Sleeping Limbs

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In the many podcasts I've been listening to (many featuring interviews), the topic keeps coming up about the idea of being fulfilled by what you do (a job). One popular interviewer even said that she purposefully didn't have kids because it did not fit into the life she wanted. They then go on to list the many amazing things they now do. And some of them are really cool. These people have been causing me to review my life as well.

But my life isn't to be compared to those who "follow their dreams." It is to those who follow Christ, that is , His saints. I would say that a good half of the saints on the Orthodox liturgical calendar are martyrs, that is those who were killed for being Christians and not denying their faith. The Orthodox faith calls me to say that these people are my examples. St. Nikolai of Orhid would even say that the Orthodox faith itself is a kind of martyrdom.

Maybe I've been focusing too much on dreams, on what I'd like to do, what may bring some happiness, perhaps even much. But I always find an ache that's like a false bottom beneath a well. Just when you think it's full, that bottom opens up and the depth of longing becomes all the more apparent. And there seem to be an infinite number of these false bottoms called "dreams" and "goals" and "aspirations." But what can satisfy infinity but infinity?

 Perhaps many of us are called to do specific things. Though I think far too often we follow a way of thinking that suggests because we have a strong passion to do something and it seems good or at least neutral, it has God's blessing or at least is not wrong. Passions in Orthodoxy are distorted desires; they are cravings for things--gluttonous cravings--outside of the intended appetites and perimeters. Furthermore, everything around us is fleeting and far too much time is spent on pursuing our goals that die and disintegrate with the minds they originate from. We do not carry our goals and careers into heaven. The soul's state is what shall present itself before all of God, His saints and his angels.

I am finding a far more glorious way; it is still and calm and long-suffering. And it is good. It is theosis, the path of union with God. Not in a mystical, impractical way but in the life and practices given by the Church to be performed over a lifetime. I am but a beginner, and a sinful beginner at that. And it is certainly the good way though not the easy way. But I also find that this path, while maybe not always satisfying, provides a communion and closeness to God that cools the aching with eternal refreshment, even in my wretchedness and laziness that I have never found in pursuing my dreams.



“Tell me, can a soul occupied with the merriments of this age, feel this joy? It seems to me that as man cannot serve both God and mammon, so too is it impossible for one occupied with temporal delights to feel spiritual joy in God.

—	Elder Theodore of Sanaxar