Thessaloniki, Greece
I would like to share a few selections (with a few abridgments) from
a book which is perhaps one of the most significant Orthodox
writings I have ever read. Mrs. Pennock knows the Church Fathers
and has an unparalleled ability to explain them. For those willing to
listen, reading this book can be a life changing experience. I am
most grateful to her for broadening my perspective and understan-
ding. I urge everyone reading this post, do not deprive yourself of
the blessing of reading this book and get your copy asap!
Selections from chaper 5 ‘God is Greater than your Environment’
Path to Sanity, Dee Pennock, , Life & Life Publishing Company
2010, ISBN 978-1-933654-26-3
Note:
The new edition of this book is entitled, God's Path to Sanity:
Lessons from Ancient Holy Counselors on How to Have a Sound Mind
by Dee Pennock This book is available from Light & Life
Publishers.
Available here
Using your environment as a way to justify any problems or weak-
nesses you might not want to see in yourself, or might not want others
to see in you, lets you always be seen as standing in the ‘right’ place.
So with the system of self-justification that much modern psychology
gives us, what happens? Psychological and spiritual paralysis is
what happens. If you are standing in the ‘right’ place, why move?
It’s only if you see yourself standing in the wrong place that you are
going to want to change and move to where you think you should be.
Let’s look at the saints who have chosen as their environment the
Lord Jesus Christ. People who are all redeemed from their earthly
environments (and even from their inborn passions), who have not
remained spiritually affected by them. People whose souls have
been shaped by God, not by their earthly environments. God
becomes your environment by your own use of your free will in
desiring Him, and by His loving and abundant responsive Grace.
Then haven’t our families and environments anything to do with
shaping us? Yes, obviously they have, depending upon how much
we accept or reject their influence. Many of the people who served
God had to endure abusive environments to prepare them for their
calling. One was Joseph, who was sold to be a bond-servant…”Until
the time came when his cause was known, the word of the Lord tried
him” Psalm 105:17-19.
It is no different today. Our circumstances are connected with our
calling. “As the Lord placed Joseph in Egypt in the position to feed
his brethren in time of famine, so he placed you in the position to
serve the community”. St Barsanuphius
Your environment is given to maximize your discovery of what and
who you are, to maximize your realization of your sin and need for
God, to maximize your incentive to reach out to Him and receive
“Christ in you, the hope of glory”. Col. 1:27
We never inquire into God’s reasons for giving others their particular
environments or providential circumstances that may be puzzling to
our carnal way of thinking. Even when Peter asked Him about John,
“And what shall this man do? Jesus said to him, If I will that he tarry
until I come, what is that to you? You come and follow me".
John 21:21-22.
Look at your own environment and the people in it, to see how God
means for you to use that environment and what it can reveal to you
about yourself. Environment can have wonderful influences in your
various accomplishments….but environment HAS NO EFFECT AT
ALL on the sins and passions you retain inside yourself. So we may
not blame persons in our environment for anything that is spiritually
wrong with us, for any weaknesses or faults we may have, nor for
any of the passions that afflict us.
Take the passion of anger. Someone says, “I know I lose my temper
too much. But I’m living with a man so unreasonable it would try the
patience of a saint”. But nobody can elicit anger in you if there is no
anger in you to inflame- as we see from the saints who experienced
abuse and martyrdom without any anger.
“Many passions are hidden in our souls, but they are discovered only
when the object or cause which arouses them appears” Hesychius of
Jerusalem
“The reason for our anger springs from our own impatience, but not
from the fault of the brethren. And while we lay blame for our anger on
others, we shall never be able to reach the goal of patience”.
John Cassian
Do you see the point? Our environments and persons who bring our
passions into the spotlight have only shown that the passions are
there. They haven’t created any passions that weren’t already
present in us.
“For no one is ever driven to sin by being provoked to another’s fault,
unless he has the fuel of evil stored up in his own heart”. John Cassian
The passion of anger is what matters; how it got stirred up is irrelevant,
because the craving was already there. Our environment doesn’t
create our passions. It only gives us a chance to discover them.
