Evagrius on persevering with persistent thoughts

 I have had a persistent fascination with Evagrius of Pontus, ever since I read about him in John Mark Comer's book Live No Lies. His notebook entitled Antirrhetikos or Talking Back (translated by David Brakke, 2009) is a long list of specific tempting thoughts classified under eight headings, with each thought countered by a verse from Scripture. 

Here are three of my favorites, creatively addressing the feelings of impatience, laziness, and loneliness that try to make me think of giving up the fight:

Against the thought that supposes that in a single hour the evil thoughts of fornication will flee from it:

'I will not cast them out in a year, lest the land become desolate and the beast of the land multiply against you. Gradually I will cast them out from before you, until you have increased and will inherit the land' (Exodus 23:29-30).

Against the intellect that is contending with thoughts of fornication, but does not want to shake them off of it completely and does not recognize the fetter of sin and the anxiety of evils:

'And Delilah said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he woke up from his sleep and said, “I will go out just like every other time, and I will shake them off.” And he did not know that the Lord had departed from him. And the Philistines seized him, cut out his eyes, brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he ground at the mill in the prison house' (Judges 16:20-21).

Against the soul’s thought that succumbs to distress and sadness and supposes that it is the only one that is tempted so severely:

'Discipline yourselves, keep watch. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering' (1 Peter 5:8-9).

As Evagrius says in Praktikos 6, "There are eight general and basic categories of thoughts in which are included every thought. First is that of gluttony, then impurity, avarice, sadness, anger, acedia, vainglory, and last of all, pride. It is not in our power to determine whether we are disturbed by these thoughts, but it is up to us to decide if they are to linger within us or not and whether or not they are to stir up our passions." 

Surfing the urge

G. Alan Marlatt and Jean L. Kristeller. 1999. Mindfulness and meditation. In William R. Miller (ed.), Integrating spirituality into treatment: Resources for practitioners, 67-84, at 78-79. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

As an example of ... insight meditation procedure, Marlatt (1994) developed the technique of "urge surfing" in the treatment of addictive behaviors. Designed as a relapse prevention method, the purpose of urge surfing is to help clients cope with craving or urges that otherwise might trigger a setback or lapse. Ask the client to first self-monitor any urges, cravings, or strong desires to engage in the target behavior (e.g., to ingest a substance or to engage in a high-risk sexual behavior). Encourage clients to identify the specific form that the urge takes when it occurs. Urges often take the form of a verbal intent or command, such as "I must smoke or I will go nuts" or "Just this once won't hurt me" or "Damn it! I OWE myself a drink after this!" Such verbal statements may or may not be accompanied by strong physical sensations or desire cravings. Such urge reactions often appear to take the form of classically conditioned responses, usually triggered by a cue or situation associated with the target behavior (e.g., a recent ex-smoker sees an open pack of cigarettes lying on the table). Contextual and environmental factors such as the client's mood and social environment may also elicit strong urges to indulge. 

This method first arose in the course of working with a client who was trying to give up smoking. After he had quit for a week, he reported constant urges to smoke that felt like a growing ball of discomfort that was increasing in intensity to the point that he felt that he would "go crazy" unless he gave in. Recalling a prior account of his reputation as a surfer during his youth, the therapist asked, "What if you could see the craving in the form of a cresting wave instead of a growing ball?" We then discussed his experience as a budding surfer. He described how he learned to keep his balance as the ocean wave swelled up beneath his surfboard and he rode the wave as it finally crested and diminished in size. He learned to keep his balance without being "wiped out" by the wave. He agreed to transfer this surfing metaphor to his meditation practice. As soon as he experienced any indication of a rising urge in his thoughts or feelings, he would direct his full attention to this growing wave while keeping his balance until the wave gradually crested and subsided. Because many urges in fact take the form of conditioned responses elicited by trigger events, their duration and intensity do not necessarily last unless they are reinforced by engaging in a consummatory response (smoking or drinking). The client reported using this meditative urge surfing technique as an effective means of coping with cravings to smoke.

Refugee and immigrant-themed movies

Tonight I watched All Saints again, and started to tear up because it reminded me of the Ukrainian refugees I've been teaching English to all day. On further reflection, I realized that there are at least three movies I've watched with similar themes on the Asian American experience.

