An Excerpt

 from the Teachings of St. Nektarios

By St. Nektarios of Pentapolis

Seek the Lord everyday; but do so within your heart and not outside of it. And when you find Him, stand with fear and trembling as the Cherubim and Seraphim, because your heart has become a throne of God.

But in order to find the Lord, humble yourself down to the dust, because the Lord abhors the proud ones, and loves and visits the humble in heart. For this reason he says: “But on this one will I look: On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word” (Is. 66:2).

Fight the good fight and God will strengthen you. In the fight we identify our weaknesses, our deficiencies and our defects. [The fight] is the mirror of our spiritual state. He who has not struggled, does not know himself.

Take heed even of the small trespasses. If a sin occurs in you out of carelessness, do not lose hope, but get up quickly, and fall before God who has the power to rehabilitate you. Great sorrow hides within it pride.

Exaggerated sorrow and despair are harmful and dangerous, and many times are exacerbated by the devil in order to hinder the progress of the struggler.

Within us we have deep-rooted weaknesses, passions and faults: they are many in number and are inherited. None of them can be cut off with a spastic motion, neither with impatience, anxiety or intense sorrow, but with patience and perseverance, with patient endurance, with care and attention.            

The road that leads to perfection is long. Pray to God to strengthen you. Face your falls with patience, and after you get up quickly, run and do not stand, like children, in the place where you fell, crying and wailing inconsolably.

Be vigilant and pray in order not to enter into temptation. Do not give up hope if you fall continuously into the same sins. Many of these are by nature strong and out of habit. With the passing of time, however, and with diligence they are conquered. Nothing should drive you to despair.

Source: http://users.uoa.gr/~nektar/orthodoxy/tributes/agios-nektarios/didaxes.htm

Transformation

Seems like a keystone of Christianity is transformation.  No?

Everyone I grew up with loved to give testimonies about all of their naughty la-la's and how asking Jesus into their heart turned them into awesome people.  Those of us, like me, who 'came to the Lord' when we were 6,7, or 8 because we were at church camp and we missed our mothers -- well, speaking for myself now, I always felt that I had never actually been naughty enough to be a super awesome Christian.

So what's a Jesus loving little A.P. class, National Charity League, frosh-soph track star wannabe, over-privileged over-achiever nerd like me to do?

Go to WHEATON COLLEGE and GET NAUGHTY.

Isn't there something in Proverbs about like sow in the mud....like a dog returning to his vomit.....something?

Stir in a little prozac, screwed up psychiatric 'help' and a beautiful pastor's kid who is just as destroyed in the mind as I am and we are having f.u.n.

Heaven and hell, the soot of sin and being washed 'white as snow', Judas and Jesus, Mary the Virgin and Mary the Magdalene.  An awful lot of bipolarities here aren't there?  Hmmmmmm.

Enough of that.  I am no longer bitter - or at least not as bitter.  I meant to write about transformation and this is not about me.  Because in truth, me does not actually exist.  There is only Us.

Now it is time to take a moment for quiet reflection and meta-cognition:

Thank you for staying with me.  The purpose of this post is to reflect upon transformation - both in the abstract and in the concrete.  We Christians seem to long for it - and yet most of us spin the sin wheels while we see everyone else ascend the latter of divine ascent.

I have become convinced that the only way to gain any traction on the slippery slope that leads simultaneously to both death and Life is through hunkering down in community.  Sticking with our spouses when it seems that we hate their asses.  Sticking with our friends when they piss us off and drain our energy.

The smarty-pants people always say: energy is neither created nor destroyed.  So, if they are right - if your energy is currently depleted, just hang on baby, there is more to come.  Just wait.  You don't need to get the hell out of Dodge in order to heal.  The truth is staying with it and laboring together is the only way that new energy/life ever comes forth.

We know this from wombs and farms.

I hope this makes sense to someone out there.

Enough of the abstract. Now to the concrete aspects of transformation relevant to our wee community on Spring Street:
- We are now - Casa de Curacion
- New people have moved in
- We are not doing Thursday dinners at this time, but we would love to have you over for a meal!

Thanks for reading this entire post.  I hope that it was useful to someone.


Love never fails.