If we have persons in our environment who cause our inborn passions
to flare up in an obvious way, it can be a blessing for us. This distur-
bance, like the angel’s troubling of the water in the pool of Bethesda
(John 5:2-9), can send us into the pool of God’s mercy for help.
Without such trouble we might not have stepped in and been healed.
Healing is the purpose of conditions that reveal our passions… If a
sin is not yours, you can’t repent and be healed of it. We can’t be
healed of someone else’s sin, only of our own. If we disown our sin
and make it somebody else’s, then we never become free of it. This
is something the saints emphasize. You will never end any psycholo-
gical unpleasantness by blaming others. No matter how overwhelming
the evidence may appear, our psychological and spiritual state of
being is not related to anyone else’s sin but our own. Our own sin we
can handle with repentance; the sin of others we can’t. Faith in this
truth eventually brings perfect freedom, quietness, peace of soul.
Listen to what the saints teach. They say that whenever you keep
feeling bothered by someone, tempted to impatience or anger or
revenge, it’s not because of the sin in the other person. No, it’s NEVER
because of the sin in others; it is ALWAYS because of the sin in you.
Very often, some passion or self-indulgent motive in you has been
inviting the offense. Or slipping into a wrong relationship. Or refusing
to go where God is trying to lead you. Or being touchy, wanting to be
in control, not having patience- or just a need to notice your own sin.
You will find that repentance always works, enlightenment always
comes, and the circumstances are always changed. The practice of
looking for your own sin, when somebody else’s sin seems to be the
one that’s bothering you, will bring you this reward:
It will put you, and not the other person, in control of the situation- in
control that is, of your own soul and the peace there will be in it.
“For confusion arises within us. It does not come from the nature of
circumstances, but from the infirmity of our minds. If we were
disturbed because of what befalls us, then all people would have to
be troubled. For we all sail the same sea; it is impossible to escape
the waves and the spray.
But if there are some who stand beyond the influence of the storm
and the raging sea, then it is clear that it is not the outward
circumstances which make the storm within us. Rather, it is the
disposition or condition of our own minds.
Therefore, we should so order the mind that it may bear all things
contentedly in Christ. Then we shall have no storm, nor even a
ripple, within us but always a clear and steady calm”.
St John Chrysostom
If we don’t or we won’t see our own sins, we retain in ourselves
that profound ignorance known as the passion of PRIDE.
(Remember that’s ignorance of yourself and of your need for God).
Without somebody stirring up our sin, we could remain ignorant of
it, blinded by that pride.
“If passions are inactive merely because the causes which arouse
them are removed (absent), pride follows”. Hesychius
Trials that seem at the time to be harming us, they say, will be the
means of saving us if we let them draw us to God in repentance.
“Look to the end of every involuntary suffering, and you will find
in it the removal of sins”. Mark the Ascetic
To be free we have to take full responsibility for what we are
spiritually, to leave no blame on anyone or anything else.
“None can harm him who will not harm himself”.
John Chrysostom
Selections from Chaper 6 ‘The Passion that Enslaves the Will’,
(VAINGLORY and SELF-LOVE) emphasis mine.
Vainglory (meaning empty glory) causes what the saints call man-
pleasing or people-pleasing. It makes us want to do everything we
can to please other people, in order to win their admiration and thus
bring a sort of ‘glory’ to ourselves. Within that slavery, which is
people-pleasing, a person is shut off from obeying and serving God.
Social isolation is a common outcome of this passion of people-
pleasing. It comes from two things. First the audiences cause it, by
rejecting the performance. They sense no real friendliness in people-
pleasers, only a vainglorious display of interest that doesn’t come
across as natural- because it’s not natural.
Second the people-pleasers do their own separation from others.
They are trying to use others to satisfy their craving for approval.
When audiences are not applauding, praising them…-when that
happens, they don’t care for those audiences….The larger isolation
hanging over souls immersed in vainglory is isolation from God.
