"Elizaveta Iurievna Kuzmina-Karavaeva Skobtsova, later known as Mother Maria, was a Russian Orthodox religious thinker, poet and artist. Her multi-faceted legacy includes articles, poems, art, and drama. In the 1910s she was part of the literary milieu of St. Petersburg and was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. She fled Russia soon after the Bolsheviks' takeover and lived in Paris, where she became a nun. In 1935, she participated in organizing the so-called Orthodox Action, which was designed to help Russian immigrants in France. She and her fellow-workers from Orthodox Action opened a house for homeless and sick immigrants in Paris. During the Nazi occupation of the city, the house was transformed into a refuge for Jews and displaced persons. Mother Maria and her son were arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and died in the Ravensbruck camp in Germany. Mother Maria's selfless devotion to people and her death as a martyr will never be forgotten. In 2004, the Holy Synod confirmed the glorification of Mother Maria." - from Columbia University Libraries Special Collection link

Truer than You Suspected

The mindset behind caring for those in prison, the poor, the sick, the homeless, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the outcast is all about removing some image or stigma that sees the individual self (ego) as either different, better, or removed from the other.  Perhaps why the mystic communities throughout time have been also hotbeds for social action is because in the falling away of the small self in contemplative prayer there comes an awakening of the knowledge that we are all just ONE.  There is no division between the masses.

In the awakened heart there is room for the OTHER - no matter who it is - because the awakened heart is itself the universe.  The Buddhists have this sense of spirituality that recognizes that the Buddhas cannot seek salvation for themselves alone.  The seeking of salvation must involve the resolution of all humankind, the enlightenment of all.  Wesley tasted the vision and said: "all the world is my parish."

Caring for the "least of these" is not just a simple, bare-bones command of Jesus.  It is an ontological presupposition that the individual is inextricably bound to the corporate.  I cannot be truly fed unless my neighbor is also fed.  I cannot be truly clothed, unless my neighbor is clothed.  I cannot be truly "un-alone" until my neighbor is "un-alone".

The dropping of the single self in contemplative prayer is about the inherent cohesiveness of the universe.  Our simple acts of mercy only uncover what is already true.

"Let me seek, then, the gift of silence, and poverty, and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into prayer; where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is in all."  - Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

Ciao!

+Tom













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