Introduction:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

Part 7:

Part 8:

Part 9:

Discern the straits where beetling cliffs arise,
and roaring breakers pound the jagged stone; 
no crew can clear the clashing rocks alive— 
the choice is Scylla’s maw or Charybdis’ moan.

Discern the captain bent on safe command,
who weighs his words and boasts about the past;
he arms himself in silence, spears in hand,
and makes his men row on, their hearts aghast.

Discern as six strong men are snatched away,
flailing upward, shrieking captain’s name;
his withheld warning sealed their doom that day—
heart wrenched beneath the burden of his shame.

Discern the good green island of the Sun 
where sacred cattle graze to hearts’ content; 
and now the captain’s cautious words are shunned, 
his crew demands a break; their strength is spent. 

Discern the month-long gale that holds them fast, 
the gnawing hunger, ever growing gloom; 
with captain gone they break their oath at last— 
and foolishly, while praying, seal their doom. 

Discern the deed that cannot be undone,
the feasting that will give way to regret; 
the punishment demanded by the Sun, 
the squalls and lightning bolts that must be met. 

Discern the lone man clutching keel and mast, 
blown back to straits he thought he’d left behind; 
achievement’s shortcuts led him back at last— 
to face the truths he’d put out of his mind.

Discern the idol of the grand design 
that bends the truth to reach a noble end; 
deceit disguised as wisdom, swift and fine, 
has left the captain shipwrecked, without friend.

Discern the Goodness born of Spirit’s grace,
that speaks the truth in full and walks in light; 
the Lord who gave himself to take our place,  
and whispers “do not fear” in darkest night. 

A lesson on Goodness - The Antidote to Deceit

Odysseus and his crew have made it past the Sirens’ spellbinding song, thanks to Circe’s advice. And so they have avoided the inevitable shipwreck of those who steer toward sympathy without boundaries. But there are more dangers ahead, as Circe has warned:

But once your crew has rowed you past the Sirens

a choice of routes is yours. I cannot advise you

which to take, or lead you through it all —

you must decide for yourself —

but I can tell you the ways of either course.

On one side beetling cliffs shoot up, and against them

pound the huge roaring breakers of blue-eyed Amphitrite —

the Clashing Rocks they’re called by all the blissful gods.

Not even birds can escape them, no, not even the doves

that veer and fly ambrosia home to Father Zeus:

even of those the sheer Rocks always pick off one

and Father wings one more to keep the number up.

No ship of men has ever approached and slipped past —

always some disaster —big timbers and sailors’ corpses

whirled away by the waves and lethal blasts of fire. . .

The first option offers little chance of survival. As for the second:

On the other side loom two enormous crags . . .

One thrusts into the vaulting sky its jagged peak,

hooded round with a dark cloud that never leaves —

no clear bright air can ever bathe its crown,

not even in summer’s heat or harvest-time.

No man on earth could scale it, mount its crest,

not even with twenty hands and twenty feet for climbing,

the rock’s so smooth, like dressed and burnished stone.

And halfway up that cliffside stands a fog-bound cavern

gaping west toward Erebus, realm of death and darkness —

past it, great Odysseus, you should steer your ship.

No rugged young archer could hit that yawning cave

with a winged arrow shot from off the decks.

Scylla lurks inside it —the yelping horror,

yelping, no louder than any suckling pup

but she’s a grisly monster, I assure you.

No one could look on her with any joy,

not even a god who meets her face-to-face . . .

She has twelve legs, all writhing, dangling down

and six long swaying necks, a hideous head on each,

each head barbed with a triple row of fangs, thickset,

packed tight —and armed to the hilt with black death!

Holed up in the cavern’s bowels from her waist down

she shoots out her heads, out of that terrifying pit,

angling right from her nest, wildly sweeping the reefs

for dolphins, dogfish or any bigger quarry she can drag

from the thousands Amphitrite spawns in groaning seas.

No mariners yet can boast they’ve raced their ship

past Scylla’s lair without some mortal blow —

with each of her six heads she snatches up

a man from the dark-prowed craft and whisks him off.

The other crag is lower —you will see, Odysseus —

though both lie side-by-side, an arrow-shot apart.

Atop it a great fig-tree rises, shaggy with leaves,

beneath it awesome Charybdis gulps the dark water down.

Three times a day she vomits it up, three times she gulps it down,

that terror! Don’t be there when the whirlpool swallows down —

not even the earthquake god could save you from disaster.

No, hug Scylla’s crag —sail on past her —top speed!

Better by far to lose six men and keep your ship

than lose your entire crew.’

The second option is to thread the needle between the six headed monster Scylla, who is bound to take six men— and the whirlpool of Charybdis which is likely to consume the whole ship. In other words, there are no good options. Odysseus attempts to strategize:

‘but tell me the truth now, goddess,’ I protested.

‘Deadly Charybdis —can’t I possibly cut and run from her

and still fight Scylla off when Scylla strikes my men?’

But there is no way to prevent losses, as Circe insists:

‘So stubborn!’ the lovely goddess countered.

‘Hell-bent yet again on battle and feats of arms?

Just flee the creature, that’s the only way. . .

Circe then warns against the next temptation:

Then you will make the island of Thrinacia 

where herds of the Sungod’s cattle graze, and fat sheep. . .

Leave the beasts unharmed, your mind set on home,

and you all may still reach Ithaca —bent with hardship,

true —but harm them in any way, and I can see it now:

your ship destroyed, your men destroyed as well!

And even if you escape, you’ll come home late,

all shipmates lost, and come a broken man.’

Odysseus had assured his men that he would tell them all of Circe’s advice, but by the time he had told them about the Sirens it was time to prepare for that encounter. And he wasn’t exactly honest about what he did have time to tell. Circe had advised Odysseus to have his crew lash him to the mast “if you are bent on hearing,” but he told them “I alone was to hear their voices, so she said.”

And so as the ship approaches the harrowing strait, he instructs his terrified men:

‘Friends, we’re hardly strangers at meeting danger —

and this danger is no worse than what we faced

when Cyclops penned us up in his vaulted cave

with crushing force! But even from there my courage,

my presence of mind and tactics saved us all,

and we will live to remember this someday,

I have no doubt. Up now, follow my orders,

all of us work as one!

Is that what happened at the Cyclops’ island? Wasn’t it Odysseus’ lust for greatness that resulted in six lost men and a curse upon their voyage? He knows that he cannot get past Scylla without losing six more of his men— yet he assures them “we will live.”

So I shouted. They snapped to each command.

No mention of Scylla —how to fight that nightmare? —

for fear the men would panic, desert their oars

and huddle down and stow themselves away.

He also fails to inform them of the inevitable danger ahead; more afraid of panic than of the consequences of broken trust.

But now I cleared my mind of Circe’s orders —

cramping my style, urging me not to arm at all.

I donned my heroic armor, seized long spears

in both my hands and marched out on the half-deck,

forward, hoping from there to catch the first glimpse

of Scylla, ghoul of the cliffs, swooping to kill my men.

But nowhere could I make her out —and my eyes ached,

scanning that mist-bound rock face top to bottom.

One wonders what his men were thinking as they witnessed their Captain preparing for a danger he hadn’t even mentioned to them.

Now wailing in fear, we rowed on up those straits,

Scylla to starboard, dreaded Charybdis off to port. . .

and ashen terror gripped the men.

But now, fearing death, all eyes fixed on Charybdis —

now Scylla snatched six men from our hollow ship,

the toughest, strongest hands I had, and glancing

backward over the decks, searching for my crew

I could see their hands and feet already hoisted,

flailing, high, higher, over my head, look —

wailing down at me, comrades riven in agony,

shrieking out my name for one last time!

. . . so now they writhed,

gasping as Scylla swung them up her cliff and there

at her cavern’s mouth she bolted them down raw —

screaming out, flinging their arms toward me,

lost in that mortal struggle . . .

Of all the pitiful things I’ve had to witness,

suffering, searching out the pathways of the sea,

this wrenched my heart the most.

This is not, of course, the first time Odysseus has lost men. But this time he knew they would be lost and failed to warn them— which adds an element of guilt to the tragedy. He continues:

But now, at last,

putting the Rocks, Scylla and dread Charybdis far astern,

we quickly reached the good green island of the Sun

where Helios, lord Hyperion, keeps his fine cattle,

broad in the brow, and flocks of purebred sheep. . .

And I was struck once more by the words of the blind Theban prophet, Tiresias,

and Aeaean Circe too: time and again they told me

to shun this island of the Sun, the joy of man.

So I warned my shipmates gravely, sick at heart,

‘Listen to me, my comrades, brothers in hardship,

let me tell you the dire prophecies of Tiresias

and Aeaean Circe too: time and again they told me

to shun this island of the Sun, the joy of man.

Here, they warned, the worst disaster awaits us.

Row straight past these shores —race our black ship on!’

Now Odysseus decides to warn his men, but he seems to have run low on trust:

But Eurylochus waded in at once —with mutiny on his mind:

‘You’re a hard man, Odysseus. Your fighting spirit’s

stronger than ours, your stamina never fails.

You must be made of iron head to foot. Look,

your crew’s half-dead with labor, starved for sleep,

and you forbid us to set foot on land, this island here,

washed by the waves, where we might catch a decent meal again.

Drained as we are, night falling fast, you’d have us desert

this haven and blunder off, into the mist-bound seas?

. . . No, let’s give way to the dark night, set out our supper here.

Sit tight by our swift ship and then at daybreak

board and launch her, make for open sea!’

So Eurylochus urged, and shipmates cheered.

Then I knew some power was brewing trouble for us,

so I let fly with an anxious plea: ‘Eurylochus,

I’m one against all —the upper hand is yours.

And so he has them swear an oath that they’ll never harm the herds of Helios. But that night a storm comes, courtesy of Zeus, which prompts the men to haul the ship ashore. Odysseus calls a muster, and warns the men again:

‘Friends, we’ve food and drink aplenty aboard the ship —

keep your hands off all these herds or we will pay the price!

The cattle, the sleek flocks, belong to an awesome master,

Helios, god of the sun who sees all, hears all things.’

So I warned, and my headstrong men complied.

He tells the men to keep their hands off of the sacred cows, but fails to mention the consequences that Tiresias and Circe had warned of in precisely the same words: “harm them in any way, and I can see it now: your ship destroyed, your men destroyed as well!”

But for one whole month the South Wind blew nonstop,

no other wind came up, none but the South, Southeast.

As long as our food and ruddy wine held out, the crew,

eager to save their lives, kept hands off the herds.

But eventually their supplies run out, and the men resort to hunting and fishing for food. Odysseus decides to go on a prayer walk inland in search of direction,

but soon as I’d prayed to all the gods who rule Olympus,

down on my eyes they poured a sweet, sound sleep . . .

as Eurylochus opened up his fatal plan to friends:

‘Listen to me, my comrades, brothers in hardship.

All ways of dying are hateful to us poor mortals,

true, but to die of hunger, starve to death —

that’s the worst of all. So up with you now,

let’s drive off the pick of Helios’ sleek herds,

slaughter them to the gods who rule the skies up there.

Of course they plan to erect a temple to Helios and “line the walls with hoards of dazzling gifts” — after they’ve eaten his sacred cows. Now it’s Eurylochus that’s weighing two terrible options:

‘I’d rather die at sea, with one deep gulp of death,

than die by inches on this desolate island here!’

So he urged, and shipmates cheered again.

And so the men do the very thing that Tiresias, Circe and Odysseus all warned them not to do— not to mention the oath they took. They do remember, however, to pray in the midst of their folly.

Odysseus awakens after the fact, as he did on the voyage from Aeolia:

I groaned in anguish, crying out to the deathless gods:

‘Father Zeus! the rest of you blissful gods who never die —

you with your fatal sleep, you lulled me into disaster.

Left on their own, look what a monstrous thing

my crew concocted!’

It’s not long before Helios finds out and cries out to Zeus in his outrage:

punish them all, that crew of Laertes’ son Odysseus —

what an outrage! They, they killed my cattle,

the great joy of my heart . . .

Unless they pay me back in blood for the butchery of my herds,

down I go to the House of Death and blaze among the dead!’

To this Zeus responds:

‘Sun, you keep on shining among the deathless gods

and mortal men across the good green earth.

And as for the guilty ones, why, soon enough

on the wine-dark sea I’ll hit their racing ship

with a white-hot bolt, I’ll tear it into splinters.’

When Odysseus finally reaches the ship at the water’s edge,

I took the men to task, upbraiding each in turn,

but how to set things right? We couldn’t find a way.

The cattle were dead already . . .

and the gods soon showed us all some fateful signs —

the hides began to crawl, the meat, both raw and roasted,

bellowed out on the spits, and we heard a noise

like the moan of lowing oxen.

The feasting lasts for six more days. On the seventh day the wind finally changes so the men board the ship and make for the open sea. But it’s not long until:

All of a sudden killer-squalls attacked us, screaming out of the west,

a murderous blast shearing the two forestays off

so the mast toppled backward, its running tackle spilling

into the bilge. . .

Then, then in the same breath Zeus hit the craft

with a lightning-bolt and thunder. Round she spun,

reeling under the impact, filled with reeking brimstone,

shipmates pitching out of her, bobbing round like seahawks

swept along by the whitecaps past the trim black hull —

and the god cut short their journey home forever.

Odysseus manages to fashion a makeshift raft out of the mast and keel— which are all that remains of the doomed ship— just in time for the south wind to blow him back towards Scylla and Charybdis. As he tells it:

All night long I was rushed back and then at break of day

I reached the crag of Scylla and dire Charybdis’ vortex

right when the dreadful whirlpool gulped the salt sea down.

But heaving myself aloft to clutch at the fig-tree’s height,

like a bat I clung to its trunk for dear life. . .

There he painstakingly waits for the dreaded Charybdis to regurgitate his raft, and when evening arrives his chance finally comes. He scrambles aboard, rows hard with his hands right through the straits— attributing his survival of Scylla to “the father of men and gods.” From there:

I drifted along nine days. On the tenth, at night,

the gods cast me up on Ogygia, Calypso’s island,

home of the dangerous nymph with glossy braids

who speaks with human voice, and she took me in,

she loved me . . . Why cover the same ground again?

Just yesterday, here at hall, I told you all the rest,

you and your gracious wife. It goes against my grain

to repeat a tale told once, and told so clearly.

Thus we have come full circle— back to the lessons that began in Part 1 of this series.

The Idol of Achievement - Ends Over Means

After the Sirens fall silent behind them, Odysseus and his crew confront a strait with no easy way out. Circe has already laid out the grim geography: the Clashing Rocks on one side, and on the other the twin horrors of Scylla and Charybdis. Strategic genius, cunning plans, heroic feats of arms—none of these will avail. There is only the narrow, harrowing passage. Circe advises sailing through at top speed, hugging Scylla’s crag: better to mourn six men than lose the entire ship to the whirlpool.

Odysseus considers his options and chooses control over candor. He decides it is better, in order to achieve his goals, to withhold the truth from his men and not mention Scylla at all. He relays some of Circe’s warnings but edits out the inevitable sacrifice, fearing that full disclosure will cause panic and desertion at the oars. Instead he rallies them with selective memory of past dangers:

“Friends, we’re hardly strangers at meeting danger—
and this danger is no worse than what we faced
when Cyclops penned us up in his vaulted cave…
But even from there my courage, my presence of mind and tactics saved us all…”

He presents himself as the proven hero who always delivers, omitting that his own folly and prideful taunting at the Cyclops’ island had cost six comrades and brought Poseidon’s curse upon them all. His strategy is information control— selective memory and limiting how much he tells his men—which will come back to bite him before long.

The crew follows his orders and rows through the straits in ashen terror. While their eyes fix on Charybdis, Scylla strikes. Six of the strongest hands are snatched screaming from the deck, hoisted writhing into the air, and devoured raw. The ship survives. The mission presses forward. But the cost is paid in the currency of trust.

Reaching the island of Thrinacia, both Tiresias and Circe have given the same stark warning: shun the sacred cattle of Helios, who sees and hears all things, or face total destruction—ship and crew alike. Odysseus gives a partial warning and extracts an oath, but he does not relay the promised consequences. The men’s trust in his leadership has begun to fracture; withholding information only makes things worse. He has fostered a low-trust environment and does not seem to have learned his lesson from the Aeolian bag of wind. When he last fell asleep and his men acted behind his back, disaster followed.

When supplies run out after a month of contrary winds and Odysseus goes inland to pray, Eurylochus steps into the leadership vacuum. Ostensibly caught between two bad options—starving to death on shore or risking death at sea—he repeats the error of his captain with pragmatic logic:

“I’d rather die at sea, with one deep gulp of death,
than die by inches on this desolate island here!”

Odysseus made his decisions without consulting his men, and now they return the favor. They slaughter the sacred herds, rationalizing their folly by promising to erect a temple and give offerings to Helios. They seek to compensate for the transgression with prayers and vows, as if it were better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Odysseus awakens to the bellowing meat and crawling hides—divine signs ignored too late. When the wind finally shifts and they depart the island, Zeus’s bolt shatters the ship. All hands perish except Odysseus, who fashions a makeshift raft from what remains of the mast and keel.

Because of this pattern of calculated deceit and truth withheld, Odysseus must go back through the same trial—Scylla and Charybdis—this time alone. The very shortcuts he relied upon to “achieve” the greater goal of getting past these obstacles have lengthened the voyage and stripped him of every companion. Short cuts make long delays. And achievement, when it becomes an idol, devours its own.

The Duplicity Trap in Modern Life

We live under the same pressure. When the way forward offers no clean options—only loss on every side—the idol of achievement whispers that the destination justifies the means: edit the briefing to keep morale high, withhold the full picture to prevent panic, spin the narrative to maintain momentum, rationalize the forbidden when hunger (or ambition) presses.

