Smallness and Simplicity

It was a choice that we carefully made. It was a choice greatly influenced by necessity and circumstance.

I once heard it said by a Protestant pastor friend that God often leads through circumstances. There is a lot of truth in this. [Think of Romans 8:28. All things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.]

This life of smallness and simplicity is not something we were completely unfamiliar with. We had a good mental understanding of it. We simply lacked the personal experience. The working together for good thing was certainly in play, helping us to achieve in the natural what we honestly sought in the spiritual and emotional.

We are approaching our Fourth Anniversary of living full-time in the smallness and simplicity of this tiny domicile tucked away in the quiet of these woods.

This smallness, simplicity, and near-hermit life has greatly benefited us during this Covid-19 Season that has so many people hard-pressed. It is a goading, multi-faceted, hard-pressing that is truly showing itself to be a revealer of hearts.

A brother came to Scetis to visit Abba Moses and asked him “Father, give me a word.” The old man said to him “Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.”

Among the Desert Fathers, those Christian monks of the fourth and fifth centuries, it was customary for a novice to go to an elder and ask for “a word” of counsel, a word to take home and reflect on. What does this word of advice from Abba Moses say to us today?

It says pretty much the same things to us today that it said to those early Christians who chose the harsh environment of the desert as the place where they made the pursuit of God their supreme desire.

The challenge now, as it was then, is to put air between ourselves and the world. The challenge now, as it was then, it to embrace and outgrow our fear of silence.

Silence is scary. Silence causes us to reckon with ourselves and our personal demons, with our own carnal natures, with our own moral failures and the personal effects of the moral failures of others. Silence opens the door so that the still, small voice of God can be heard.

Perhaps we surround ourselves with noise and activity because we, like the Israelites, are afraid of God? Perhaps we would rather someone else speak to us because it is far easier to dismiss others and argue with others than it is with God? [And all the people saw the voices and the flames, and the sound of the trumpet, and the mount smoking: and being terrified and struck with fear, they stood afar off, saying to Moses: Speak thou to us and we will hear: let not the Lord speak to us, lest we die. Exodus 20:19]

It is said that hindsight is always 20/20.

In retrospect, I think life [all that went on before] has groomed us for where we are. In desiring and accepting this small and simple lifestyle, we were, though we did not think of it as such at the time, saying yes to a divine plan for our lives that is so much greater than our own. It has been something like reentering the womb; therein to redevelop and grow into newer new creations.

Here, this far into being taught, we are still beginning.