The Hesychast

for Jeff

The heavy rain keeps pouring down on to the brim of the Hesychast’s Laredo hat. His waxed trench coat deflects the onslaught, but his face, hands, all exposed skin, are dripping. His face does not change expression; he absorbs the rain into his soul. He becomes, “a man who is rained upon.”
The horses fidget and nay behind him; he waits, as he is. “As I am is who, what, where and how I am,” he thinks (if you could call it thinking- it’s more like a self-acknowledgement, a sense perception of his current condition). Soon- in a week or two, perhaps, the rains will dry up and the sun will take its place, heating everything. But he considers not about a more pleasant future. Here… now… he is a man, rained upon.

He expects what is happening; he expects to be what he is. The log he sits upon, hunched over slightly, elbows on his knees, he expects it to be rough on his bottom, as it is. And when the wind picks up, freezing his face and eyes- it is so, so it is to be so.

Finally, after some time, the rain softens, the air begins to soften, and the air glimmers in the dusky light and has a sweet smell. A few relieved birds stick their heads out of the branches to sing.

He lifts his frame by pushing his hands to his knees and walks to his cabin door, and enters to make himself some tea. The remaining light from the day paints everything inside his cabin with a fine brush. The stove lights, the water steams, he pours it into his mug and sits on a kitchen bench to drink.

In the morning, after he has slept in his hard bed under his wool army blanket and his one down pillow, a sleep as simple and event-less as the life of a rock, his two nephews clamber on outside his cabin. They jut their legs and arms about themselves and speak, always, excitedly, louder than The Hesychast thought they needed to. But he refuses to ask them to change- nothing is within his authority outside himself.

The nephews open The Hesychast’s cabin door in stride as they jawed at each other and entered through the doorways as ones belonging. “Where’s the coffee?” says Abbot, chirpily, opening and slamming cabinet doors when they did not reveal his prize. “Hesie? You got some coffee here?”
Hesie sits up on his bed and looks over to them.

“No.”

Abbot has a quizzical response on his face, “No coffee… huh.”
“Huh,” says his brother Francis, equally suspicious.

“Trying to quit,” says Hesie.

“Now why’d you wanna do something like that?” says Abbot, in a faux-moralizing tone. “Tssk tssk, what are we going to do? How are we going to drink coffee if you ain’t buyin’ it? You gotta fix this, Hesie!”

Hesychast smiled approvingly at his nephew. He likes his sense of humor- it’s nuanced, psychological, he’s able to change places with himself, play the devil’s advocate while revealing God’s grace at the same time.

“Ha! You’ll have to figure it out until I it breaks my will and I buy it again,” He sighed, a little mournfully. “Could be a while- I hope,” he winked. “How’s about some nice herbal tea?”

The brothers acted repulsed and stormed out of the cabin in tandem. Just outside the door, Abbot turned and shouted, “You…! You’re insane! You monster!” and Francis beside him glared at Hessie with a hilarious dark glare, and they left in Abbot’s Chevy truck to drive 6 miles to the store and back before they all got to work on the ranch.

The Hesychast loves those boys, but he’ll never say it outright. Why spoil the depth and expansiveness of God’s Love by claiming possession of It in words? Words that disappear into the void as soon as they are spoken, and could neither sustain the love they claim, nor prove it into being. Better give it space and silence to breathe and be felt. Let the prayer of the heart guide it into the world, and let it speak for itself in its own tongue.