The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers

An actor reads from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers:

An elder said: “A man who flees the world is like a ripe grape; but he who is in the midst of men is like an unripe one.”

A second actor reads:

An elder said: “The prophets made the books; our fathers came and practiced them. Those who came after those learned them by heart. Then there came this generation; they wrote them out, then set them in the niches, unused.”

A third actor reads:

An elder said: “Either run away and escape from men or mock the world and men by playing the fool most of the time.”

A fourth actor reads:

An elder was asked: “Why am I afraid when I walk about in the desert?” “Now you are alive,” he replied.

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Host Aaron Henne: Welcome to Episode Five of the third season of theatre dybbuk’s The Dybbukast. I'm Aaron Henne, artistic director of theatre dybbuk. We're happy to present the third in our five-episode series in partnership with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. As part of exploring the diverse interests of the NEJS Department, in this episode, we'll be investigating a text from the beginnings of Christian monasticism in the Byzantine period. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers is a collection of short stories and sayings from and about monks centered in Northern Egypt in the fourth century CE that were recorded in the fifth and sixth centuries. You heard actors from theatre dybbuk read selections from The Sayings at the top. They will continue to read from the collection throughout the episode. Dr. Darlene Brooks Hedstrom, the Myra and Robert Kraft and Jacob Hiatt Associate Professor of Christian Studies, takes us through the ways in which the collection was developed, the influence it has had, and its intersections with various faith traditions.

And now, Season Three, Episode Five: “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers.”

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Dr. Darlene Brooks Hedstrom: The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers is a really unique collection of Christian literature that dates from the fifth and sixth centuries in terms of its written form, reflecting the experiences and stories of the fourth century, and sort of the earliest century of monasticism. Now the stories themselves range from a simple sentence in terms of a religious statement or a religious instruction — sometimes a rebuke — to very long stories that are small vignettes that have many characters.

Actor 2: An elder saw somebody laughing and he said to him: “We have to give an account of our entire life before heaven and earth — and you are laughing?”

Darlene: Even though it has a history that develops in the ancient Mediterranean world, it's still read today by monks around the world. So I've been with monks in Egypt at various monasteries to talk about The Desert Fathers and Mothers. I've been with monks in Ohio sitting down for a meal, and then also with female monks living in a rural monastery in the hills of Kentucky.

Actor 1: An elder said: “The bee makes honey wherever it goes; likewise the monk carries out the work of God wherever he goes.”

Darlene: The collection itself really has three different forms. So the first form is one that is called the alphabetic form, or alphabetical collection. The alphabetic collection is a collection of the sayings organized alphabetically according to the Greek alphabet. And within that collection, the stories are just known by the fathers, whose name, for example, begins with alpha or with “a”. It doesn't have a particular structure.

Actor 3: Abba Arsenius used to say that one hour’s sleep is enough for a monk if he is a good fighter.

Darlene: A second collection is called the systematic collection. And that one, we actually have a prologue in which the editor of the sayings stipulates that it was really hard for monks to remember all these great ideas and all these wonderful solutions for how to live the monastic life. And so they needed some way to understand it. And so it's divided by theme. We have categories like how to deal with sexual desire. We have chapters about how to deal with self-control, meaning how to control one's thoughts, how to control one's opinions, how to control one's desire for food. We also see discussions about humility and how to guard yourself about judgment of others.

Actor 3: Abba Joseph asked Abba Poemen: “Tell me how I can become a monk.” Said the elder to him: “If you want to find repose here and in the age to come, say in every situation, ‘I, who am I?’ and do not pass judgment on anybody.”

Darlene: We also see a chapter in sayings that deal with how to pray without ceasing. This is a desire that a lot of monks have that no matter what you're doing, no matter where you are, no matter what you're involved with, you should be praying continuously. And how does one do that?

