Admonitions
2026-07-06
I find myself becoming a lot less rigid in my prayer life, which to some might sound like a good thing. For me, I don't see it as a bad thing so much as a slightly scary notion; there's a sense of fear in becoming complacent, telling myself, "Oh, I don't have to be so overachieving and zealous with my prayer," and then becoming so entrenched in demonic bullshit that I forget about the love and mercy of Christ. The last thing I want to do is try and understand those demonic entities, because what they want is for us to get so caught up in the rhetoric and argumentation that we start to treat it as an idol, and then make more in its stead. The beauty of the church is that for the last two millennia, we've been blessed to have the essential playbook for keeping a life with Christ; everything from the books of prayers to theological discourse—and of course the lives of the Saints—is given to us on a humble but ornate platter. More than that, we have the lives of people today to look toward for guidance and understanding: many holy sites are still fortunate enough to be spread across every continent, and there is so much spiritual richness found in them.
Less than a fear of complacency, I fear feeling like I've got it "all figured out," so to speak. I have prayers I can lean on, routines I can comfortably live in, and more than enough texts to indulge in for several lifetimes. But the last thing I'd want is to sit with myself and say, "Yeah, this is all I need, right here." In a sense, it goes back to that fear of not knowing enough, or being misunderstood. I guess I fear not having a sense of control in my spiritual life, despite the fact that the core wisdom found in a good spiritual life is coming to peace with a lack of control. God gave me this mind because I think He wanted to impress upon me the importance of giving up that control. When I've spent so long being unsure of how I'll wake up in the morning, being hypersensitive to stress, and falling down the rabbit holes of depression, paranoia, and addiction—it makes me realize just how much I have the Lord to thank for, despite the constant wrestling I struggle with every second of every day. I don't blame myself for it, at least not anymore.
Still, I have certain prayers I want to memorize. Shit, I had the Symbol of Faith memorized, but I think I forgot it since it's been so long since I've said it. Don't get me wrong, The Jesus Prayer and the Our Father are more than enough for a daily spiritual grind, but there's still so much wisdom to be found in the beautiful works of prayer we have. If I don't get through this life having memorized at least ten Psalms, I pray that God will be merciful toward me for my insolence. In the same way I have that fear of God, I try my best to delight in the love and mercy He so graciously provides. For a long time, I'd read guides online about Orthodox prayer rules and feel a bit bad about myself for not "delighting in every word" as I read through the prayers in my prayer book. It was something I didn't understand for quite some time. I'd read through the prayers and feel like I was back in grade school doing popcorn reading.
However, there's a greater power in memorizing and repeating shorter prayers. Once you have that prayer in your mind, it can never be taken away from you. Particularly here in America, Christians are not accustomed to any true sense of persecution. Sure, some might get upset when a public figure starts giving glory to God and then gets inevitably censored, but that's not even an iota of what true persecution looks like. I was reading stories of Soviet persecution of Christians, and how those Bolsheviks made Orthodox Christians do the Divine Liturgy, but as a brutal humiliation ritual: making them sing Soviet propaganda songs instead of hymns, eat feces for Communion, that kind of thing. When you're imprisoned in a gulag, there's no luxury of prayer books or Scripture to reference; that's why you keep it in your mind and in your heart, so that no oppressor can ever take it away from you.
Even when I get slung propaganda in my face every single day, I still have my ways of fighting back and maintaining sanity in the face of these horrendous and cognitively destructive demoralization campaigns. I might not know the specifics of them—who is funding them, their exact interests, the ends behind the means—but I've been through enough of it to know I can handle it. When I start thinking the TV's talking to me, thinking I'm being followed, or hallucinating—I can lean on the prayers in my mind; perhaps not to make the pain go away, but at least to give me comfort in handling the woes of this mind I've been given. At the very least, I can use the energy I have to produce something useful, something that shows there's more to life than banal, destructive pieces of media. An admonition? A declaration of some kind? I'm not sure.
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