim that he was, took a somewhat different tack:  he recommended self-sufficiency within the context of reliance upon Another.

The Greek term Paul used to convey his thought was autarkeia, a compound of autos, “self”, and arkes, “sufficient, enough.”  The word occurs, among other places, in 1 Timothy 6:6, where it is commonly rendered as contentment:  “Now godliness with contentment is great gain.”

Interestingly, the English adjective content (“satisfied”) is directly related to the noun con’-tent – “the stuff inside.”  Both words are derived from the verb to contain.  Contentment is wealth; and the wealth of contentment consists in the mind-boggling realization that (the claims of advertisers notwithstanding) everything I could ever possibly want or need I already possess within myself – not because I am infinite, omniscient, or omnipotent in my own right, but because, as a disciple of Christ, “I too have the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 7:40).

It was this radical truth that enabled Paul to tell the Christians at Corinth, “All things are yours:  whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come – all are yours.  And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Corinthians 3:21-23).  On the basis of this same internal reality, the apostle could also boast with reference to himself, “I have learned in whatever state I am to be content (autarkes):  I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound.  Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 411-13).

In his timeless novel War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy describes how his protagonist, the loveable but inept Pierre Bezukhov, is taken prisoner by Napoleon’s forces after stumbling wide-eyed through the horrors of the battlefield at Borodino.  For all his naïveté, Pierre possesses a rare wisdom and insight; for upon finding himself detained and shackled by the French soldiers, he never thinks to fret or fume.  Instead, he laughs out loud.  With unfeigned wonder he looks up at the night sky and declares,  “The soldier did not let me pass!  They took me and shut me up!  They hold me captive!  What, me?  Me?  My immortal soul?  Ha-ha-ha!  Ha-ha-ha!”  And with that, says Tolstoy, Pierre “laughed till tears started into his eyes.”

And why not?  After all, when a man possesses all things – when the world, life, death, things present, and things to come are all his, and when even the stars twinkling in the heavens make up part of the internal vastness he has in mind whenever he says “I” – how is it possible for any mere sergeant-at-arms to take all of that and shut it up inside a shed boarded over with planks?  No wonder Pierre smiled at the thought.

Somehow in his good-natured simplicity, Pierre – a true Pilgrim in spite of his pampered aristocratic upbringing – had laid hold of an eternal truth.  Somehow, he had grasped the meaning of autarkeia.  He knew that it makes no difference what one owns, what one has accomplished, or how much wealth and stature one has achieved.

He understood that, in God, it is enough to be – no matter how or where.