Actor 2: An elder was asked: “What is ‘to pray without ceasing’?”, and he replied: “It is the petition sent up to God from the very foundation of the heart, requesting what is appropriate. For it is not only when we stand for prayer that we are praying. True prayer is when you can pray all the time within yourself.”

Darlene: There's also practical things about how to be a monk, how to live virtuously, how to mind your own business — although it's not expressed that way, but that's what it's about — of your monasticism is not my monasticism and don't cause problems for someone else.

Actor 1: One of the fathers wept bitterly when he saw somebody sinning, saying: “Him today; me tomorrow.”

Darlene: It also has, interspersed with all that, discussions about the importance of memorizing and reciting scripture, but also not getting caught up in heresy or getting caught up in theological debates.

Actor 4: An elder was asked: “What is the monk’s task?” “Discretion,” he replied.

Darlene: And then there is a third collection, which is made up of anonymous sayings in which we don't know who the monks are. They are not named. Sometimes names of other monks appear in the stories as different characters.

Actor 3: There was an elder in the district of the Thebaid named Hierax who had lived for about ninety years. Wishing to cast him into accidie through his longevity, the demons set upon him one day, saying: “What are you going to do, elder, for you have another fifty years to live?” In answer, he said to them: “You have greatly distressed me, because I made preparations for two hundred years,” and they went away from him, howling.

Darlene: So we have 114 sayings that are attributed to male monks, and then we have three named female monks. So we have a collection of 117, and then we have numerous unnamed monks. Some of the three collections, they overlap in some of the sayings, but they don't all have the same materials. So it's a really rich and diverse collection.

Actor 2: An elder said that strife betrays a man to anger, anger to blindness, and blindness makes him do all manner of evil.

Actor 3: An elder said: “Let no monk who drinks more than three cups of wine pray for me.”

Actor 4: An elder said: “A little absinthe will spoil a pot of honey, and corporal sin draws one away from the Kingdom of Heaven and dispatches one to Gehenna. Humble monk, flee from corporal sin.”

Actor 1: An elder said that the fathers entered within by harshness, but we enter by gentleness if we are able to do so.

Darlene: Understanding how The Sayings came about is really interesting detective work because the collection suggests that it's about individuals who are kind of the founders of the monastic movement. So one of the key characters is somebody named Anthony, or Anthony of Egypt. He’s considered the father of Egyptian monasticism

Actor 3: Abba Anthony said: “I no longer fear God, but I love Him. For love casts out fear.”

Darlene: And he's very popular. He's well known throughout Eastern and Western Christianity because of a biography that was written about him in the middle of the fourth century, shortly after he died, by a very famous bishop from Alexandria named Athanasius. The biography or the life of Anthony really set the stage for how monks would see themselves following in the footsteps of Anthony. And some of the key themes would be that Anthony was wealthy, and he gave away his property. He also placed his sister in a monastic community with other female practitioners. And then he went and spent some time with another monk to sort of learn what he wanted to be doing. And then eventually he separated himself to live alone. And he did that for several decades before having a couple assistants with him to tend with him and learn from him. And then he periodically made trips to speak with other monks in nearby areas. And the biography of Anthony also provided the stage for understanding the Egyptian deserts as a very important religious landscape in which monks could live. So The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers are looking at the other individuals who not only followed Anthony into the desert, in his area, but started their communities in other areas; in the area of Nitria, or in Kellia or in Scetis, all — those three are located in Northern Egypt.

Actor 4: Some monks of Scetis came one day to visit Amma Sarah. She offered them a small basket of fruit. They left the good fruit and ate the bad. So she said to them: “You are true monks of Scetis.”

Darlene: When we think about early monasticism, if we just rely upon The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, we think, okay, monks are living alone in these very small caves or in these small cells that they can make out of mud bricks in a day, that they don't have a lot of things because they are talking about how you should get rid of things that you own and not be attached to things. And yet we also hear that they have books, that they have goods.

