"We must learn not only to accept our neighbour, but also to accept ourselves; we tend too easily to consider that all that we like in ourselves is our true self, while all that we and others find ugly is only accidental. I am the real, attractive self, circumstances are distorting my best intentions, queering the pitch of my most perfect impulses. We might usefully remember a page from the correspondence of one of the Russian staretz, Macarius of Optina, taken from an exchange of letters he had with a merchant of St Petersburg: 'My maid has left me and my friends recommend a village girl to replace her--what do you advise me to do? Shall I hire her or not?' 'Yes', answered the staretz. After a while his correspondent writes again. 'Father, allow me to dismiss her, she is a real demon, since she has come I spend my time in rage and fury and have lost all control over myself!' And the staretz replies: 'Take care not to dismiss her, she is an angel whom God has sent to you to make you see how much anger was hidden within you, which the previous maid had never been able to reveal to you.' So it is not circumstances that make shadows darken our souls, nor is it God's fault, although we accuse him all the time. How often have I heard people say 'Here are my sins', then stop a moment to take a breath and begin a long discourse to the effect that had not God afflicted them with such a hard life, they would not sin so much. 'Of course', they would say, 'I am in the wrong, but what can I do with such a son-in-law, my rheumatism or the Russian revolution?' And more then once I suggested, before reading a prayer of absolution, that peace between God and man was a two-way traffic, and I asked whether the penitent was prepared to forgive God all his misdeeds, all the wrong he had done, all the circumstances which prevented this good Christian from being a saint. People do not like this, and yet, unless we take full responsibility for the way we face our heredity, our situation, our God and ourselves, we shall never be able to face more than a small section of our life and self. If we want to pass a true and balanced judgement on ourselves we must consider ourselves as a whole, in our entirety."The passage reminds me a bit of Father Zosima in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, who urges the protagonist, Alyosha, to accept responsibility for sins of the whole world. Perhaps Zosima's advice is too extreme, but both make the essential point that I must take responsibility for the wrong that is within me, if I am to be forgiven that wrong.
Here is another passage on discipline, which needs much unpacking, but I will let stand without comment:
"Doing the will of God is a discipline in the best sense of the word. It is a test of our loyalty, of our fidelity to Christ. It is by doing in ever detail, at every moment, to the utmost of our power, as perfectly as we can, with the greatest moral integrity, using our intelligence, our imagination, our will, our skill, our experience, that we can gradually learn to be strictly, earnestly obedient to the Lord God. Unless we do this our discipleship is an illusion and all our life of discipline, when it is an act of self-imposed rules in which we delight, which makes us proud and self-satisfied, leaves us nowhere, because the essential momentum of our discipleship is the ability in this process of silence and listening, to reject our self, to allow the Lord Christ to be our mind, our will and our heart. Unless we renounce ourselves and accept his life in place of our life, unless we aim at what St Paul defines as 'it is no longer I but Christ who lives in me', we shall never be either disciplined or disciples."
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