At this juncture, the ancient tension between past-centred conservatism and future-centred progressivism, together with every received notion of completeness, is devolving into new constellations of liberation, collaboration and co-inherence that transcend all we can grasp or possess. Today, tensions threaten to divide centre from periphery, north from south, east from west in a proliferation of new ways that press for devolutions… Read more »
Our lives appear quite ordinary, but wisdom beholds glory as awareness embracing presence in every perception. Indeed, awareness is most ordinary but the presence of awareness is glory unveiled in the embrace of wisdom in every moment. We live between awareness and presence, in the midst of uncreated presence unveiled to uncreated awareness, witnessing wisdom’s love of glory in purifying… Read more »
When the Apostle speaks of the wisdom, revelation and knowledge of God, he speaks in his Epistle to the Ephesians of the awakening of the eye of the heart (Eph 1:17-18). Without this hallowing awakening of the eye of the heart, there can be faith understood as conventional belief, but not trust in wisdom and revelation that yields true knowledge of God…. Read more »
For those who experience the dark night of glory as a teenager, darkness of unknowing dazzles early, leaving a life-time of paradox, where affirmation is negation and negation is affirmation. Of course, there are the usual temporal unfoldings in one’s twenties and timeless awakenings in one’s thirties, but these contrasts and changes gradually turn into an increasingly steady abiding in… Read more »
In his Spiritual Testament, delivered to us in community on the Feast of Saint Antony January 17th 1991, Saint Sophrony the Hesychast shared his vision of monastic life as the unity for which Christ prayed, that we may be one as the Father and the Son are one, that we may be one in the image and likeness of God the… Read more »
The Lord’s Prayer bequeaths to desert ascetics the prayer of Name-hallowing, God’s God-centred glorification of God in Holy Trinity, lived as the self-emptying of God through God in God and as the self-emptying of the created into the uncreated in deification. This Name-hallowing is the desert’s ascetical, reciprocating response to God’s self-emptying of the uncreated into the created in his… Read more »
Cherubic wisdom embraces Seraphic glory in the midst, enthroning the hallowed Name which gives birth to the Kingdom of glory. In the Gospel of Thomas, Yeshua says: ‘When you give birth to that which is within yourself, what you bring forth will save you. If you possess nothing within you, that absence will destroy you (Logion 70 Bauman 2002, 2008,… Read more »
Desert stillness testifies to the Kingdom of glory present in the hallowed Name, whose radiant wisdom hallows the Name in heart and forehead, crowning with glory all who turn with profound metanoia, all who see as they are seen, all whose hearts are sanctuaries of the indwelling Name, temples of the Spirit’s unceasing prayer, ‘Abba, Father,’ witness to the union… Read more »
The revelation of the Name in the Burning Bush on Mount Sinai is God’s self-revelation of glory, ‘I AM WHO I AM,’ to Moses, communicating in the Name ‘I AM,’ ineffable release (Ex 3:14). The revelation of the Name to Elijah on Mount Carmel reveals ‘I AM: He is God,’ ‘I AM: He is God,’ exposing the delusions of Baal with all-consuming… Read more »
Self-emptying glorification is grounded in the Name that reveals God in the midst, emptying confusion with the created from vision of God at centre, purifying the heart with turning (metanoia), illumining the heart with seeing (theoria), emptying all that usurps God in the heart in self-emptying deification (theosis). Elders point out where God is to be found when they introduce the mystery of the… Read more »