Actor 1: Abba Eulogius of the ninth mile post from Alexandria used to say that there was a brother living at the cells who, having spent twenty years applying himself day and night to reading, one day got up and sold all the books he possessed and, taking his sheepskin, went off to the inner desert. Abba Isaac met him and said to him: “Where are you going, my son?” “I have spent twenty years only hearing the words of the sacred books, Father,” the brother answered him, “and now I finally want to make a start on putting into action what I have heard from the books.” The elder offered a prayer for him and dismissed him.

Darlene: The monks are apart, meaning they're away from the world. They're on the margins. They're in the abandoned villages or they're on the borders of these communities, but they're also part of the world that they are spatially moving themselves a little bit away from. At least in terms of the archeological evidence that we have for these monastic communities, they're not in the remote desert. They are in a very near desert. And so the monks are really in this very interesting space of being separate, but still being a part of this world. And you can see this in the sayings where they're on their way to town and they're selling their baskets and their mats that they've made during their meditation. But they need to sell those in order to get food or to provide for themselves and their community.

Actor 1: One of the fathers went off to the city to sell his handiwork. He was moved to compassion at the sight of a naked pauper and gave him his own levitôn, but the pauper went and sold it. The elder was distressed when he learnt what he had done and regretted that he had given him the garment. Then, that night, Christ appeared to the elder in a dream wearing the levitôn and said to him: “Do not be distressed for see: I am wearing what you gave me.”

Darlene: There was an idea that living in the desert was really sort of the deepest commitment, sort of the hardcore commitment to living the monastic life. And a lot of monks, during the time in which the stories were written down, were feeling like they lost some of the purity of the first decades of the monastic movement. And they sort of were longing for the past; a time when things were simpler and one was really committed to these ideas. So the stories from the earliest monks and nuns became ways of sort of replicating the past and creating a memory of what we used to be and what we might be again if we're able to sort of focus on the pure elements of what it means to be a monk.

Actor 2: One of the elders said: “At first, we used to assemble together and speak of spiritual benefit; we became as choirs —choirs of angels — and were being lifted up to heaven. Now, we assemble together and come to backbiting, dragging each other down into the abyss.”

Darlene: The monasticism that's starting to become apparent in the fifth and sixth centuries is one in which we're starting to see greater wealth and greater authority within monastic communities. Archeologically, we're starting to see monasteries that are purpose-built. So monasteries that have churches, they have painted cells. They are engaged in correspondence that they are traveling between communities. They're involved in education. We have elites who are coming to visit the monasteries. And then sometimes particular monastic communities are getting caught up in some theological controversies. And so some monks are having to flee and be refugees in other communities. We have sometimes some bishops who are getting into trouble with ecclesiastical authorities or political authorities, and they're actually also seeking refuge in some of these monastic communities. Additionally, we know that non-monastic Christians are traveling to these monasteries. They're going there sometimes for medical care. We can see this in some of our documentary sources. They're going there for prayer. We know that we have lots of merchants who are moving back and forth between monastic communities, bringing palm fibers for monks so that they can weave their mats. We know that they are participating in preparing prayers, and so they really are, in many ways, sort of at the center of their communities, and that they're playing a very important role in education and transmission of these holy texts, but then also in the daily lives of the people around them.

Actor 3: A monk was working on a day when a martyr was being commemorated. Another monk saw him and said: “Is it possible that you are working today?” He said to him: “On this day the servant of God was tortured bearing witness to his faith and was beaten; ought not I too make a little effort at work today?”

Darlene: The relationship between the Church, if we could use that phrase, and the monastic movement is really complicated, and it really does depend upon where we are in the Byzantine world, which is sort of encompassing a large area of the Mediterranean up until we have the Arab conquest in the early seventh century. So everything that I'm kind of talking about is really within the framework of the Byzantine Empire, but the Church is really fragmented in some ways because you have different regional patriarchs, and then the monks themselves are really kind of trying to sidestep a lot of that authority. We know from other monastic literature that monks are resisting being pulled into ecclesiastical authority because then somebody's really over them.