Leaders shade truth for “success.” Teams cut corners and dress them up with promises of later restitution. We tell ourselves that a little duplicity serves the greater good—until the ship lies in splinters and we find ourselves drifting alone.

“The temptation of the age is to look good without being good,” according to Brennan Manning. And modern technology has made this easier than ever—deepfakes, curated feeds, strategic ambiguity, and the quiet art of the half-truth. When adversity comes— and we are forced by circumstance to choose between difficult options— our true character can no longer be concealed.

Painful as they may be, such moments present us with an opportunity to wrestle with our own self-deception, which includes the temptation to believe that deceit is justified.

As Aldous Huxley observed,

“The end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.”

In the long run, this pragmatic spirit erodes the very trust it seeks to claim. Those who rely on deceit will, like Odysseus, inevitably drift back to face the uncomfortable truths they once sought to avoid.

We see this tragedy repeated in every sphere of life:

The promising executive whose carefully “curated” financial projections or performance reports eventually unravel in regulatory scrutiny, derailing a once-bright career.

The respected ministry leader whose private failings and attempts to control the narrative erupt into public scandal, devastating a congregation and undermining years of faithful work.

The brand that builds its reputation on claims of transparency and ethical standards, only for whistleblowers or leaked documents to expose systematic deception—triggering consumer backlash, plummeting trust, and sometimes total collapse in reputation and revenue.

Careers implode, congregations scatter, and carefully curated public images evaporate, each collapse a vivid illustration of how even small, “necessary” deceptions compound into irreversible damage.

The duplicity trap, like all of the traps revealed in the Odyssey, delivers exactly the opposite of what it promises. When we choose the path of deceit, we end up with loneliness where we sought acceptance, failure where we sought success, and shame where we sought honor.

The Virtue of Goodness

Yet goodness—the fruit of the Spirit that refuses every compromise of character—stands as the antidote to deceit. Goodness does not calculate how much truth is safe to tell; it walks in the light. It does not seize what belongs to others under the banner of necessity. It learns from past folly rather than repeating it in subtler forms.

At the root of every trap Odysseus and his crew encounter—from the lotus that numbs the will, to the Aoelian bag of wind, to the sacred cattle of Helios—lies the same corruption revealed in Ephesians 4: the “deceitful desires” of the unredeemed self. The hunger for comfort, the lust for fulfillment, the craving for control, the drive for achievement—all spring from this poisoned source. As Scripture reveals:

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

(Ephesians 4:22-24 ESV)

“Put off your old self” is not a gentle suggestion but a clear imperative—an active, decisive command. We must deliberately strip away the old patterns of cunning, selective disclosure, pragmatic compromise, and self-serving half-truths that temptation so readily offers.

“Be renewed in the spirit of your minds” is no passive process; it happens through sustained exposure to truth. Only the light of divine revelation can penetrate the self-deception we so easily embrace, exposing the deceitful desires we are most tempted to minimize and hide.

Jesus himself claimed:

I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.

(John 12:46, ESV)

And as that renewal takes place, we are enabled to put on the new self—our transformed identity in Christ—which, as Colossians 3:12 urges, clothes itself with “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,” along with every other virtue that flows from the fruit of the Spirit.

Goodness, therefore, is not something we manufacture through raw willpower or heroic self-discipline. It is not an item on some checklist of moral achievements. As a fruit of the Spirit, it grows only by long exposure to grace and truth. Grace empowers us to admit our hidden flaws and selfish desires without shame—freeing us from the need to edit reality or protect our image. Truth empowers us to see and acknowledge the very parts of ourselves we are most tempted to deny or avoid—the pragmatic calculations, the quiet rationalizations, the fear of relinquishing control. Together, grace and truth cultivate in us a character that no amount of striving could ever produce.

Goodness is not naive softness or rigid legalism. It is the sturdy integrity of the Spirit that refuses to treat people as expendable props in our self-centered stories. It speaks the truth in love, even when the news is grim. It keeps its hands off of what belongs to God—even when hunger or ambition screams otherwise.

Jesus never practiced selective disclosure to keep His followers motivated. He warned plainly of suffering, betrayal, and the cross. He rebuked every “ends justify the means” logic. And He achieved the ultimate deliverance not by withholding truth or sacrificing others, but by embodying perfect goodness—truthful to the end, faithful to the Father, laying down His own life so that we who were lost might finally come home.

In the straits where every route demands sacrifice, goodness chooses to obey anyway. It does not edit the warning. It does not hide the cost. It does not bargain with the forbidden. It simply refuses to take matters into its own hands. And in that refusal, something astonishing happens: the one who is Goodness personified enters the storm with us. He does not stand safely on the half-deck issuing edited orders. He climbs into the boat, takes the full weight of the waves, and carries us home at the cost of his own life.

This is the grace that finally breaks the cycle of deceit. Not our cunning, but His perfect character imputed to us and cultivated in us by the Holy Spirit—making us people who can tell the truth when it hurts, keep our hands off what is not ours, and trust that nothing gained through deceit is worth having.

Where are you most tempted to edit the truth, avoid the full cost, or bargain with what belongs to God in the name of a “greater good”? Are there relationships, leadership roles, or personal ambitions where “deceitful desires” are quietly steering you toward a shortcut that could cost more than you realize? What would it look like this week to deliberately put off the old self in one specific area—choosing full honesty over strategic silence? How might sustained exposure to God’s grace and truth renew your mind so you can put on the new self, clothed in goodness? And where do you need to invite Jesus, the embodiment of perfect Goodness, into the straits you’re facing so that he can guide you home? There’s no better time than now to abandon the path of deceit.

[Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles, introduction and notes by Bernard Knox, Penguin Books, 1996.]

Mark the trench dug where the rivers meet, 
where blood is poured to converse with the dead; 
the seer speaks and warns them not to eat
the grazing cattle on the voyage ahead.  

Mark the mother’s shade who speaks of pain, 
her life cut short by longing for her son; 
three times he reaches out his arms in vain— 
she slips away like mist when day is done.

Mark Agamemnon’s ghost in sullen rage, 
who mourns the welcome stolen by his queen; 
Achilles follows, turning every page, 
of glory pale beside the living scene.

Mark Ajax standing silent, full of spite, 
still nursing wounds from contest lost at Troy;
the greatest heroes, shown in this new light; 
reduced to shadows, grasping, robbed of joy.

Mark the Sirens on their meadowed coast, 
who sing of every grief the men have known; 
“Come hither, you poor soul, and listen close— 
we know it all, we’ve heard your every groan.”

Mark the captain bound against the mast, 
straining toward the voices sweet and clear; 
his loyal crew with wax-filled ears rows past, 
while tightening the bonds of he who hears.

Mark the quiet grace that breaks the chain 
of endless competition, bitter score; 
where envy dwells on loss and others’ gain, 
kindness offers us a better door.

Mark the one who conquered sin and grave, 
Who forgives enemies, and transforms hearts; 
His gentle grace invites the soul to brave 
the path of kindness where true freedom starts.

A lesson on Kindness - The Antidote to Envy

Odysseus and his remaining men have spent a year on Aeaea, Circe’s island, “feasting on sides of meat and drafts of heady wine.” But now it’s time to move on— not straight home, as the men urge— but first to get further guidance, as he tells them:

‘You think we are headed home, our own dear land?

Well, Circe sets us a rather different course . . .

down to the House of Death and the awesome one, Persephone,

there to consult the ghost of Tiresias, seer of Thebes.’

So I said, and it broke my shipmates’ hearts.

They sank down on the ground, moaning, tore their hair.

But it gained us nothing —what good can come of grief?

And so they set off according to Circe’s instructions, with a fresh wind pushing them along. When they reach the prescribed spot they perform the necessary rituals of trench digging, libation pouring, vows, prayers and the offering of a ram and a black ewe— which enable Odysseus to converse with the dead.

The ghost of Elpenor comes first— the crewman they had lost on their departure — begging for a proper burial when the men return to Aeaea. Next comes the ghost of Odysseus’ mother Anticleia, but she is made to wait “till I had questioned Tiresias myself.” When the shade of the famous Theban prophet comes at last, he offers the following advice:

‘A sweet smooth journey home, renowned Odysseus,

that is what you seek

but a god will make it hard for you —I know —

you will never escape the one who shakes the earth,

quaking with anger at you still, still enraged

because you blinded the Cyclops, his dear son.

Even so, you and your crew may still reach home,

suffering all the way, if you only have the power

to curb their wild desire and curb your own, what’s more,

from the day your good trim vessel first puts in

at Thrinacia Island, flees the cruel blue sea.

There you will find them grazing,

herds and fat flocks, the cattle of Helios,

god of the sun who sees all, hears all things.

Leave the beasts unharmed, your mind set on home,

and you all may still reach Ithaca —bent with hardship,

true —but harm them in any way, and I can see it now:

your ship destroyed, your men destroyed as well.

And even if you escape, you’ll come home late

and come a broken man —all shipmates lost,

alone in a stranger’s ship —

The House of Death is a strange and disconcerting place, but clarity is available to those who are able to receive it. There will be no “sweet smooth journey home” — desire will continue to threaten their prospects — things will not be easy. Yet there is still life to be lived, which is more than can be said for Tiresias himself. He continues:

and you will find a world of pain at home,

crude, arrogant men devouring all your goods,

courting your noble wife, offering gifts to win her.

No doubt you will pay them back in blood when you come home!

But once you have killed those suitors in your halls —

by stealth or in open fight with slashing bronze —

go forth once more, you must . . .

carry your well-planed oar until you come

to a race of people who know nothing of the sea,

whose food is never seasoned with salt, strangers all

to ships with their crimson prows and long slim oars,

wings that make ships fly. And here is your sign —

unmistakable, clear, so clear you cannot miss it:

When another traveler falls in with you and calls

that weight across your shoulder a fan to winnow grain,

then plant your bladed, balanced oar in the earth

and sacrifice fine beasts to the lord god of the sea,

Poseidon —a ram, a bull and a ramping wild boar —

then journey home and render noble offerings up

to the deathless gods who rule the vaulting skies,

to all the gods in order.

And at last your own death will steal upon you . . .

a gentle, painless death, far from the sea it comes

to take you down, borne down with the years in ripe old age

with all your people there in blessed peace around you.

All that I have told you will come true.’

It may be taken for granted that the Odysseus who returns will not be the one who left — his experiences have changed him— but the home he returns to will also be indelibly altered, “a world of pain,” not the place of belonging which he longs for. And after reaching Ithaca, Odysseus must “go forth once more” on another journey, this time far from the unharvestable sea, before returning to the House of Death. What he needs to hear is likely not what he wanted, or expected, to hear — but his illusions must perish — and what better time for that than now?

After getting the truth from Tiresias (who among us would rather be given lies?), Odysseus receives a tip about his remaining time in the House of Death:

‘One rule there is,’ the famous seer explained,

‘and simple for me to say and you to learn.

Any one of the ghosts you let approach the blood

will speak the truth to you. Anyone you refuse

will turn and fade away.’

And so, upon Tiresias’ departure, Odysseus holds audience with his departed mother Anticleia, who explains:

it was my longing for you, my shining Odysseus —

you and your quickness, you and your gentle ways —

that tore away my life that had been sweet.’

How does one respond to such an admission?

And I, my mind in turmoil, how I longed

to embrace my mother’s spirit, dead as she was!

Three times I rushed toward her, desperate to hold her,

three times she fluttered through my fingers, sifting away

like a shadow, dissolving like a dream. . .

The House of Death, as it turns out, is the realm of perpetually unfulfilled longing. After his mother’s departure, during which she calls him “my son, my son, the unluckiest man alive!” — a “grand array of women” approach. And so he encounters Tyro, Antiope, Alcmena, Megara wife of Heracles, Epicaste the mother of Oedipus, Chloris, Leda, Iphimedeia, Phaedra and Procris, lovely Ariadne, Clymene, Maera and loathsome Eriphyle. These are the envied women of myth and legend - all reduced to shades.

And now we are reminded that this is a story within a story, as Odysseus offers an aside to his Phaecian listeners:

But the time has come for sleep, either with friends

aboard your swift ship or here in your own house.

My passage home will rest with the gods and you.

After some deliberation, king Alcinous declares:

Our guest, much as he longs for passage home,

must stay and wait it out here till tomorrow,

till I can collect his whole array of parting gifts.

His send-off rests with every noble here

but with me most of all:

I hold the reins of power in the realm.

The king then asks:

But come now, tell me truly: your godlike comrades —

did you see any heroes down in the House of Death,

any who sailed with you and met their doom at Troy?

The night’s still young, I’d say the night is endless.

For us in the palace now, it’s hardly time for sleep.

Keep telling us your adventures —they are wonderful.

I could hold out here till Dawn’s first light

if only you could bear, here in our halls,

to tell the tale of all the pains you suffered.

And so Odysseus relates his encounter with “famous Atrides, lord of men Agamemnon,” who turned out to have been betrayed and murdered by his own wife.

“So,” Agamemnon tells Odysseus,

there’s nothing more deadly, bestial than a woman

set on works like these —what a monstrous thing

she plotted, slaughtered her own lawful husband!

Why, I expected, at least, some welcome home

from all my children, all my household slaves

when I came sailing back again . . . But she —

the queen hell-bent on outrage —bathes in shame

not only herself but the whole breed of womankind,

even the honest ones to come, forever down the years!’

Trapped in his bitterness, Agamemnon offers this advice:

so even your own wife —never indulge her too far.

Never reveal the whole truth, whatever you may know;

just tell her a part of it, be sure to hide the rest. . .

I tell you this —bear it in mind, you must —

when you reach your homeland steer your ship

into port in secret, never out in the open . . .

the time for trusting women’s gone forever!

This is what has become of the man of whom Odysseus had boasted to the Cyclops, “whose fame is the proudest thing on earth these days. . . ” — reduced in death to vengeful self-pity.

Next comes Achilles, most envied of men, to whom Odysseus says:

my life is endless trouble.

But you, Achilles,

there’s not a man in the world more blest than you —

there never has been, never will be one.

Time was, when you were alive, we Argives

honored you as a god, and now down here, I see,

you lord it over the dead in all your power.

So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.

And here, at the center of the Odyssey, the truth that challenges all our worldy striving is revealed. The hero Achilles, whom all sought to emulate— the embodiment of Kleos (the immortal fame that all men seek)— confesses:

No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!

By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man —

some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive —

than rule down here over all the breathless dead.

So much for immortal fame. . .

Upon Achilles’ departure, Odysseus continues:

Now the rest of the ghosts, the dead and gone

came swarming up around me —deep in sorrow there,

each asking about the grief that touched him most.

Only the ghost of Great Ajax, son of Telamon,

kept his distance, blazing with anger at me still

for the victory I had won by the ships that time

I pressed my claim for the arms of Prince Achilles. . .

Would to god I’d never won such trophies!

After Ajax bitterly stalks off, Odysseus sees Minos, Orion, Tityus, Tantalus, and Sisyphus, followed by Heracles, who:

knew me at once, at first glance,

and hailed me with a winging burst of pity:

‘Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus famed for exploits,

luckless man, you too? Braving out a fate as harsh

as the fate I bore, alive in the light of day?’

At Heracles’ departure, Odysseus admits:

I held fast in place, hoping that others might still come,

shades of famous heroes, men who died in the old days

and ghosts of an even older age I longed to see,

Theseus and Pirithous, the gods’ own radiant sons.

But before I could, the dead came surging round me,

hordes of them, thousands raising unearthly cries,

and blanching terror gripped me —panicked now

that Queen Persephone might send up from Death

some monstrous head, some Gorgon’s staring face!

I rushed back to my ship, commanded all hands

to take to the decks and cast off cables quickly.

They swung aboard at once, they sat to the oars in ranks

and a strong tide of the Ocean River swept her on downstream,

sped by our rowing first, then by a fresh fair wind.

And so they sail back to Aeaea, “east where the Dawn forever young has home and dancing-rings and the Sun his risings” — and see to the rights of their departed comrade Elpenor.

Circe meets them there, and offers her usual feast, before taking Odysseus aside to get “the whole story, start to finish.” She then offers the following:

‘Your descent to the dead is over, true,

but listen closely to what I tell you now

and god himself will bring it back to mind.

First you will raise the island of the Sirens,

those creatures who spellbind any man alive,

whoever comes their way. Whoever draws too close,

off guard, and catches the Sirens’ voices in the air —

no sailing home for him, no wife rising to meet him,

no happy children beaming up at their father’s face.

The high, thrilling song of the Sirens will transfix him,

lolling there in their meadow, round them heaps of corpses

rotting away, rags of skin shriveling on their bones . . .

Race straight past that coast! Soften some beeswax

and stop your shipmates’ ears so none can hear,

none of the crew, but if you are bent on hearing,

have them tie you hand and foot in the swift ship,

erect at the mast-block, lashed by ropes to the mast

so you can hear the Sirens’ song to your heart’s content.

But if you plead, commanding your men to set you free,

then they must lash you faster, rope on rope.

We’ll leave the rest of her advice for later, and jump ahead to the voyage. Odysseus informs his shipmates point by point, saying “I alone was to hear [the Sirens’] voices, so she said,” as they were being “driven on by the brisk wind.” He follows Circe’s advice, and stops the ears of his comrades with beeswax before they bind him to the mast.

And thus he hears the Sirens sing:

‘Come closer, famous Odysseus —Achaea’s pride and glory —

moor your ship on our coast so you can hear our song!

Never has any sailor passed our shores in his black craft

until he has heard the honeyed voices pouring from our lips,

and once he hears to his heart’s content sails on, a wiser man.

We know all the pains that the Greeks and Trojans once endured

on the spreading plain of Troy when the gods willed it so —

all that comes to pass on the fertile earth, we know it all!’

Odysseus signals to be set free— who wouldn’t want to know it all— and his men bind him faster, as instructed, “with rope on chafing rope.” And so they leave the Sirens fading in their wake, and continue towards the next trial.

