Doxological stillness transcends all identities but playfully offers an identity, ‘Orthodox Hesychasm,’ that situates it in the human world of identities and stories. Stillness abides in the glory of the age to come by indwelling uncreated light as wisdom beholding glory at the heart of the world. Stillness is doxological in ways that include many stories, many identities, without identifying with them in fixated ways, because it is the Spirit who dwells in the midst of Orthodox seers rather than a fixed, self-centred identity. This God-centred Spirit is holy because it hallows the Holy Name, opening at centre to God’s doxological glorification of God in Holy Trinity, turning fixed identities inside out and repeated stories outside in. Dogmas satisfy a need for assurance but transcend such needs in their capacity to express wisdom’s love of glory. Dogmas also meet the need for truth but It is quite normal for wholesome dogma to open to ineffable freedom rather than cling to fixed identities or to self-obsessed stories. Dogmatic awareness is not, in fact, tempted to fixate into narrow dogmatism, but freely partakes with the Spirit in Christ’s delight in the Father, rather than hunt heresies among heresy hunters who have lost their way among heresies.
Stillness abides at centre in the glory of the age to come that rests in timeless translucence. Delight reigns when glory dances with angels as they glorify God. Past and future give way to the timeless presence of glory. Wisdom song rather than prosaic prose glorifies God in union with creation as it sings glory to God, breathing with the Spirit as it chants its timeless song. All identities become translucent as they co-inhere in one another and sing the stories of their co-inherence. The garden enclosed is paradise opening identities to co-inherent union, whilst the fountain sealed is the heaven of heavens that embraces every story with the holy communion of its wisdom song. The wound of love breaks hearts open with glory by transmuting fixations into overflowing freedom. The snort of the horse bears witness in the Spirit to the Song of the Name as surely as angel choirs, for stars, like horses, sing as they dance their dance of the heavens. The whole creation glorifies God with one voice as wisdom embraces glory in the age to come, wisdom that is timeless as it releases past and future into timeless glory.
Stillness is dynamic in its doxological freedom for it does not fixate on identities or define itself by its stories but freely releases them as it wends its open way with the timeless way of the Name. Shallow narrows deepen by harrowing, opening out into boundless depths of freedom. The Name saves by freeing narrows to break out of compulsive shallows, liberating bondage into boundless freedom, transforming tight shallows of spite into vast waters of delight. There are no imprisoning closures when the fountain seals wisdom in the garden enclosed. The garden of ineffable openness releases bondage into ecstatic freedom. Of course, identities flit in and out but do not fixate, being stories that retain their truth by forming new forms of life. Wisdom transfigures the old and refigures the new as she works with iconic images old and new. Doxology is a formless form of life that lives death as timeless life, sustaining stillness from within. The fountain bubbles up with the Spirit’s unceasing prayer in the heart, enclosing paradise without subjecting heaven or earth to closed parodies. Stillness sings the Spirit’s song of freedom in the solitude and silence of the desert, ensuring that wisdom abides in glory as the Name is hallowed in uncreated light and the Spirit abides with Christ in the Father.