Actor 4: There was an elder on the Jordan who entered a cave in the heat of the day and found a lion inside. It began grinding its teeth and roaring but the elder said to it: “Why get upset? This is a place with room for you and me. Get up and leave if you do not like it.” Unable to tolerate this, the lion went out.

Darlene: One of the things that I find so fascinating about The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers for my work as an archeologist and a historian is not necessarily the theological history that is often how they are regarded, or in terms of the biographies of the particular monks, whether male or female, that are identified in the text. What's found in this very rich and diverse collection are reflections of humans struggling in their religious tradition and in their faith, and figuring out how to be in community with others. So, for example, there's a story from the anonymous sayings that's one of my favorites because it's about a brick, and it goes like this:

Actor 2: Two elders were staying with each other and never quarreled. Said the one to the other: “Let us quarrel the way people do.” In answer, the other one said to him: “I don’t know how a quarrel begins,” but he said: “Look, I am putting a brick between us and saying it is mine; you are to say, ‘No, it is mine,’ and that is how it begins.” They did so and one of them said: “That is mine,” and the other one said: “No, it is mine,” and the first one said in reply: “Yes indeed; take it and go,” and off they went, finding nothing to quarrel with each other about.

Darlene: This saying is interesting to me because not only does it reflect something that I'm sure everyone who hears it can identify at some moment in their life, in which there's been a similar conversation about something perhaps frivolous. But it's also showing how there is this engagement with living in community with one another and being willing to explore what it means to live with somebody, and to try and understand who they are and how they might behave and act with each other.

Another saying that I think is fairly interesting is about living in community versus living alone.

Actor 3: An elder was asked: “How can a man live alone?” and in answer he said: “Unless an athlete spar with many, he cannot learn the skill of winning so that in this way he may be able to fight in single combat with the adversary. So too the monk; unless he be trained with brothers and learn the skill of counteracting bad thoughts, he cannot live alone nor can he withstand his bad thoughts.”

Darlene: This is a saying that reflects to me the ways in which monks are very attuned to the psychology and sort of anthropology of living together, and thinking about what it means to situate yourself in a world in which you are facing yourself, and that you are recognizing and you are coming to terms with what are your challenges in terms of living a life that's dedicated to God. What are the challenges that you have, and that there's benefit to living with others; that sometimes living alone is a way to escape accountability.

Actor 3: An elder said that one who lives in obedience to a spiritual father has a greater reward than one who retires into the desert, all alone.

Darlene: So one of the surprising stories, and there's not many of them within The Sayings of the Desert Fathers — there are a few that deal with the fact that male monks had nocturnal emissions. The question becomes: is that monk then allowed to participate in the Eucharist because they have a bodily expression of desire? And so, as the monks are struggling with this, they're asking the question, if this happens, does that mean that you are not clean, that you are sinning? Or is it an expression of a natural function of the body? If you're aware of it, does that mean that you have sinned? If it is something that happens during sleep, does that mean it is something that is out of your control?

Actor 1: An elder was asked about having a wet dream, as if it were sexual intercourse with a woman or with oneself alone, and he answered: “Pay no attention to it whatsoever, but think of yourself as having wiped your nose. For, if while you are walking around in public, you see a cook-shop, and come near to it as you are passing, and get something of the smell of the meat, have you eaten it or not? Of course not, you will say. Likewise, neither will a wet dream impose any defilement on you. If, however, the enemy sees you apprehensive, he will attack even more. But take care not to give in to the desire when you return to consciousness.”

Darlene: We see monks struggling with porneia, which is sort of excessive desire, and, really, recognition that one has urges. And how do they grapple with that? How do they fight that in their physical body? And how do they fight that in their spiritual mind?

Actor 2: They recounted of a certain elder that he once desired a small cucumber. He took it and hung it up where he could see it. He was not overcome by the desire, but rather repented, chastening himself for having even had the desire at all.