The Idol of Fairness - The Root of Bitterness

Odysseus has asked “what good can come of grief?”— and he will soon have his answer. There is no shortage of grief in the House of Death. Tiresias warns of the difficulties ahead, made worse by “wild desire” — and of the “world of pain” to be found at the end of a successful homeward journey. These are brutal truths, but they speak of the world of the living: a place inaccessible to the inhabitants of this realm.

After Tiresias, Odysseus encounters a procession of shades who cannot stop rehearsing the unfairness of their fates. His mother appears, and attributes her death to her longing for him — now too late to remedy— and Odysseus finds that it is also too late to fulfill his longing to embrace her.

Agamemnon, once “lord of men” who led the Greeks to Troy, appears first among the heroes. He does not mention glory won or battles fought; he speaks only of betrayal. The wife he trusted murdered him on the very night he expected her welcome. “There’s nothing more deadly, bestial than a woman set on works like these,” he warns Odysseus, his voice still raw with the injustice of it. The man who commanded fleets now commands nothing but the memory of what should have been his—homecoming, honor, trust—and the unfairness of its theft has come to dominate him.

Achilles follows, the very embodiment of kleos: the immortal fame every warrior seeks. Yet he finds no satisfaction in his laurels. “By god,” he tells Odysseus, “I’d rather slave on earth for another man—some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—than rule down here over all the breathless dead.” The hero who once chose a short life of glory over a long life of obscurity now envies the meanest living laborer— simply because that laborer still walks beneath the sun. Even the greatest prize the world can offer turns bitter in the House of Death.

Ajax stands apart, blazing with an old grudge. He will not speak; he will not even approach the blood. The armor of Achilles had been awarded to Odysseus by fair judgment, yet to Ajax that judgment was never fair. The slight still burns. One hero’s victory is another hero’s enduring wound, and the House of Death offers no court of appeal—only the endless replay of the moments that cannot be re-lived.

The Sirens, encountered later on the living sea, sing the same song in a different key. Their honeyed voices promise total knowledge—“We know all the pains that the Greeks and Trojans once endured… all that comes to pass on the fertile earth, we know it all!”—so that the listener may at last compare his own lot with every other and judge accordingly. The temptation is not merely to hear; it is to be fully heard— and to possess the cosmic scorecard, to know exactly where one has been cheated or short-changed. Odysseus, bound to the mast, feels the pull. Who among us would not want to know it all, if only to prove that our grievances are legitimate?

Throughout this episode, envy never appears naked. Instead it appeals to fairness: I deserved better. They received more. My life has been unfair. The dead rehearse their wounds because they cannot let go of what might have been. And the living are lured by the same demand dressed up as wisdom—if only I could see the full picture, I would know why I’m so ill-favored. In both realms, the bitterness spreads because fairness itself has become an idol turning every blessing sour, every gift into a grievance, and every neighbor into a rival in a contest no one can win.

Hell, according to Homer, is the place of perpetual regret, thwarted ambition, and insatiate desire. It is the realm of what might have been. The greatest heroes of the age are not undone here by the temporal dangers of violence or adversity, but by the perpetual inward insistence that they have been short-changed— or most notably in the case of Sisyphus— that existence itself is an exercise in futility. Nowhere is the temptation stronger to see one’s story as tragic, and to conclude oneself as irredeemable. The shades are hopeless, powerless, tormented by the prospect of eternal misery with no way out. Here envy— which is bitterness in the name of fairness— is revealed as the threshold of despair. But it is also here that Odysseus can now willfully embrace life, because he has come to terms with the lessons of death.

Thus he is prepared to hear the Sirens sing “we know your pain” — without stopping to dwell on what has passed. He has heard enough of such melodies, and he has taken the necessary precautions. Circe has wisely instructed him to “race straight past that coast!” He may be seduced by the songs of sympathy, but he must not alter his course accordingly— destruction comes to all who do.

The Comparison Trap in Modern Life

We do not need a literal trench filled with blood to enter our own version of Hades, a smartphone in hand at 11 p.m. is enough. One scroll through a feed and the shades press in: the friend whose business just hit seven figures while ours limps along; the couple posting sun-drenched anniversaries while our relationships feel like they’re hanging by a thread; the parents whose children seem to excel at everything while ours struggle. Each image asking for our lifeblood—our attention, our envy, our silent agreement that life is not fair.

The idol of fairness whispers the same things now as it did then: “You deserve better. Look at what they have. Why them and not you?” The comparison is instant and merciless. We tally the gap between our reality and their highlight reel, and bitterness takes root. We replay old wounds—“If only the promotion had come… if only the diagnosis had been different… if only I had been raised by better parents”—until the present grows dim and the future feels stolen. Like the shades in the underworld, we become convinced that our particular sorrow is uniquely irredeemable, and that we are owed an explanation that never arrives.

Dorothy Sayers had this to say on the subject:

[Envy] hates to see other men happy. The names by which it offers itself to the world's applause are Right and Justice, and it makes a great parade of these austere virtues.

It begins by asking, plausibly: "Why should not I enjoy what others enjoy?" and it ends by demanding: "Why should others enjoy what I may not?"—

Envy is the great leveller: if it cannot level things up, it will level them down; and the words constantly in its mouth are “My Rights” and “My Wrongs.”

At its best, Envy is a climber and a snob; at its worst, it is a destroyer—rather than have anybody happier than itself, it will see us all miserable together.

The Sirens join the chorus online and in culture. Podcasts, memoirs, and endless therapy threads sing the intoxicating song: “We see your pain. We understand its depth. We have the explanations you’ve been searching for.” The invitation is almost irresistible—who would not want their private anguish finally acknowledged and woven into a story that matters? Yet many of us, as Circe warned, discover too late that listening without boundaries turns the voyage into a shipwreck.

We linger on our trauma, dissecting every “why me?” while drifting straight toward the jagged rocks. The result is a generation of shadows: envious of those who are “truly living,” haunted by unlived possibilities, demanding fairness from a world that will never balance the scales on our terms. We scroll, we compare, we resent—and we wonder why hope feels so out of reach.

But kindness offers the quiet escape hatch. It refuses to measure life by comparison with others and chooses instead to rejoice in what it has. It hears the Sirens’ song of sorrow, responds with grace towards self, and keeps rowing toward the people who need us—spouse, children, neighbors—right now, in the imperfect present. Where envy insists “I should have had better,” kindness asks “how can I make the most of this moment?” Where comparison paralyzes, kindness liberates us to plant our oar in the soil of ordinary days and move forward.

This is the modern lesson hidden inside the ancient descent: the comparison trap is Hades on the way in and the Sirens’ song on the way out— but kindness is the fresh wind that carries us past it. The mast holds. The oars still move. And the way home remains open for anyone willing to stop attending to every ghost and every tragic song—and start allowing kindness to shift us to a new perspective.

The Virtue of Kindness

The primary traps of the human condition are clearly laid out in the Odyssey, and are as prevalent now as ever. But for the antidotes we must turn to Scripture— which shines light into our darkness. Kindness appears at the very center of the fruit of the Spirit. It is the virtue that makes the others livable; it is the embodiment of grace. It refuses to keep score, and spends itself without calculating the return. It is the opposite of the envy that Homer reveals in this passage— which cloaks itself in the robes of fairness.

This dynamic is revealed in the Psalms:

But as for me, my feet came close to stumbling, my steps had almost slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant as I saw the prosperity of the wicked. . .

(Psalm 73:2-3, ESV)

The Psalmist continues:

Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and washed my hands in innocence; for I have been stricken all day long and chastened every morning. . .

But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I came into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end.

(Psalm 73:13, 16-17, ESV)

It’s perspective that transforms envy into pity and frustration into gratitude. And like Odysseus, the Psalmist moves forward by perceiving the ultimate end of the enviable.

The Christian story presses the point further still. The only One who had an absolute right to demand fairness looked at the envious, bitter, score-keeping world and chose kindness instead. “Father, forgive them,” he prayed while the nails went in. He did not rehearse the injustices done to him; he released them. And in that release the root of bitterness is pulled up for every soul that will allow it. The cross is the final answer to the House of Death: not a balancing of debts, but their cancellation.

And here the Scripture names the quiet power at work:

Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”

(Romans 2:4, ESV)

God’s kindness is not a gentle pat on the back that leaves us unchanged. It is the deliberate, pursuing mercy that invites a complete paradigm shift—a literal change of mind. Repentance is not groveling or self-flagellation; it is the moment we stop rehearsing the ledger of what we think we are owed and begin to see reality through the eyes of grace.

It was a shift in perspective that allowed Odysseus, after gazing on the restless shades, to bury Elpenor without resentment, and to bind himself to the mast not as a show of superiority but to protect his men from a temptation he himself could not resist. Kindness silences the Sirens’ invitation to endless grief by declaring, “I do not need to know every story to trust the One who authors mine.”

In this way kindness becomes the fresh wind at our back. It is the fruit that grows only after the root of bitterness has been exposed and surrendered. Where envy measures and resents, kindness releases and restores. Where fairness demands, kindness extends grace. And where the old mind kept score, the renewed mind—led by the kindness of God—simply rows on, free at last to live fully in the imperfect present with the imperfect people who share it with us.

Do your daydreams tend towards comparison to others? Are you tempted to assume that their fate is better than yours? That your situation is unredeemable? Where can you be more kind to yourself? What would it look like to celebrate the achievements of others instead of resenting them? It is never easy to escape the seduction of longing, envy and regret— but these emotions also reveal the hidden truth about our wounds and false assumptions if we are brave enough to receive it. Facing our shadows, and the lessons they offer, is an essential (and inescapable) part of the journey home to the true self.

[Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles, introduction and notes by Bernard Knox, Penguin Books, 1996.]

The story continues here:

Heed the shattered fleet that limps to shore,
away from giants’ wrath and comrades lost;
one crew remains, hearts aching, spirits sore,
they seek a haven, without further cost.

Heed the smoke that curls from palace halls,
where Circe sings while weaving on her loom;
men drawn inside by her enchanting calls,
gulp down her potions, swallowing their doom.

Heed the wand that strikes with wicked art,
turning warriors into grunting swine;
as greed consumes their eager, hasty hearts,
forgetting home in honeyed cheese and wine.

Heed the one who flees the cursed place,
Eurylochus, with terror in his plea;
“cut and run!” he cries, in his disgrace,
as his captain arms for what must be.

Heed the god who meets him on the way,
Hermes bearing remedy divine;
moly that will break the spell’s dark sway,
and shield against her potion’s sly design.

Heed the clash where sword meets wand’s quick flick,
she cowers, yields, and swears no further harm;
the men restored from condescension's trick,
rescued by their captain's loyal charm.

Heed the lingering year in lavish halls,
where abundance tempts the soul to stay;
yet Odysseus hears the homeward call,
and insists they must be on their way.

Heed the Lord whose patience never fails, 
enduring all our foolish, grasping haste; 
he offers us escape from our false tales, 
and gives his lambs the tree of life to taste. 

A lesson on Patience - The Antidote to Greed

After the horrors of Laestrygonia—where cannibal giants hurled boulders from the cliffs, smashing eleven ships to splinters and devouring hundreds of men in a single afternoon—only Odysseus’s black-prowed vessel remains. The survivors row away “with aching hearts,” having lost everything but their one fragile ship and the lives aboard it. The story continues:

We reached the Aeaean island next, the home of Circe

the nymph with lovely braids, an awesome power too…

The men rest in a “safe and snug” harbor for two days and nights, “eating our hearts out, bent with pain and bone-tired.” On the third day Odysseus rises up and finds a lookout point, from which he:

could just make out some smoke from Circe’s halls,

drifting up from the broad terrain through brush and woods.

He gets more than he was looking for; he manages to spear a big stag on his way back to the ship— and returns with a word to lift the men’s spirits:

‘Listen to me, my comrades, brothers in hardship —      

we won’t go down to the House of Death, not yet,      

not till our day arrives. Up with you, look,

there’s still some meat and drink in our good ship.      

Put our minds on food —why die of hunger here?’

After a day of feasting on stag and seasoned wine, Odysseus calls a muster to brief the crew— explaining:

We must think of a plan at once,

some cunning stroke. I doubt there’s one still left . . .

When he reports seeing smoke in the distance—

My message broke their spirit as they recalled      

the gruesome work of the Laestrygonian king Antiphates      

and the hearty cannibal Cyclops thirsting for our blood.

They burst into cries, wailing, streaming live tears      

that gained us nothing —what good can come of grief?

But Odysseus wants to keep things moving, so he numbers the men off into two platoons.

I took one and lord Eurylochus the other.

We quickly shook lots in a bronze helmet —      

the lot of brave Eurylochus leapt out first.

So he moved off with his two and twenty comrades,      

weeping, leaving us behind in tears as well . . .

When the platoon reaches Circe’s palace they hear her singing and decide to call out to her— and she invites them all in. But “Eurylochus stayed behind— he sensed a trap.” She feeds the men a drugged soup of cheese, barley, honey and wine, “to wipe from their memories any thought of home.” When they greedily finish the bowls, she suddenly strikes with her wand and turns them all into pigs!

Back Eurylochus ran to our swift black ship

to tell the disaster our poor friends had faced.      

Odysseus continues:

At that report I slung the hefty bronze blade      

of my silver-studded sword around my shoulder,      

slung my bow on too and told our comrade,

‘Lead me back by the same way that you came.’

Eurylochus may have escaped Circe’s enchantment, but he turns out to be quite pig-headed in his pleas:

‘Don’t force me back there, captain, king—

leave me here on the spot.

You will never return yourself, I swear,

you’ll never bring back a single man alive.

Quick, cut and run with the rest of us here —

we can still escape the fatal day!’

But Odysseus, just as obstinate, decides to go anyway. As he approaches Circe’s home he crosses paths with Hermes, “god of the golden wand”— who gives him the black and white herb moly, the antidote to Circe’s potion— along with a step by step plan of action:

The moment Circe strikes with her long thin wand,      

you draw your sharp sword sheathed at your hip      

and rush her fast as if to run her through!

She’ll cower in fear and coax you to her bed —

but don’t refuse the goddess’ bed, not then, not if

she’s to release your friends and treat you well yourself.      

But have her swear the binding oath of the blessed gods      

she’ll never plot some new intrigue to harm you,      

once you lie there naked —      

never unman you, strip away your courage!’

The plan works, to Circe’s chagrin. She admits:

I’m wonderstruck —you drank my drugs, you’re not bewitched!      

Never has any other man withstood my potion, never,      

once it’s past his lips and he has drunk it down.      

You have a mind in you no magic can enchant!      

You must be Odysseus, man of twists and turns —      

Hermes the giant-killer, god of the golden wand,      

he always said you’d come. . .

Her four handmaids arrive to treat Odysseus to bread and wine, a sumptuous bath, fresh clothes and “appetizers aplenty.” But he won’t eat until his men are freed. Circe obliges, and moved by the men’s tears, she urges:

‘Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, tried and true,      

go at once to your ship at the water’s edge,

haul her straight up on the shore first      

and stow your cargo and running gear in caves,      

then back you come and bring your trusty crew.’

He has won her over, now he declares that “her urging won my stubborn spirit over.” He returns to the ship with renewed hope, to more weeping men who are “deeply moved in their hearts” as their pessimism is overcome by the news. He reassures them with an invitation:

‘to see our friends in the magic halls of Circe,      

eating and drinking —the feast flows on forever’. . .

But cautious Eurylochus tries to hold them back, spouting:  

‘Poor fools, where are we running now?      

Why are we tempting fate? —      

why stumble blindly down to Circe’s halls?

She’ll turn us all into pigs or wolves or lions      

made to guard that palace of hers —by force, I tell you —

just as the Cyclops trapped our comrades in his lair      

with hotheaded Odysseus right beside them all —      

thanks to this man’s rashness they died too!’

Odysseus is tempted to retaliate, but manages— with encouragement from his men— to be patient. Eurolychus straggles behind them back to Circe’s palace, where they are reunited with their freshly bathed shipmates, who are decked out in fleecy cloaks and shirts, feasting in her halls. Odysseus continues:

Once we had recognized each other, gazing face-to-face,

we all broke down and wept —and the house resounded now

and Circe the lustrous one came toward me, pleading,      

‘Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, man of action,      

no more tears now, calm these tides of sorrow.      

Well I know what pains you bore on the swarming sea,      

what punishment you endured from hostile men on land.      

But come now, eat your food and drink your wine      

till the same courage fills your chests, now as then,      

when you first set sail from native land, from rocky Ithaca!

. . . So she enticed

and won our battle-hardened spirits over.

And there we sat at ease,      

day in, day out, till a year had run its course,

feasting on sides of meat and drafts of heady wine . . .

And there they may have remained forever, had not his men urged him to remember home. But in response to Odysseus’ request “to help me home”— “the lustrous goddess” answers:

‘Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, old campaigner,      

stay on no more in my house against your will.      

But first another journey calls. You must travel down

to the House of Death and the awesome one, Persephone,

there to consult the ghost of Tiresias, seer of Thebes,      

the great blind prophet whose mind remains unshaken. . .

the rest of the dead are empty, flitting shades’

At this Odysseus admits:

So she said and crushed the heart inside me.      

I knelt in her bed and wept. I’d no desire

to go on living and see the rising light of day.

But once I’d had my fill of tears and writhing there,

at last I found the words to venture, ‘Circe, Circe,      

who can pilot us on that journey? Who has ever      

reached the House of Death in a black ship?’

And so she gives the “royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, born for exploits,” detailed instructions. He is to sail by the North Wind to a desolate coast, beach the vessel and make his way “down to the moldering House of Death.” Once there he is to perform a certain ritual and consult with the blind seer Tiresias, who:

‘will tell you the way to go, the stages of your voyage,

how you can cross the swarming sea and reach home at last.’

And so Odysseus announces to his men “we must set sail!” And in their haste they lose the youngest of their crew, Elpenor, who had bedded on the roof in his drunkenness and breaks his neck when jumping down to join the marching men.