Gran Torino (2008) - Hmong refugees from Laos in Highland Park, Michigan

All Saints (2017) - Karen refugees from Burma in Smyrna, Tennessee

Minari (2020) - South Korean immigrants in rural Arkansas

Common themes and characters

- a cranky white American veteran of the Korean or Vietnam war slowly becomes friends with the immigrants (all three films)

- immigrants growing vegetables to sell at Asian markets and restaurants (All Saints and Minari)

- trying to grow and water crops and suffering setbacks and disasters (All Saints and Minari)

- immigrants awkwardly being welcomed into a church sparsely populated by older white people (All Saints and Minari)

- an immigrant couple's marriage being strained by long work hours (All Saints and Minari)

- teenage immigrant boys getting in trouble with the law (Gran Torino and All Saints)

- immigrants working in chicken plants (All Saints and Minari)

- immigrant families winning over cranky Americans with politeness, food gifts, and hospitality (Gran Torino and All Saints)

Rawang music video released

 Today I was credited as the translator of a song from Rawang into English on music video subtitles for the second time. Congratulations to singer-songwriter Zamishar TK on your auspicious release, honoring your homeland!

Latest music video:

Rvwàng Móng (Rawang land) by Zamishar TK featuring Pe John Mvbøq, released 22 February 2024

https://www.facebook.com/100063573785290/videos/1208606070102483/

The first music video I translated lyrics for:

Té vtvng we shóngnøt mvshǿl (The greatest love story) by A Shep, released 19 December 2020

https://fb.watch/qnYKM-Asg5/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v

Tracing a line to the desert

On July 1 of last year, my mom's old friend Aletha Knopp invited me to a lecture on a Christian view of sexuality and gender by Matt Zrust. I arrived late, just as the Q&A was beginning, in which Matt mentioned the book Paul and the Person by Susan Grove Eastman. I bought the book, and found that Eastman cites The Mind of the Spirit by Craig Keener. I bought that book too. Keener cites Emotion and Peace of Mind by Richard Sorabji. (You know what I did then.) I jumped from book to footnote to book to footnote like a frog on a flyscraping mission. 

Meanwhile, by someone on the internet, I was advised to check out Jared Moore's writings on concupiscence as related to the Celibate Gay Christian movement. I skimmed through Moore's dissertation and his book The Lust of the Flesh, enjoyed some of his online articles, listened to some of his podcast interviews and those of his friends Jeff Wright and Ben Woodring (Backwoods Belief), and for a couple months I became constantly angry following his Twitter feed before finally swearing off Twitter altogether.

Moore was bashing Sam Allberry, Preston Sprinkle, and anyone else who takes a gentler approach to the issue mentioned above, and teamed up with Rosaria Butterfield (I thought she was a friend in her former books), who had her own harsh words to say about Sprinkle. 

Moore's dissertation camped on Augustine's use of the idea of concupiscence against Pelagius and Julian of Eclanum, attempting to prove that any latent tendency toward sin, such as same-sex attraction, should be considered morally culpable sin, even if not mentally surrendered to or acted on. From there Moore traced Augustine's influence on the Reformers and their heirs. Not liking his conclusion or his harshness, I purposed to find something before Augustine to hang my hat on. After all, at the end of his dissertation (p.238), Moore recommends that future researchers investigate what Jerome and other church fathers had to say on the topic. 

In a debate with James White, Greg Coles mentioned the possibility of a pre-lust condition that could be morally blameless. I researched this idea and found the Greek concept of propatheia (pre-passion), which originated with Seneca and other Stoics, and then was carried forward by the Christian thinker Origen and his followers, such as Didymus the Blind, Evagrius of Pontus, and even Jerome. 

Sorabji chides Augustine for mangling the concept, but Peter Brown in an article reviewing Sorabji's book says that Sorabji missed a parallel concept that was core to moral philosophy in Judaism and early Christianity, namely single-mindedness (or single-souledness), as opposed to double-mindedness or double-souledness (dipsychia), similar to the Stoic idea of apatheia, but rebranded by John Cassian in biblical language as purity of heart (which, as Kierkegaard tells us, is "to will one thing"). Brown goes on to say that John Cassian's Conferences were always read alongside Augustine's writings in medieval monastic circles to temper their extremes. 

