The following chapter in Hartgrove’s book warns, “Buckle Up!”
After encouraging nurturing roots of love, he immediately offers that you can expect spiritual challenges. His first reference retells the story of the desert monastics’ “describing the ‘noonday devil’ who attacks after one commits to stay and begins to feel the heat of high noon.”
This is where the book’s subtitle, “Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture,” gets highlighted. To stay, to root, to pursue stability “against the seas of constant change makes us susceptible to temptations we would not otherwise have occasion to know.”
The practice of stability cannot be reduced to a quick fix for the spiritual anxiety of a placeless people. It is a process. It takes time…To persevere in the process that leads to real growth, we must learn to name and resist the midday demons.
These are the three midday demons:
- Ambition’s Whisper
- Boredom’s Rut
- Vainglory’s Delusion
I’m quite familiar with the first two. They often show face at high noon. Hartgrove offers several countermoves to these temptations focused on both spirit and body including physical activity, engaging community, and dying well.
This book, available on hoopla and an easy weekend read, is worthwhile. If you only read chapters four and five of this book, you will be enriched. However much you read, you’ll find yourself wiser and pondering your stability.
John Gregory 