Back to the swift ship at the water’s edge we went,      

our spirits deep in anguish, faces wet with tears.

The Idol of Abundance - The Mindset of Scarcity

After the devastating loss at Lastrygonia, the temptation to cling desperately to what little remains is overwhelming. Scarcity is not a distant fear; it is the fresh wound of catastrophic depletion. The crew’s every action now betrays the impulse to hoard safety, to refuse any further risk, to grip tightly lest even this final remnant be lost.

When Odysseus—having speared a massive stag to feed them—tries to rally their spirits, the men can barely respond. Even he doubts there’s still a decent plan left. The mere suggestion of scouting the distant smoke causes them to “burst into cries, wailing, streaming live tears” and ask “what good can come of grief?” And when the first platoon sees the lavish abundance offered by Circe, all but Eurylochus fall for her scheme— quick to seize the only opportunity they can see.

Circe is the feminine archetype of absolute independence. Youthfully braided, singing at her loom, dwelling alone in a stone palace on the cleared rise of Aeaea, she needs nobody. Tamed wolves and lions fawn like dogs; four nymph maids attend her. The world beyond is unnecessary—its neediness a threat to be neutralized.

This fierce self-sufficiency springs from scarcity: the fear that to need is to be vulnerable, to open oneself is to risk depletion. Abundance, in Circe’s realm, is therefore something to control and withhold. She possesses the wisdom Odysseus needs to continue his journey—forecast of the North Wind, directions through Persephone’s Grove, specific instructions to get further guidance—yet she offers it only after he passes her tests.

First comes the drugged feast, the potion that erases nostalgia for home, the wand that proves that men are nothing more than pigs. The transformation is emasculation: brave warriors reduced to grunting, greedy, penned creatures, their human minds intact yet powerless - not “man enough” to resist her. Her avarice is revealed as the hoarding of self that leaves her isolated while surrounded with pets.

When Odysseus withstands her potion, Circe is stunned. “You have a mind in you no magic can enchant!” —the key phrase, and a temptation to pride. Yet he refuses the bait, demanding her oath and the release of his men before he’ll touch his food. Faithfulness to his crew—and to the homeward call—overrides the lure of isolated abundance.

Circe never repeats an epithet for him. She perceives the shifting, adaptable man she cannot reduce to one dimension. At first recognition he’s “man of twists and turns”; when his loyalty is proven he’s “tried and true”; when he reunites his men he’s “man of action”; when he presses to go home he’s “old campaigner”; when he receives her instruction he’s “captain of armies”; when he needs encouragement he’s “born for exploits.” Each phrase acknowledges another facet of Odysseus’ character, compliments from the one who failed to dehumanize him with her enchantments.

Then comes Hermes—male archetype of fluid, threshold-crossing independence. Psychopomp, messenger, trickster, he is the “giant-killer” who leads souls from one realm to another. Wisdom with him is hermetically sealed until the moment demands hermeneutic unveiling. He delights in shiftiness: the capacity to alter appearance, to redirect attention, to hold convictions lightly as circumstances require. Pig-headedness—obstinate refusal to shift perspective—is its opposite, the attitude that keeps men penned as swine.

Hermes plucks the herb moly—black root delving into hidden darkness, milk-white flower reaching toward light—and arms Odysseus with a precise strategy: counter the potion, rush with drawn sword, compel the oath, mollify the nymph, then receive provision without being possessed by it. Adaptability, guided by divine timing, empowers Odysseus to overcome the enchantments of scarcity-driven indulgence and independence alike.

Greed (classically called avarice), at its deepest, is idolatry: the worship of abundance that hoards out of fear there will never be enough love, safety, resources, knowledge or time. Circe’s island is its monument. Only the patient trust that receives without grasping— that shifts perspective without losing purpose— can walk through unbound and carry the true way forward. Even when the path leads downwards, as Odysseus’ inevitably does.

The Scarcity Trap in Modern Life

The real enchantment beneath the the pig-headedness, the fierce independance, the reticence of Eurylochus and the haste with which Elpenor jumped— is the scarcity mindset—the fear that drives us to grasp, hoard, rush and withhold. In the ancient story it turns men into pigs; in our lives it operates more subtly, yet no less relentlessly.

Lynne Twist, in The Soul of Money, names it plainly:

“For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is ‘I didn’t get enough sleep.’

The next one is ‘I don’t have enough time.’

Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of…

We don’t have enough exercise.

We don’t have enough work.

We don’t have enough profits.

We don’t have enough power.

We don’t have enough wilderness.

We don’t have enough weekends.

Of course, we don’t have enough money—ever.

We’re not thin enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not pretty enough or fit enough or educated or successful enough, or rich enough—ever.

Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds race with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day.

We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to the reverie of lack… What begins as a simple expression of the hurried life, or even the challenged life, grows into the great justification for an unfulfilled life.”

This is Circe’s draught in contemporary form: a narrative of scarcity that we swallow without realizing. We scroll and compare—someone else’s vacation, home, family, career—and feel the familiar pinch of “not enough.” We overwork to secure a future that never quite arrives. We accumulate possessions that crowd our homes and activities that fill our calendars, yet the fear persists: is this enough? And we impatiently cut others off, in more ways than one, believing “I don’t have time for this!”

In relationships the spell is subtler. We withhold transparency, affection, forgiveness—hoarding our emotional energy out of fear that giving it away will leave us depleted. Independence becomes isolation; self-protection becomes self-imprisonment. We end up like Circe herself: competent, surrounded by tamed beasts, singing and weaving in our isolated palaces—yet fundamentally alone as we reduce others to a single dimension.

Greed is not only the frantic pursuit of more; it is also the quiet refusal to risk, to share, to trust that there will be enough—enough love, enough time, enough grace—if we slow down and receive life as it comes.

This is the piggish spell Odysseus refuses. He enjoys the feasting without being possessed by it, receives provision without surrendering his purpose, and finally sails on when the time comes. The way out of the scarcity mindset is not found in material abundance, but in learning to receive with open hands—patiently trusting that providence will meet our needs as they come.

The Virtue of Patience

Twice Odysseus shows remarkable restraint toward the fearful, obstructive Eurylochus. First, he refuses to abandon the enchanted men despite Eurylochus’s terrified pleas to cut and run. Later, when the same Eurylochus—speaking with painful accuracy—accuses him of rashness, Odysseus feels the hot impulse to draw his sword and strike down his own comrade. Yet he masters it. Having learned hard lessons along the way, Odysseus is changing; he overcomes the temptation to impatience, choosing endurance instead—holding the tension without breaking, trusting divine guidance over reckless reaction.

This echoes the wisdom of Solomon, who wrote:

The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance,
but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.

(Proverbs 21:5, ESV)

Scripture names patience (makrothymia, also translated as longsuffering) as both a fruit of the Spirit and the first attribute of divine love:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control… (Galatians 5:22–23, ESV)

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. (1 Corinthians 13:4-6, ESV)

Christ embodies patience most perfectly—as unhurried presence born of trust in the Father’s provision. Though he lacked material resources—even a place to lay his head— he never lost his temper with his followers, never rushed past the marginalized, never grasped after the things we spend our lives chasing. He was in no hurry to be made king, to heal his friend Lazarus, even to launch his witnesses into the world. His ministry flowed from a deep well of abundant love:

“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love.”

(John 15:9, ESV).

Saint Paul, the self-proclaimed former “blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent” of Christ had this to say about the Lord’s patience:

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.

(1 Timothy 1:15-16, ESV)

God is far more patient with us than we are with ourselves. Saint Peter reminds us:

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

(2 Peter 3:9, ESV)

And the temptation of the scarcity mindset—to believe "I don’t have what I need!” Is directly contradicted in Scripture:

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

(2 Peter 1:3, NIV)

Patience is the quiet refusal to live out scarcity’s lie. It receives today’s provision without hoarding for tomorrow, waits instead of worrying, and takes the time to love in the face of inconvenience—trusting that the true feast, the real home, is a gift that will come in due time.

In a world that whispers “not enough,” patience prays with open hands: “Your grace is sufficient, your timing is perfect.” It is the virtue that transforms swine back into men, and keeps a wandering hero headed towards home.

Are you tempted to believe that you don’t have enough? What is it that you lack, really? How quickly do you lose patience with others, or find it difficult to wait? When the voice of greed brings worries of tomorrow by whispering “not enough,” shift your focus to the only kingdom that will never pass away. It's well worth waiting for!

[Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles, introduction and notes by Bernard Knox, Penguin Books, 1996.]

The story continues here:

Beware the isle where sunlight gleams,
the harbor calm, embraced by cliffs;
where days extend in endless dreams,
and night retreats as fleeting myths.

Beware the promise of that place,
the plume of smoke that evokes bread;
the strapping daughter’s smiling face,
the high-roofed halls where men are led.  

Beware the queen, a horrid sight, 
who summons forth the king in wrath, 
he grabs a man and takes a bite—
the others flee back to the path. 

Beware the giants’ howling rage,
who swarm at those they deem a threat;
they cast their stones from fear’s own stage,
destroying those they've never met.

Beware the idol of control,
that slyly seeks to steal your peace;
while promising a carefree soul, 
it multiplies the heart's unease. 

Beware the screens that trigger fear,
Where distant stories fill our minds;
with worries for all we hold dear,
and tragic tales of every kind. 

Beware the fearful hardened hearts,  
that crowned the Prince of Peace with thorns; 
He bore our sin and conquered death, 
and offers comfort as we mourn. 

A lesson on Peace - The Antidote to Fear

With their hopes of easy satisfaction dashed, and having been banished from Aeolia, groaning Odysseus and his men:

…pulled away with heavy hearts,

with the crew’s spirit broken under the oar’s labor,

thanks to our own folly. . . no favoring wind in sight.

The hope of plunder at Ismarus resulted in regret; the hope of comfort from the Lotus-eaters resulted in weeping; the hope of renown at the Cyclops’ island resulted in curses— perhaps Odysseus has begun to see the pattern as his optimism has given way to discouragement.

Six whole days we rowed, six nights, nonstop.      

On the seventh day we raised the Laestrygonian land,     

…Where shepherd calls to shepherd as one drives in his flocks

and the other drives his out and he calls back in answer,      

where a man who never sleeps could rake in double wages,      

one for herding cattle, one for pasturing fleecy sheep,      

the nightfall and the sunrise march so close together.

It’s a land where the days are long and the nights are momentary, where the need for sleep— and not darkness itself— appears to be the limitation.

We entered a fine harbor there, all walled around      

by a great unbroken sweep of sky-scraping cliff      

and two steep headlands, fronting each other, close      

around the mouth so the passage in is cramped.

The harbor’s entrance is narrow, protected by cliffs, like a Norwegian fjord.

Here the rest of my rolling squadron steered,      

right into the gaping cove and moored tightly,      

prow by prow. Never a swell there, big or small;      

a milk-white calm spreads all around the place.

The cove seems peaceful enough, so eleven crews— exhausted from a week of rowing— go right in and concentrate their forces in the calm water. But Odysseus has learned the hard way that things are often not as they appear. Cautiously, he holds back:

But I alone anchored my black ship outside,      

well clear of the harbor’s jaws      

I tied her fast to a cliffside with a cable.      

I scaled its rock face to a lookout on its crest

but glimpsed no trace of the work of man or beast from there;      

all I spied was a plume of smoke, drifting off the land.

Reconnaissance piques his curiosity, not unlike what happened at the Cyclops’ island. But Odysseus is no longer looking for a chance to prove his greatness.

So I sent some crew ahead to learn who lived there —      

men like us perhaps, who live on bread?      

Some bread would be good for the men, after all that rowing. So he dispatches two scouts and a runner:

 …and before the walls they met a girl, drawing water,

Antiphates’ strapping daughter —king of the Laestrygonians.

She’d come down to a clear running spring, Artacia,      

where the local people came to fill their pails.

My shipmates clustered round her, asking questions:      

who was king of the realm? who ruled the natives here?      

She waved at once to her father’s high-roofed halls.      

They entered the sumptuous palace, found his wife inside —

a woman huge as a mountain crag who filled them all with horror.  

It’s a land of sunshine with a protected harbor, a clear running spring and a sumptuous palace. But there’s something terrifying about the queen— and things quickly take a turn for the worse:

Straightaway she summoned royal Antiphates from assembly,      

her husband, who prepared my crew a barbarous welcome.      

Snatching one of my men, he tore him up for dinner —      

the other two sprang free and reached the ships.      

But the king let loose a howling through the town

that brought tremendous Laestrygonians swarming up      

from every side —hundreds, not like men, like Giants!      

Down from the cliffs they flung great rocks a man could hardly hoist      

and a ghastly shattering din rose up from all the ships —      

men in their death-cries, hulls smashed to splinters —      

They speared the crews like fish      

and whisked them home to make their grisly meal.

The barbarous welcome, the consumption of men, the hideous howl, the incoming rocks - all of this is reminiscent of the encounter with the Cyclops. But Odysseus is not the same man he was then; he shows no interest in revenge:      

But while they killed them off in the harbor depths      

I pulled the sword from beside my hip and hacked away      

at the ropes that moored my blue-prowed ship of war

and shouted rapid orders at my shipmates:      

‘Put your backs in the oars —now row or die!’      

In terror of death they ripped the swells —all as one —      

and what a joy as we darted out toward open sea,      

clear of those beetling cliffs . . . my ship alone.      

But the rest went down en masse. Our squadron sank.

Odysseus has found a new use for his sword— to sever the bonds that bind him to this tragedy— to flee rather than fight. A dozen ships had sailed in his command; all but his were destroyed; hundreds of men met their doom. What’s a man to do to in the face of such an overwhelming loss?          

From there we sailed on, glad to escape our death      

yet sick at heart for the dear companions we had lost.

The Idol of Control - Perpetual Turmoil

In the wake of Aeolia’s shattered hopes, where the winds of fortune were loosed not by divine caprice but by human folly, Odysseus and his weary crew confront the barren truth of their journey: optimism alone cannot chart the course home. Now banished and broken-spirited, they row through six unrelenting days and nights, no favoring breeze to ease their toil. Discouragement settles like fog over the sea, and the temptation to get things under control begins to emerge.

The harbor here is calm and well protected, guarded by sheer cliffs that keep the stormy sea at bay. Eleven ships venture boldly into this tranquil setting, mooring tightly together. But Odysseus, tempered by trials, anchors apart— his black ship tethered to the cliffside beyond the harbor’s jaws.

His caution proves prescient. A plume of smoke brings the hope of human contact and the thought of bread— so Odysseus sends scouts ashore. Soon they encounter the king’s strapping daughter at the clear spring of Artacia—a scene of apparent innocence that swiftly unravels. Led to the sumptuous palace, they face the queen, colossal and horrifying, who summons royal Antiphates. The king’s barbarous hospitality devours one man whole, and his howl rallies giants to the cliffs above the Greek ships. Boulders crash like thunder, hulls splinter amid screams, crews are speared like fish for a grisly feast. The echoes of Polyphemus resound—the consumption, the rage—but here the assault is not reactive fury; it is preemptive terror, a defensive strike against imagined perils.

Laestrygonia incarnates the idol of control, forged in the fires of fear and pride. The Laestrygonians, hypervigilant in their sun-drenched realm, divide the world into black and white: allies or enemies, with outsiders condemned before they even say a word. Antiphates, whose name implies “opposed to speech,” projects his inner shadows outward—consuming lest he be consumed, howling to drown out silence, attacking to evade attack.

This is not the overconfident bully Polyphemus, seizing what he desires, but the self-protective tyrant, devouring others to maintain the illusion of control. This land of fleeting night fosters a superficial gaze, fixated on “what dark thing approaches?”—a paranoia that breeds perpetual turmoil. This fear-fueled control not only breeds pride in one’s fortified illusions but ignites wrath against the unknown, turning potential allies into enemies—a cycle peace alone can shatter.

Odysseus’ transformation shines amid the carnage. No longer the boastful raider brooding on revenge, he wields his sword not for battle but to sever his ties, commanding his crew to row for their lives. His proud men had survived ten long years of war at Troy, but they were caught completely off guard at Laestrygonia. Hundreds perish, eleven vessels are destroyed—it’s in this land of sunshine that Odysseus has his darkest day. As his circumstances spin wildly out of control, his self-control resurfaces. He endures by making peace with adversity, accepting his losses, and refusing the cycle of retaliation. Odysseus’ shift from bravado to retreat embodies a key lesson: true homeward progress demands surrendering the illusion of control, and choosing peace amid loss.

The Anxiety Trap in Modern Life

Like every idol, Control also delivers exactly the opposite of what it promises. The desire for certainty and control manifests as a ceaseless cycle of turmoil: quick to sense persecution in every glance, ever alert and armored against uncertainty. We leave nothing to chance, striking first—”get them before they get you!”—assuming the worst, hurling verbal rocks in perpetual doubt and worry. Screens banish night, amplifying threats through endless news cycles and algorithmic doom, fostering hypervigilance that seeks to micromanage everything. Like Antiphates we refuse to listen as we project our fears onto others— living in defensive isolation— and howling at every supposed threat.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance” — said Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first inaugural address. It was a disastrous time in 1933, as the overindulgence of the twenties led to the Great Depression— the winds of optimism giving way to the self-fulfilling fear of disaster. Banks closed, businesses failed, farms suffered, unemployment threatened to reach 25%, and industrial production was barely half its 1929 level.

The desire to “get things under control” led to the New Deal— which significantly increased the federal government’s size. The paralysis was overcome, but the turmoil that would lead to the second world war had only just begun. The same fears are present today— as they have been in every generation— and they have been commodified by the false promises of certainty and control.

