The way through the woods leads to a burning bush, a moment of revelation, in which the Name is hallowed and the Kingdom comes. Wisdom humbly discerns the glory of the Holy Name, unveiled from the Father through the Son, opened in the Spirit’s hallowing radiance. We are all created for glory, which is the destiny of every human being, the body of light which is the radiant vesture of grace. The wilderness is where all is stripped away leaving the Son descending from the Father, revealed in the Spirit’s opening eye of the revelatory Name. Wisdom discerns this glory in the awakening heart, transmitting it from heart to heart, the life-giving quintessence of sacred tradition.
The way through the woods is an icon of presence at centre in the midst, manifesting the spirit of truth and giver of life. Instead of dividing our lives into before and after, it hallows our lives with its healing wholeness. Catholicity receives its name from this wholeness just as Orthodoxy receives its name from God’s God-centred right-glorification of God, ascribing glory to God aright as only God in Holy Trinity does. Both unveil uncreated grace, not something we control or possess. If we subject them to our egoism, they become dead letter not living spirit. They become an outward exterior not inner light. Deadly reification is the result. Stripped of glory, we are condemned by shame, riddled with guilt, cut off from grace. But the moment we turn again and see, wisdom cuts through delusion and leaps over shame, shedding egoism together with the guilt it engenders. The way as icon is renewal through beauty, glory unveiled by glory without end.
The way through the woods is not a way back or away, but a revelation of glory in every moment. The way is truth and life in the beginning as it will be at the end, bearing witness to hallowed completeness all along the way. The bush burns but is not consumed, for glory is the living flame that anoints the heart with tongues of fire, igniting the charisms of wisdom, prophecy and prayer at centre in the midst. The desert wasteland is transformed into a garden, a paradise, whenever the Holy Chrism anoints creation with a hallowing wisdom, whose uncreated energies renew creation so that everything is filled with uncreated presence, capable of creating all things new.