Star Wars fans may recognize this scene, but it is a long-ago community for Celtic Monastics. Here is a piece I did on that place 10 years ago in my book CAIRN-SPACE:
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Skellig Michael (Michael’s rock) is an island on which a Celtic monastic community was founded in the seventh century, AD. The remoteness and barrenness of the island – seven miles out at sea - are a living physical definition of silence and stillness.
For six hundred years, Celtic monks lived in clochans (stone beehive shaped huts) nestled above the cliff walls of the island.
Skellig Michael (Michael’s rock) is an island on which a Celtic monastic community was founded in the seventh century, AD. The remoteness and barrenness of the island – seven miles out at sea - are a living physical definition of silence and stillness.
For six hundred years, Celtic monks lived in clochans (stone beehive shaped huts) nestled above the cliff walls of the island.
They were 714 feet above sea level. Like most Celtic monks, they endured the austere ruggedness required of island life. They saw it as an image of the true arena for the spiritual athlete. Battling the monstrous forces of the Norseman was one of the many hardships they faced. Weather was another. Obtaining food yet another. They always battled the stillness and the silence.
The spiritual journey is not easy. The Celtic monks did not shy away from difficulty. They knew it was a battle until the end.
There is some resonance here for the one who battles with the sacred cairns of silence and stillness. If you believe the spiritual life should be easy, you will probably not accept the connection of the pious life with the image of Skellig Michael. If you understand the call of the monks on Skellig Michael, you will probably be willing to give “hesychia” a go.
There is some resonance here for the one who battles with the sacred cairns of silence and stillness. If you believe the spiritual life should be easy, you will probably not accept the connection of the pious life with the image of Skellig Michael. If you understand the call of the monks on Skellig Michael, you will probably be willing to give “hesychia” a go.
Perched in the open heat of the Atlantic Ocean, Irish monks – Saint Patrick himself – were said to have done battle with serpents and dragons. It is told that the Archangel Saint Michael joined up with Patrick on the island to aid in the struggle; putting an end to the enemy. Hence the name: Michael’s Rock.
The lore of snakes and demons are beyond commonplace in the lives of the early Christian monks both here and in the deserts.
The lore of snakes and demons are beyond commonplace in the lives of the early Christian monks both here and in the deserts.
The imaginations of the heart and mind that crawl out of the cairns of silence and stillness are no less snakes and demons than the ones the monks battled long ago. Anyone attempting to sit quietly knows this.
I often wonder if it is the Adversary we are battling within our lives; or, if we are battling against the call of opportunity from the Holy Spirit. Sure, the Adversary may be the one tempting us into following the mutant trail of arisings in our prayer life, but perhaps these arisings have been allowed by God to give us opportunities to grow. Maybe this is the meaning behind the story of Job. We always have a choice of how we respond to the things that arise in life. How we respond will surely change the neural hardwiring of how we receive life’s arisings in the future.
The image of desolation and isolation is the image of death, silence, stillness, the desert, the Skelligs, Mount Athos, and ultimately the image of the human heart. It is the great place of being alone with the Alone. This is why the spiritual journey is taken up in the desert and the remote places. It is in these places that we discover an energy that is most often left untapped – an energy that is below the surface. People have always known the desert and desolate places to be a cairn for the spiritual life.
The fear of unleashing the mighty powers from Pandora’s box is clearly at the root of why the desert energy is left untapped. We fear we may not be able to control whatever it is that emerges. This is an underlying fear of the spiritual life – we may lose everything. We may unleash a force that will overpower us and take everything from us. This fear becomes a reality in the spiritual journey. Entering the heart is entering the center of a mass confluence of forces. Entering the heart is entering the eye of the storm.
There is a quote from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas that speaks to this fear. It tells us that if we bring forth that which is within us, what we bring forth will save us. But, if we do not bring forth that which is within us, that which we do not bring forth will destroy us (vs. 70).
We must give passage to the arisings in our hearts and minds. We give passage by acknowledging that they have come forth from within us. We return to our practice to align ourselves with health. The stuff that is coming out of us is coming out of us for a reason. Hiding it or hiding from it is not the answer.
We forget that behind the angels, and demons, and Adversary of the desert is the LORD of all. The Supreme God of life. No demon, or Adversary, or angel for that matter, gains access to us unless God allows this. The things that emerge are known to the Father of Lights. If they come forth, it is so we may be free of them.
