Wisdom loves glory, inspiring glorifying love of wisdom, raising awakened hearts into realms of integral translucence, integral wisdom discerning translucent glory. Wisdom is integral because she springs from God to embrace everything that gives enduring glory to God, integrating glory with increasing glory in age after age. Wisdom is translucent because she transfigures with glory all that bears witness to glory, everything that ascribes glory to God from whatever age. Translucent wisdom turns awareness back into glory’s uncreated presence, opening the eye of the heart to awakened insight, restoring glory to glory by extinguishing the vanities of vain glory. When awareness turns to see who sees here in the midst, wisdom sees with God’s insight into God, awakening God’s awareness of God in God, God revealing and God revealed, Holy Trinity. This is wisdom’s revelation of glory, awareness opening to ineffable presence, presence generating ineffable awareness, glory unveiling glory, integrating wisdom from glory to glory. This wisdom is Apostolic and Scriptural, but does not end with canonical closure, inspiring holistic Patristic Tradition through living prophecy and prayer. Wisdom is without end because her timeless witness continues to renew Hesychast Orthodoxy in the desert, inspiring elders and saints in every generation. Not all saints are Fathers of the Church, leaving writings that renew the tradition, but all bear witness in the Spirit to wisdom’s unveiling of glory in the midst. Christ is wisdom revealing glory, unveiling integral translucence. The Spirit inspires integral wisdom as prophecy, assimilated in the heart as translucent prayer. Saints are living icons of integral translucence, integral wisdom opening to translucent glory.
Wisdom is integral, being an embrace of all in God and God in all, and translucent, being glory unveiled in all through all. This is not the product of sophisticated argumentation but an unveiling of presence to awareness, glory to wisdom. It is a holy work of wisdom in the desert that hallows sacred places and even holy cities, an unveiling of integral translucence which transforms culture and society in age after age. Integral translucence lets glory shine through whatever arises, hallowing all that was shut off from God in age after age. Each age has its hells of separation that cry out for healing, its infernal repressions which long for hallowing wholeness. Wisdom descends into hell to raise hell to heaven, glory restoring glory in world after world. Christ is wisdom in ancient Christendom, re-interpreted afresh in different Christian worlds, giving way to a succession of secularising cultures for which wisdom is increasingly ignored or overlooked. The repression of wisdom by scientism does not mean wisdom and science are at war. Integral wisdom embraces sound science and opens all premature closures to translucence. The arts, too, are renewed by translucence the moment wisdom is alight in them, welcoming glory home. Desert solitaries inspired numerous monasteries which nurtured the arts as well as the sciences, such as medicine. It can do so again and again, if wisdom’s love of glory renews translucent love of wisdom, which the Spirit unveils in pure, unceasing prayer.
Integral translucence calls out from the ineffable glory of God’s Kingdom of uncreated light, transfiguring every form of glory which continues to give glory to God, releasing what usurps glory or resists glorification. This helps to guarantee the healthy development of wisdom culture in age after age, but not without a costly transmutation which calls for profound discernment in each era. All ages have their blind spots and their repressions, so all require wisdom to heal what is diseased, or else let die what needs to die. Tradition is living transmission that renews itself anew in every generation, developing therapies which impart spiritual healing for their time. The desert knew of alchemies which are being transmuted anew for our day, therapies which still have great power to heal. Love of wisdom is lost whenever scholastic rationalism reduces philosophy to binary dualisms bereft of spiritual intuition, hardening and blinding the heart, neglecting the Patristic culture of noetic turning, seeing and deification. Integral translucence renews wisdom, ascribing glory to God, restoring Patristic wisdom in tongued fires of Pentecost, transfiguring obscure symbols with hallowing translucence. This Pentecostal turn grounds Hesychast wisdom in Christ’s resurrection, ascension and glorification, which are not individualist feats but the universal embrace of all-inclusive love. Resurrection restores wisdom to love’s glory, ascension raises wisdom into deifying glory, whilst glorification glorifies the saints who glorify God. Glory restores wisdom so that wisdom may discern glory, integral wisdom discerning translucent glory, opening wisdom to glory as integral translucence.
Wisdom is truly integral when her universal embrace renews everything capable of being truly translucent, everything in the tradition that is truly transfigured by glory. The Spirit of truth reveals integral translucence as the mature completeness which glory bestows on wisdom. Icons are images that unveil glory and transmit wisdom, not mere pictures or photographs depicting the external face of things. Sacred chant clothes resounding words of the eternal Word in sacred sound, wisdom hallowing the ineffable glory of the Holy Name. Orthodox Tradition is transmission of the hallowing Name, wisdom embracing glory in sacred forms, not heavy cultural baggage with an Oriental veneer. Holy Orthodoxy is Holy Trinity in action as co-creative divine-humanity, a Cherubic Hymn which raises on high ‘I AM’ of glory, restoring glory to glory in translucent realms. Ancient symbols like the cherubic throne come out of storage when wisdom is welcomed home from exile. The Holy of Holies unveils its ancient mysteries in the light of the Name, once wisdom is embracing glory as integral translucence. But wisdom culture is not a shallow or narrow idololatry of past forms but a resonant embrace of wisdom wherever wisdom is revealed, raising the Name ‘I AM’ on high wherever ‘I AM’ is ineffably unveiled. This ecstatic translucence frees old images to transmute into icons, as glory unveils wisdom in an integral embrace. Old forms shine forth as new when expressing wisdom’s love of glory. Divine joy breaks forth when wisdom cuts through obstacles and glory leaps over obstructions. Wisdom awakens hearts to God, making all things new. Her translucence is glorious when her embrace is integral, restoring transmission of the Name. Integral wisdom loves translucent glory, transfiguring what is arising with beauty and holiness.