One of the greatest frustrations in my spiritual life has been caused by a passion for certainty. You might call it a need to know, a need to know what God is doing in my life, a need to have some explanation for or feeling for why my life is the way it is right now. When I don’t know—or when I don’t have some explanation that I can tell myself is…
In Homily 37, St. Isaac the Syrian discusses how a person comes to desire the heavenly life. In a series of questions and answers, he explains to the questioning novice how one comes to give himself or herself completely over to the experience of the heavenly life. One does this, according to St. Isaac, only through obeying Christ’s word to deny one’s self and take up one’s own cross to follow Christ…
In 1851, an anonymous monk on Mount Athos wrote a book on prayer. The title of the book has been translated as The Watchful Mind: Teachings on the Prayer of the Heart. It is a book that I cannot recommend for most people because, like much classic Orthodox spiritual writing (the Philokalia, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian, to name a few), it was written…
Truly, O Lord, if we do not humble ourselves, You do not cease to humble us. Real humility is the fruit of knowledge; and true knowledge, the fruit of trials. St. Isaac the Syrian Homily 36 In homily 36, St. Isaac says that there are two levels to our being crucified with Christ. The first level is physical and is a matter of our will. It has to do with bringing our…
A small affliction borne for God’s sake is better before God than a great work performed without tribulation; for affliction willingly borne brings to light the proof of love…. St. Isaac The Syrian: Homily 36 Someone has famously said, the exact attribution is under dispute, that it is not the mountain that wears us out but the grain of sand in our shoe. St. Isaac is, I think, saying something similar. In…
In my part of the world, sometimes referred to as the Bible Belt of Canada, I have plenty of opportunity to interact with Evangelicals of various stripes: from intellectually rigorous, Reform(ation)-minded Calvinists to free wheeling, seemingly theologically ambivalent Charismatics. One thing that has struck me, however, about most of the Evangelicals I have encountered lately is how strongly they prioritize ministry, or action taken for God in the world. This is such…
One of the struggles I have as I strive to pay attention to my heart, is that (at the same time) I perceive in my heart very sad things and joyful, hopeful things. It’s as if two realities, or two reflections of the world around me are manifest within me. When I first started to notice this reality within myself I found the concept of “bright sadness” helpful. I first ran across…
Tea At The Clayburn Store This morning my wife and I took one of our occasional half-day vacations. It’s a warmish 19 degree day (68 Fahrenheit) with the sun poking through the clouds. We walked a mile or so up a trail in the hills and then afterward stopped by a country tea and scone place for a bite and a chat and just some quite time together, Bonnie working on her…
Mt. San Jacinto “So there you are on the heights, surveying the earth below and the sky above. Your intellect [nous] now begins to feel its freedom and wants to fly.” I enjoy reading spiritual literature from holy people in the Orthodox Christian tradition. I like it because I often catch glimpses of myself, of my own struggles and my own triumphs. In many ways, books have been like a surrogate spiritual…
Mother Alexandra, formally Princess Ileana of Romania, back in 1960 wrote a little booklet called “Our Father: Meditations on The Lord’s Prayer.” The booklet is divided into fourteen prayers each focusing on a phrase from the Lord’s Prayer and arranged to be prayed with one’s morning and evening prayers over a week (so there’s a morning and an evening prayer for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.). In the very last prayer, the prayer…