We are ultimately asked to yield and surrender to the force from the desert. This force, which is in fact not the Adversary as had we expected, but God Himself, is using the Adversary to purify us. The angels and demons must be brought forth so we may attain to God.
The goal of the spiritual life is hidden in this power of yielding to God. Bonhoeffer alluded to this when he said, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” (Cost of Discipleship). We are to die to our preconceived notions of our self. We must die to the old self. We must die in the purification of the heart.
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In cold-war America, the deserts were turned into testing grounds for nuclear devices. Men ran into the sand to test their ability to destroy everything. They unleashed the Armageddon potentiality hidden in the atoms of life. Trampling down all life with death. Immense forces are unleashed in the desert. That means we were unleashing an awesome power toward destruction into our hearts. These were perilous times.
In cold-war America, the deserts were turned into testing grounds for nuclear devices. Men ran into the sand to test their ability to destroy everything. They unleashed the Armageddon potentiality hidden in the atoms of life. Trampling down all life with death. Immense forces are unleashed in the desert. That means we were unleashing an awesome power toward destruction into our hearts. These were perilous times.
It would appear there is some archetypal acknowledgement that the solitude of the desert is charged with energy, filled with power. Thomas Merton pointed this out to us wonderfully in his book “Thoughts in Solitude”. There is a power in the wilderness of the heart that is greater than we can imagine. The heart is the eye of the storm.
The desert calls us into life on the edge – on the edge of living and dying. God, man, angels, the Adversary, and demons are all in the desert. A place God goes to meet man. A place man goes to meet God. It is a place for which most men have found no use. Except for the ascetics. Except for the “world-destroyers” (reference Oppenheimer’s quote: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." – Bhagavad Gita). The desert is the heart. The heart is the eye of the storm.
Life in the desert is the ultimate grazing place for the ravenous spirit of man and the demons. One may not go into the desert with matted hair and a grizzled appearance. One surely finds them there.
The desert is the great equalizer. All mountains are brought down low, all valleys are filled-in. This is the experience of raw encounter and wrestling with the Divine. God changes us in the desert, even if the desert is a small place in the home and in the heart of the believer. Power, great power is in the desert of the human heart.
What is produced in the desert is a crystallized form of humanity. The surplus of life is boiled away in the encounter and wrestling of the monastic with God. When we analyze the literature that comes from the throngs at Sketis and Nitria we find a body of literature that resembles the haiku or koan. Their words are concise. What they teach us is the ability to reduce things to manageable sizes. Massive concepts and theories are reduced to truncated statements and actions.
The sayings attributed to the Mothers and Fathers of the desert – in the Apophthegmata Patrum - are small in size but mighty in stature. They reveal what is possible for humanity when it removes all barriers to thought-action. When we remove all of the extra words about God, we are left with powerful doses of Divine Meetings. These meetings change us deeply. These meetings are cairns in the desert.
These sayings contain an immense number of references to wrestling with God, angels, and demons. There is something about the desert, about the distillation of the process of the heart, that lends itself to wrestling. Jesus did the same when He was in the Desert. Whether God, or angels, or demons, or the Satan, the power we find in the desert is conflictual at best. It stimulates wrestling encounters. This is another reason it is hard to sit with silence and stillness – we start wrestling. We are battling for our lives, many times.
The desert experience is about the stripping away of everything that is not spiritual. Because of this barrenness, there is time and space for the angels and demons of our personalities to emerge and battle for our attention. When we live in the Empire, the consumerism and bureaucracy of the landscape repels the inner battle and numbs us from feeling the conflicts of being human.
We struggle to make a go of it in the arena of survival and exchange of goods and services. We can find many things to distract us from the battle to purify our souls. Without the distraction, the heart opens up and reveals what is really hidden within it.
We struggle to make a go of it in the arena of survival and exchange of goods and services. We can find many things to distract us from the battle to purify our souls. Without the distraction, the heart opens up and reveals what is really hidden within it.
We can expect nothing less when we enter the cave of our heart. We may find solace and unity as we begin the work. But, at some point the cell, prayer closet, and heart will become a refiners fire. We will long to flee it, run for the city, and hide from the processes of isolation: purification, enlightenment, and union. Many do not survive the power of the desert and leave it, or die in its heat.
