Love of wisdom can mean many things in the schools, but in the desert, glory’s love of wisdom unveils ineffable mysteries that are never divulged as shallow gossip but preserved with wonder in stillness. Wisdom is loved by glory, her divine beloved, because wisdom hallows the Name which reveals God’s glory in the Holy of Holies. The Father reveals his glory through the Son when he gives his Name to the Son, who imparts it to us in the Spirit, but ineffable glory hides this mystery from curious scrutiny so that the Name is not profaned. Desert sages never claim to be wise but bear witness to the wisdom that inspires their love. Each bears witness to this love in different ways, reflecting the unique ways that wisdom is revealed to them. Wisdom is one yet manifold when she unfolds mysteries of glory to the saints, because the way the Name illumines is unique and personal just as the way glory glorifies the saints is unique and personal. The wisdom that Jesus was and loved anointed him uniquely in the Spirit as the Christ, resurrecting him to glory so that through the mysteries of baptism and chrismation, resurrection to glory might be revealed to us. Love of wisdom embraces glory because wisdom loves glory, glory restoring primordial glory in the saving presence of the Name.
The desert loves wisdom because she is God’s saving energy of union shared with us as deifying communion. Light reveals glory when wisdom sees the hidden union of seer and seen in the midst and wisdom is loved and known in glory. The Spirit breathes light with a kiss, generating light from light with an embrace that includes all that was excluded in ascetical ascent, hallowing all that glory embraces in deifying descent. The Spirit breathes glory everywhere but only those who are born of the Spirit recognise light or glory, receiving wisdom that sees as she is seen. The Spirit attunes the heart to wisdom so that alignment with the Logos opens light to glory. The Logos gathers what was scattered so that the Spirit’s centred alignment shares healing with all. To see God is to awaken to the Spirit’s vision of God, but such wisdom is loved as a gift of God and is not confused with natural visual perception. Seeing or theoria, promises deification or theosis, because the Name unveils God. In God, wisdom is all that she sees, glory loved and known. She illumines angels, mothers seers, and embraces saints who love wisdom in the Holy of Holies. A garment of glory is one of the mysteries of glory which the Name unveils, sharing transfiguration with those who turn and see. It clothes love of wisdom in the glory that wisdom loves, a mystery of union that generates deeper and deeper communion.
Love of wisdom in the desert reveres these ancient icons to renew the creative imagination in wisdom’s uncreated creativity. It is not that the mythic imagination died with the mythic age because wisdom renews it anew in each epoch. Love of wisdom loves her icons and her capacity to renew them in every generation. The grace of the Name breathes light as union, then glory communicating communion. These are the mysteries of the Bridal Chamber and the Holiest of Holies, mysteries of the Cherubic Throne. These ancient icons are images that express love of wisdom’s restoration of all things in the Name. We are named with the Name, using the sign of the Cross in both Baptism and Chrismation, symbols which do what they say, mysteries that transmit the invisible through the visible. The visible and the invisible are restored as indivisibly one when separation is undone by wisdom and the Name. Heaven and earth are restored as one in Christ who unites them without confusion, one in the Spirit who conjoins them. The wisdom of the Cross clarifies confusion so as to heal division, hallowing the Name in all through union, deifying all in the Name as communion. The Bridal Chamber of union is communion in the Holiest of Holies where wisdom embraces glory so that the Cherubic Throne becomes a Chariot that upholds and unfolds God’s reign throughout his Kingdom. Vision of the Chariot is glorification of God, glorification through which God glorifies the saints.
Love of wisdom opens to the sacred embrace of glory which illumines, then glorifies the saints. Philosophy in the schools may offer a rational analysis of reason’s scope and limits, but in the desert recovers reason’s unconscious ground of wisdom and glory beyond the binary mind. Wisdom discerns glory as God’s ‘I’ awareness and ‘AM’ presence unveiled by the Name. Union of uncreated awareness and divine presence in the Bridal Chamber renews trust in the Name so that union between wisdom and glory in the Holy of Holies opens to true deifying communion in us. These ancient icons of glorification rend the veil of the temple from top to bottom, raising the dead from old graves and awakening hearts to wisdom and glory. When wisdom embraces glory, the Bridal Chamber transfigures into the Holy of Holies, healing the great wound. Union undoes old violence in the Kingdom of glory so that communion restores primordial wholeness in original completeness.
Love of wisdom opens these mysteries in ways that are utterly ineffable, employing ancient symbols that in poetic prophecy show forth what cannot be said in discursive prose. The ‘Last’ restores the ‘First’ but embraces all in between as well. The lover of wisdom loves glory too, embracing glory as wisdom’s love in the Bridal Chamber and Holiest of Holies. Love longs to become what is loved, revealing the glory of love in wisdom’s embrace. Uncreated awareness loves uncreated presence as wisdom loves glory in the garden of stillness and shares what she loves with those who love her. Wisdom welcomes the completeness of glory, whereas addiction to lack and loss refuses glory. Refusal wanders in hells of fixation until grace turns and wisdom sees glory embrace completeness in the Great Peace. The tree of life imparts eternal life to the glorified, unveiled by the Father through the Son’s revelation of the Name. Love of wisdom listens to the Spirit’s witness, unveiling love of wisdom as union in the Bridal Chamber and wisdom’s love of glory in the Holy of Holies, revealing the union of pure awareness and pure presence as wisdom’s timeless communion in the glory of the Great Peace.