The Spirituality of Anonymity

Cynthia Millen-Pink Cliff Flowers

Anonymity is not popular in today’s world. Instead, self-promotion is pushed as the path to success. Social media platforms are filled with people trying their best to get the most ‘likes’, have the most ‘views’, and acquire the most ‘followers.’  I was raised to do the exact opposite. The era of letting your work or friends speak for you seems to have passed. Now, being well known seems to be the overriding indication that one has succeeded.

So how to speak about the spiritual value of anonymity? Does anonymity really hold any spiritual value? As I wrote last month, St. Charles de Foucauld was an example of spiritual anonymity. He did not hide who he was but longed to live in the hidden world of Jesus in Nazareth. This time in the life of Christ when the Gospels are particularly silent as to the day-to-day life of our Savior. Here there is no preaching, no trying to convince or convert anyone, just the day-to-day living of a quiet, Christian life. A life rooted in work among fellows, in quiet, average, mundane living.

I have not always lived the Christian life to the best of my ability. As a young adult, I was submerged in the world. I rarely went to Mass and my prayer life was all but nonexistent. I believed the world. I believed that if I were beautiful and wealthy, I would find happiness. I spent my time seeking this happiness in many different forms. Jumping from one track to the next, endlessly searching for the happiness that constantly evaded me.

At twenty-seven I experienced a crisis which brought me face to face with the question of how I had been living my life. Still confused and very, very spiritually sick, I met a woman who was willing to help me out from the darkness in which I had been living. At the time, I had no idea what the problem was but knew that the methods I had tried before to help myself had failed miserably.

This woman became a sort of spiritual guide. She introduced me to the spirituality of anonymity. When I complained that I felt bad, she told me point blank that this was my own doing. Of course, I felt bad, how could I feel any other way? My life had been completely self-centered. I had been consumed with nothing but myself. The result of living in this way was a desperate loneliness and there was no other way out than to seek the help of God.

She gave me practical things to do every day. Things like asking God for help first thing in the morning before I did anything else, spending a few minutes being quiet after reading some sort of spiritual reflection, and thanking God at night for the day he had given to me.  One day she told me to do something nice for someone else every day and then to call her and tell her what I did. Just one nice thing. Hold a door open, return a shopping cart for someone, smile at the person taking my order and ask how they were feeling today. She told me to do this every day for one week. This I did and I began to experience a shift in how I felt.

The next week she told me to continue doing something nice for another person every day but that the person I helped couldn’t know what it was I had done. It had to be anonymous, secret, but I was still to call her every day and tell her what good deed I had done. This was more difficult. It required imagination, but it also required self-restraint, self-restraint of which I had very little. Through this process, I found that, interiorly, I wanted the people I helped to acknowledge the help I had given them.

This was the value I had hitherto sought in doing good works. Not only did I want their acknowledgment, but I also wanted, dare I say required, their gratitude as well. They should be grateful for whatever nice thing I had done. Of course, at the time, I wasn’t at all ashamed of feeling or thinking this way. This is, in fact, how much of the world operates. But I did what she asked me to do and still found comfort in the fact that I could call her and tell her of all the good works I had done during the day. This brought me solace and comfort as she approved of my actions.

When I had finished the second week of good deeds, she told me that for the following week I was again to do something kind for someone every day and, just as I had done the week before, the person could not know what I had done. This time, however, I was to tell no one, not even her. I wasn’t even to tell her that I had done something good. I was to be silent and anonymous in everything, including my actions. Here I discovered the greatest difficulty of all. No one was to know? No one? Not anyone at all? No one, she said, except God. God, of course, would know.

This action would cultivate in me what she called humility, a trait I found excruciatingly painful to develop. I would often object to the suggestions she made. She told me to pray on my knees to which I replied that God doesn’t care if I pray on my knees or not. She told me that she agreed. It makes no difference to God, but it makes a big difference for me. Praying on my knees, just like doing something nice anonymously, changes me. I soon found that I expected a payoff for everything I did. Either some kind of notoriety, approval, acceptance, or even just the satisfaction of knowing that I was ‘a good person’. Something that had rarely to that point been expressed in my actions.

What I found through these very simple exercises was that I had an idea or belief of who and what God was but very little experience with God. Years of philosophical pursuits had led me down some strange paths, paths that pulled me further from the love of God and neighbor toward an ever more urgent love of self. Self-promotion, self-aggrandizement. And I must stress it is not because I was an inherently selfish, egotistical, person who was out for no one other than myself. I was simply doing what the world seemed to be telling me to do. Yes, I should serve at a soup kitchen because it would look good on my college application. Doing good for the wrong reasons is still doing good, but it pulls me deeper into an empty space devoid of God and it is a very, very lonely place.

Jesus calls us to action. But he also calls us to surrender. The point of my entire life is to become smaller so that God can become bigger. As John the Baptist says: “He must increase, I must decrease” (John 3:30). But how, you might ask, is this to come about? You may be saying, “Sure, Sydney. This is all good and well, but you are writing a column every month… isn’t this self-promotion?”

This is indeed the difficulty of living in the world. Actions can fall on either side of the moral threshold. As Christians, we must seek to do the will of God. This is confusing and often difficult. I believe that this is fulfilled through the use of the inherent gifts we receive from God. Just as St. Paul writes:

But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift… And he gave some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers, to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ, so that we may no longer be infants, tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human trickery, from their cunning in the interests of deceitful scheming. Rather, living the truth in love, we should grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, with the proper functioning of each part, brings about the body’s growth and builds itself up in love (Ephesians 4:7-16).

The gifts that we have been given are not to be used to build up self, reputation, riches, or delights, but to build up the body of Christ. Hopefully, I am using these gifts wisely. Writing to you each month in such a way that God can speak through me. I do not know, and often have no idea, if indeed this is not my own self-centered, self-seeking attempt at self-gratification. Only God knows this. However, I do believe that seeking God does in fact please him.

In this way, anonymity has a strange shift. It is simply the shift in seeking to let God’s power flow through me in any way he sees fit. If this means to become well known or, conversely, completely unknown, well respected or despised, the center of attention or just one of the crowd, whatever it turns out to be, so be it, for these are not the things of eternal life.

St. Augustine said that there are two types of things in the world. Those that are good in and of themselves (that is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirt) which are to be sought above all, and goods that are used to seek God (the world, its creatures, things that are created). God created the world and it was very good (Genesis 1). Therefore, let us use what God has given in order to seek him more fully. Hidden in anonymity simply means, to me anyway, to seek without wanting reward. To let God’s light shine through me:

Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly father (Matthew 5:16).

By asking for God’s inspiration and power to flow through me throughout the day. By frequent reception of the Sacraments. By interiorly seeking peace instead of giving in to anger, doubt, or confusion, we can be led toward becoming small and less known, becoming anonymous so that through service in the world God’s love can shine through. That, even in notoriety, God is reflected instead of self. As the song from my childhood goes: “They will know we are Christians by our love.”

Of course, this is very easy to write about but very difficult to achieve. Thus, the final word from Thomas Merton:

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
(Prayer from Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton).

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4 thoughts on “The Spirituality of Anonymity”

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  4. Thank you Sydney for an inspiring article. You might know that anonymity is one of the Traditions of 12 Step programs (such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Adult Children of Alcoholics, Al-Anon,….):
    “Tradition 12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.” or, in the slogan
    “Who you see here, What you hear here, let it stay here.”
    There is a Catholic organization also following the 12 Steps, The Calix Society. See
    http://www.calixsociety.org

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