Darlene: The authors and collectors recognize that both men and women struggle with sexual desire.

Actor 4: It was related of Amma Sarah that for thirteen years she waged warfare against the demon of fornication. She never prayed that the warfare should cease but she said: “O God, give me strength.”

Darlene: Something that's unique, I would say, to the women's experience is the fact that we have stories of male monks trying to undercut them or perhaps shame them for being women. Because within this world, women, in general, within the ancient Mediterranean Christian world, are viewed to be lesser men, right? Because they have not been born male. And so there's some men that come up to Sarah, and there's a couple sayings where she's very smart back to them, and they come to her, and they say, let’s — let's humiliate her.

Actor 4: Another time, two old men, great anchorites, came to the district of Pelusia to visit her. When they arrived, one said to the other: “Let us humiliate this old woman.” So they said to her: “Be careful not to become conceited, thinking to yourself, ‘Look how anchorites are coming to see me, a mere woman.’” But Amma Sarah said to them: “According to nature, I am a woman, but not according to my thoughts.”

Darlene: And so she sort of snaps and claps back at them, if you will, and says, look, you know, you're behaving like women. I'm actually more of a male than you are.

Actor 4: She also said to the brothers: “It is I who am a man, you are women.”

Darlene: And so this idea that there's a recognition that women are not at the same level as men, that they could not achieve the same level of piety, is kind of here in some of these sayings of the women. But it's also clear that they are highly valued in terms of the things that they did.

Actor 4: Amma Sarah said: “If I prayed to God that all men should approve of my conduct, I should find myself a penitent at the door of each one, but I shall rather pray that my heart may be pure towards all.”

Darlene: And then there's numerous stories within the males’ accounts of women trying to lead men astray, women who are in their mind's eye rather than sort of physically — that even sort of seeing a footprint of a woman might make another monk fall into temptation. And so you can see there's this real kind of anxiety around being near women.

Actor 3: They said of an elder that, when he came across a woman’s footprint on the road as he walked along, he covered it up, saying: “In case a brother sees it and has an attack of temptation.”

Darlene: And yet, if you read the stories in a different angle, you see that they must be surrounded by women all the time. That, in fact, because there’re people visiting, there's somebody visiting somebody else, that their family members are coming, that they're really struggling with this idea that they've set up for themselves of separation from the other sex or gender, and how to do that.

Actor 2: A monk who encountered some nuns on the road withdrew from the road. Their leader said to him: “If you were a perfect monk you would not have noticed that we are women.”

Darlene: A lot of these stories are clearly embedded within Egypt and its landscape, but also within — more specifically within Northern Egypt where we have Alexandria as the major metropolitan center. And, as a space with the largest Jewish community outside of Israel, we start to see the fact that this is a space in which monks are potentially interacting with Jewish communities. And then there's a shared educational value because of Alexandria as a center for Christian education and interaction with Jewish thinkers. Philo of Alexandria is from this region, and of course he predates these collections, but one of the things that he talks about are Jews who are actually leaving the city and living in the nearby desert outside of Alexandria so that they can create a community that is separate from the urban environment. And there they are practicing communal eating. They have built their own structures. The Greek term that he uses for that is monastery, and, for a long time, early monastic scholars thought about this being sort of a direct line, but monastery itself is not an expressly Christian word. It's simply a space where one lives alone, and only later does it take on Christian meaning.

Actor 4: Abba Hyperechios said: “Humble-mindedness is a tree of life raised up on high.”

Darlene: The idea that one would move outside of the urban area and move to the fringe and to the borders is something that is not unique to Christianity. And so we see this tradition talked about with Philo of Alexandria and the Therapeutae. We see this even earlier with some of the Greco-Roman philosophers who had a sense of withdrawing and keeping oneself separated from the emotions and the tensions that come with living in communities. And so I do think there's a very Egyptian element, in which there's a diverse religious landscape in which these traditions were actually developing.

