“The birds are always singing praises to the Lord. They begin their song early, at three o’clock in the morning, and don’t stop until nine. At nine they calm down a little bit—it’s only then that they go looking for food to feed their young. Then they start singing again. Nobody tells them to sing—they just do. And what about us? We’re always frowning, always pouting; we don’t feel like singing or doing anything else. We should follow the example of the birds. They’re always joyful whereas we’re always bothered by something.”
—Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica
Category: DESPONDENCY
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When we are spiritually deaf, we are not aware that anything important is happening in our lives. We keep running away from the present moment, and we try to create experiences that make our lives worthwhile. So we fill up our time to avoid the emptiness we otherwise would feel.
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“I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. It didn’t make for an interesting person. I didn’t want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.”
—Charles Bukowski -
“Joy and sadness are opposites. However, you can’t have one without the other.”
—Fr. Stavros Akrotirianakis -
A man asked Abbot Antony, ‘What shall I keep, that I may please God?’ Antony said: “Wherever you go, have God ever before your eyes. In whatever you do, hold by the example of the Holy Scripture; and in whatever place you abide, don’t be swift to leave [out of restlessness]. These three things keep, and you will be saved.
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We must not seek to know God, or anything else from or about God. We must rather humble ourselves. God will then come to us and give us that which we desire. If you don’t humbly acknowledge your spiritual poverty, you won’t be able to ask God to give you the treasures of His grace. But through humility and prayer, God pours out the riches of His knowledge, granting us communion in His life. But rather than being filled with knowledge of God, we normally live with a void at the center of our existence. There is a hole in our heart, into which crawl all the cares and worries of life. We work ourselves to exhaustion in pursuit of success and happiness. We struggle to improve our position in society, to attend the right schools, and move in the right kind of circles. But the void within us is always on the increase. Nothing in the world can fill it, because it can only be filled with God. But we mustn’t despair, because despair itself is a sign of pride, and thus will take us even further away from the humble God. Avoid that road. Resist temptation, struggle, take up your cross, and God will come and find you, wherever you are.
—Elder Aimilanos of Simonopetra -
Amma Theodora said: A certain monk, afflicted by many sorrows, said to himself, “Leave this place.” With these words he began to put his sandals on his feet, and suddenly he saw the devil in the form of a man sitting in the corner of his cell. The devil was also putting on his sandals. He said to the monk, “Are you leaving here because of me? Well then, wherever you go, I will be there before you.”
—St. Ignatius Brianchaninov -
“My melancholy is the most faithful mistress I have known; what wonder, then, that I love her in return.”
—Søren Kierkegaard -
An entire entertainment and travel industry is occupied today with just this: to lighten the burden of despondency for our poor contemporaries, or rather, to prevent them even from realizing that they are afflicted with this evil. There must be no standing still, no emptiness! “Grief shared is grief halved,” and the beneficial effects of a trip, of a “change of scene,” are they not known from of old? But the evil is not remedied by this, only postponed. The beautiful illusion vanishes and despondency returns and requires yet stronger doses.
The yearning so characteristic of despondency for diverse amusements in general, and especially for human companionship, can become almost overwhelming.
Despondency
Gabriel Bunge
SO GOOD QUOTES 