Category Archives: Great Peace

Flame of the Name: Kiss of Peace

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The Name seals the heart with a flame of love stronger than death, a flame of Yah consuming confusion and diffusing division at the heart of the Burning Bush.  The seal’s transfiguring flame purifies desire of all that usurps God, illumining the heart by unveiling divine desire, embracing a glorified earth with heaven’s ineffable wisdom. Earthly loves are completed when passionate heavenly… Read more »

Forgiveness and Grace

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Because we have received the grace of God’s forgiveness, we can forgive one another as ourselves.  Because we have forgiven one another as our very life, we can truly receive the grace of God’s forgiveness as the timeless life of love’s ineffable glory. Gratuitous love manifests doxological circularity that takes the form of a co-inherence of grace and forgiveness, generating the… Read more »

Awakened Heart of Stillness

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Stillness abides at the heart of awareness where wisdom beholds the presence of glory in the Name, a womb of infinite ineffability that grounds purification of the heart.  Stillness does not waver from the heart of awareness that is awake to the presence of glory.  Beyond rational description, pictorial imagination and literal expression, stillness abides where awareness of presence embraces the presence of… Read more »

Practice of Turning and Seeing

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Orthodox Christian Hesychasm is not a divisive, sectarian phenomenon but the living wisdom of the hallowing Spirit, awake in Christ to the generous grace of the Father of light and glory.  Metanoia turns the light of awareness round to awaken to theoria, seeing that sees who sees at centre, illumined vision of uncreated light that unveils the glory of grace.  Saint David’s metanoia… Read more »

Saint Sophrony the Hesychast

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Encountering Saint Sophrony the Hesychast, in 1965. at the age of twenty, was catalytic for a theological student who knew very little about the Orthodox Patristic Tradition.  Recommended to see him by Father Gilbert Shaw, who loved him dearly, the directness of his wisdom of God-centred personhood was both overwhelming and reassuring, and gave clear direction to a lifetime of spiritual… Read more »

Name and Face

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The way of the Name is the way of the unveiled Face, ever-moving, ever still.  The Spirit is everywhere present without departing from Christ’s union with the Father for a moment.  Wisdom serenely abides in the glory of the Name without separating from Christ or wavering from his union with the Father.  The Spirit of wise awareness does not flit around like… Read more »

Unfinished Glory

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Saints abide in the unfinished glory of God’s hallowed Name, knowing that the glory of the Name they name does not exhaust the ineffable glory of the hidden Name of God.  The hidden Name is radiant with the glory that deifies the saints, who never call themselves saints, but sinners who fall short of the glory that deifies them.  They neither… Read more »

Hesychast Wisdom

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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… Read more »

Unveiled Face of Glory

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Christ reveals the Holy Name of God, unveiling the glory of God’s Face.  God’s unveiled Face of glory dispels delusion, undoing confusion with the grace of radiant communion, healing division with co-inherent translucence.  The Name unveils God as He is, glory wondrous to behold.  The unveiled Face of Glory is not, of course, visible as an object of empirical observation, although saints… Read more »

Praxis of Theoria

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The practice of spiritual vision, which Orthodox Hesychast Tradition calls the ‘praxis of theoria,’ is the methodical activity that turns and sees what the Name reveals, purifying and illumining the awakened heart, opening mysteries of grace to hallowing glorification.  Elders explain this conceptually in order to point the saints beyond conceptuality to direct, non-conceptual awareness.  It is the practice of seeing in the Spirit that keeps… Read more »