Actor 2: If your mind tells you to make a variety of dishes for a feast, do not listen to it, since you are celebrating the feast in the Jewish way; for they prepare such things. Sorrow and tears are good food for a monk.

Darlene: Other monastic literature from this time is talking about travels to these monks. For example, monks that are living on the Mount of Olives are traveling to Egypt because they really want to learn sort of at the center.

If we look at Buddhist monasticism, we see something very similar happening several generations after the advent of Buddhist monasticism, in which monks are leaving China and going down to Nepal to study, or we see monks leaving from Japan, going to China because China then has a collection of very famous Buddhist texts.

So there's a sense that there’s a center and a place.

Even today, there are monks from the Franciscan order, from the Benedictine order, Christians who are not monks but who are interested in what we might call desert spirituality, will travel to Egypt to spend time with some of the existing monastic communities to try to recapture that sense of, does the desert kind of cultivate a sense of spirituality that can't be found in another landscape?

Actor 3: An elder dwelt in the desert for many years, toiling mightily. Some brothers who were visiting him said in their amazement: “How can you stand living in this place, Abba?” But he said: “The entire time of the labor I have accomplished does not amount to one hour of punishment.”

Darlene: I first started reading The Desert Fathers when I was in graduate school, and I was interested in the archeology of monastic spaces in Egypt. And I was struck by a saying by Father Moses:

Actor 1: A brother came to Scetis to visit Abba Moses and asked him for a word. The old man said to him: “Go sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.”

Darlene: And I thought, that's really interesting. What does that mean? And of course it was one of these perfect, one-sentence sayings that doesn't explain what it means. And I thought, wow, that's very powerful. That is talking about physical space being a teacher in some kind of way. But it also can be a metaphor that the cell — and this is also in The Sayings, there's another reference — that the cell is not a physical place, but it's a cell that's within you. It's your heart. It's the space in which you convene with God. And so while I came from a very tactile, artifactual, architectural place when I first encountered those sayings, it started to foster a sense of deep appreciation for the ways in which monks were using the environment around them to talk about what space and place could mean for spiritual life.

Actor 2: An elder said: “If one inhabits a place but does not produce the fruit of the place, the place chases him off for not performing the task of the place.”

Darlene: And so, even though the spaces that I excavate and the monasteries that I study are not necessarily at all the spaces in which the named saints from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers lived, the idea is that the memory from the fifth and sixth century thought that these spaces had some kind of spiritual power, and that it was both space — interior space and exterior space — that could do these kinds of things. And so, as I work in this area and as I've gone through my career, I keep coming back to these sources, and learning and hearing these stories in new ways.

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Aaron: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Dybbukast, “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers.” The text featured in this episode was read by Joe Jordan, Julie Lockhart, Mark McClain Wilson, and Diana Tanaka. Thank you to Dr. Darlene Brooks Hedstrom for sharing her insights. Our theme music is composed by Michael Skloff and produced by Sam K.S. Story editing was led by Julie Lockhart, with support from me, Aaron Henne. This episode was edited by Mark McClain Wilson.

Please visit us at theatredybbuk.org, where you will find links to a wide variety of materials which expand upon the episode’s explorations. And if you want to know more about theatre dybbuk’s work in general, please sign up for our mailing list on that same website. Selections from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers were taken from the alphabetical collection as translated by Benedicta Ward, and the systematic and anonymous collections edited and translated by John Wortley.

This is the third in a multi-episode series presented and produced in collaboration with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. This season of The Dybbukast is generously supported by a grant from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah. The Dybbukast is produced by theatre dybbuk.

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Actor 2: An elder said: “I prefer defeat with humble-mindedness to victory with arrogance.”

Actor 1: An elder said: “Our task is to burn wood.”

Actor 3: An elder said: “If, humbling yourself, you say to somebody: ‘Forgive me,’ you incinerate the demons.”

Actor 4: An elder said: “Know the good life by experience and do not fear it as something impossible.”