In our era, modern innovations have amplified this idol’s deceitful allure, promising mastery over the unknown while sowing deeper seeds of anxiety. Cable news channels, with their 24/7 barrage of breaking alerts and doomsday punditry, vow to keep us informed and prepared, yet they trap us in a loop of neverending crises, heightening dread over distant tragedies we can neither prevent nor forget. Insurance and litigation, marketed as shields against life’s uncertainties—from health scares to natural disasters—offer the illusion of security, but their fine print and escalating premiums foster a nagging worry about uncovered risks, turning peace of mind into a perpetual audit of vulnerabilities.

Social media platforms, designed to connect and empower, instead curate echo chambers of outrage and conspiracy, where algorithms feed us tailored threats and validations, eroding trust and inflating fears of social exile and misinformation. Advertising, relentless in its pledges of products that offer certainty— from smart home devices monitoring every shadow to apps tracking every step—conditions us to crave constant updates, only to leave us more unsettled, chasing an unattainable fortress against the inevitable chaos of life.

How does one escape the nagging feeling of vulnerability, the constant temptation to fear, the anxiety that seems to pervade every area of life? When the temptation is to fixate on all of the problems and threats that are out of our control, the first step towards peace is to shift our attention.

In Letters to an American Lady, C.S. Lewis offers the following advice:

Remember one is given the strength to bear what happens to one, but not the 100 and 1 different things that might happen. And don’t say God has proved that He can make you fear poverty, illness, etc. I am sure God never teaches us the fear of anything but Himself. As the only two good lines in one of our bad hymns say:

“Fear Him ye saints and you will then

have nothing else to fear.”

We can’t control the bad news streaming in, but we can control how much attention we give it. We can’t escape the vulnerabilities and vicissitudes of life, but we can examine our expectations and align them with reality. Inner peace is possible in spite of outer turmoil; retreat is better than endless perturbation.

The Virtue of Peace

True and lasting peace cannot be attained by striving or scheming— it is a gift freely given by the only one who is actually in control. Just as in Odysseus’ journey, fear follows dissatisfaction— but peace follows joy. As King David wrote over thirty centuries ago:

You have put more joy in my heart
than they have when their grain and wine abound.

In peace I will both lie down and sleep;
for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.

(Psalm 4:7-8, ESV)

Jesus, the Prince of Peace foretold in Isaiah 9:6, embodied this virtue fully— even as those who thought they were in control sought to silence him. One day when crossing the Sea of Galilee,

…as they sailed he fell asleep. And a windstorm came down on the lake, and they were filling with water and were in danger. And they went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased, and there was a calm.

He said to them, “Where is your faith?” And they were afraid, and they marveled, saying to one another, “Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?”

(Luke 8:23-25, ESV)

Where was their faith, anyway? Fear had gripped their attention; they thought they were perishing. But in his rebuke, Jesus revealed a better option— one that echoes Isaiah 26:3:

You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.

In the midst of political upheaval and social unrest, only a few short decades before the loss of their nation— the very night he would be arrested, accused, denied and abandoned— Jesus said:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

(John 14:27, ESV)

The peace Jesus offers transcends circumstances, trusts in the one who allows them, and flies in the face of the worries of this world. He has set us free from fear of condemnation, of suffering— from our bondage to the fear of death itself— if only we will grasp his loving hand.

The first thing the resurrected Christ said to his disciples was “Peace be with you”— and later when they were arrested and threatened they didn’t pray for safety but for boldness!

We’re told in Ephesians 2:13-17:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.

And in Philippians 4:6-9, we’re given very practical advice:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Instead of trying to take control; look to the one who is in control. Instead of leaning on your own understanding; trust in the one who is beyond understanding. Instead of focusing on every frustration; divert your attention to all that is praiseworthy— remembering that:

God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

(2 Timothy 1:7, NKJV)

What things tend to rob you of peace? Are you allowing your attention to be hijacked by fear? Has trusting your own intuition led you towards, or away from peace? Perhaps it’s time to sever the beliefs that hold you back, and row away from the false promises of control.

[Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles, introduction and notes by Bernard Knox, Penguin Books, 1996.]

The story continues here:

Imagine Aeolus, the swift-named king,
who welcomes weary men with lavish grace;
for weeks of boundless feasting, savoring,
then binds the gusting gales to speed their pace.

Imagine sailing nine full days and nights,
the west wind wafting, towards home’s tended fires;
the captain, now exhausted from his plight,
submits to slumber, as his men conspire.

Imagine murmurs rising from the crew,
of hidden gold within the leather sack;
fear stirs their hearts—“he keeps our rightful due!”—
they loose the knot, and squalls come surging back.

Imagine chaos, blasting winds and rain,
that hurl the fleet far from their native land;
back to Aeolea, met with cold disdain,
the king concludes: “the gods despise this man!”

Imagine realms unmoored, no roots to claim,
adrift on whims where every path lies free;
commitments shift like breezes, without shame,
and meaning scatters on the restless sea.

Imagine appetites that crave the thrill,
of ev’ry novelty, the winds they chase;
always the next imagined, sweeter swill,
leaves them dissatisfied, and blind to grace.

Imagine joy that anchors in the now,
a quiet fruit that tastes the grace at hand;
it thanks the Giver, honors every vow,
and guides the soul to reach the promised land.

A lesson on Joy - The Antidote to Gluttony

Having learned through experience with the Cyclops the deceitfulness of fulfillment and the hollow pursuit of greatness, Odysseus and his men rowed on:

We reached the Aeolian island next, the home of Aeolus,

Hippotas’ son, beloved by the gods who never die—

a great floating island it was, and round it all

huge ramparts rise of indestructable bronze

and sheer rock cliffs shoot up from sea to sky.

The king of this island has twelve children, six pairs:

Seated beside their dear father and doting mother,

with delicacies aplenty spread before them,

they feast on forever… All day long…

This is a welcome respite to Odyssesus after his three previous excursions:

Aeolus hosted me one entire month, he pressed me for news…

and I told him the whole long story, first to last.

Odysseus has the opportunity to process and reflect as he tells his story, but there is no hint of him dwelling on the past. Like the floating island itself, he wants to keep on moving. And one can only feast and reminisce for so long. Optimistic King Aeolus seems keen to satisfy his guest’s desires:

And then, when I begged him to send me on my way,

he denied me nothing, he went about my passage.

He gave me a sack, the skin of a full-grown ox,

binding inside the winds that howl from every quarter,

for Zeus had made that king the master of all the winds,

with power to calm them down or rouse them as he pleased.

After the regretful raid on the Cicones, the trial of self-control at the lotus-eater’s island, and the narrow escape from the lusty Polyphemus — Odysseus’ fortunes seem to have taken a turn for the better.

Aeolus stowed the sack inside my holds, lashed so fast

with a burnished silver cord

not even a slight puff could slip past that knot.

Yet he set the West Wind free to blow us on our way

and waft our squadron home.

What a plan! One can imagine the captain saying “sit back gents, and relax - we don’t even have to row to get home! It’ll be smooth sailing from here - it won’t be long before we’re all satisfied!”

It was only a matter of time until the men’s shadows caught up with them…

But his plan was bound to fail,

yes, our own reckless folly swept us on to ruin…

Nine whole days we sailed, nine nights, nonstop.

On the tenth our own land hove into sight at last—

we were so close we could see men tending fires.

And so Odysseus finds himself within sight of home, at last! He can almost taste it. And surely his men were doing what every war-weary squadron does - fantasizing about the meals they’ll eat, the things they’ll do, the stories they’ll tell when they finally get home! Odysseus doesn’t see his next test approaching…

But now an enticing sleep came on me, bone-weary

from working the vessel’s sheet myself, no letup,

never trusting the ropes to any other mate,

the faster to journey back to native land.

No one is more eager to get home than Odysseus. But in his desire to get there as fast as he can, he fails to brief his men. He doesn’t tell them about the sack of winds, doesn’t trust them to do their jobs, and neglects their desires as he seeks to satisfy his own. And so they do what every group does when they’re kept in the dark with no explanation:

the crews began to mutter among themselves,

sure I was hauling troves of gold and silver home…

‘The old story!’ One man glanced at another, grumbling.

‘Look at our captain’s luck— so loved by the world,

so prized at every landfall, every port of call.’

‘Heaps of lovely plunder he hauls home from Troy,

while we who went through slogging just as hard,

we go home empty-handed…

‘Hurry, let’s see what loot is in that sack,

how much gold and silver. Break it open— now!’

The crew trusts their captain as much as their captain trusts them, and the “fear of missing out” overtakes them:

A fatal plan, but it won my shipmates over.

They loosed the sack and all the winds burst out

and a sudden squall struck and swept us back to sea,

wailing, in tears, far from our own native land.

If only they had known, it was just a windbag all along.

Odysseus confesses:

And I woke up with a start, my spirit churning—

should I leap over the side and drown at once or

grit my teeth and bear it, stay among the living?

As soon as his hopes are dashed, he’s tempted to throw himself overboard. He’s “a man of many twists and turns,” but he’s not a quitter:

I bore it all, held firm, hiding my face,

clinging tight to the decks

while heavy squalls blasted our squadron back

again to Aeolus’ island, shipmates groaning hard.

They find King Aeolus in the middle of another feast. And less than pleased to be interrupted with bad news. The king exclaims:

‘Surely we launched you well, we sped you on your way

to your own land and house, or any place you pleased.’

And thus the finger pointing begins. Odysseus

…replied in deep despair,

‘A mutinous crew undid me— that and a cruel sleep.

Set it to rights, my friends. You have the power!’

But these are the sort of “friends” that like to party. Not the kind that want to be associated with failure. Aeolus, once warm— now turns cold, dismissive, almost cynical. Negativity has entered his floating realm; he wants no part of it:

…the father broke forth with an ultimatum:

‘Away from my island —fast —most cursed man alive!

It’s a crime to host a man or speed him on his way

when the blessed deathless gods despise him so.

Crawling back like this —

it proves the immortals hate you! Out —get out!’

So much for optimism! Odysseus, left holding the bag, admits:

Groan as I did, his curses drove me from his halls

and from there we pulled away with heavy hearts,

with the crews’ spirit broken under the oars’ labor,

thanks to our own folly. . . no favoring wind in sight.

The Idol of Satisfaction - Perpetual Dissatisfaction

The Aeolia episode is laced with whispers of satisfaction. The Aeolians themselves live in perpetual feasting, delicacies spread before them forever, day after day, as if unending enjoyment could be secured by letting the good times roll on forever. Their island floats wherever the wind blows—unmoored, rootless, committed only to the next possibility. King Aeolus, quick-moving and ever-optimistic, binds the contrary winds in a grand, clever plan that promises effortless arrival—yet the windbag delivers the exact opposite of what was expected.

The crew, seized by fear of missing out, cannot bear the thought that their captain might relish a share they do not; they must help themselves to the imagined treasure now! Odysseus himself, driven by desire and preoccupied with quickly reaching home, overworks himself without rest or explanation, inviting fatigue and distrust. Overtaken at last by his need for sleep, he yields to exhaustion at the worst possible moment.

And Aeolus, when faced with the failure of his efforts to be of service, dismisses it instantly—cynical, cold, unwilling to endure the negativity. He does not ask questions or offer second chances; he simply pivots. Everything is negotiable except, apparently, his desire to keep things positive. But Odysseus eventually owns his error and admits the truth: the failure was “thanks to our own folly.”

Underneath all of this is the passion of gluttony: the insatiable hunger for pleasure, novelty, and the next exciting thing. This vice advocates stimulating experiences as the highest good— ambitious plans, pleasurable interactions, good conversations, and feasting of all kinds. The Greeks had a whole school of thought around this passion, called Epicureanism. Epicurus himself sought modest pleasures, tranquility, and freedom from pain and fear. But popular opinion has morphed this philosophy into an endless thirst for richer sensations, finer tastes, newer highs—always chasing the horizon of perfect satisfaction, always convinced it lies in the next experience.

But the pursuit of satisfaction above all else leads to dissatisfaction: the feast leads to nausea; pleasure turns to numbness; thrill sours into cynicism. Odysseus went to sleep with hope, and awoke in despair. The pitfalls we ignore in our passions are revealed when it’s too late to act— catching us by surprise. And like Odysseus we realize we’ve been chasing after the wind, which ends up blowing us all the way back to where we started.

As we tend to minimize the vice of lust to the realm of sexuality, we also frame Gluttony in terms of overeating. But the behaviors are only symptomatic of the underlying passions. Lust is the fantasy of fulfillment through possessing some thing, while gluttony is the fantasy of satisfaction through experience. Lust wants to gain and own; gluttony wants to savor and consume.

This distinction is an ancient one; St. Maximus the Confessor wrote that “from gluttony [not lust] is born the thought of fornication.” Gluttony is the corruption of all appetites; for food, for novelty, for excitement, for physical pleasure— the neverending search for experiential bliss. It’s the hedonic treadmill of promised satisfaction, always just beyond our reach— and it’s the corresponding fear of missing out. Until, of course, unrealistic expectations ensure the opposite of what was promised— leaving us disgusted and dissatisfied.

The Dissatisfaction Trap in Modern Life

“I can’t get no satisfaction,” Mick Jagger wailed in 1965—and the song still echoes as the anthem of pleasure seekers today.

More than forty years later, University of Virginia professor Mark Edmundson observed this restless hunger in his students— now supercharged by the Internet. In his 2008 essay “Dwelling in Possibilities,” he wrote:

[This] student generation is a singular one, at least in my experience of 30 or so years teaching: Its members have a spectacular hunger for life and more life. They want to study, travel, make friends, make more friends, read everything (superfast), take in all the movies, listen to every hot band, keep up with everyone they’ve ever known. And there’s something else, too, that distinguishes them: They live to multiply possibilities. They’re enemies of closure. For as much as they want to do and actually manage to do, they always strive to keep their options open, never to shut possibilities down before they have to. . .

“I dwell in possibility,” says Emily Dickinson, “a fairer house than prose”. . .

My students are possibility junkies… As we talked about this in class… something surprising came out. The moment of maximum Internet pleasure was not the moment of closure, where you sealed the deal; it was the moment when the choices had been multiplied to the highest sum. It was the moment of maximum promise, when you touched the lip of the possible: of four majors and eight courses per term and a gazillion hits on your Facebook page, and being everyplace (almost) at once. . .

Beneath the hustle, he detects a quiet fear: “Do it now, for later may be too late.” The same fear drives hookup culture, where commitment feels like selling out and keeping options open masquerades as freedom.

We know the pattern intimately: one more episode, one more purchase, one more swipe, one more notification, one more trip. Each promises the satisfaction we lack, yet leaves us wanting more. The culture of endless possibility keeps us scrolling, spending, speculating—convinced that “contentment” is a lie told by those who have settled for less.

But gluttony does not always mean excess. In The Screwtape Letters (C.S. Lewis, 1942), the senior tempter Screwtape makes the following observations on gluttony in a letter to his nephew Wormwood:

One of the great achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe. This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of Delicacy, not gluttony of Excess. Your patient’s mother, as I learn from the dossier and you might have learned from Glubose [another tempter], is a good example. She would be astonished—one day, I hope, will be—to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small. But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern?

…Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance…

The woman is in what may be called the ‘All-I-want’ state of mind. All she wants is a cup of tea properly made, or an egg properly boiled, or a slice of bread properly toasted. But she never finds any servant or any friend who can do these simple things ‘properly’—because her ‘properly’ conceals an insatiable demand for the exact, and almost impossible, palatal pleasures which she imagines she remembers from the past… Mere excess in food is much less valuable than delicacy.

The result of this trap is dissatisfaction, the means of getting there are as varied as our appetites.

Edmundson concludes that the first task of education—and, we might add, of the soul’s journey home—is to slow down. To stop. To think. To recognize that “life is more than spontaneity and whim.” To truly live well, we must resolve to close the tabs, tie the knot, and bloom where we’re planted.

The Virtue of Joy

How does one escape the trap of dissatisfaction? By shifting focus from future expectations to present opportunity; from what could be to what already is. As with the lie of fulfillment, the lie of satisfaction puts us out of touch with the present moment by distracting us with false promises—turning our attention away from people and towards things. Escape involves pivoting from the expectation of enjoyment to the practice of rejoicing. This thread is woven throughout scripture.

King David wrote of the Lord:

You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

(Psalm 16:11, ESV)

And even in repenting of the mess he made with Bathsheba, David wrote:

Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice.

(Psalm 51:8, ESV)

Centuries later, when the angel announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds in the field, he said:

Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people…

(Luke 2:10, ESV)

And Jesus, whose most common command is “do not be afraid,” taught often of the importance of shifting our perspectives:

Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.

(Luke 6:22-23, ESV)

It was the joy of our redemption that motivated him, and his example that motivates us to:

…lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

(Hebrews 12:1-2, ESV)

Love is central to Jesus’ mission, and so is joy. He taught:

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

(John 15:9-11, ESV)

The antidote to gluttony is joy—the second attribute of the fruit of the Spirit—which is always and only experienced in the present moment. Joy receives the west wind blowing now. It sings over the manna on the ground today. It’s never disappointed because it doesn't have expectations. It is not the promise of tomorrow’s satisfaction; it is the quiet song of gratitude for the grace we have in hand. Where gluttony says, “this isn’t enough,” joy answers, “all this for me?”

Jesus embodied joy through every trial. Rooted in who he was and what he came to do—he carried a poise that no circumstance could uproot. He turned water to wine, feasted with sinners, and rejoiced when each lost sheep was found. On the night of his betrayal, he served the friends who would soon abandon him, praying:

…that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

(John 17:13, ESV)

Joy is not the absence of longing or pain; it is the presence of gratitude, transforming adversity into opportunity to rejoice. It does not deny tomorrow’s hope; it refuses to overlook today’s grace. It grounds us where we are, countering Aeolia’s aimless drifting with Ithaca’s fixed belonging. On our own way home, we are invited to cultivate this same joy: to notice the steady breeze of grace carrying us forward; to give thanks for provision as it comes; to rejoice in the people and promises God has entrusted to us; and to reject the lie that satisfaction can be found in chasing the wind.