Also while reeling from Moore's Twitter onslaughts, I took refuge in Matthew Lee Anderson's lengthy blog defenses of Side B and the Revoice conference (1, 2, 3, 4), as well that of Philip Cary. This led me to Anderson's Substack, which led me to Myles Werntz's Substack -- both Anderson and Werntz are Christian ethicists -- and in one of Werntz's blog posts, he says he's reading John Cassian's Conferences, and that just sealed the deal for me. (The story Werntz cited is a beautiful analogy attributed to Abba Moses, where our thoughts are an ever-flowing river, our minds are a grist mill on that river, and the grain to grind if we so choose is the Scripture passages we put into our minds.)

So now I'm halfway through Peter Brown's Augustine of Hippo, on a vow not to buy any more books until this one is complete, and with the intention to read John Cassian as soon as I finish. 

It seems all roads lead to the desert (the desert fathers and mothers, that is, of the early monastic movement whom Evagrius led and John Cassian interviewed in the late 300s). Thank you, Mrs. Knopp, Matt Zrust, and everyone else on this merry chain, even dear Jared Moore. I started to realize that his Twitter vituperance was an evil mask for a kinder soul when I watched his New Year sermon, where he encouraged the singles in his Crossville, Tennessee congregation to glorify God in their singleness (43:36-46:14), rather than implying, as he did to the poor singles on Twitter, that "therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife" (Genesis 2:24) is not just an explanation but a command for everyone who possibly can get married to a permissible person, to get married unless they have a biblical reason not to, via a special gift of singleness. Now I know better, and I value you, my friends in real life, even more for your patience in our conversations over tea and over the phone as I learn these things with you through this hard experiment called life. 

*I wrote about this search a few months ago in a post about metaphors in recovery, but after some maturing of my thought and some encouraging back and forth with Laurie Krieg and Marshall Kramer, I decided to trace the lines again as far as they've been drawn up to "today tonight", as they say in Rawang. 

Union with Christ as learning

 In an earlier blog post, I mentioned that a certain O.O. and S.M. made a difference in my life.

"From O.O., I learned to map the events of the life of Jesus onto my own life, and live them over again united with him. This reinforced the lesson of the song 'Go to Dark Gethsemane' as sung by S.M. on a beloved Indelible Grace album, a long-ago gift from W.G."

Here is where I explain what that means.

O.O. is Oliver O'Donovan, the British theologian. In the second-edition prologue to Resurrection and Moral Order, he says:

Granting this axiom, that Christian thought will be concerned with all the moments of the Christ-event and all the moments will shape the lives of Christians, what can be said for the particular significance of the resurrection? 

• The Christian life takes its beginning in the act of faith, an act which renders all other acts comparatively indifferent; this corresponds to the advent moment. 
• The Christian life involves obedient suffering in the pattern of Christ’s own suffering. 
• It confers the power of prayer and prophecy under the authority of Christ’s eternal throne. 

All these are included when we speak of our ‘conformity’ to Christ. Yet when we think quite specifically about Christian action we have to single out the resurrection moment which vindicates the creation into which our actions can be ventured with intelligibility. In action the integrity of the world order is supposed, and that integrity is answered for by the empty tomb, where God has stood by the life he made and has not allowed it to be brought to nothing.

(The bullet point formatting is my addition.)

O'Donovan is saying that each moment in Jesus' life is meant to shape our lives as we live in union with Him, especially the resurrection. And we could see something similar in passages like Romans 6, about being united with Christ in His death and resurrection.

Now let's see that song. Turns out the lyrics were written by James Montgomery in 1825, and the new tune on the Indelible Grace V album was by Kevin Twit, but the lead singer on the recording I heard was Sandra McCracken (S.M.). The album was a gift to my family by Will Gilmore (W.G.), probably around 2008. I used to listen to the CD over and over again in the car. 

1. Go to dark Gethsemane, ye that feel the tempter's power

Your Redeemer's conflict see, watch with Him one bitter hour

Turn not from His griefs away; learn of Jesus Christ to pray

Learn of Jesus Christ to pray

2. See Him at the judgment hall, beaten, bound, reviled, arraigned

O the wormwood and the gall! O the pangs His soul sustained!

Shun not suffering, shame, or loss; learn of Christ to bear the cross

Learn of Christ to bear the cross

3. Calvary's mournful mountain climb; there, adoring at His feet

Mark that miracle of time, God's own sacrifice complete

"It is finished!" hear Him cry; learn of Jesus Christ to die

Learn of Jesus Christ to die

4. Early hasten to the tomb where they laid His breathless clay

All is solitude and gloom. Who has taken Him away?

