In his Third Letter, Saint Antony tells us, “He who knows himself knows God” (Chitty SLG 1975 pg 11). He bears witness in the Spirit that all who know themselves know God and glorify God aright, knowing God’s own God-centred knowledge of God which undergirds God’s God-centred glorification of God. For Antony the Great, desert father of monks and solitaries, it was… Read more »
Wisdom in the desert regenerates the imagination, inspiring radical transforming vision, renewing the language and imagery of vision for an age that has lost vision. Desert wisdom retells old myths and stories in new, liberating ways, to awaken hearts in times that have lost faith in wisdom. Desert prophecy was always radically counter-cultural, inspiring imagery that regenerates degenerated imagination, imagination conditioned… Read more »
Desert elders abide in the Holy Name of God, ‘I AM,’ a union of deifying awareness and uncreated presence which reveals the enlightened state of hallowed glorification as wisdom’s living stream to the saints. ‘I AM’ is ever-present as timeless awareness, but without recognition, there is no remembrance of God, only the endless confusion of conditioning thoughts grasping at conditioned phenomena, or… Read more »
Ineffable release abides at centre in Christ as it rests in peace in this life and in the world to come. Death is release when timeless awareness abides in pure presence on both sides of the great divide. The transition called death is not the catastrophic loss that fear dreads but is rather an ineffable release into love’s blessed consummation…. Read more »
Glorified saints sing the Thrice Holy Hymn Isaiah heard in the Temple in BC 742, sung by six-winged Seraphim before the throne in heaven, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory’ (Isaiah 6:3). ‘Lord,’ here, names God’s Name, ‘EHYEH,’ ‘I AM,’ so the Thrice Holy Hymn glorifies God’s Name ‘I AM’… Read more »
Saint Sophrony the Hesychast taught that the reason Holy Orthodoxy calls humility a divine Name is because God is humility. God’s Name is ‘I AM,’ humble awareness in communion with humble presence, the humble ‘I’ of wisdom in union with the humble ‘AM’ of presence. God’s Name, ‘I AM,’ communicates God’s humility, curing pride, and does not therefore, like our hardened hearts, require… Read more »
The wisdom of the Cross is the wisdom of unselfish love, which is the wisdom of the Holy Trinity unveiling purifying love, enlightening love through love and love’s God-centred glorification of God through God. It is not only that love’s glory is revealed to be wisdom’s divine intent, but that the glory of love is also the way love is revealed through glorification. The… Read more »
Love loves because love loves, transcending the constricted understanding of the binary mind. Love forgives because love forgives, leaping over the narrow judgments of the dualistic mind. In a fundamentalist environment, love is reduced to love of ‘us’ opposed to ‘them,’ a constriction which divides the mind between an ethnic ‘us’ and a demonised ‘them.’ In the case of orthodox fundamentalism, the Hindu, Buddhist… Read more »
Hesychasm is silence and silence is not the absence of sound but wholesome completeness imparting wholeness through the uncreated energies of wisdom and glory. Stillness is awareness of presence deifying us, not a philosophy that imposes wordy control by taking sides. Desert wisdom loves silence because it loves wisdom that glorifies the Name, not because it is asserting its opposition… Read more »
Wisdom is timeless openness of glory unveiling the timeless radiance of grace. Wisdom awakens the heart to glory by cutting through confusion and leaping over separation, beginning at the end where God unveils God in his Name. To begin at the end means the Alpha initiates wisdom with the Omega of ‘I AM,’ revealing glory which is the timeless openness… Read more »