What kind of “satisfaction” do you tend to fantasize about? Do you lean more towards excess or delicacy? How often do you find yourself in the middle of an experience you’ve been looking forward to, only to be distracted from the present by another possibility? When was the last time you slowed down to stop and think— to give thanks for all of the things that are going right? Imagine the joy of being fully present; of enjoying every moment as it comes. And resolve to stop seeking satisfaction in the next experience, which smothers enjoyment under the weight of expectations.

As the Lord said: “these things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

[Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles, introduction and notes by Bernard Knox, Penguin Books, 1996.]

The story continues here:

Observe the weary fleet that reaches shore,
and comes upon the Cyclops’ hearty land;
though stores are full and home calls evermore,
they chase the vain ambitions of one man.

Observe the wine he pours into a skin;
his chosen men who cross the narrow strait;
the giant’s cave unguarded, cheese within,
but he will not give way, “greatness awaits.”

Observe the slab that seals their living tomb,
no twenty wagons’ strength could push aside;
six comrades now are lost to craving’s doom,
the Cyclops wolfed them down in his great pride.

Observe the vengeful heart that plots all day,
and slyly mixes wine, to use that night;
three bowls the monster seizes, puts away,
as Nobody awaits to steal his sight.

Observe the groping hands that pat each ram,
yet miss the warriors trussed beneath their ribs;
the slab is moved, the men escape, but pride’s old dam
still breaks in taunts across the waves, “your rival lives!”

Observe the foolish shout—“here's my real name!”—
that brings Poseidon’s curse upon their quest;
the breakers toss, the waters swirl, the heart’s old flame;
of greatness lengthens every trial, every test.

Observe the lust that whispers, “Take and own,
achieve, possess— and emptiness will cease”;
Yet every conquest leaves the heart as stone,
Still chasing dreams that never bring it peace.

Observe the world’s inverted, hollow creed:
”Love things, use people, worship self alone!”
Promising fulfillment, planting seeds—
that overgrow with thorns the rightful throne.

Observe the One who took the lowest place,
who washed the feet of Judas, bore the cross;
true greatness serves, and love alone gives grace—
to fill the the empty hearts of those once lost.

A lesson on Love – The Antidote to Lust

The story continues as Odysseus and his men depart the island of the Lotus-Eaters—where the sweet sounding temptations of comfort through avoidance were overcome with self-control.

From there we sailed on, our spirits now at a low ebb,

and reached the land of the high and mighty Cyclops…

They have no meeting place for council, no laws either,

no, up on the mountain peaks they live in arching caverns –

each a law unto himself…

The men’s low spirits set them up for the next temptation – to prove themselves, to glory in their strengths, to grasp after the fulfillment that seems within their reach. The mention of Cyclops must have piqued the Phaeacians’ interest; previously we were told that they themselves:

lived in… Hyperia, all too close to the overbearing Cyclops,

stronger, violent brutes who harried them without end.

So their godlike king, Nausithous, led the people off

in a vast migration, settled them in Scheria,

far from the men who toil on this earth…

But instead of withdrawing like the Phaeacians, Odysseus chooses to engage. Upon arrival on the new island they replenish their stores of meat:

A dozen vessels sailed in my command

And to each crew nine goats were shared out

And mine alone took ten. Then all day long

Till the sun went down we sat and feasted well.”

As for wine—

there was still plenty left;

The men had carried off a generous store in jars

When we stormed and sacked the Cicones’ holy city.

So why bother with the Cyclops? What do you think Odysseus was after?

Now we stared across at the Cyclops’ shore, so near

we could even see their smoke, hear their voices.

If his first priority is to get home, and they have all the provisions they need, what exactly was it that tempted Odysseus to “probe the natives living over there”? He boastfully continues:

I told most of my good trusty crew to wait,

To sit tight by the ship and guard her well

While I picked out my dozen finest fighters

And off I went. But I took a skin of wine along…

He admits:

A sudden foreboding

told my fighting spirit I’d soon come up against

some giant clad in power like armor-plate—

a savage deaf to justice, blind to law.

But he goes anyway, driven by desire. As soon as they reached the Cyclops’ coast – “no long trip” –

we spied a cavern just at the shore…

Here was a giant’s lair…

A grim loner, dead set in his own lawless ways.

Here was a piece of work, by god, a monster

built like no mortal who ever supped on bread,

no, like a shaggy peak, I’d say – a man-mountain

rearing head and shoulders over the world.

Luckily, the giant wasn’t home. So they explored his den and found it “loaded with drying cheeses” and “crowded with young lambs and kids.” Odysseus reveals:

From the start my comrades pressed me, pleading hard,

‘Let’s make away with the cheeses, then come back—

hurry, drive the lambs and kids from the pens

to our swift ship, put out to sea at once!’

But I would not give way—

and how much better it would have been—

Not till I saw him, saw what gifts he’d give.

So they built a fire and helped themselves to the Cyclops’ provisions, and “settled down inside, awaiting his return…” How would you respond to thirteen belligerents who broke into your home and plundered your pantry?

The giant finally returns—he had left his home open while gone; now he shuts them in:

to close his door he hoisted overhead

a tremendous, massive slab –

no twenty-two wagons, rugged and four-wheeled,

could budge that boulder off the ground, I tell you,

such an immense stone the monster wedged to block his cave!

…‘Strangers!’ he thundered out, ‘now who are you?

Where did you sail from, over the running sea-lanes?

Out on a trading spree or roving the waves like pirates,

Sea-wolves raiding at will, who risk their lives

To plunder other men?’

He may only have one eye, but the Cyclops sees them accurately enough. At least at first. What have they been risking their lives, and losing their comrades for, anyway? “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” – and Odysseus’ boasting is no exception:

We’re glad to say we’re men of Atrides Agamemnon,

whose fame is the proudest thing on earth these days,

so great a city he sacked, such multitudes he killed!

Is sacking cities and killing multitudes what makes a man great? The Trojan war began as a fight over a woman – is glory really to be found in such conflicts? Is “I take what I want, and nobody takes from me!” the mantra of a truly great man? It could very well be the mantra of the Cyclops…

There is an apocryphal story about another famous Greek— Alexander “the Great.” In it, Alexander’s fans boast to the philosopher Diogenes about his conquests, saying: “This man has conquered the world! What have you done?” Diogenes replies without hesitation: “I have conquered my desire to conquer the world.”

Perhaps it is the battles within, and not without, that matter most in life.

Odysseus’ boasting doesn’t help him at all. The Cyclops isn’t impressed, neither is he affected by Odysseus’ subsequent plea for mercy out of respect for the gods. The giant is happy to engage in a contest of “greatness” – and he raises the stakes by ruthlessly devouring two of the uninvited plunderers:

Lurching up, he lunged out with his hands toward my men

And snatching two at once, rapping them on the ground

he knocked them dead like pups—

their brains gushed out all over, soaked the floor—

and ripping them limb from limb to fix his meal

he bolted them down like a mountain-lion, left no scrap,

devoured entrails, flesh and bones, marrow and all!

As if to prove that he’s not in the least afraid of the Greeks, he then goes to sleep right in front of them “in his cave, stretched out along his flocks.”

Odysseus is tempted to kill him then and there, but he realizes that that would only leave them trapped:

How could we with our bare hands heave back

that slab he set to block his cavern’s gaping maw?

The monster awakens at dawn,

and as soon as he’d briskly finished all his chores

he snatched up two more men and fixed his meal.

He then nonchalantly leaves the cave, putting the slab back in place to trap the “great” men in. They are powerless to escape. Odysseus is not shy to admit:

he left me there, the heart inside me brooding for revenge:

how could I pay him back?

Observe how quickly his desire for glory turned into desire for revenge! The story continues:

Nightfall brought him back…

he hoisted the huge slab to block the door…

and as soon as he’d briskly finished all his chores

he snatched up two more men and fixed his meal.

Odysseus has now lost six of his twelve “finest fighters” – but he has also had time to reflect and to strategize, and to make an olivewood spear out of the Cyclops’ great club (his own weapon will be his undoing!). He has realized that he’ll never beat this adversary in a contest of force. And he still needs him to move the huge slab from the cave’s entrance. But what if the Cyclops’ strength is also his weakness? With only one eye, the monster has no depth perception. Will he be able to see through this scheme? Perhaps his unrestrained desires will lead to his undoing. And what of self-control? Odysseus devises a test:

But this time I lifted a carved wooden bowl,

brimful of my ruddy wine,

and went right up to the Cyclops, enticing,

‘Here, Cyclops, try this wine—to top off

the banquet of human flesh you’ve bolted down!’

The strategy works.

He seized the bowl and tossed it off

and the heady wine pleased him immensely – ‘More’ –

he demanded a second bowl – ‘a hearty helping!

And tell me your name now, quickly,

so I can hand my guest a gift to warm his heart…

Odysseus obliges:

Three bowls I brimmed and three he drank to the last drop,

the fool, and then, when the wine was swirling round his brain,

I approached my host with a cordial, winning word:

‘So, you ask me the name I’m known by, Cyclops?

I will tell you. But you must give me a guest-gift

as you’ve promised. Nobody—that’s my name. No-body—

so my mother and father call me, all my friends.’

But he boomed back at me from his ruthless heart,

‘Nobody? I’ll eat Nobody last of all his friends –

I’ll eat the others first! That’s my gift to you!’

Supremely overconfident, the Cyclops succumbs to the wine and passes out, “sprawled full-length,” oblivious to his vulnerabilities. And as consciousness left him,

wine came spurting, flooding up from his gullet

with chunks of human flesh—he vomited, blind drunk.

Now, at last, Odysseus has his opportunity. He heats the tip of the spear “to get it red-hot” – rallies his men, and plunges it straight into the monster’s eye.

In response the giant

loosed a hideous roar…

Wrenched the spike from his eye…

Bellowed out for help from his neighbor Cyclops…

Hearing his cries, they… asked what ailed him:

‘What, Polyphemus, what in the world’s the trouble?’

Roaring out in the godsent night to rob us of our sleep.

Surely no one’s rustling your flocks against your will —

surely no one’s trying to kill you now by fraud or force!’

‘Nobody, friends’—Polyphemus bellowed back from his cave—

‘Nobody’s killing me now by fraud and not by force!’

His neighbors credit the gods, then lumber off. Odysseus proudly relates:

…but laughter filled my heart

to think how nobody’s name—my great cunning stroke—

had duped them one and all.

The Cyclops then heaved the huge slab from the doorway and sat down to try and catch them in the act of escaping. But Odysseus has perceived that the monster, whose one eye left him without insight, and now without any sight at all, would not think to check the underside of his rams as they went out.

Their master now, heaving in torment, felt the back of each animal

halting before him here, but the idiot never sensed

my men were trussed up under their thick fleecy ribs.

Now it’s the Cyclops who is “brooding for revenge.”

If Odysseus’ primary goal was to get home, this whole episode could have been avoided. Indeed, now he has the chance to make himself scarce. Observe what he does instead:

But once offshore as far as a man’s shout can carry,

I called back to the Cyclops, stinging taunts:

‘So, Cyclops, no weak coward it was whose crew

you bent to devour there in your vaulted cave’—

… That made the rage of the monster boil over.

Ripping off the peak of a towering crag, he heaved it

so hard the boulder landed just in front of our dark prow…

again I began to taunt the Cyclops—men around me

trying to check me, calm me, left and right…

but they could not bring my fighting spirit round.

I called back with another burst of anger, ‘Cyclops—

If any man on the face of the earth should ask you

who blinded you, shamed you so—say Odysseus,

raider of cities, he gouged out your eye,

Laertes’ son who makes his home in Ithaca!’

Now this is a notoriously stupid thing to do (how many criminals are caught because they couldn’t help but boast or leave their mark) — and it brings a prophecy to Polyphemus’ recollection— “that I’d be blinded here at the hands of one Odysseus.” And so he prays to his father Poseidon:

If I really am your son and you claim to be my father—

come, grant that Odysseus, raider of cities,

Laertes’ son who makes his home in Ithaca,

never reaches home. Or if he’s fated to see

his people once again and reach his well-built house

and his own native country, let him come home late

and come a broken man—all shipmates lost,

alone in a stranger’s ship –

and let him find a world of pain at home!

Poseidon responds to Polyphemus’ prayer – he is not so capricious as one might assume – he has legal right to do what he subsequently does to Odysseus, who ends the episode thusly:

And from there we sailed on, glad to escape our death

yet sick at heart for the comrades we had lost.

The Idol of Fulfillment – Perpetual Emptiness

At the beginning of his account, Odysseus told the Phaeacians:

Calypso the lustrous goddess tried to hold me back,

deep in her arching caverns, craving me for a husband.

So did Circe, holding me just as warmly in her halls,

the bewitching queen of Aeaea keen to have me too.

But they never won the heart inside me, never.

He clearly had his heart set on returning home. But is that the only thing that had his heart? The raid on the Cicones was not due to the god’s intervention, and neither was the temptation of the lotus or the encounter with the Cyclops. Odysseus ordered the raid; Odysseus sent scouts to the Lotus-Eaters; Odysseus chose to remain in the Cyclops’ cave. The encounter with Polyphemus reveals conflicting desires within Odysseus. He dreams about getting home, but he fantasizes of “greatness” – of conquest, of fame, of proving himself the hero. This is Lust at work– the lie that securing some thing will fill the empty space within. “When I achieve that, when I prove myself, when I finally get the ________ of my dreams—when I gain the respect of this world—then I will be fulfilled!” Or as Rocky Balboa said: “then I’ll know that I’m not a bum!”

But even when Odysseus is celebrated as a hero, as Demodocus sings of his conquest of Troy in the presence of a king—fulfillment eludes him—always just out of reach. He can't help but weep (has he had, by then, a change of heart?). And that’s the nature of this trap. The fantasy of fulfillment is always in the future, never in the present – and as soon as we get the things we thought would fulfill us—and find ourselves still empty—we’re back to fantasizing about, and lusting after, the next thing that whispers the same lie.

We have lost touch with this deeper meaning, minimizing lust to the realm of sexuality. But in doing so we have lost perspective on what may be the most pervasive of the vices. Saint Peter wrote that the corruption in the world is caused by lust (2 Peter 1:4) – Saint John wrote that “all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world (1 John 2:16). Saint Paul— a man who sought “greatness” himself before being blinded by the Truth— advises the Saints to “put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to deceitful lusts” (Ephesians 4:22) – and elsewhere “for I had not known lust, except the law had said, ‘Thou shalt not covet’” (Romans 7:7).

Polyphemus is the personification of lust, of unrestrained libido: he wants and he takes, defying anyone who stands in his way. He has only one eye—he cannot perceive depth; to him things are quite simple, he does not bother to look beneath the surface. But this also reveals the shadow side of Odysseus, the self-proclaimed “raider of cities,” who has thus far sacrificed seventy-two men in the raid on the Cicones, and another six of his finest fighters to the Cyclops’ appetite. All on the altar of greatness.

How did lust become disassociated with covetousness and minimized to sexual desire? How did the most intimate part of life become a source of shame? This twist, of course, serves our accuser quite well—the issue of sexual desire is one of the most common reasons that people abandon faith. But this shift also has something to do with our conception of romantic love as the thing that will fulfill us - which is a relatively new idea.

C.S. Lewis sheds light on this in The Allegory of Love:

“French poets, in the eleventh century, discovered or invented, or were the first to express, that romantic species of passion which English poets were still writing about in the nineteenth. They effected a change which has left no corner of our ethics, our imagination, or our daily life untouched, and they erected impassable barriers between us and the classical past or the Oriental present. Compared with this revolution the Renaissance is a mere ripple on the surface of literature…

We must conceive a world emptied of that ideal of ‘happiness’—a happiness grounded on the successful romantic love—which still supplies the motive of our popular fiction…

‘Love’, in our sense of the word, is as absent from the literature of the Dark Ages as from that of classical antiquity. Their favorite stories were not, like ours, stories of how a man married, or failed to marry, a woman. They preferred to hear how a holy man went to heaven or how a brave man went to battle…”

The ancients weren’t enamored with the idea of romance; they were in love with the notion of greatness. And that is what Odysseus was captivated by – that is where he sought fulfillment. And this put part of him at odds with his desire to return home – his interests were divided. Can you relate?

The Fulfillment Trap in Modern Life

Cynthia Heimel observed this lust for greatness in our culture all the way back in 1990. Our cultural conception of greatness may not involve pillage and plunder in the classical sense – but the spirit of lust as promised fulfillment is alive and well. Here’s what she wrote about “The Celebrity Decade” (1980-1989):

We have by necessity come to believe that unless you are a celebrity, you don’t exist at all. If you are not a celebrity, you are inert filler. If the media isn’t flashbulbing your every gesture, it didn’t happen. Pri­vate epiphanies, soul-wrenching despairs, so what, who cares? You are a tree falling alone in the forest…

I PITY CELEBRITIES. No, I do. The min­ute a person becomes a celebrity is the same minute he or she becomes a monster. Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Bar­bra Streisand were once perfectly pleas­ant human beings with whom you might lunch on a slow Tuesday afternoon.

But now they have become supreme beings and their wrath is awful. It’s not what they had in mind. When God wants to play a really rotten practical joke on you, he grants you your deepest wish and then giggles merrily when you suddenly realize you want to kill yourself.

Sly, Bruce, and Barbra, fervently, more than any of us, wanted fame. They worked, they pushed, they stepped on the other guy’s face in their desperate need…

The night each of them became famous they wanted to shriek with relief. Finally! Now they were adored! Invincible! Magic!

The morning after the night each of them became famous they wanted to take an overdose of barbiturates.

All their fantasies had been realized, yet the reality was still the same. If they were miserable before, they were twice as miserable now, because that giant thing they were striving for, that fame thing that was going to make everything okay, that was going to make their lives bear­able, that was going to provide them with personal fulfillment and (ha ha) happi­ness, had happened. And nothing changed. They were still them. The disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable.”

