Glory throws symbols like rainbow bridges between the uncreated and the created, symbols like light and fire, symbols which wisdom beholds as uncreated, creative energies unifying unity and difference in ways that confusion and division conceal. Uncreated energies wed creation in holy unions of hallowing unity and wholesome difference, a holy love-play between wisdom and glory that sees awareness as ineffable openness and presence as spontaneous oneness. In an unceasing dance of hallowing love-play, wisdom and glory conjoin in the Holy Name ‘I AM,’ which unites wisdom’s ‘I’ with glory’s ‘AM,’ wisdom’s awareness with glory’s presence, beholding a hidden Bridal Chamber, called the Holiest of Holies at the heart of the Holy of Holies. The Name conceals a Song of Songs that lives this hallowing in ‘between’ as sacred marriage, as mystical union which ‘throws symbols’ to signify what lies beyond speech. Wisdom beholds symbols as rainbow theophanies, which are simultaneously uncreated and creative, bearing witness to a deifying love-play between ‘I’ and ‘AM,’ between awareness and presence, wisdom and glory. The Name itself is not the name of a monolithic ontological essence, conceived externally as a supreme being, but divine love-play between the uncreated energies of wise awareness and glorious presence, a oneness that loves to open into a dance of two, then to abide as neither one nor two, but three, unveiling Holy Trinity. ‘I AM’ breaks oneness open into two, and twoness open into three, releasing every confusion into differenced union and every division into wholesome difference.
The Name ‘I AM’ opens in the Holiest of Holies to expand and contract, proceeding from oneness into many different worlds, only to return from manifold ages to fulfilled oneness again, in every moment. ‘I’ weds ‘AM,’ awareness conjoins presence, as manifold wisdom making endless love with multiform glory, theophanies of the hidden heart of the Holy Name in the Holiest of Holies. The first of seven signs in the Gospel of John offers the symbol of an anonymous wedding feast that conceals the identity of both Bride and Bridegroom. The Beloved Disciple refused to profane the mystery at the heart of the Holy of Holies, concealing the Holiest Bridal Chamber so as to reveal the embrace of wisdom and glory everywhere. Instead of what moderns call transparency, the Beloved Disciple’s Gospel offers translucency, water become wine, a symbol of love thrown between the uncreated and the created which leaps the chasm that descends into every abyss. Wisdom ineffably opens what glory spontaneously unites, but which would otherwise threaten to confuse or divide. Wisdom releases glory by unveiling ‘I AM’ as God’s self-revelation in his Name. Glory lets ‘I AM’ be, so that in wisdom, the Father opens to the Son, spontaneously opening in the Spirit to revelation of Holy Trinity. Together their love dance unveils Godhead beyond names and God with names, itself a love dance inherent in the Name. Wisdom sees what glory conceals and her seeing unveils as the Name, opening as one and three, glory longing to be loved and known, wisdom yearning to be revered and seen.
Glory leaps over obstructions whilst wisdom cuts through them and their mutual release is the cessation of avoidance. Apatheia is not apathy but freedom from passion in the midst of compassion, which releases passions so that in glory, alienating vanity is consumed. Freedom from passions voids avoidance by releasing self-centred avoidance into self-emptying love, so that wisdom breaks open into glory. What avoidance blocked, God-centred grace opens, releasing wisdom into glory and glory into wisdom. Contracted confusion splits open like a budding flower to become union, communion without division separating what union conjoins. External, representational thinking is utterly baffled by wisdom’s dancing joy and by glory’s freedom from every fixated version of how or why. The desert embraced this conjoined co-inherence as it lived glory’s gift of wisdom and embraced wisdom’s love of glory. Wisdom sees everything as glory’s gift and gives thanks for glory given. Such glory inspires deep thanking, as in the Eucharist, ‘holy gifts unto the holy,’ which in turn inspires deep thinking. The desert renews wisdom’s holy thinking by transforming profane thinking into hallowing thanking. Indeed, wisdom in the desert ‘thinks’ its thanks and ‘thanks’ what it thinks, so that in wisdom thinking and thanking are thrown together to soar above every unthinkable, gratuitous abyss.
Desert wisdom thinks its thanks as Eucharistic thanks-giving thinks glory through, from arche to telos. Indeed, thinking releases into thanking when thinking turns right round and sees with wisdom’s eye what glory does with what is given and received. Thoughts are thanks, given and received, when wisdom restores glory to glory. Glory is grace which sees everything as gift, glory giving and glory given. Wisdom thinks and thanks, giving thanks as she thinks. She gives thanks as she thinks through theophanies of glory as her own most intimate epiphanies of wisdom. Her ‘Song of Songs’ sings of wisdom’s love of glory, giving thanks for glory’s love of wisdom in the Bridal Chamber. Grace-filled thinking gives thanks in the Holiest of Holies, giving and receiving in a play of love in which wisdom breaks forth into ineffable glory and glory bursts open into ineffable wisdom. A Song of Songs was always hidden at an anonymous wedding in Cana of Galilee, concealing to reveal the bride and groom, veiling wisdom’s embrace of glory in the Holiest of Holies, turning water into wine.