Bridal Chamber conjoining wisdom and glory

Union with God in the Bridal Chamber of wisdom and glory reveals the uncreated light of glory in which the radiance of presence consumes parodied pretense, offering glory to God that restores right-glorification of God.  Addictive gods are unseated at centre to enthrone God in the midst in uncreated glory.  Elders surround the throne of glory but it is wisdom that discerns the glory of Christ in the midst, who shares the glory of his throne with all who awaken to him in glory in the midst.  Elders do not stand in the way of glory, but themselves partake in glory’s way, as well as the truth and the life of glory.   Wisdom is the healing of all who enter the Kingdom of glory, imparting eternal life. Wisdom is the water of life that nourishes the tree of life that cures the diseased tree of dualistic knowledge, the binary mindset of confusion and division.  Elders attend to the gifts of healing that flow from the Holy Chrism of Christ’s anointing, but they do not interfere between wisdom and the glory that glorifies the saints.  Their self-emptying frees their spiritual work from self-centred self-interest, empowering them to hand on the Holy Tradition without self-regarding reserve.  Wisdom purifies with uncreated light, enlightens with uncreated glory and glorifies with ineffable mysteries of wisdom and glory in the Bridal Chamber of the purified heart.

The Bridal Chamber is the place of presence where wisdom conjoins with glory, where wise awareness conjoins with glorious presence beyond all binary exclusions.  As the place of presence, the Bridal Chamber is Paradise, reconciling awareness with presence in a union of wisdom and glory.  As Paradise, it is the Holy City that is also a Holy Sanctuary of wise awareness and glorious presence.  The prophets bequeath to elders these sacred symbols of a garden paradise, a holy city and a temple sanctuary but they also transmit the symbol of the Holy Mountain.  The Great High Mountain is the sacred place where heaven weds earth, where an earthly heaven conjoins with a heavenly earth, where the mystical marriage of the uncreated and the created is conjoined and consummated.  It is the Bridal Chamber of God Most High, unveiling wisdom and glory.   Biblical Mount Zion was a prophetic image of paradise restored, as was the image of the New Jerusalem in the Apocalypse.  Desert elders transmit wisdom as the water of life and the tree of life, both of which are icons of Paradise.  The water of life was shared together with the bread of life, symbols that communicated the wisdom and glory that they symbolised.  The precious stones that adorned the breastplate of the High Priest in the Holy of Holies adorned the walls of the New Jerusalem (Rev 21:19-20), signifying that the Holy City is the Holy of Holies, the Name revealed, God loved and known, love’s glory glorifying the Beloved.  This is the ancient language of glory put to work by prophecy to transmit the mysteries of glorification.

God the Father generates God the Son in the midst of all who awaken to God in his Name.  The white martyrdom of desert wisdom is a witness unto death that overturns death by witnessing to Christ’s resurrection, ascension and glorification.   Saints are priests when their glory ascribes glory to God and kings when their glory shares in the reign of glory which is God’s.  The scope of wisdom transcends self-consoling religion and the glory of wisdom extends way beyond the boundaries of ethnocentric religion.  But wisdom does not impose, preferring costly witness to bruit force, with the inevitable consequence that saints are martyred at least as often as they are revered.  The Bridal Chamber was not understood and what was not understood was persecuted, like Jesus, whose witness to the Name was what inevitably led to his accursed crucifixion (John 8:58).  The Bridal Chamber is glorification, but glorification is martyrdom for God’s Name’s sake, white martyrdom in the desert, if not red martyrdom in the city.

Glory adorns wisdom in the Bridal Chamber of glorification.  The original garden of paradise was regained and restored but the glory that glorifies paradise in the Kingdom of God transcends all that conventional religion is able to include.  Wisdom has to be throne-vision because glorification is the consummation of purification and illumination.  The language of Cherubic enthronement lies at the heart of Christian wisdom and explains why hidden doxological mysteries of the Bridal Chamber are crucial to Orthodox right-glorification.  Ascension to illumination on the Holy Mountain imparts ascent to the place of uncreated presence revealed to uncreated awareness, the paradise garden of union, the union of glory with wisdom.  This is the mystery of the Bridal Chamber, in which wisdom and glory reveal yet wisely veil the Holy of Holies.  It communicates the mysteries of God’s indwelling Name, which transfigure hearts with God’s deifying presence.  Wisdom weds glory in the Bridal Chamber of deifying mysteries, generating hallowed treasures that renew Holy Orthodox Tradition in age after age.