“There are many in mountains acting like city dwellers who are perishing and many in cities doing the deeds of the desert who are being saved. For it is possible to be alone with one’s spirit while in the company of many and also to have one’s thoughts with crowds even when one is alone.” — Amma Synklētikē
“There are many in mountains acting like city dwellers who are perishing and many in cities doing the deeds of the desert who are being saved. For it is possible to be alone with one’s spirit while in the company of many and also to have one’s thoughts with crowds even when one is alone.” — Amma Synklētikē
Amma Synklētikē, also known as Syncletica of Alexandria, was one of only a few desert mothers, or Ammas, whose words have been collected in the literature of the desert elders. Her sayings are full of nautical metaphors, leading some scholars to speculate that she may have come from a seafaring family. She also was well-versed in scriptural imagery, suggesting that she may have been literate — or at the very least, had a fine memory.
Her wisdom is on full display when she suggests that “doing the deeds of the desert” is a matter of inner disposition rather than external circumstances. A person might live in the city and yet carry the silence, serenity and solitude of the desert with them, even in crowded conditions. On the other hand, someone might dwell alone in the desert, yet be so enmeshed in “thoughts with crowds” that there is no interior room for the movement of the Spirit within.
For those of us who live in densely populated areas, Amma Synklētikē’s wisdom offers us hope: we can cultivate our own “interior desert” regardless of the environment which fortune or chance has provided us. This prefigures the dramatic insights Thomas Merton received on a busy streetcorner in Louisville, KY, when he realized that there is nothing special about being a monk. The cloister of the heart (a phrase made popular by Joan Chittister) is more important than whether or not we happen to live in a physical monastery.
But Amma Synklētikē reminds us that no matter where we live, we also face the challenge of letting our hearts become so distracted that we end up “like city dwellers who are perishing.” We cannot simply rest on our laurels, especially when things seems to be going well. “When life looks like easy street, there’s danger at the door” warned Robert Hunter. That’s not meant to be pessimistic, but rather a call to attentiveness: always safeguard the silence and stillness within, regardless of how quiet — or noisy — our surroundings might be.
Quotation source: John Wortley, ed. The Book of the Elders: Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Systematic Collection (Cistercian Studies Series 240) (p. 21). Kindle Edition.
thanks Carl, and thanks for highlighting a dessert mother, a rare occurance