That’s because love is never present with vainglory.
“A person who has been illumined through love is never puffed up
by the spirit of vanity: but a person who has not attained to it is
easily swayed by the latter”.Maximus the Confessor
Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery because of the selfishness
in their hearts. VAINGLORY is like Joseph’s brothers. It has the
same selfishness motivating it. And it sells us into the slavery of
people-pleasing. The name of that underlying selfishness is SELF-
LOVE, which is a passionate attachment to one’s own physical
and psychological being. It’s a lust to satisfy the appetites aroused
in the carnal self, weather by bodily or other passions, especially the
passion of vainglory. Vainglory is a powerful motivator, and will often
keep self-love under control, say the saints. They describe monks
whose gluttony urges them to overeat but who, motivated by vainglory
(what people will think) restrain themselves…
A common symptom of lustful self-love, say the saints, is laziness-
being weigh down by the inertia of the flesh, as St Antony calls it.
This laziness fosters restlessness and depression.
….The passion of Self-Love makes people very dissatisfied with
places or persons or circumstances that fail to give them material
pleasures and personal prestige.
SELF-LOVE produces “lovers of their own selves…without natural
affection ( 2 Tim. 3:2-3) It is always characterized by hardness of
heart, by disdain and contempt of others, as John Cassian points
out- especially toward any persons who fail to satisfy one’s thirst for
self-esteem. With self-love people who appear to be kind and
caring (because of vainglory) can easily dismiss the sorrows, fears,
discomfort, and pain of other persons and creatures. There is cruelty
here, as in the hearts of Joseph’s brothers. And a person possessed
by self-love will be taking it all in stride, because it concernsw some
other creature and not oneself.
For those moved by Self-love and vainglory, other people are not
seen and accepted as individuals separate from and other than,
oneself. They are more like clothes a person tries on…are they
comfortable for effortless lounging around? How should they be
altered to fit me better?...
A soul bound in the unhappiness of and pain and isolation of
self-love and vainglory can, like Lazarus bound in his grave clothes,
receive from the Lord a blessed deliverance by praying, perhaps for
a very long time:
Lord Jesus Christ, deliver me from , Self-Love and Vainglory,..... and
give me Love!
Prayer That Brings Self-Discovery
From Chapter 4 p.62
People sometimes pray over and over to be delivered from a bad
habit or an addiction, but are not freed from it. And they become
discouraged when God does not answer their prayer. Here's why
that happens. Whenever prayer is not delivering us from the sin or
addiction we are praying to be rid of, it's because that sin is
anchored by some other sin underneath it, like a boat being held in
check by a submerged weight. For example (as we'll see later on),
underlying an addiction to food or alcohol is the big passion of
Self-Love. So we often need to pray for God to deliver us from
Pride and show us the deeper sin anchoring the one that's a
problem.
When we pray to God to show us what sin is underlying the difficult,
involuntary sin we can't overcome, it will always bring us to some
voluntary sin that we can get hold of and repent, an anchor we're able
to pull up. In that way, even persons who are very weak, say the saints,
will find a point where they can begin to turn themselves around and
change the whole course of their lives. Mark the Ascetic writes,
"According to Scripture, the cause of all sin that is involuntary lies in
what is voluntary".
"He who is drawn away by sin against his will ought to understand that
he is being mastered by some other previous sin, which he serves
willingly, and is hence-forward led under its power even to things which
he does not wish." Basil the Great
God's Path to Sanity: Lessons from Ancient Holy Counselors on How to Have a Sound Mind
by Dee Pennock
Format: Soft Bound
Description:
This book brings the reader together with holy physicians of the soul in ancient Christian Traditions, offering superbly clear examples of the patristic method of diagnosing and healing many disorders of the soul that are now being widely treated with brain-crippling drugs. Addresses violent mood swings, uncontrollable willfulness, anger, depression, suicidal urges, ambivalence in decision-making, built-in self-defeating programs, ignorance of oneself, inability to control thoughts, being "possessed" by passions, compulsive physical appetites, social isolation, inability to love and feel loved, demonstrating just what the Fathers say about recovering sanity in the love of Christ. The author, a Stanford graduate and a veteran editor and author, worked at Harvard with Fr. Georges Florovsky. Early reviewers have dubbed this book a "must read" for spiritual health and sanity. Discussion questions have been added at the end of each chapter.
