Stay present, no matter what.
I am departing this month from my usual article meditating on the Sunday Gospels, at the request of my editor, Teresa. Since this issue of Restoration focuses on the gift of poustinia in Madonna House, I want to reflect on this gift in my own life.
I had the great privilege and grace of living as a poustinik in Combermere for five years, immediately before my current assignment to our house in Missouri.
Those five years, which I count among the most precious of my life and among the greatest gifts God has given me, had been preceded by a long period of feeling deeply called to this way of prayer and this dimension of our Madonna House vocation.
So what’s it all about, anyhow? On a practical level, being a poustinik in Madonna House means living in a poustinia cabin and, for three or four days of the week, staying there in silence, prayer, solitude, and some expression of fasting (a myriad of health factors means this will vary greatly).
For those who are not poustiniks but who go to poustinia, the norm is 24 hours spent in those same realities, however often the Lord allows and our discernment has indicated.
Within that barest of frameworks, utter freedom reigns. How to pray and when, whether to stay in the building or go for a walk, when to sleep, when to eat — all of this is left to the individual in the absolute sovereignty of his or her conscience. The poustinia itself is a place of stark, minimal furnishing and decoration; the structure of the time is equally minimalist.
When I first moved into the one-room cabin that would be my home for the next five years, I received a word about poustinia that served me well and has shed much light on the subject.
It is that poustinia is the naked self in the presence of the naked God. This word lit my path through the subsequent years in poustinia and continues to illumine my path as I strive to live the poustinia of the heart in my busy active apostolate here in the Ozarks. *
The naked self: Poustinia is a place where there is just no point in pretending anything. Just you and God are there. You can’t fool him, and while you can fool yourself some of the time, what does that make you? A fool, that’s what!
Time in poustinia is meant to translate into a whole approach to life of just being what and who you are, not only with God but with everyone. Living in vulnerability, in humility, sometimes in humiliation as our naked self is not always the loveliest of things to behold. Living life with a certain childlike, foolish directness of approach. Sort of like “Hi, I’m a poor, wretched mess! How are you today?”
In the presence of: Just being there. Not that we can’t get out and move our bodies or wander around a bit. But to be present, to be there. To not run away in mind or spirit. I learned in poustinia that prayer comes and goes. There are times in all our lives when prayer flows with some ease, other times when it is almost impossible.
But stay with it. Stay with wherever the Lord has put you, be it a one-room cabin with little furniture and silent solitude, or a busy life filled with people, things, and events. Stay the course, stay present.
Be where you are, and be attentive to what is happening within and without. At times this will be joyous; at times it will be anguished; at times it will simply be tedious and dull, all of which reflects the “naked self” aspect. There are simply times when we are stuck with the paucity of our interior and exterior resources, and God himself is keeping pretty quiet.
I used to joke with the Lord that “I hope I’m not boring you, here!” when, for the one hundredth day in a row, I could manage no other prayer than the name of Jesus muttered with repetitive doggedness and near zero emotional connection. Stay present, no matter what. That’s the key.
The naked God: There’s the kicker. We come (and sometimes we have to drag ourselves) to be present, naked, and vulnerable and without a whole lot to show for ourselves, to either the physical poustinia or that mysterious place of the heart we all possess. And who meets us there? God, who in a sense makes himself vulnerable to us in a manner beyond understanding.
The naked God is the baby in the manger at Bethlehem. He is also the man nailed to two pieces of wood. And he is the unfathomable, unknowable Trinity, utterly given to us in those core mysteries of our faith. God is love poured out to the very end of love, which has no end. A naked flame, a naked eye, a naked heart, a naked God —this is a mystery beyond mystery of mercy and love.
So that is what poustinia is about: poor, naked little creatures living in the presence of the God who is all love and gift and grace. Of course, none of this is precisely specific or exclusive to the poustinia conceived as a physical place with a specific structure and look. It is really the essence of prayer itself, which is to say, it is the essence of life itself, since prayer is the life and breath of the soul.
The poustinia emerges from this simple formulation of nakedness and presence as a living icon of the human person in their core spiritual truth. We can run, we can hide, we can dress ourselves up in a million disguises and pretenses, but in the end, and in the depths of our being, we all stand naked before the naked God.
The beauty of it is that this is intensely nuptial imagery, and it all ends not in humiliation and sorrow but in union and spiritual fecundity. God wants this, and so he bids us come to him in this way. Let us not be afraid to answer that call.
*Fr. Denis is on staff at Marian Acres, our mission in Salem, Missouri.
Image: Poustina painting by ©Patrick Stewart, Madonna House.
