Death to the world without prayer is simply death.

The past few days have been hard. I’m struggling against depression, struggling against hating people in the world as opposed to the world itself, struggling against apathy in my schoolwork, struggling against spiritual apathy, struggling against nihilistic thoughts that maybe this life means nothing…

I know I must be getting something wrong because I am not getting any closer to God. I still have little desire to pray, for all my obsessing over suffering — what good is that suffering if it does not draw me to prayer? And what is that suffering, anyway? It seems to be entirely self-inflicted, because it’s all in my mind. I really have little or nothing in my life that is not going well for me. The retort to that in my mind, however, is that the world would see that I’m doing just fine, but spiritually I am not. Maybe there’s some truth in that. I’m not sure anymore. And I won’t be sure unless I start praying more.

I have a prayer rope around my wrist, and I use it once in awhile. I’m thinking I should probably use it more often if I want all of my endless ponderings to have any kind of meaning… I don’t know why I’m so into reading about Orthodox spirituality, and thinking on how to apply that to the question of how to live my life, if I’m not going to do anything with it. I have established something of a prayer rule for myself, but I only follow it off-and-on — that needs to change.

When I first decided to become Orthodox, I had in my mind that the meaning of life is theosis. Now, that answer seems simplistic; it’s far easier said than done. Am I holier now than I was a year ago? It’s probably not for me to say, but I feel little progress has been made. Sure, outwardly I seem a lot different, but am I? I judge the world and everyone in it just as harshly as I did in the height of my black metal days. That alone is a severe problem.

Theosis… union with God, full communion with Him, just as He intended when we humans were created. So why don’t I pray? What else is prayer but one of the greatest gifts in being drawn closer to Him? It’s ridiculous if I think about it for long… an Orthodox convert all about how this life is filled with suffering and affliction and how we must utterly die to this world to live in the next, and yet this Orthodox convert cannot do the most basic of things, which is to pray to the very God he claims to put his trust in. What am I doing?

I am drawn to the monastic lifestyle. I want to die to this world thoroughly. I want nothing to do with what modern society tells me I ought to care about — money, popularity, an esteemed job, big house, lots of possessions, endless entertainment, and moral depravity. Yet, I not only want nothing to do with them, I hate them. And in so doing, I wonder if that is what makes me prone to judging those who indulge in them (ironically, I still watch some television, listen to music once in awhile, and watch movies). And furthermore, I wonder if this is residual from my black metal days, in simply hating the status quo and what society said was good, just for the sake of it. Or maybe it was some idealistic asceticism buried in my heart of stone. I don’t know.

I do know that I have a long way to go. I know I must suffer. I know I must die to the world. I know I must pray. And I know I’m missing something. The thought occurs to me that perhaps in failing to pray, I am failing to allow God to do His part in me — after all, synergy takes more than just me. And perhaps this failure to pray, this failure to allow God into all of this, is exactly why I’m getting nowhere. St. Paul rails against the people who thought that their works by themselves would save them, and perhaps I am unwittingly doing this by not focusing on prayer. This suffering and death to the world is absolutely meaningless if there is no prayer involved in it, if that prayer is not the whole basis of it all.

Maybe I’ve answered my own questions. If I try to die to this world without prayer, I simply die — there is no life in Christ in my death if I do not seek Him. St. Paul exhorts us to unceasing prayer, and countless saints through the ages took him up on this… seems to me that I ought to take that a little more seriously than I have.

I’d ask for the prayers of anyone reading this, but a story from the desert fathers just struck me — the prayers of others f0r us will do no good if we are not willing to first pray for ourselves. God grant that I might learn to pray. +++