It’s July when the summer begins to wear even the most dedicated of sun lovers down. Life begins to feel sticky; nights get close; days get long and dry. Everything becomes a major effort; we slow down like rusted bogs on old wheels. Time suspends. Nothing much gets done. Day follows day with not much to show for any of them.
Oh, yes, monastics know all about that kind of thing. In ancient monasteries, the warnings of Evagrius of Pontus to “beware the devil of the noonday sun,” loomed large. Acedia, they called it. Spiritual sloth. The burden of the long haul. The question in every life, of course, is how to keep on going when going on seems fruitless.
The Zen Master taught, “The seed never sees the flower.” In a world where everything is changing and nothing ever seems to get resolved, in a church where revelation comes an inch at a time, the notion of slow growth is comforting when every effort weighs heavy. Or, as a political prisoner wrote on the wall of his cell, “Those who would give light must endure burning.” No one gets away easy. If you are about something worthwhile, it will be tested by fatigue and pressure and the sheer boredom of the daily.
But there are simply some divine cravings in life––the liberation of the poor, the equality of women, the human dignity of the entire human race––that are worth striving for, living for, dying for, finished or unfinished, for as long as it takes to achieve them. No single campaign will do the trick. No one speech will change the climate. No single law will undo eons of damage. It will take a million lives dedicated to the long haul and heaped on top of one another.
July is the month that teaches us to prepare ourselves for the heat of the noonday sun, for those times in life when going on and going through something will take all the energy, all the hope we have. July reminds us that on the other side of such intensity, such demanding effort, comes the harvest time of life when we see that all our past efforts have been worth it.
––from A Monastery Almanac (Benetvision), by Joan Chittister
