Disturbed and Distracted: A Reflection on Abba Arsenius 25

A recurring theme in his series on the Desert Fathers has been the dangers of seeking out what’s ‘bigger and bolder’ in the life of faith. I find that interesting, since to our eyes, it’s hard to get much bigger and bolder than the radical vocations of these men (and women — there were Ammas as well as Abbas in the desert). And yet, there are also places where we can see some cracks in the bold monastic ideal. Today I’d like to reflect on a story that points to one of these cracks. It deals with the ideal of peaceful contemplation, but, reading the story against itself, I think it shows how pursuing that idea can limit as much as it can benefit.

The story goes like this:

One day Abba Arsenius came to a place where there were reeds blowing in the wind. The elder said to the brothers, ‘What is this movement?’ They said, ‘Some reeds.’ Then the old man said to them, ‘When one who is living in silent prayer hears the song of a little sparrow, his heart no longer experiences the same peace. How much worse it is when you hear the movement of those reeds.’ (Abba Arsenius 25)

The problem with the pursuit of complete peace, understood as perfect interior stillness, is that it is so easily disturbed. Here we have an experienced monk complaining about the noise of birdsong and the wind rustling the grasses. One may rightly wonder how, if his peace is so easily disturbed, he could ever fare in a city! I find it compelling that the story doesn’t make any comment, for good or bad, about Abba Arsenius’s comments. It’s neither a favourable teaching for his disciples nor a teaching moment for him. It’s simply there for us to read and draw our own conclusions.

This is a story that hits upon one of the dangers of monastic vocation — and one which to which monastic orders tend to be very sensitive when vetting potential novices: The danger of wanting to retreat from conflicts, distractions, or temptations. Retreating from a conflict doesn’t mean you’re free from it; just that you aren’t dealing with it. And, as Abba Arsenius finds out here, those conflicts are going to follow you. As the saying goes, no matter where you go, there you are. If you have trouble praying amidst distraction in the city, you’ll find plenty of distractions in the desert. If you struggle with interpersonal conflict in your family or workplace, you’ll struggle with people in community too. Indeed, monastic life is not an escape from such things, but a boot camp for them.

The irony is that Abba Arsenius’s complaints stand in contrast to teachings of Jesus. Abba Arsenius finds sparrows to be a distraction to his desired life of peaceful contemplation; yet Jesus taught us to contemplate birds like them and take them as a lesson in divine providence: “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (Matthew 6.26). Likewise, Abba Arsenius complains about the noise of the wind in the reeds; yet Jesus taught us to contemplate plant life and again learn something of God from them:

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith. (Matthew 6.28-30)

The danger, certainly as we see with Abba Arsenius, but in our own lives too, is that the more we focus or fixate on one thing, we can become blind to other things that God may want us to see. Sometimes the things we see as distractions, the things the disturb us, are the very things God wants us to notice. The monastic ideal of ‘peace’ is interesting too if we think about peace in the Old Testament sense of Shalom, which is not defined by stillness or absence but by harmonious co-existence. It’s not that there is nothing to be gained from stillness and meditation, but that they don’t represent the whole truth that we are called to inhabit, for there is just as much, if not more, to be gained from actively building positive, healed, whole, and reciprocal relationships. To the example of Abba Arsenius, it doesn’t need to be a matter of birdsong versus prayer; perhaps we can find ways in which birdsong can enable our prayer.

This is yet another call to balance in the life of faith. We ought never to undertake anything in an attempt to escape our problems. And we would do well not to fixate on one practice or aspect of faith or one kind of sin, so that we never lose sight of the whole picture before us. After all, who would want to live in a world where life’s simple pleasures, like birdsong or the rustling of wind through tall grasses on a summer day, become disturbing distractions!