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There is ample speculation about what the monks of Skellig Michael ate. Some say they tilled the rocky soil, some say they raised rabbits, others say they ate fish, seaweed, and bird eggs. I would venture a guess that the “pragmatic monk” (should there have been one on the island) ate whatever was available - whenever it was available. They ate whatever arose.
There is ample speculation about what the monks of Skellig Michael ate. Some say they tilled the rocky soil, some say they raised rabbits, others say they ate fish, seaweed, and bird eggs. I would venture a guess that the “pragmatic monk” (should there have been one on the island) ate whatever was available - whenever it was available. They ate whatever arose.
Look at our biblical narratives about feeding in the desert. Moses and the Israelites ate manna from heaven. Elijah the Tishbite at food dropped off by God’s ravens. Jesus was given the chance to eat stones, John ate locust and honey. Pragmatic.
The work of the heart produces food for the journey. It may not be a sumptuous feast. It may be food that spoils if it is kept in jars for more than a day. The heart produces food; something always arises. Pragmatic.
I remember a powerful story emerging from one of my days of sitting at the cairn of my heart. Memories of my childhood and being left alone in the upstairs to sleep without anyone else up there arose and littered my vista. I remembered the crying out I did for someone to come and sit with me. What a feast that was. My heart gave voice to the depths of my soul: we all long for companionship – even God. I learned to acknowledge the aloneness I had felt as a child.
It took me a while to come to see this experience as nourishing, but in the end it became the fuel that enabled me to live through experiences of isolation, hoping for the redemption of community. It gave me eyes to see and ears to hear the cry of the poor and abandoned. We all long for companionship.
This is the kind of grist that is milled in the heart. This is what we walk away from the desert learning and knowing. These morsels are not always happy thoughts, but they are nourishment for the journey. These are the notions that enable us to understand the call of evangelism.
This is the kind of grist that is milled in the heart. This is what we walk away from the desert learning and knowing. These morsels are not always happy thoughts, but they are nourishment for the journey. These are the notions that enable us to understand the call of evangelism.
Evangelism is about helping people address the aloneness of human life. Evangelism exists somewhere between the notion that God is with us, and that when Jesus was alone and in prison we visited Him.
We have to learn to eat what arises.
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There are many practices we can engage in our cairn-space. As we first sit to settle and focus ourselves, we should look to do something that will point us into the silence and stillness with some direction.
There are many practices we can engage in our cairn-space. As we first sit to settle and focus ourselves, we should look to do something that will point us into the silence and stillness with some direction.
I have already mentioned simple prayers, prayer services, or the Psalms. The words of these venues give our heart something to latch onto as we enter the stillness of “hesychia”. If we are reading a Psalm, it may say something about “hiding in the shadow of His wings”. This thought and feeling become a natural image to hold onto as we experience the stillness. We may sense ourselves hidden in God. We may long for the feeling of being held.
There are other practices as well. We can write in a journal and read back what we have written. Then we can sit with the residue of those words. We can read a scripture over and over; listening for the words that jump out at us and speak to us (lectio divina). We may try visualizations - reading a portion of the Gospel stories and inserting ourselves as one or all of the characters.
The key is that we do the practice and then sit with the residues left with us, trusting the Spirit to do a good work in us. Ultimately, the Fathers felt that we should move from this form of imaging and imagination to the utter emptiness of meeting God without image and without word. But, this is a process on a continuum. We must first be able to regulate our stillness through the use of images and imagination.
These radical experiences of emptiness and quiet stillness are experiences that defy the beginner and are surely not something we will encounter for some time. They are gifts that we will be given when we put ourselves to the regular task of wrestling. So at first, we should hold on to something we have taken from our practice.
We may imagine ourselves as the one who gathered all he had and sold it so he could buy a field that held a single pearl of great price. We may visualize ourselves as the woman with an issue of blood that reached through the crowd to touch the hem of Christ’s garment. We may offer ourselves as Simon of Cyrene, shouldering the cross for our Jesus as he walked to Golgotha. Wrestling. Wrestling. Wrestling.
We should have some imagining to hold on to. When the arisings come we go back to the practice. The arisings may take the form of a thought that says, “You don’t need to buy the field, you can just visit it.” Return to the practice. The arisings may take the form of a thought that says, “You’re not as bad off as the woman with an issue of blood.” Return to the practice. Whatever comes forth to distract you from sitting in stillness with the residue of your practice, acknowledge it, and return to your practice.
