Journey Back to Eden.pdf - St Mark Coptic Orthodox Church Chicago

60 DECEMBERfirst sold ourselves to them, they appeared to be pleasures, but themore we attained them, the less joy they gave us, because it is notthe intention of the Evil One to give human beings pleasure. And ifhe should tempt us to pleasure, he would do so only by giving usthe minimum of it—even just the illusion of it. So the whole worldwill be filled one day with people appearing to be happy, appearingto enjoy all of their wealth and possessions. Yet so unhappy andmiserable will they be, that they will not allow themselves to appearas they really are. They will lie about it and try to deceive othersabout how awful they really feel; otherwise they will feel absolutelyalone.This strikes me as a remarkably intuitive grasp of the way inwhich the world has gone, with the media fashioning for us the appropriateappearances whereby we should look happy with all thatwe have acquired. But, in fact, not only are we unhappy, we are unableto allow anyone to know it; we are unable to show how hollowall of this has become. This is the new mythology, the new dogmathat must not be violated. TV commercials do nothing so much asserve up momentary vignettes of seemingly happy people, made soby the endless acquisition of whatever the market is promoting. Icome from a culture where even people of faith long to be enslavedby the markets and the media, not unlike the Hebrews who longedto return to slavery while on their exodus journey.Abuna Sidrak said that the Evil One traditionally appeared tothe monks in the desert under three forms: the beast, a woman, oran image suggesting some kind of phantom or ghost-like apparition.The beast, he said, was designed to instill fear; the womanwas designed to tempt us with our own weaknesses. And, in thecase of the phantom-like images, the Evil One’s intention was toconfuse us, to befuddle us, to make us unsure of what is real, whatis true.He also noted that the Evil One sometimes simply sends us evilpeople to harass us. Sometimes people carry with them intimationsof evil, yet we mustn’t necessarily blame them per se, since Godhas permitted it for us to be tested. He said that the Wadi Natrounhas been called “the valley of devils” for a long time by the monks.Ah, that they should call their own home so! The devils in the valleyof the Wadi Natroun no longer appear so much in images toconfuse or tempt us. They sometimes appear in confreres, rather,who unwittingly act as agents to upset or anger or sadden us. This