Available here
Using your environment as a way to justify any problems or weak-
nesses you might not want to see in yourself, or might not want others
to see in you, lets you always be seen as standing in the ‘right’ place.
So with the system of self-justification that much modern psychology
gives us, what happens? Psychological and spiritual paralysis is
what happens. If you are standing in the ‘right’ place, why move?
It’s only if you see yourself standing in the wrong place that you are
going to want to change and move to where you think you should be.
Let’s look at the saints who have chosen as their environment the
Lord Jesus Christ. People who are all redeemed from their earthly
environments (and even from their inborn passions), who have not
remained spiritually affected by them. People whose souls have
been shaped by God, not by their earthly environments. God
becomes your environment by your own use of your free will in
desiring Him, and by His loving and abundant responsive Grace.
Then haven’t our families and environments anything to do with
shaping us? Yes, obviously they have, depending upon how much
we accept or reject their influence. Many of the people who served
God had to endure abusive environments to prepare them for their
calling. One was Joseph, who was sold to be a bond-servant…”Until
the time came when his cause was known, the word of the Lord tried
him” Psalm 105:17-19.
It is no different today. Our circumstances are connected with our
calling. “As the Lord placed Joseph in Egypt in the position to feed
his brethren in time of famine, so he placed you in the position to
serve the community”. St Barsanuphius
Your environment is given to maximize your discovery of what and
who you are, to maximize your realization of your sin and need for
God, to maximize your incentive to reach out to Him and receive
“Christ in you, the hope of glory”. Col. 1:27
We never inquire into God’s reasons for giving others their particular
environments or providential circumstances that may be puzzling to
our carnal way of thinking. Even when Peter asked Him about John,
“And what shall this man do? Jesus said to him, If I will that he tarry
until I come, what is that to you? You come and follow me".
John 21:21-22.
Look at your own environment and the people in it, to see how God
means for you to use that environment and what it can reveal to you
about yourself. Environment can have wonderful influences in your
various accomplishments….but environment HAS NO EFFECT AT
ALL on the sins and passions you retain inside yourself. So we may
not blame persons in our environment for anything that is spiritually
wrong with us, for any weaknesses or faults we may have, nor for
any of the passions that afflict us.
Take the passion of anger. Someone says, “I know I lose my temper
too much. But I’m living with a man so unreasonable it would try the
patience of a saint”. But nobody can elicit anger in you if there is no
anger in you to inflame- as we see from the saints who experienced
abuse and martyrdom without any anger.
“Many passions are hidden in our souls, but they are discovered only
when the object or cause which arouses them appears” Hesychius of
Jerusalem
“The reason for our anger springs from our own impatience, but not
from the fault of the brethren. And while we lay blame for our anger on
others, we shall never be able to reach the goal of patience”.
John Cassian
Do you see the point? Our environments and persons who bring our
passions into the spotlight have only shown that the passions are
there. They haven’t created any passions that weren’t already
present in us.
“For no one is ever driven to sin by being provoked to another’s fault,
unless he has the fuel of evil stored up in his own heart”. John Cassian
The passion of anger is what matters; how it got stirred up is irrelevant,
because the craving was already there. Our environment doesn’t
create our passions. It only gives us a chance to discover them.
If we have persons in our environment who cause our inborn passions
to flare up in an obvious way, it can be a blessing for us. This distur-
bance, like the angel’s troubling of the water in the pool of Bethesda
(John 5:2-9), can send us into the pool of God’s mercy for help.
Without such trouble we might not have stepped in and been healed.
