Intuition, Discernment, and Prelest

 

An ever-present struggle in the Christian life can be boiled down to a simple question:  How do we know?

And the hard answer is, usually, we don't.

We put words on our lack of true insight and knowledge.  Intuition, discernment, and prelest all can be used to describe the same phenomenon.  Sometimes our "spidey sense" is telling us something is wrong (or right), and that sense is correct.  That's intuition.  Sometimes we have the same feeling, but we're wrong.  That is a lack of discernment. 

Sometimes we think that because we've been right in the past, we must be clairvoyant, with a gift for intuition and discernment.  That's prelest.

What is the cure for this spiritual blindness?  Humility.  Remembering that because we experience something one way, that doesn't mean someone else experienced it as we did.  Remembering that even if something seems to be one way, we often only have fragments of the information we need to have a firm opinion that things are as they seem.  Remembering that even if God blesses us with insight and discernment, that is not because we are so great, but because He is, and we should never let such gifts go to our head or expect they will be repeated in the future.  None of this is magic. Doing the stuff is not equivalent to a vending machine, where we put in our effort and God gives us what we want.  Often, it is in doing the stuff that we figure out that God wants us to do something completely opposed to our subjective desires.

Of course, the biggest impediment to actually doing these things is the very antithesis of humility -- pride.  Too often, we want what we want, and even though that same little intuition is telling us something is wrong, we are too blinded by our desires and wishes to admit it, much less act to correct it.  Our contentment and sloth win out over what our very being tells us to be true.

I believe that, over time, most people in any given situation will eventually come to follow Godly intuition, exercise discernment, and avoid prelest. At some level, you have to be willfully ignorant to pretend some situations are okay.  But I have also come to believe people can convince themselves of a lot of things that just aren't so.  Humility remains the cure.  Be humble enough to understand when God is leading you a certain direction, especially if you don't want to go in that direction.  And be more humble still about presuming that God's plan always aligns with ours.  Because that is rarely the case, even with the saints.

The Mission of Beauty

 

Christ is risen!

Indeed He is risen, and it is a beautiful thing!  

"Beauty will save the world"  is a famous quote from Dostoevsky, which has been misunderstood and, simultaneously, underappreciated, for quite some time.  What does it mean to have a theology of beauty?

In the Orthodox Church, we are always striving for beauty.  I've mentioned recently how amazing Fr. Seth's transformation of our space has been, for example.  But the beauty of Pascha is another level entirely.  It always has been.

I have to confess, I was skeptical whether we'd be able to pull it off in our little mission.  We have a small choir comprised of the choir director, John (also a Reader and founder of the mission), me, his daughter, two of my daughters, and our friend Alicia. For now, that's it. Could we do these elaborate pieces the Slavic tradition gives us for this feast of feasts?

It turns out, yes we could, and yes we did.  I don't say this to brag on the choir's aptitude (though John did a great job preparing us) so much as to say thanks be to God that He provides what we need. The music was beautiful, as it has been every year I've been in the Church.

Could we pull off the procession and revel in its beauty with our little storefront in a strip mall beside the Subway sandwich shop?  Also yes.  We gathered in the parking lot, candles lit, and sang and prayed and when we entered the nave, everyone was singing Christ is Risen.

For those who don't know, the Orthodox celebrate the Resurrection.  It is an hours long party where the priest yells "Christ is risen!" in different languages and the parish responds.  I remember being stunned, because the choir was pretty loud that day, the first time the parish responded "indeed He is risen!"  That response felt like someone muted the choir, it was so loud and boisterous!  All of the rest that followed felt the same way.

It felt, in other words, like every other Orthodox parish I've ever celebrated Pascha in (three in total, not including St. Patrick).  The surprise was, our little mission, smaller than those, felt exactly like any of them.  The beauty of Pascha shone through.

Does it matter?  Isn't Christ risen even if we can't pull off the aesthetics of a proper Paschal liturgy?  Of course.  And yet, we nonetheless strive for beauty.  We aren't functionaries or utilitarians, leaving our music bland and our architecture like the Soviets, useful only for getting stuff done.  We are worshipping the One True God, and His only begotten Son, our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ!  Our worship, our space, and our piety ought to reflect His beauty.

So why do we beautify? Because God is beautiful! His infinite love is beautiful. His creation is beautiful. Beauty is a reflection of Him Who created us in His image, and seeks to conform us again to His likeness.  So we tend the garden, hoping her seeds will bear fruit.  Thanks be to God we can do that even in our nascent little mission parish.