Our deepest wishes are not so different from Odysseus’—we too are torn between the quiet call of self-realization and the roaring lure of worldly fulfillment. The false promise echoes everywhere: “Once I secure that—one more achievement, one more possession, one more award—then I will be fulfilled!”

Our culture feeds the fire, offering endless promises of happiness to those who buy what the world is selling: material achievement, academic credentials, respected careers, designer homes, perfect health, luxury retirement. Consumerism shouts that the next thing will fill the emptiness within; that our main problem is that we don’t have what we need— resulting in hearts divided, relationships abandoned, years wasted in pursuit of false promises.

Consider the absurd volume of advertising today: the shiny new vehicle that will prove that you’ve “made it,” the vacation (or pill) that will bring perfect happiness, the thirty day cleanse that will solve all your health problems, the must-have product that will finally make everything right! We are constantly fed images of possession as the key to happiness—“secure this, and the void will be filled!” But they are designed to leave us wanting more: the latest style, the upgraded model, the endless cycle of “one more thing!” The more we chase the mirage, the more desperate we become; the more we “need” on the outside, the emptier we are on the inside. Ultimately, the things we seek to possess are the very things that end up possessing us.

We boast of our triumphs—follower counts, promotions, degrees, conquests and achievements—proclaiming “I have arrived!”—but we fail to convince ourselves—the shadow follows: loneliness, burnout, the continual obligation to maintain the façade. Like Odysseus shouting his name from the shore, we demand recognition for our “greatness,” only to invoke the wrath of those we’ve trampled along the way (sometimes, sadly, even our own families).

Have you ever gotten what you thought would fill the void, only to find yourself emptier than before?

Escape requires a paradigm shift. Instead of committing ourselves to things— what if we commit ourselves to the only one who even claims to have fully commited himself to us? In other words, the only thing that will free us from the self-serving grip of lust is the self-giving virtue of love.

As Arthur Brooks wrote:

The world gives us a simple formula for living: Love things, use people, worship yourself.

This is completely upside down. The right formula is: Love people, use things, worship God.

Odysseus is no example of self-giving love; but he is a wonderful example of the struggles we all face within—and we still have much to learn from his journey.

The Supremacy of Love

It was not until the arrival of Christ that the ancient world had an alternative Great Man to consider. And there are hints all throughout his story that the preoccupation with greatness was as pervasive then as it is now. His own disciples were caught arguing—more than once— about which of them was “the greatest.”

The first time this happened;

Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by his side and said to them, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.”

(Luke 9:47-48, ESV)

The second time he said to them:

“The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves.

(Luke 22:25-27, ESV)

When asked “which is the great commandment in the Law?” He replied:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.

(Matthew 22:36-40, ESV)

Read that last sentence again.

Elsewhere, Jesus speaks directly to the trap of possessiveness:

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

(Mark 8:36, ESV)

St. John, “the one whom Jesus loved,” explicitly says:

Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

(1 John 4:8, ESV)

Jesus’ single-focused mission to “destroy the works of the devil” (which consist of deceitful desires and enslaving false narratives) and “deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” was far more difficult than the mission of any prior “great man.”

And he didn’t sacrifice others to achieve this - he sacrificed himself.

Do you think Jesus is weak? Just try to live like him— humility is much harder to achieve than arrogance. He’s the ultimate hero, the ultimate example of manhood, the champion that saves us from the giants we could never face alone. Only the love that he offers can truly fill our empty hearts to fullness - the fulfillment we crave is found only in self-giving, life-renewing, ever-flowing unstoppable love.

As Lewis observed:

If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?

What form of “greatness” do you tend to fantasize about? Does it involve trampling on others and poking out eyes? Is it the perfect home, the perfect family, the perfect career, the perfect legacy? Are the people who have the things you’re grasping after really as happy as you imagine? Is your pursuit of fulfillment harming your relationships? Observe the ways you’ve fallen into this trap, and resolve to stop pursuing fulfillment in things that can never live up to our fantasies. A whole new perspective on life awaits!

[Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles, introduction and notes by Bernard Knox, Penguin Books, 1996.]

The story continues here:

Remember the bard whose songs of glory ring,
praising the war and Troy’s resounding fall;
the hero’s sobs and tears are hidden things,
he weeps from memories the songs do not recall—

A woman clings to husband gasping, dying,
is dragged away, as his men beat her down;
so tears of heartbreak from his eyes are flying,
his own deep wounds reopened, raw and brown.

Remember the raid on the Cicones’ shore,
the war was past, yet lived on in the men;
they sacked the town, took wives and spoils galore,
while fury summoned darkness back again—

Remember the land where lotus was first met,
where grinning hosts gave numbness of the will;
with just one taste, the heart forgot regret,
content to drift while time stood deadly still.

Remember the scouts who ate the lotus gladly,
mission forgotten, every care dispersed;
remembrance itself became a haze and sadly—
purpose lost, abandoned, numb to thirst.

Remember the captain’s stern and urgent arms,
dragging his stoned men— back to the ship;
lashing them fast lest comfort’s lying harms,
should end their voyage within its dazed grip.

Remember the idol: Comfort, soft but blind,
that asks no price and slowly steals the soul;
promising ease while leaving self behind,
numbing the aches that make our spirits whole.

Remember the vice that wears the mildest face—
acedia’s sorrow at the goads of pain;
complacency that lets adventure fade,
as we trade our worries for its chains.

Remember the Lord, who embraced suff'ring's crown,
refusing easy bread for better food;
And for joy’s sake, swallow'd sin and death down—
He chose the path of sorrows, for our good.

A lesson on Self-Control – The Antidote to Complacency

In the courteous halls of king Alcinous, the Phaeacians treat Odysseus with every honor—bathing him, clothing him, seating him beside the king himself. The blind bard Demodocus sings of Troy’s fall: the wooden horse, the sack of the city, the triumph of Greek cunning. To the Phaeacians these are stirring tales of glory, sung for delight and admiration. But for Odysseus they bring back other memories. The songs remember only the so-called glories of war; he remembers its horrors:

But great Odysseus melted into tears,

Running down from his eyes to his wet cheeks…

as a woman weeps, her arms flung round her darling husband,

a man who fell in battle, fighting for town and townsmen,

trying to beat the day of doom from home and children.

Seeing the man go down, dying, gasping for breath,

she clings for dear life, screams and shrills –

but the victors, just behind her,

digging spear-butts into her back and shoulders,

drag her off in bondage, yoked to hard labor, pain,

and the most heartbreaking torment wastes her cheeks.

So from Odysseus’ eyes ran tears of heartbreak now.

He veils his face in his cloak, concealing his grief— yet the tears flow unchecked. Alcinous notices, stops the music, and gently asks:

why do you weep and grieve so sorely when you hear

the fate of the Argives, hear the fall of Troy?

That is the gods’ work, spinning threads of death

through the lives of mortal men,

and all to make a song for those to come…

Moved by the king’s compassion and the weight of his own sorrows, Odysseus finally speaks—revealing his heart:

you’re set on probing the bitter pains I’ve borne,

so I’m to weep and grieve, it seems, still more…

And thus he begins his story with the merciless raid on the Cicones, a regretful memory of war’s lingering grip. The war was over, yet it lived on in the men. Fresh from Troy’s fall, the wind drove them to Ismarus, stronghold of the Cicones—former allies of the Trojans. Their mission is no longer glory or victory; it is raid and plunder. Infected with the evil they have witnessed and committed—and without the self-control necessary to oppose their darker impulses—they needlessly sack the city, kill its defenders, capture the women, and divide the plunder so that none would be “deprived of his fair share.”

Odysseus then

urged them to cut and run, set sail,

but would they listen? Not those mutinous fools;

there was too much wine to swill, too many sheep to slaughter

down along the beach, and shambling longhorn cattle.

His story cuts through the bard’s selective songs—his idealist hosts get a glimpse of the unsung side of warfare. “Honor is a mere scutcheon,” as Shakespeare wrote —an empty emblem, painted over sorrows; an adornment on death’s door— of little solace in life, and only truly associated with those we memorialize. Most honor the heroes they only know from stories, but the heroes themselves have a much different perspective. Odysseus bears witness to this—even while he is being honored in the king’s court he cannot help but weep. This is the shadow side of every warrior: we were trained to participate in death and destruction, but not how to deal with the resulting evil infection. The habit of fury, the numbness to violence, the entitlement to do whatever it takes to prevail —it is far easier to take the man out of the war than it is to take the war out of the man.

The raid shows the Greeks still in warfare’s grip, needlessly inflicting its evil on others—and paying dearly when retribution comes. Reinforcements arrive to aid the battered Cicones; six men from each Greek ship fall dead on the beach before the rest escape.

Odysseus continues:

From there we sailed on, glad to escape our death

yet sick at heart for the dear companions we had lost.

Worth it? Hardly. And if it's not worth dying for, it’s not worth living for.

Out at sea, they are met by

a howling, demonic gale, shrouding over

in thunderheads the earth and sea at once…

Their “sails slashed to rags… cringing at death” — they row their ships to the nearest shoreline, pulling with all their power. For two days and nights they huddle there. On the third day the storm clears, only for a tide rip and the north wind to drive them way off course for another nine whole days. On the tenth day they reach the land of the Lotus-Eaters—”people who eat the lotus, mellow fruit and flower”—a gentle shore offering sweet fruit that silences the voice of regret, numbs one’s unhealed wounds, and promises to let the war—and everything else—fade into pleasant oblivion.

Odysseus dispatches a scouting detail. They fall right into the trap.

Any crewmen who ate the lotus, the honey-sweet fruit,

lost all desire to send a message back, much less return,

their only wish to linger there with the Lotus-eaters,

grazing on lotus, all memory of the journey home

dissolved forever.

And there they would have stayed, munching like contented cattle, had Odysseus not intervened. He demonstrates the self-control needed to resist the lotus’ temptation, drags his lost men weeping to the ships, hauls them under the rowing benches, lashes them fast and orders the rest to shove off at once —

‘Quick, no time to lose, embark in the racing ships!’—

so none could eat the lotus, forget the voyage home.

They swung aboard at once, they sat to the oars in ranks

and in rythm churned the water white with stroke on stroke.

The Idol of Comfort - Difficulty in the Name of Ease

The lotus represents the fantasy of comfort through avoidance: effortless, endless, without apparent conflict or cost. It whispers that the highest good is the absence of disturbance, that tranquility lies in forgetting the very desires—and pains—that make us human. Its lies are sweet, smooth, intoxicating. But everything we’re tempted to worship also demands a sacrifice — and ultimately seeks to enslave us.

Ithaca is no paradise of ease; it is rough, distant, demanding. But its sweetness lies in its reality—roots, family, belonging. The lotus tempts with a counterfeit sweetness: numbness that erases both the joy of home and the ache to return. This is the lie of complacency: that respite is found in escape from responsibility, in the erasure of striving and of memory itself. That one must go along to get along (avoiding conflict); that drifting through life and sidestepping tough decisions is the way to remain untroubled (“just go with the flow, man!”). It nurtures the vice of acedia—not mere laziness of body, but the ancient “noonday demon” of spiritual sloth: a deep frustration at the inconvenience of living, a disaffection from the human condition that leads to numbness, boredom, and indifference to life’s deeper truths and opportunities — and makes all effort appear far more difficult than it really is.

The Complacency Trap in Modern Life

The psychologist Martin Seligman puts it this way:

“Acedia” used to be reckoned a sin, one of the seven deadly sins, in fact. Medieval theologians translated it as “sloth,” but it is not physical torpor that makes acedia so deadly. It is the torpor of the soul, the indifference that creeps up on us as we age and grow accustomed to those we love, that poisons so much of adult life.

As we fight our way out of the problems of adolescence and early adulthood, we often notice that the defeats and setbacks that troubled us in our youth are no longer as agonizing. This comes as welcome relief, but it has a cost. Whatever buffers us from the turmoil and pain of loss also buffers us from feeling joy. It is easy to mistake the indifference that creeps over us with age and experience for the growth of wisdom. Indifference is not wisdom. It is acedia.

We are offered lotus every day — it is commoditized, packaged, and marketed to us — and we can have it delivered overnight with a keystroke and a click. Endless distraction, algorithmic feeds tuned to our favorite ways of coping, substances that blunt every edge, ideologies that promise peace through disengagement — therapy that tells us to cut our loved ones off instead of seeking reconciliation. We doom-scroll in a mild trance, binge to avoid silence, medicate not only pain but the very memory of higher calling. Comfort culture crowns self-care the supreme virtue, teaches that boundaries mean never being bothered, and that the good life is frictionless—yet these lies leave us indifferent to the very things that make life worth living.

Comfort without purpose atrophies the soul. We wake one day to find years gone, relationships faded, gifts unused, unfinished projects rotting in the sun. The persistent longing for home—in this life or the next— is quietly smothered. We become masters of avoidance; strangers to perseverance. The heart grows dull and forgetful, content to graze while the ships that could carry us home are abandoned at anchor. Acedia breeds spiritual blindness; the progressive weakening of the will; grasping after a life of pleasant, endless, empty meaninglessness.

And as with all deceitful desires, this one delivers the exact opposite of what it promises. The more preoccupied one is with comfort, the more sensitive one will be to every discomfort. The more one seeks the easy life, the more frustrated one will be with every difficulty. True rest comes on the other side of embracing, not avoiding life’s challenges. This is the goal of discipline—and of much military training—the learned ability to become comfortable with what was once uncomfortable. Temptation seeks to keep us within our comfort zones, but they expand when we push their limits. And we learn that the simplest way to deal with life’s challenges—the way that requires the least amount of effort in the long run—is to take them head on, without delay (to the oars, lads!). Perpetual avoidance is not just difficult—it’s impossible. Like an infected wound, our problems only worsen and fester when we try to ignore them.

Attempting to secure comfort by controlling one’s environment is an exercise in futility. But mastery of the inward self is the virtue of self-control. And this comes not by avoiding trials, but by persevering through them.

When the fleet finally departs, the lotus-eaters are left behind, harmless and forgotten. All of their power was in the sweet lies they offered. The men weep at first, but the wind fills their sails, and the hard decks beneath them become solid footing once again.

The Epitome of Self-Control

We’ve touched on faithfulness and gentleness; we need look no further than Christ for flawless self-control. Although he possessed divine power and could have chosen comfort, convenience, or escape at any moment, he consistently chose service before self - prioritizing mission ahead of convenience and enduring temptation, suffering, and even death “for the joy set before him” - our redemption.

After his baptism and divine confirmation from heaven, this is how his ministry began:

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written,

‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

(Matthew 4:1–4, ESV)

This is the opposite of self-indulgence. The tempter then presented two more opportunities to avoid the difficult path before him, to which Christ responded by quoting Scripture: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” and “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.”

He, unlike us, never succumbed to the temptations of comfort and convenience.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus repeatedly refused to use his power for personal gain or to avoid hardship. He could have performed miracles to eliminate doubt or silence opposition, instead he restrained himself. We are told:

we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

(Hebrews 4:15, ESV)

And in Gethsemane, facing arrest and crucifixion, Jesus experienced overwhelming anguish:

“My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.”

And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour?”

(Matthew 26:38b-40, ESV)

He explicitly acknowledged that he could escape at any moment:

Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?”

(Matthew 26:53-54, ESV)

Yet he chose not to. Even when “all the disciples left him and fled.” During his trial, Jesus remained silent (give this a try when you’re falsely accused!). During his crucifixion:

Those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.”

(Matthew 27:40, ESV)

It was his love for us, and not the nails, which held him there. We are told that he was committed to our homecoming (and not to his convenience):

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

(Hebrews 12:1-2, ESV).

His self-control was not indifference to desire but mastery over it—choosing the Father’s will over every lesser comfort, that we might—through his efforts (and not our own)—be carried home to the place we most belong. He was never compelled by circumstance; He always had the power to choose the easy path but never did. His perfect self-control flowed from perfect love and obedience to the Father, providing the supreme model for all who are called to “walk as he walked.”

In the land of the Lotus-Eaters, Odysseus echoes these themes: he seeks his lost men and binds them not to punish but to save, forcing them back to the hard voyage because only there will their true rest be found. His story reveals that the way to consolation is the path of discipline, that self-control is always better than complacency, that our own journey home requires rowing hard against the currents of our time.

Thus the epic wisely reveals a primary temptation of all who have been touched by evil. Only self-control—in the face of temptation to lash out, avoid or indulge—will take us anywhere worth going.

What’s your favorite coping mechanism? Is it doing you any good, really? That decision you’ve been avoiding, that habit you’ve slid into, that problem you wish could be forgotten—all of these will only get worse if left in the dark. Your excuses prove that you already know this—perhaps it’s time to stop drifting, and start rowing in a new direction. It's never as hard as temptation would have you believe.

[Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles, introduction and notes by Bernard Knox, Penguin Books, 1996.]

The story continues here:

Behold the storm-tossed man flung to the shore,
salt-stung and broken, as a lion brought down low;
where righteous rage could roar at his own fate—
he chooses meekness, and the olive branch to show.

Behold the maids who scatter, terrified,
and Nausicaa, her heart both bold and shy;
the words he speaks are honeyed, free of pride,
transforming fear to pity, by and by.

Behold the Phaeacians, flawless in their ways,
bronze-walled and upright, sailing ever true;
their virtue shines yet hardens judgment’s gaze—
as if they know what all mortals should do.

Behold the ship that flies across the waves,
gifts heaped for honor, justice now fulfilled;
'till Poseidon’s anger petrifies presumption,
and paragons of order find their judgments stilled.

Behold the feast of wrath, delicious to the taste—
one's wounds to lick, sharp words to savor long;
we claim our grievances with royal, bitter haste,
devouring ourselves with our own tragic songs.

Behold the strength that bends, the power held in check,
the tongue restrained, the fist that does not rise;
we trust the Judge who balances the deck,
and cling to hope, instead of wrathful cries.