What is happening in the process of practice and stillness is that we are using images to settle us. We notice an arising and we return to the simple prayer practice that we have begun. Regardless of the practice, the prayers we offer are filled with images that our mind and heart will connect to. This will help us refocus in order to settle down. It will rebuild a path into the stillness of the neural desert.
If we pray a Psalm, our mind will create snapshots of the things in the Psalm that we are reading – images – and we will settle into these. For example if we pray, “As the deer pants for water, so my soul longs for Thee” (Psalm, xlii, 1), we will make an interior image of a thirsty deer and visually connect it with ourselves. Then we approach the stillness with the residue of this image. An arising of thought or emotion may try to lead us off the trail, and so we acknowledge it and we return to our practice and create another focusing image.
In this way we move from imaging to imagelessness. It takes time, but this is the pattern. The heart and the mind work together in the process. The repetition of the process is actually hardwiring the practice into our neural pathways.
In this way we move from imaging to imagelessness. It takes time, but this is the pattern. The heart and the mind work together in the process. The repetition of the process is actually hardwiring the practice into our neural pathways.
The mind often creates the interior image and the heart attaches feeling and impressions to that image. Eventually the heart and mind will cease needing images to settle into silent stillness.
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Most of the monks of the desert or island cairn-space tended to go the journey alone. They still submitted their hearts to an elder for correction. They spoke about what they discovered in their heart with another cairn-builder. This was purposeful.
Most of the monks of the desert or island cairn-space tended to go the journey alone. They still submitted their hearts to an elder for correction. They spoke about what they discovered in their heart with another cairn-builder. This was purposeful.
The intention behind sharing our heart-stuff is having someone else preview the inner process with us. We may begin to feel proud because of our experiences. The fellow journeyman will tell us to be careful of pride. We may find despair or loneliness in the pilgrimage. The fellow journeyman will tell us to be strong and of good cheer. We would go mad if we did not submit our inner process to the community of cairn-builders.
It is a good idea to have a group to share experiences with. This is perhaps the greatest call before the modern Church. Can we produce small “gatherings” (“ekklesia”)– that can be therapeutic communities administering the medicine of the Spirit. Can we grow communities of vulnerable togetherness before God? Can the Church learn the lost art of therapy?
The stories from the “Sayings of the Fathers” remind us of the value of shared experience. In them, we find examples that the shared cairn-experience produces fruit in many, not just one.
The story was shared about Abba Isidore that one day he went to the market to sell the baskets he had made. As he approached the market, anger welled up inside him. He told the journey-folk that he dropped everything and fled because of the anger. He felt all his work had come undone. His distress got the better of him and the distraction of failure won out.
The story was shared about Abba Isidore that one day he went to the market to sell the baskets he had made. As he approached the market, anger welled up inside him. He told the journey-folk that he dropped everything and fled because of the anger. He felt all his work had come undone. His distress got the better of him and the distraction of failure won out.
Without the sharing of these tales, the journey-folk would not have seen the value of the struggle. Abba Isidore was reminding them that all we work for could perish in an instant. We could lose all we have established in us; it is possible. He lost hope because of what arose, but he shared this openly so others could learn from his hopelessness. This is why we must collaborate on the journey. Go into the Alone, but bring that experience back to the community.
Abba Isidore is also reminding us that the experiences of the heart do not cinche things up for good. Having heart experiences does not mean we are perfect. Sanctification (or “theosis” in the Eastern Church) is a process, not an event.
We must approach the heart everyday and listen for that day’s wealth, for that day’s arisings. The manna in the wilderness molded if the Jews tried to hoard it for another day’s food. There was no stockpiling of manna. So too, there is no stockpiling of cairn-experience. We go it anew, each and everyday. We have the neural circuitry to enhance the travel, but we must start anew each day.
You would be mistaken to believe that the words here in this book will give you a solid platform on which to stand for the rest of your days. There is one thing that can do that, that is the One. We must approach Him afresh at every opportunity. Like the man who said that he would tear down his barns to build bigger ones to store more for the future; our lives may be required of us this night. Burn down your barns in your mind before you go to sleep.
Give us this day our daily manna. Pragmatic cairn-builders eat whatever is available, when it is available. This is the wisdom of insecurity for our current age of anxiety.
from CAIRN-SPACE: https://wipfandstock.com/cairn-space.html
