Solitude was always persecuted by those who lived in terror of silence and martyred by those who distrust stillness. The original symphony of verbal prayers and stillness was lost when stillness was crucified. Desert seers understand why persecution of stillness was always a martyrdom of silent solitude but also know that glorification of God precedes and succeeds the Cross of loving stillness. Martyrdom of persecuted stillness glorifies God in saints who give their lives witnessing to the glory of the Name. Conventional orthodoxy needs saints if it is not to die the death of a thousand reductions, bound as it is by its enslavement to parochial verbosity. It would rather fill solitude with busy activism, silence with repetitious words, quenching stillness to preserve its nominal orthodoxy. After saints were safely dead, the imperial church canonised those who were persecuted and martyred, revealing glory beyond what was nominal. Hallowing the Name of glory, stillness bears with all this, suffering without confusion or division, embracing silence in the midst of solitude. At the heart of martyrdom, the Name imparts wisdom embracing glory in the midst of persecutions of glory, bearing witness to God’s reign of glory with every breath. Silence contests persecution with silent glorification rather than verbal contestation, because stillness chooses to confess rather than contest glory, bearing witness to glory in the midst of martyrdom.
Parochial orthodoxy seeks to control or exclude stillness by destroying solitude and stifling silence, which it often succeeds in doing unless the Spirit preserves solitude for a time and permits stillness to keep silent in the desert for a space. The desert enters and embraces the city when saints bear witness in the city to the glory of the Name. Serenity steps back from verbally contesting convention by confessing the Name in realms of glory. Wisdom loves glory, inspiring glory to love wisdom, instead of descending into conflictual separations that confuse and divide. Conventional orthodoxy is baffled by stillness, offended by silence and scandalised by solitude, so it is no surprise that it persecutes those who are martyred for witnessing to the Name in its name, nominal though that name is, crucifying the Name of glory. There is no end to all this until the reign of the Name overcomes nominal verbosity with the serene stillness of glory, which is the mystery of ineffable love. The vulnerability of love passes into the vulnerability of stillness in solitude and silence. Love’s stillness fills silence with glory, always vulnerable to persecution and martyrdom, but glorified in timeless realms when solitude embraces glory in silence, freeing stillness to embrace the glory of love, which alone is what it always was.
The desert heals the confusions of fear by embracing the stillness of silence in solitude, filling the silence of solitary stillness with the completeness of the glory of love. Binary conflict releases into union in the light of the communion of love. Holy Orthodoxy is sustained by martyrs, who transfigure what was nominal into what is glorious. The wounds of persecution heal when the Name is hallowed and the realms of glory glorified. When earth sings with the doxologies of heaven, words rejoin the uncreated Word from which they came. Solitude resounds with glory in the silence of radiant stillness, restoring Holy Orthodoxy in the glory of God’s Name. Holiness heals by hallowing the Name, completing what ineffable words were communicating in the stillness of silent solitude. Grace gives glory to God when glory is martyred, releasing created words into the ineffable words of the Word, words that fill silence with the grace of stillness and turn solitude into ineffable joy. All is well when well-being discovers it is timeless, releasing passing, fleeting smiles into the one Great Smile, empowering solitude to rejoice in the silence of pure stillness.
This wisdom journal post can be read as a spiritual interpretation of the post with the same title published on September 26th 2017.