Healing is the purpose of conditions that reveal our passions… If a
sin is not yours, you can’t repent and be healed of it. We can’t be
healed of someone else’s sin, only of our own. If we disown our sin
and make it somebody else’s, then we never become free of it. This
is something the saints emphasize. You will never end any psycholo-
gical unpleasantness by blaming others. No matter how overwhelming
the evidence may appear, our psychological and spiritual state of
being is not related to anyone else’s sin but our own. Our own sin we
can handle with repentance; the sin of others we can’t. Faith in this
truth eventually brings perfect freedom, quietness, peace of soul.
Listen to what the saints teach. They say that whenever you keep
feeling bothered by someone, tempted to impatience or anger or
revenge, it’s not because of the sin in the other person. No, it’s NEVER
because of the sin in others; it is ALWAYS because of the sin in you.
Very often, some passion or self-indulgent motive in you has been
inviting the offense. Or slipping into a wrong relationship. Or refusing
to go where God is trying to lead you. Or being touchy, wanting to be
in control, not having patience- or just a need to notice your own sin.
You will find that repentance always works, enlightenment always
comes, and the circumstances are always changed. The practice of
looking for your own sin, when somebody else’s sin seems to be the
one that’s bothering you, will bring you this reward:
It will put you, and not the other person, in control of the situation- in
control that is, of your own soul and the peace there will be in it.
“For confusion arises within us. It does not come from the nature of
circumstances, but from the infirmity of our minds. If we were
disturbed because of what befalls us, then all people would have to
be troubled. For we all sail the same sea; it is impossible to escape
the waves and the spray.
But if there are some who stand beyond the influence of the storm
and the raging sea, then it is clear that it is not the outward
circumstances which make the storm within us. Rather, it is the
disposition or condition of our own minds.
Therefore, we should so order the mind that it may bear all things
contentedly in Christ. Then we shall have no storm, nor even a
ripple, within us but always a clear and steady calm”.
St John Chrysostom
If we don’t or we won’t see our own sins, we retain in ourselves
that profound ignorance known as the passion of PRIDE.
(Remember that’s ignorance of yourself and of your need for God).
Without somebody stirring up our sin, we could remain ignorant of
it, blinded by that pride.
“If passions are inactive merely because the causes which arouse
them are removed (absent), pride follows”. Hesychius
Trials that seem at the time to be harming us, they say, will be the
means of saving us if we let them draw us to God in repentance.
“Look to the end of every involuntary suffering, and you will find
in it the removal of sins”. Mark the Ascetic
To be free we have to take full responsibility for what we are
spiritually, to leave no blame on anyone or anything else.
“None can harm him who will not harm himself”.
John Chrysostom
Selections from Chaper 6 ‘The Passion that Enslaves the Will’,
(VAINGLORY and SELF-LOVE) emphasis mine.
Vainglory (meaning empty glory) causes what the saints call man-
pleasing or people-pleasing. It makes us want to do everything we
can to please other people, in order to win their admiration and thus
bring a sort of ‘glory’ to ourselves. Within that slavery, which is
people-pleasing, a person is shut off from obeying and serving God.
Social isolation is a common outcome of this passion of people-
pleasing. It comes from two things. First the audiences cause it, by
rejecting the performance. They sense no real friendliness in people-
pleasers, only a vainglorious display of interest that doesn’t come
across as natural- because it’s not natural.
Second the people-pleasers do their own separation from others.
They are trying to use others to satisfy their craving for approval.
When audiences are not applauding, praising them…-when that
happens, they don’t care for those audiences….The larger isolation
hanging over souls immersed in vainglory is isolation from God.
That’s because love is never present with vainglory.