Christ is risen! He meets our eyes; Savior, teach us so to rise

Savior, teach us so to rise

Notice in the lyrics above that the last line is always repeated, and when I'm listening to the recording in the car, many of the lyrics are too quiet or quick to catch, except for the first and last lines of each verse.

This has made me meditate more and more on the last lines of the verses:

1. Learn of Jesus Christ to pray
2. Learn of Christ to bear the cross
3. Learn of Jesus Christ to die
4. Savior, teach us so to rise

As I think about our human agency, at the end of the first verse, it sounds like I learn to pray by imitating Jesus. This makes me start to think that the song is about being "good" by doing what Jesus did as a great moral example... true enough, but not enough to make us truly good.

Then, in the second verse, we are told to "learn of Christ to bear the cross", and I start to think that life will be harder than I anticipated. Does this mean dying to my desires for comfort and self-will, and doing hard things? Enduring persecution and hardship? Yes to all of that? And yet "bear" reminds me of Jesus inviting us to wear his "easy" yoke.

In the third verse, we are supposed to "learn of Jesus Christ to die". Sounds suicidal, unless it means dying of old age. Is this theological gerontology? Hospice care for believers? Does it again mean dying to my desires? Or submitting to the consequences of persecution for Christ's sake? How do I learn something like this? Is dying something you can practice? I'm starting to think the original mimetic learning idea has strayed far afield...

Then finally in the fourth verse, it suddenly switches addressee, and asks the Savior to "teach us so to rise", that is, "teach us to rise just like you did". But how does one learn to rise from the dead? This kind of teaching leaves a mushroom cloud over my brain, and in the fallout I think I hear that Christ's particular kind of teaching teaches us in ways that empower us to do things we couldn't before, even supernaturally by Holy Spirit power -- such as to literally rise from the dead at the end of the age, and before that, to live as though our old self and old way of life is no longer us. 

This kind of teaching is very peculiar. Are we copying, learning, following, or being lifted up by a power beyond us? Yes to all of that again?

Let's learn to love the mystery.

Basic Seminar session 1

 I just finished editing a transcription of Bill Gothard's Basic Seminar, session 1. I ran the audio through Nuance's Dragon Professional Individual, an automatic transcription program, after which I pasted the rough transcript into Express Scribe and gave it a close listening and edit using my foot pedal. 

70 minutes and 28 seconds of speech comes out to 12.5 pages without paragraph breaks, and 16 or 17 pages with paragraph breaks in Arial 12 point font.

I agreed with what Gothard says about tracing behavior problems and habits to heart-attitude problems, which is a big improvement on my earlier impression of him as constantly attacking things teenagers liked in the 1960s, such as rock music or counter-culture clothes. I see him now as trying to help parents who were already reacting against such things to approach their kids with more humility and talk about deeper things. This persona that Gothard takes on of trying to be a friend of both parents and teens reminds me of Joshua Coleman's demeanor toward parents trying to reconcile with their estranged adult children.

In terms of his Scriptural interpretation methods and general moralistic focus, I think Gothard would have been really good friends with folks like Evagrius of Pontus, Origen, Pelagius, or the Desert Fathers and their hagiographers. And I don't mean that as an insult. He is clearly steeped in Scripture, and he takes a very imaginative approach to application that doesn't always fit the grammar-historical method, and yet his rhetorical skills are quite powerful as he piles up examples, stories, mnemonic lists, ever toward his main point of taking personal responsibility to change. 

Like those thinkers of late antiquity or early Christianity, he was ostensibly celibate and had a cult following. His reputation has fallen on hard times, both because of his speculative additions to doctrine (like Origin and Evagrius) and his harmful behavior toward women working for him -- unlike, I hope, these others I mentioned, although Evagrius himself had his own scandal from which he fled from the city to the desert; Gothard finally, in the last ten years, retired to his own house and left his organization to others. 

There's still something appealing about the way, despite his failures, how he tried to turn the Bible into a mnemonic system applied to the moral issues facing young people in his time (the 1960s). Maybe part of the reason his seminar hasn't aged well is that it hasn't been updated since 2002, and the issues, or at least some of the ways of talking about them, have changed. 

There might still be one or two things I can learn from him, if I take him with Evagrius in mind.

See the video and transcription below.