Thanksgiving and Attachment

A few weeks ago I was in conversation with my bishop about ministry, formation, vows, and some of the tensions that inevitably emerge in any season of life. 

In the course of the conversation he said something that will not leave me alone:

“For the desert tradition, the opposite of thanksgiving is attachment.”

It will not leave me alone partly because it returns me to one of the themes that first drew me to the desert mothers and fathers. When I first began exploring the desert tradition years ago, I was surprised to discover that the opposite of gratitude was not ingratitude, at least not in the way I assumed. The deeper danger was attachment.

Attachment is what happens when I begin to treat a gift as a possession. When I forget that what I have received was first given. When I move from receiving to claiming.

At some point our conversation wandered into ministry. My bishop observed that when we become proud of what we have made of our ministry, we lose the capacity to be truly grateful for what God has given us through the Church. Gratitude may produce a healthy pride. Attachment always turns us back toward ourselves.

As a priest, more specifically your priest and pastor, I find that both clarifying and unsettling.

So much of life can become attached: our ideas, our successes, our failures, our wounds, our imagination, our vision of the Church, even our sense of calling. We begin to speak and act as though these things belong to us. The desert tradition would probably diagnose that not as commitment but as attachment. And attachment, unlike gratitude, is always hungry. It is always consumptive. It is never quite satisfying.

As I have mentioned in a homily, a month or so ago I found myself returning to the desert tradition. Looking back, I suspect the Spirit was already laying some groundwork before this conversation ever happened. For that, I am grateful.

There is more here than I presently understand so I’m risking Pastoral Words that are more thinking in public. Working things out as I go. Under all the working though, is one burning question I am holding: is holiness, at least in part, the slow recovery of our capacity to receive?

For now, below are a few sayings from the desert I have begun sitting with. I offer them without commentary.

I’d be curious what strikes you as you read.

Abba Agathon

The same Abba Agathon was walking with his disciples. One of them, finding a small green pea on the road, said to the old man, “Father, may I take it?” The old man, looking at him with astonishment, said, “Was it you who put it there?” “No,” replied the brother. “How then,” continued the old man, “can you take up something which you did not put down?”

Abba Anthony

A brother renounced the world and gave his goods to the poor, but he kept back a little for his personal expenses. He went to see Abba Antony. When he told him this, the old man said to him, “If you want to be a monk, go into the village, buy some meat, cover your naked body with it and come here like that.” The brother did so, and the dogs and birds tore at his flesh. When he came back the old man asked him whether he had followed his advice. He showed him his wounded body, and Saint Antony said, “Those who renounce the world but want to keep something for themselves are torn in this way by the demons who make war on them.”

For the heart of Christ and the good of his people,

Bliss+