Those permitted by God to test us either inflame the desiring aspect of the soul, or stir up its incensive power, or darken it's intelligence, or envelop its body in pain, or deprive us of bodily necessities. The demons either tempt us themselves or arm against us those who have no fear of the Lord. They tempt us themselves when we withdraw from human society, as they tempted our Lord in the desert. They tempt us through other people when we spend our time in the company of others, as they tempted our Lord through the Pharisees. But whichever line of attack they choose, let us repel them by keeping or gaze fixed on the Lord's example. (Maximos the Confessor)

Yesterday I arrived too early for a meeting in Richmond, Virginia and visited a small exhibit on Edgar Allen Poe. The curator argued Poe had - decades before Freud - found that our greatest threats are interior rather than exterior, psychological demons rather than the sort represented in medieval gargoyles.

We tempt ourselves. With pride, ambition, fear, and neediness we are distracted from the present and our best potential. Not knowing ourselves, neglecting God, and too often seeing our neighbor as a means rather than an end, it can seem, as Poe wrote, "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." Or a nightmare.

The Lord's example was to be wholly himself, fully in relationship to God, and loving all as neighbor. Jesus was real which, as Poe, Freud and even Maximos might agree, is the best talisman for courage and competence.