“A person who has been illumined through love is never puffed up
by the spirit of vanity: but a person who has not attained to it is
easily swayed by the latter”.Maximus the Confessor
Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery because of the selfishness
in their hearts. VAINGLORY is like Joseph’s brothers. It has the
same selfishness motivating it. And it sells us into the slavery of
people-pleasing. The name of that underlying selfishness is SELF-
LOVE, which is a passionate attachment to one’s own physical
and psychological being. It’s a lust to satisfy the appetites aroused
in the carnal self, weather by bodily or other passions, especially the
passion of vainglory. Vainglory is a powerful motivator, and will often
keep self-love under control, say the saints. They describe monks
whose gluttony urges them to overeat but who, motivated by vainglory
(what people will think) restrain themselves…
A common symptom of lustful self-love, say the saints, is laziness-
being weigh down by the inertia of the flesh, as St Antony calls it.
This laziness fosters restlessness and depression.
….The passion of Self-Love makes people very dissatisfied with
places or persons or circumstances that fail to give them material
pleasures and personal prestige.
SELF-LOVE produces “lovers of their own selves…without natural
affection ( 2 Tim. 3:2-3) It is always characterized by hardness of
heart, by disdain and contempt of others, as John Cassian points
out- especially toward any persons who fail to satisfy one’s thirst for
self-esteem. With self-love people who appear to be kind and
caring (because of vainglory) can easily dismiss the sorrows, fears,
discomfort, and pain of other persons and creatures. There is cruelty
here, as in the hearts of Joseph’s brothers. And a person possessed
by self-love will be taking it all in stride, because it concernsw some
other creature and not oneself.
For those moved by Self-love and vainglory, other people are not
seen and accepted as individuals separate from and other than,
oneself. They are more like clothes a person tries on…are they
comfortable for effortless lounging around? How should they be
altered to fit me better?...
A soul bound in the unhappiness of and pain and isolation of
self-love and vainglory can, like Lazarus bound in his grave clothes,
receive from the Lord a blessed deliverance by praying, perhaps for
a very long time:
Lord Jesus Christ, deliver me from , Self-Love and Vainglory,..... and
give me Love!
Prayer That Brings Self-Discovery
From Chapter 4 p.62
People sometimes pray over and over to be delivered from a bad
habit or an addiction, but are not freed from it. And they become
discouraged when God does not answer their prayer. Here's why
that happens. Whenever prayer is not delivering us from the sin or
addiction we are praying to be rid of, it's because that sin is
anchored by some other sin underneath it, like a boat being held in
check by a submerged weight. For example (as we'll see later on),
underlying an addiction to food or alcohol is the big passion of
Self-Love. So we often need to pray for God to deliver us from
Pride and show us the deeper sin anchoring the one that's a
problem.
When we pray to God to show us what sin is underlying the difficult,
involuntary sin we can't overcome, it will always bring us to some
voluntary sin that we can get hold of and repent, an anchor we're able
to pull up. In that way, even persons who are very weak, say the saints,
will find a point where they can begin to turn themselves around and
change the whole course of their lives. Mark the Ascetic writes,
"According to Scripture, the cause of all sin that is involuntary lies in
what is voluntary".
"He who is drawn away by sin against his will ought to understand that
he is being mastered by some other previous sin, which he serves
willingly, and is hence-forward led under its power even to things which
he does not wish." Basil the Great
God's Path to Sanity: Lessons from Ancient Holy Counselors on How to Have a Sound Mind
by Dee Pennock
Format: Soft Bound
Description:
This book brings the reader together with holy physicians of the soul in ancient Christian Traditions, offering superbly clear examples of the patristic method of diagnosing and healing many disorders of the soul that are now being widely treated with brain-crippling drugs. Addresses violent mood swings, uncontrollable willfulness, anger, depression, suicidal urges, ambivalence in decision-making, built-in self-defeating programs, ignorance of oneself, inability to control thoughts, being "possessed" by passions, compulsive physical appetites, social isolation, inability to love and feel loved, demonstrating just what the Fathers say about recovering sanity in the love of Christ. The author, a Stanford graduate and a veteran editor and author, worked at Harvard with Fr. Georges Florovsky. Early reviewers have dubbed this book a "must read" for spiritual health and sanity. Discussion questions have been added at the end of each chapter.
Available here
