early morning ponderings on the 'poor in spirit'
Last night, I tried to write a blog attempting to explain my thoughts on the first of the Beatitudes
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" - Matthew 5:3
After several frustrating rewrites, I abandoned it and came back to it this morning with fresh eyes (well, not so fresh as I woke at 4am and no, that is most definitely part of my religious routine!). Reading it again, I realised that it still didn't explain what I was hoping it would. It is sometimes said that God is mystery and it seems that even just these few words prove that to be the case for me anyway.
What it did highlight for me is something that I already knew but which, at times, I forget, and I suspect I'm far from the only one and that is that having faith is not about intellectual understanding but about deepening our faith, often in the most simple of ways.
This ties in with the belief that we sometimes have which is that if we 'try' harder, we will become close to God. This might mean more prayer, helping others more etc. These are not bad things of course, but deepening our faith is more about 'letting go' and resting (and trusting) in God; in our case, during our silent prayers in particular. There is a long tradition of this especially among ascetics; something I will be returning to soon. A few words appeared in a document this morning which perhaps sums this up quite nicely saying that to be 'poor in spirit' is "...nothing more or less than a reduction of the concerns and claims of the self, a continual and ever deepening movement of self-emptying"(1) Hopefully that at least partially explains what I meant to say last night though there is still room for discussion and debate around that, but for now I will leave you on that subject with those words.
Before I go though and returning to the non intellectualism of faith (although study is still good to deepen our faith of course), I want to leave you with the summary of a little story which always amuses me but also makes a very important point. It is from a short story by Tolstoy and is called 'The Three Hermits'
A priest was travelling on a boat with some of his men when he heard them talk about a nearby island where three devout hermits lived. He asked the captain to take him there, to which the captain agreed. On arrival, he was greeted by three scruffy and unkempt men who greeted him. He asked them how they prayed to God and they replied that their prayer was "Three are ye, three are we, have mercy upon us."
Smiling, the priest advised them to learn the Lord's prayer and to use that to pray to God and decided to teach them how to do so. The three hermits struggled to remember it though and it took many hours before they finally remembered it. He then bid them farewell and returned to the ship and they started to sail away. A few moments later, he saw light approaching the ship and looking more closely, he could see the three hermits running on the surface of the water. He was amazed as they approached the ship and pleaded with the priest to teach them the Lord's prayer again as they had already forgotten it.
The priest assured them that their faith was so sincere that there was no need to remember the prayer and that their own prayer was clearly quite sufficient.
I like that story as it simplifies faith and doesn't complicate things, though I suspect I won't be running on water any time soon!
(1) from an academic paper by Douglas Burton-Christie entitled 'Simplicity, or the Terror of Belief: The Making and Unmaking of the Self in Early Christian Monasticism'