Talking Tuesday: The Inner Tumult of Ascesis

This weekend was the Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee, the official start of the Lenten Triodion.  We are in the last few weeks before Lent is officially upon us; these weeks given to us by the Church to pause, reflect, get ready, before the big dive at the end of this month.  I've found myself in a pretty contemplative state of mind for several weeks now, just thinking about various things.  I'm trying to read more, watch less, eat less, shop purposefully for the needs of the household, be in front of a screen less.  It is hard to do this--it produces a lot of internal discomfort for me as I use a lot of these things to cope with the difficulties in my life.  It is a crutch and not a good one.

The weaker part of me wants to stop being so purposeful, to eat until I'm full, watch movies until I'm overtired, shop mindlessly, surf the internet for no good reason, just to turn off the noise of the world.  But none of these things helps to do that.  Developing a spirit of quietness and reflection, particularly living in the sort of family I live in, is very very difficult.  A lot of days, I just want to run and hide and stop being an adult for a while.  The pressure of responsibility for the household and for parenting my children well feels like too much.  I often feel as though I live directly under a giant thumb tack, constantly being pushed a little further into my head.  I don't want to live like this, or feel like this, so I think I have to take the ascesis of our Orthodox life more seriously.

I've been dipping into and out of Donald Sheehan's Grace of Incorruption for several months now, and a passage really jumped out at me last week.  He writes that the beginning of our ascetical struggle is when we confront the inner turmoil that is produced by running up against difficult things, and what we ultimately do with that turmoil.   Do we deny the passion and further our ascetical purpose, or do we give in to it and feed the passion for further spiritual destruction?  Do we learn to embrace the questions that come out of inner turmoil, and turn them to God, for His purpose?  Do we allow ourselves to experience the pain and discomfort of denying the body and the mind what it craves so that the Master can chisel us into His likeness?

I've also been reading Lysa TerKeurst's Unglued, and in it, she tells the story of how Michelangelo sculpted the statue of David out of an enormous block of marble.  He was the third in a line of sculptors to take on the project, but he was the one to finish the masterpiece.  When asked how he accomplished such a monumental task, Michelangelo replied, "Easy.  I just chip away the parts of the marble that aren't David."  Lysa TerKeurst's point in telling the story is to say that God is always molding us, always sculpting us, and the chisel can be painful and difficult; we can run away from that process and not allow God to make us who we are supposed to be: the very image and likeness of Himself.  Or we can embrace that pain and discomfort and bodily denial, seek to work with Him in ascetical struggle to conquer the passions, and let the hammer do its work.

No one said theosis was going to be easy.