Our lives appear quite ordinary, but wisdom beholds glory as awareness embracing presence in every perception. Indeed, awareness is most ordinary but the presence of awareness is glory unveiled in the embrace of wisdom in every moment. We live between awareness and presence, in the midst of uncreated presence unveiled to uncreated awareness, witnessing wisdom’s love of glory in purifying illumination of the heart, rising with Christ into his glorification and the Spirit’s glorification of the Father in our midst. So although awareness really is quite ordinary, the uncreated presence unveiled in uncreated awareness is timeless fullness of glory. This is revelation of true greatness, humbly hidden with Christ in God, concealed in the Spirit’s unceasing prayer in the heart. Uncelebrated in an age of shallow celebrity, wisdom conceals her greatness beneath an apparent ordinariness. Unrecognised in an era of gross materialism and unnoticed at a time of rampant consumerism, wisdom is one energy with the radiance of glory as awareness united to presence in ordinary perception. The ineffable oneness of awareness and presence is indivisible, just as the hidden union of wisdom and glory is inseparable. Love of wisdom embraces wisdom’s love of glory in the mysterious gaze and kiss of grace, the gaze and the kiss of deifying love, unconditioned but mostly unrecognised. But wisdom has never ceased to discern the glory of grace, so when a home is found for wisdom in pure hearts beholding God, blessing embraces awareness with uncreated presence and presence with uncreated awareness.
The hidden glory of wisdom hallows homes with a mysterious beauty of wondrous holiness. The unapparent union of awareness and presence is stronger than every apparent connection. Old stones remember unceasing prayer even though the spiritually blind have forgotten to notice it for so long. Awakened hearts sing wisdom songs that leave grace hidden but translucent between the stones. Old prophecy outlives blind insensitivity because unceasing prayer is far stronger than oblivious ignorance. Our vain and vacuous age cannot help but bear witness to the fullness that completes it, because this very incompleteness is witness to the unceasing presence of the generous promise of completeness. Extreme paradox is truly logical because all shallow resolutions collapse back into sound paradox the moment awareness unveils its timeless presence. Love knows as love is known, not as it is endlessly postponed by sophistry that always remains one thought away from ever-present awareness. Greatness eludes the great and avoids grand claims, whereas wisdom loves humble simplicity, safely hidden from vain-glory and from pride. Love’s glory is quite ordinary but hallows saints in every generation. Love’s infinite self-emptying never runs dry, never fades into empty nothingness, but blesses holy poverty with glory.
Vacuous specialness empties into holy ordinariness when pure presence awakens pure awareness, empty of all pretension, free of every presumption. Holy ordinariness is rich beyond compare, royal beyond celebrity as it embraces holy poverty with joyful serenity. Fame gives way to the Holy Name when uncreated grace offers better yields than clever worldly investment. Ordinary awareness is not what it seems to be. Generous presence is more effective than it appears to be. Just one awakened heart transforms countless lives, as Saint Seraphim of Sarov bore witness. The value of wisdom is incalculable, far outshining the celebrity of media fame. But there appears to be nothing special about seers, because contemplative seeing remains invisible to calculating rationality. Awareness does not literally tell us it is uncreated just as presence does not pretend to be anything special. The presence of awareness is deifying, which it would not be if the presence of awareness, ‘I AM,’ were not God’s revelatory Name. The practice of the presence of awareness is the practice of wisdom, even though awareness appears to be without virtue compared with what awareness is aware of. Holy ordinariness hides its infinite capacity from clever calculation, concealing its value from sophisticated complication. There is no limit to the value of glory nor end to the virtue of wisdom, even when there is no mention of wisdom or glory, but simply the practice of the presence of awareness, embracing the awareness of enlightening presence in the presence of enlightening awareness. The ordinariness of God’s presence is the completeness of deifying awareness, the glory of wisdom both recognised and known.