Behold the Gentle One who bore our wrongs,
reviled yet silent, forsaken in our place;
He died to give us all a renewed song,
and as the Judge, extends to us His grace.

A lesson on Gentleness - the Antidote to Idealist Wrath

Homer masterfully continues with Odysseus’s arrival on Scheria—after faithfulness frees him from Calypso—where he eventually recounts his earlier trials to the Phaeacians (Books 9–12). In this series, we'll follow suit: focusing first on Scheria highlights gentleness as a matured virtue, applied against idealist wrath, before flashing back to the chronological lessons. This mirrors the soul’s journey—wisdom presently redeems past experience—countering vanity (which blinds us to truth) and wrath (which blinds us to grace) in order for hindsight to reveal God’s hand at work in our past adversities.

Faithfulness launches the raft from Calypso’s hidden cave, but Poseidon’s wrath soon shatters it. After seventeen days clinging to the wreckage amid raging seas, Odysseus is hurled naked onto the river mouth of Scheria, salt-crusted, half-drowned, barely alive. And so he prays:

“Hear me, lord, whoever you are,

I’ve come to you, the answer to all my prayers—

rescue me from the sea, the Sea-lord’s curse!

…I throw myself on your mercy, on your current now—

I have suffered greatly. Pity me, lord,

your suppliant cries for help!”

And so he is drawn safe to shore at the rivers mouth, where he buries himself in leaves and sleeps the sleep of exhaustion. At dawn, Princess Nausicaa arrives with her maids to wash the royal linens, their laughter echoing like bright bells. Awakened, Odysseus emerges from the thicket—looming, crusted with brine,

“…as a mountain lion exultant in his power

strides through wind and rain and his eyes blaze…”

The girls scream and scatter. Nausicaa alone stands firm.

Any lesser man—after ten years of war, ten more of monstrous trials and divine malice—might have exploded in righteous indignation. This is my reward? Naked before giggling girls? After all I have suffered, must I beg? Wrath might feel justified. “I deserve better than this!”

Instead, Odysseus embodies the virtue of Gentleness.

He breaks off an olive branch to cover his nakedness, keeps his distance so as not to intimidate, and speaks with endearing courtesy:

“Here I am at your mercy, princess —      

are you a goddess or a mortal?

If one of the gods who rule the skies up there,

you’re Artemis to the life,  the daughter of mighty Zeus —

I see her now —just look at your build,

your bearing, your lithe flowing grace . . .     

But if you’re one of the mortals living here on earth,      

three times blest are your father, your queenly mother,

three times over your brothers too. How often their hearts      

must warm with joy to see you striding into the dances —      

such a bloom of beauty.”

His words turn her concern into compassion. Nausicaa clothes him, feeds him, guides him to the city. The Phaeacians—masters of etiquette and duty—receive him as an honored guest, bathe him, feast him, and listen rapt as he recounts his sorrows (a favorite pastime of some). Moved by his tale and their own strict code of hospitality, they give him gifts and convey him home on their swiftest ship, while he sleeps.

Gentleness, not demanded justice, opens the final passage home.

The Phaeacians’ Perfectionist Spirit

After his long string of encounters with monstrous threats and cunning obstacles, Odysseus washed up among a people marked by discipline, propriety, and an almost ritualistic sense of order. They prize courtesy above all, mindful of etiquette, duty, and the proper way to do things. Their king’s palace stands as a marvel of flawless design, its gleaming bronze walls enclosing gardens that perpetually yield fruit. As seafarers, they are unmatched, guiding their ships with unerring precision, never straying from “the true course.”

In time, their deep-seated code of hospitality stirs a sense of idealist moral duty: they are compelled to speed this storm-tossed stranger safely back to Ithaca, loading him with treasures as parting gifts.

And the ship like a four-horse team careering down the plain…

as on she ran, cutting the swells at top speed,

bearing a man endowed with the gods’ own wisdom,

one who had suffered twenty years of torment, sick at heart…”

Yet even these admirable traits carry a shadow side. When any virtue is pressed to its extreme, it curdles into something that enslaves. Human wrath at imperfection leads to (self)destruction in the name of Justice; another bait and switch. The Phaeacians’ relentless pursuit of the “right” way earns them, in some eyes, the label of judgmental—their goodness more lecturing than warm, more rigid than generous, more self-protective than self-giving. They represent the idolatry of idealism at its height: striving to be models of excellence, yet often coming across as stiff, self-righteous, quick to judge anyone who falls short of their standards.

“There’s no one alive, there never will be one,

who’d reach Phaeacian soil and lay it waste.

The immortals love us far too much for that.

We live too far apart, out in the surging sea,

off at the world’s end —

no other mortals come to mingle with us.”

And for all their careful rectitude, their virtue proves no armor against the caprice of the gods. Poseidon takes offense at the godlike swiftness of their ship and the lavish honors they bestow on Odysseus. Just as the vessel nears home, he “strikes her to stone” at the harbor’s mouth and threatens to entomb their port beneath a towering mountain. “Terrified,” the Phaeacians scramble to heap altars with offerings, falling into fervent prayer and sacrifice—reduced to pleading for mercy from a deity whose wrath no amount of flawless conduct can prevent. Because they’ve presumed a role no mortal rightly claims. The judgment seat belongs to God alone! And the quickest way to become like the accuser is to put yourself in God’s place!

We leave them there, anxious suppliants, clinging to ritual in the hope of appeasing power far beyond their control.

The Idealism Trap in Modern Life

Friedrich Buechner once observed:

“OF THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel of both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

Wrath and perfectionism are the two sides of the same coin. Both insist that others must balance their accounts: the wronged must be avenged, the imperfect corrected, the rules enforced without exception. When reality refuses, anger rises—sometimes as explosive rage, sometimes as cold, meticulous judgment. Either way, wrath embitters the spirit of the one who will not let it go, creating a foothold of evil that in time becomes a stronghold.

We too are tempted to worship at the altar of perfection and justice. We attempt to curate flawless résumés (then they'll have to give me what I want!), we optimize every ritual (I would never eat that!), we police language and behavior with exacting standards (why is everyone else so flawed?)—certain that if we “get it right,” life will finally be safe and fair. When it isn’t—when suffering comes anyway, when others fail us or we fail ourselves—we grow furious: at the world, at God, at the imperfect people around us. Outrage culture thrives here: every offense catalogued, every deviation condemned, every story framed to prove who is righteous and who must be punished.

Yet no amount of moral performance shields us from fate’s storms. Like the Phaeacians watching their ship turn to stone, we end up anxious and appeasing, exhausted by the impossible weight of our own standards.

Gentleness releases us. It is not spineless sentiment but strength submitted to wisdom. It restrains the tongue, lays down the ill-grasped gavel, refuses the demand for instant payback, and trusts the Judge of all the earth to do right in His time. It speaks truth without contempt, corrects without crushing, absorbs wrong without retaliation. It chooses the olive branch over the raised fist; blessing over bitterness.

In the presence of the idealistic Nausicaa, Odysseus reveals his own ideal — not perfection but a love united in gentle grace towards one another:

“No finer, greater gift in the world than that…

when man and woman possess their home, two minds,

two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies,

a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.”

The Truly Gentle Judge

Christ is gentleness perfected. The only truly Just One endured the ultimate injustice—mockery, scourging, crucifixion—yet

“When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.”

(1 Peter 2:23, ESV).

On the cross He prayed not for vengeance but forgiveness. In that meekness He bore the consequences we deserve, silenced our accusers, disarmed the lesser “gods” and put them to open shame, and opened the way home for us—the guilty. Because our debt was fully paid in blood, justice now demands our acquittal!

On Scheria’s shore, Odysseus faintly echoes this: by clothing his power in gentleness, he receives grace he never could demand. The Phaeacians, for all their propriety, cannot save themselves from divine anger—but the gentle Odysseus is carried home asleep, like a child in his father’s arms.

Thus gentleness is the virtue that finally brings the man of sorrows home: the quiet strength that lays down the idol of idealism, refuses the self-consuming feast of wrath, and finds the passage opened not by force or faultlessness, but by gentleness and grace.

Perhaps it’s time to push back from the table, lay down the grievances we have been gnawing for so long, and speak gently to the frightened Nausicaas around us. The ship that carries us home fills its sails not with human outrage, but with divine mercy.

Is there something you need to let go of today? Someone you need to forgive? Should you be more gentle with yourself? Why wait any longer?

Your own homecoming awaits.

[Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles, introduction and notes by Bernard Knox, Penguin Books, 1996.]

The story continues here:

Sing, Muse, of faithfulness—the steadfast heart
that pines for home amid immortal ease,
of caves where vanity in beauty dressed
detains the soul with lies designed to please.

Sing of the hero weeping on the shore,
refusing ageless splendor for the truth
of mortal vows, of Ithaca’s rough soil,
of love that ages yet endures from youth.

Sing of the nymph whose woven spells unwind
when heaven’s thunder bids her loose the chain;
how vanity, confronted, bends at last
and turns possessiveness to open-handed gain.

Sing of the raft he builds with humble hands,
timbers of truth against the glittering lie—
how choosing limit over endless days
sets free the soul, temptation to defy.

Sing of the wind that fills his faithful sail,
carrying tears and longing o’er the deep;
how every wave that breaks against the keel
reminds the heart its promises to keep.

Sing how bondage yields to open grace
when divine decree unbinds the hidden cave;
how loyalty to what is real and finite
exposes every lie the proud heart craves.

For every soul is held in some bright prison,
grasping at the Goddess’ vain dream—
till faithfulness, like dawn across the waters,
launches the raft on heaven’s narrow stream.

Sing of Christ, our Witness, ever true,
who spurned the grasp for glory’s empty throne:
teach us to choose the mortal road with You,
and find in covenant our way back home.

A lesson on Faithfulness — The Antidote to Vanity

Homer begins his tale not with triumph at Troy nor the first storms that scatter the fleet, but with a man in paradise, weeping.

“Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course…

many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea…”

Yet even so he longed for home, for the day of his return.

And where do we first find him? In the deep hollow cave of Calypso, “lustrous among goddesses,” where fragrant cedar fires burn, the loom shuttles sing, and four fountains murmur eternally through soft meadows starred with parsley and violets. Here the shining nymph feeds Odysseus divine ambrosia, clothes him in fragrant robes, and shares her bed each unchanging night, promising what no mortal could refuse: immortality, agelessness, eternal youth beside a goddess whose beauty eclipses Penelope’s mortal years.

Yet every dawn he climbs the rocks alone,

“wrenching his heart with sobs and groans and anguish, gazing out over the barren sea through blinding tears.”

Why refuse such a superior state of being? Calypso’s offer is the ultimate vain dream: a fantasy of perpetual elevation above the human condition—above aging, grief, struggle, sorrow and death. To accept would be to become “better” than all mortals, lord of an island paradise forever. But this superiority proves self-defeating. It renders Odysseus incompetent: incapable of authentic joy (he weeps in paradise), incapable of fruitful action (he sits detained, passive), incapable of true desire (his heart remains fixed on a mortal wife and a rocky island kingdom). Vanity’s promise of exaltation delivers the opposite—diminishment, detention, a living death of the soul.

Calypso herself embodies the same trap. Her lavish nurture masks possessiveness: she wants Odysseus not for his good, but to complete her own perfection. Her “love” is vanity veiled—seeking superiority through ownership of a famous man. But who respects one’s plaything? Can such a one be truly loved? Compulsion negates the very desire that compelled. Thus she cannot have what she most deeply craves; genuine intimacy eludes her. She also finds incompetence in the name of superiority. Have you ever found yourself with the opposite of what you thought you’d get?

The Trap in Modern Life

We too dwell in hidden caves, gilded not with nymphs and meadows but with screens and simulations. The fantasy of superiority whispers constantly: curate the perfect self, optimize every hour for peak performance, escape into endless entertainment or virtual worlds where limitation vanishes. We chase ageless beauty through filters and procedures, immortal legacy through viral fame, effortless pleasure through delivery and distraction. The machine we thought would set us free becomes our Ogygia—offering connection without vulnerability, achievement without risk, community without commitment.

Yet this “superior” existence breeds incompetence. We become incapable of true joy (scrolling numbly amid curated “excitement”), incapable of sustained action (paralyzed by comparison or fear of imperfection), incapable of consistent self-giving love (restless, always swiping for something better). Relationships grow possessive or superficial; we detain others in our narratives, or allow ourselves to be detained in theirs. Burnout, perpetual anxiety, and quiet despair follow—the soul weeping on the headland, gazing over a barren sea of our own making.

Escape demands the same faithfulness Odysseus embodied: loyalty to the truth of our finite selves, to the ordinary people and places God has given us, to the unglamorous duties that define a life well lived. It means logging off, weeping honestly, choosing mortal conversations over immortal feeds, embracing aging bodies and limited time as gifts rather than curses. Faithfulness reveals a deeper truth—true superiority (or glory, as some say) is not transcendence of limitation but fidelity within it. Showing up. Keeping promises. Loving imperfectly but persistently. Holding the line (semper fi!).

Only when we release the fantasy—when divine grace compels us, like Zeus’ decree—do we build the raft: simple components of prayer, Sabbath rest, authentic community, service before self — Wisdom, self-discipline, and virtue. Then aid flows freely, even from former illusions, and we launch into the perilous but authentic sea of life.

When Zeus’ decree finally arrives—“Release him!”—Calypso’s indignation flares, then yields. In surrender she aids our archetype freely: felling trees, providing tools, material, provisions, and a blessed wind. Knowing he will never reciprocate her desire, she helps him anyway. For the first time her care is unpossessive, faithful to his true good rather than her fantasy. She too glimpses the way of glory. She too begins to be transformed.

Odysseus launches his raft “into the wine-dark sea,” choosing hardship over illusion, mortality over false eternity. Faithfulness has exposed vanity’s lie: the truly superior life is fidelity within life's limitations—loyalty to God’s eternal truth planted in our finite hearts; to the people and places He has graced us with; to the homeward call that suffering itself refines.

Odysseus embodies the struggle, as do you and I. But we have a better archetype — one in whom our victory has been eternally secured.

The Virtue of Faithfulness

Christ is the perfect embodiment of faithfulness:

…who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name…

(Philippians 2:6–9, ESV).

In Him we see that the way home is not climbing above our humanity but embracing it in covenant loyalty, trusting that the Father will exalt the faithful in due time. He reveals that the way to true glory is the path of humility, that faithfulness is superior to superiority, that the way to ascend is first to descend. The way forward looks backwards; the way up appears to take us down.

He shows us, by example, that the crown is not promised before the cross.

Thus the epic begins where every soul’s journey must: detained in some glittering cave of vain imaginations, weeping for a home we cannot grasp so long as our hands and hearts are clenched on falsehoods. Only faithfulness—to truth, to authentic love, to the mortal road appointed— commissions and propels the raft we ride, at last, toward the distant shores of Ithaca, and ultimately toward the eternal city whose builder and maker is God.

Do you know the nature of the lies that have you bound? Is this the time to lay your fantasies aside? May God grace you with the courage to arise!

[Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles, introduction and notes by Bernard Knox, Penguin Books, 1996.]

The story continues here:

Lotus lulls to honeyed forgetfulness,
Sirens weave sorrow into silver strain;
Cyclops roars blind in caverns of distress,
Circe’s cup turns men to swine again.

Envy unravels gifts the kind winds bear,
Greed devours cattle sacred to the sun;
Wrath waits in halls where suitors claim your chair,
Lust offers endless life—and none.

Yet deeper than the gale a whisper wakes:
Love that frees, joy no loss can break,
Peace like deep water, patience that endures,
Kindness, goodness, gentleness awakes.

Faithfulness to guide when stars grow dim and cold,
Self-control to steer through every raging wave.
Fruit ripens on branches stark and old—
Ithaca beckons. Wanderer, be brave!

The salt wind turns. The hearth-smoke calls your name.
Come home! Come home! —you’ll never be the same.

My dear Readers,

For nearly twenty years, two ancient maps of the human heart have lived side by side in my imagination: Homer’s Odyssey and Paul’s ninefold fruit of the Spirit. At first reading, something in the Odyssey deeply resonated with my wounded soul - my own experience of modern warfare somehow left similar marks on my psyche to those Ulysses navigated on his long journey home. I don’t believe this is a coincidence. Could this ancient mythos be offering us the keys to the restoration of our own selves? And what does the fruit of the Spirit have to do with healing?

One is the story of a battle-scarred wanderer trying to return home after ten long years of war, delayed another ten by storms, monsters, temptations, and his own flaws. The other is a quiet list—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control—describing the character that grows in a person who has surrendered to God and has been set free.

What if these two maps are describing the same path?

Beginning in 2026, I’ll be publishing a nine-part series called The Way Home. Each essay will follow one major turning point in Odysseus’s long voyage home, drawing out the shadow it exposes (the classic vices: pride, wrath, sloth, fear, envy, greed, lust, gluttony, deceit) and showing how one particular fruit of the Spirit is the grace that counteracts it, loosens its grip, and moves the traveler one step closer to Ithaca—to the true self, known and belonging.

We’ll walk the road in second person, because this is not only Odysseus’s story. It is yours, too. The same temptations that detained him on glittering islands, in caves of terror, and in halls of regret still whisper to us today under modern names: Fulfillment, Control, Approval, Comfort, Superiority. The same graces that finally brought him home are the only powers strong enough to bring us home too.

Each essay will open with a short poem to set the heart’s compass, then retell the episode, name the idol and the vice it serves, and close with the quiet, stubborn fruit that sets the captive free. I’ll try my best to make it fun.

Expect beauty, danger, sorrow, and hope. Expect to meet versions of yourself you may not have recognized. Expect to glimpse, again and again, the distant smoke rising from a hearth that has been eagerly awaiting your return.

The raft is almost ready.
The wind is shifting.

See you on the water.

— Andrew

The story begins here: