Hesychast seers love the wisdom of the Name because it reveals the glory of God’s reign, inspiring elders in every generation, renewing the sacred tradition of the saints. The wisdom of stillness holds steady even when surrounding parochial Orthodoxy is nominal and consequently, out of touch with the unceasing prayer of the Spirit inspiring hearts to turn and see. The desert sends out saints into the forests to inhabit caves in the mountains and cells on distant isles, kindling awakened hearts in silent hiddenness, hearts that sing wisdom songs of flaming wisdom. Wisdom beholds the hidden glory of the hallowed Name, renewing Orthodox Patristic Tradition from within, whilst the narrows and shallows of conventional piety resist the saints in their life-time but canonise them when they are dead. This ambivalence does not seduce wise stillness into hesitant wavering, but teaches wise discernment, strengthening elders from within. Stillness cools these frenzied tendencies and cures these diseases of heart and mind. Wisdom endures forever despite the seductions that assail it, wisely standing steadfast even when Patriarchs and senior Hierarchs succumb to the culture wars that plunge nations into confusion or division. As presidents and prime ministers come and go, wisdom abides in stillness, secure in the freedom that does not impose itself on others.
Wisdom abides in the ineffable stillness of God, dissolving the warring mind-sets that threaten to tear neighbours apart like enemies. The Spirit bears witness to the union of the Father with the Son, restoring unceasing glory to the Father through the Son. Elders recognise that in God we are all one, beyond the raging furies of fraudulent narcissism. Saints are vulnerable yet undistracted by warring worlds of exclusion and division, refining the general confusion into hallowing communion. For them, striving is stilled by the hallowed Name, cooled by the burning clarity of graced union. Going way beyond warring worlds of fraudulent misinformation, wisdom stills the enmity that threatens to destroy the peace and security of wholesome difference, the diabolical fraud that degenerates constructive disagreement into terrorising and terrorised divisions. Healing comes to restore union embracing friendly difference, spreading peace where culture wars threatened to destroy wholesome trust. The way of the Name calls for truth to be respected if it is to be widely lived and loved. Narcissism and nihilism are the enemy, not the neighbours who are suffering from them because their trust was abused. Wisdom sees things as they are, without imposing itself, releasing vacuous opinion, mindless violence and raging insurrection.
The Name reveals God, sustaining freedom in wise stillness. Hesychast stillness loves the hallowing Name shining forth in the midst. Nihilism cannot cure nihilism nor narcissism heal narcissism, because they cannot step back from themselves and breathe in what cures them. Fear fights or takes flight from what it fears, so never stands back from the fear that persecutes it. Love does not doubt love but gives way to love overflowing from wisdom to glory, curing fear without fear even noticing. The openness of glory is spacious and free, generating awareness without strain, embracing presence without stress. Elders stand serenely on their own feet, enabling saints to stand peacefully on their own feet, centred in God alone without trace of lonely isolation. Wise stillness is unfettered, free of subtle guile and self-obsessed pretence. Self-interest knows no peace as it agitates to impose its self-centred desires. Wise stillness is unperturbed, so holds together those who push love away, upholding them in the embrace of wise love. Taking no self-concerned pleasure in pleasure or pain in pain, saints abide in self-emptying serenity, like leaven in the wounded lump of suffering humanity. Hesychast wisdom unfolds as love of enemies, turning enemies back into neighbours and neighbours into friends, friends into God’s friends acting in God’s Name. Wise stillness turns terrorised hells into peaceful heavens of hallowing joy, as blessing drenches enmity with grace, releasing knotted fear into radiant peace with love’s hallowing joy.