What Now?

I can tell you, this present loss of my PhD program is unpleasant. But if I believe what I’ve said just a few posts before, this, too, is God’s Providence.

But what does that mean? And now what?

This PhD has lived in me, from the time of an idea and a desire, since I was in college, which is to say, for more than 16 years. It has been a live and going concern since acceptance in Spring 2001. It is not a path I took up lightly. I seriously considered my skills, talents, abilities (what have you). I sought counsel and feedback from friends, family and trusted mentors. I prayed about it. And all of that was positive: yes, go forward.

But now it is clear: stop. Do not go forward.

To say that my identity has been wrapped up in this thing is both saying too much and yet is speaking a truth. I have viewed myself, for this decade and a half and more, as an academic, or, perhaps less pejoratively, as a scholar, a professor. And yet, it is not as though I haven’t had a sense of self that was larger, much larger, than just this narrow concern. I have been a husband for fourteen of those sixteen years. I have been a father for four. And there is my investigation and entry into Orthodoxy for the last five to seven years. But still and all, I have seen myself as (proleptically) “Dr. Healy.”

But now I am being told (and to be clear, I am not being asked): Let go. Give it up. Put it up there on the altar. And. Walk. Away.

I suppose if I were a more spiritual man, I could derive some consolation from the fact that both my patron saints walked away from academia. Having just read, as I do each year in the fall, the biography of Fr. Seraphim Rose, I am reminded of his 1961 letter to his parents.

It’s time that I chose the academic life in the first place, because God gave me a mind to serve Him with, and the academic world is where the mind is supposed to be used. But after eight or nine years I know well enough what goes on in the universities. The mind is respected by only a few of the “old-fashioned” professors, who will soon have died out. For the rest, it’s a matter of making money, getting a secure place in life—and using the mind as a kind of toy, doing clever tricks with it and getting paid for it, like circus clowns. The love of truth has vanished from people today; those who have minds have to prostitute their talents to get along. I find this difficult to do, because I have too great a love of truth. The academic world for me is just another job; but I am not going to make myself a slave to it. If I am going to serve God in this world, and so keep from making my life a total failure, I will have to do it outside the academic world. (Letter to his parents, 14 June 1961)

But I was reading (as I do regularly) from the life of St. Benedict, and just this morning was confronted once again with this passage (which, unsurprisingly, jumped out at me):

Saint Benedict was born in the town of Nursia, a small city in the Italian province of Umbria, but he was sent to Rome to study the worldly sciences of his time. Yet, perceiving a multitude of profligates in the pagan schools he attended, and how they lived according to their lustful passions, he departed thence, fearing lest on account of a little book-learning he destroy the great understanding of his soul, and lest, having debauched himself with wanton people, he fall headlong into the abyss of sin. Thus, he left school an unlettered wised man and a wise fool, and disdained superficial philosophy so as to preserve his inner chastity. [St. Dmitri’s life of Saint Benedict (tr by Isaac E. Lambertson) from The Menology of St. Dmitri of Rostov, vol. VII (March)]

Of course, both my patrons found their salvation to lead them to the monastic desert where, as St. Benedict’s life relates, he lived for three years unknown to anyone, and, in the case of Fr Seraphim, he lived with his co-struggler, Abbot Herman, for about three or four years also, in a similar state of anonymity. Since I am a married father of two, I will not soon be seeking the monastic desert, to say the least.

But given that these are my patrons, I suppose my question should be what can I take of their examples for my struggle for salvation?

For Fr Seraphim, there was a clear discernment that the academy no longer trades in truth, except for individuals or small groups. If that was true 46 years ago, how much more true has it become today? But it wasn’t simply an intellectual exercise that Fr Seraphim was after, this was a matter of service to God. How was Fr Seraphim to struggle for his salvation? What would that look like?

For St Benedict, it was a clear discernment that the life of the academy was given over to the passions. Similarly, if that was true some 1500 years ago, how much more true has it become today with the academy’s accommodation to all forms of passionate behavior (and a similar resistance to ascetical living), particularly that of pride and arrogance, hatred, anger, sexual sins, and the rejection of all authority (except for the threat of power). And again, the point was, for St. Benedict, what was he going to do to save his soul? He was going to have to leave the academy.

It is difficult to accept that, for whatever reason, even if I was correct to head to the academy, right now, by providence, I must leave the academy so as to save my soul. This is a mystery to me. If I could save my soul within the academy for a season, how is it that the salvation of my soul now leads out of the academy? I do not know. I am puzzled.

Of course there are many ways to come to some possible explanations. Perhaps this has only been a preparation for what is next to come, and I have now all the preparation God wants me to have. Perhaps in the multitudinous synergy of human choices and acts, it is now the case that some future event or set of circumstances is going to require what having a life of the academy would prohibit or truncate. Maybe there is a coming opportunity I might otherwise miss or turn down if I were “distracted” by completing my program.

Who knows? At this point it is idle speculation.

What does now linger in the remains of this day is to face head on this loss, without shirking or avoiding it. To accept this as God’s providential will. And to trust him in all things for my salvation.

I have taken to praying the following prayer every morning in the last seven days. It is a challenging one, to be sure.

O Lord, grant me to greet the coming day in peace. Help me in all things to rely upon thy holy will. In every hour of the day reveal thy will to me. Bless my dealings with all who surround me. Teach me to treat all that comes to me throughout the day with peace of soul, and with firm conviction that thy will governs all. In all my deeds and words guide my thoughts and feelings. In unforeseen events let me not forget that all are sent by thee. Teach me to act firmly and wisely, without embittering and embarrassing others. Give me strength to bear the fatigue of the coming day with all that it shall bring. Direct my will, teach me to pray, pray thou thyself in me. Amen. [from A Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayers (SVS Press, 1983), p. 20]