The Apostle Paul prays that the Father of glory will give the Ephesians a spirit of wisdom and revelation, unveiling glory as fullness of knowledge through Christ, the ‘I AM’ of glory, who illumines the eye of their heart (Eph 1:17-18). Christ’s wisdom imparts the crown of uncreated light that glorifies the saints, glory that generously and without restraint grants grace to all, glory that without reserve ascribes all glory to God. This mystery of doxological reciprocity completes God’s circular movement of uncreated light of glory from the Father through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. It restores glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. It is the circular doxological movement that God’s angels have always known, a knowing in Holy Trinity which unites knower and known. It is the circular motion of wisdom and glory in the saints, glory which connects up glory to glory so that wisdom awakens light from light light. When confusion and division reign, the divine circuit is broken, leaving us cut off in the outer darkness of hell. When the Father of glory glorifies the Son, the Spirit glorifies the Father through the Son, emptying hell of hell, revealing heaven. Glory opens hells to heaven by opening heavens in hell, turning delusion back into heavenly delight of light in light, like a crown of awakened awareness and presence, like a round mitre of wisdom and glory.
The circular divine motion of uncreated glory deifies saints who see God seeing God in God. THEOSIS, deification, is glory in act as Holy Trinity, sustained by the PRAXIS of THEORIA, the wisdom practice of turning and seeing. But eyes are blind and ears are deaf to the mysteries of glory until wisdom turns and sees. The sclerosis of the hardened heart obscures the heart’s original glory, glory that knows glory as it is known by glory. Resistance to glory distances God by imposing vanity on glory, separating wisdom from glory, ‘I AM’ from ‘I AM.’ Pride confuses the created ‘me’ with the uncreated ‘I AM,’ self-centred delusion usurping God at centre, reducing God-centred wisdom to self-centred confusion and division. Fear of death takes hold because undying ‘I AM’ is shut out, enclosing the heart in the deadly shadow of the darkness of death. But wisdom sees through death to resurrection which extinguishes the shadow of death. Wisdom opens the eye of the heart to God in the midst, unveiling glory to glory in God’s knowing of God through God. Holy Trinity is wisdom’s dance with glory, love’s ecstatic dance of wisdom with glory in the midst. A circle dance of wisdom and glory cures addictive confusion and so heals compulsive division. Love knows as she is known, God’s knowing of God as union of knower and known. Glory releases self-centred delusion into God-centred realisation. Wisdom opens confusion to the translucent clarity of glory, wisdom crowning heart and mind, unveiling ‘I AM’ to ‘I AM’ in the midst.
The experience of glorification is likened by desert wisdom to crowning, beauty of glory experienced as light descending like a hallowing halo, opening light to light. Icons depict crowning with halos, but hallowing is an experience of glory, not an external phenomenon visible to unenlightened observers. Crowning expresses the union of awareness and presence in the Name, opening to communion of wisdom and glory through the Spirit. It is God who crowns saints, grafting mortal exteriors into immortal glory, yoking the created with the uncreated. Christ is ‘I AM’ from ‘I AM,’ grafting our humanness into his deifying wisdom and glory. Crowning raises us from death in outer darkness to life of glory in resurrection, ascending with Christ into his glory through glorification. The Spirit of Truth conforms our mortal form to his immortal glory by true realisation of glory in wisdom. Wisdom opens the heart to glory by crowning the luminous eye with hallowing light, wedding the mind of light with the heart as love’s ineffable embrace of wisdom and glory. Glorification plunges light into the hidden depths of glory, completing light with glory with the ineffable embrace of incomparable completeness. Beauty of holiness crowns saints whose hallowed heads head up communion wherever they turn. Crowning ascends into light from light, deifying saints from glory to glory. The Spirit of holiness sustains wisdom with glory, restoring glory in God through God, to God, Father of glory.