Ancient Wisdom and Modern Strangers

What happens when stability crumbles?

Almost immediately after Jesus points his disciples to the widow’s humble offering, they turn their attention to the temple’s grandeur. “Look at the size of those stones!” they marvel. But Jesus shifts their gaze again: “Not one stone will be left upon another.” Only when the disciples have gained some distance from the temple can they entertain this possibility: “Tell us, when will this be?” And with some distance, ancient wisdom offers us fresh insight today.

This Gospel moment forces a crucial question: What captivates our attention and secures our sense of stability? And what happens when those things crumble?

Interestingly, Jesus is less concerned with the institution’s collapse and more concerned with the dangers of a wandering heart. They focus on the calamity of the world; Jesus points to the vacuums such calamities create—vacuums that tempt us to cling to false securities like political heroes, ideologies, or fleeting comforts. They want to know when the world will shake; and he wants to know where our hearts go when it inevitably does.

Where does your heart go when the world shakes?

We head into the new year anticipating a new presidential administration. This major transition is world-shaking—its ramifications reverberate across the globe’s geo-political fabric. For some, this is a calamitous time.

Jesus warns us to be careful during such transitions. Be cautious of the wayward heart, which tends to cling to heroes and movements that promise easy answers at the cost of losing neighborliness. As the hymn reminds us, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.” Our hearts are designed to be given away, constantly seeking something to love and serve. And often, history shows us that the powerless and vulnerable—the stranger, the foreigner, the outlier—suffer most when a nation loses its heart.

Ancient Wisdom of Detachment

I’ve found some ancient wisdom when dealing with the wayward heart. Paradoxically, a healthy community requires the spiritual practice of detachment. Detachment, or apatheia as the Desert Mothers and Fathers called it, doesn’t mean indifference or lack of care. It’s about freedom—the ability to see and steward our desires without being ruled by them. It’s about noticing the storm within us, examining the source of what we feel, and being brave enough to ask if what we feel really aligns with reality—or are we reacting to something that isn’t “out there” but is actually “within us.”

Unfortunately, our wayward passions express themselves in one of two ways, according to Eastern Christian traditions:

• Aggression: we push things or people away, driven by a fear that the world is going to invade, violate, or absorb us.
• Desire: we seek to consume the other, make them into our image, make what is “out there” a part of us, serve our needs, and serve our agendas.

Ouch. Two of our most instinctual reflexes laid bare in broad daylight. Which one do you think captures the American ethos at this moment?

Called to Something Different through Ancient Wisdom

Can we imagine a community where everyone—young and old, rich and poor, sick and healthy, foreigner and friend—contributes to the flourishing of others without erasing or possessing them?

We open ourselves to transformation when we stop trying to control or eliminate. As the early Christians proclaimed: Vita mutatur, non tollitur—life is changed, not ended. The ancient wisdom of detachment means I don’t need to make the stranger in my image or destroy them to find peace. When the world shakes, I don’t need to sacrifice neighborliness. I can critique without consuming, hold differences without damning, and seek life while letting go of the rest.

This is the fruit of Christian maturity: learning to live in freedom, to give and receive life’s gifts without grasping. This is the church at its best—a community of open hearts flourishing together in the freedom of God’s love.