The heart is like the furnace in Babylon where the three brave souls were met and sustained by the Divine presence. It is also like the burning bush from which God spoke to Moses. Again, your heart is like the rock in the desert that gushed forth water, saving the children of Israel. Enter it.
The path of unshackled happiness
In wordless prayer, my mind began to carry me away, searching for things that would make me happy. All things I don't have. All the "shoulds" and "oughts" that hound me with the persistence of a pack of dogs. Then suddenly all this cleared and I saw (or rather, felt) the great hilarity of it all. Happiness broke upon me despite what I don't have. Hilarity, precisely because in not having them---those circumstantial comforts, the conditional supports to happiness, the "good life"---my ego was detached momentarily from needing them.
Just as I began to lament this most recent challenge to all my "scripts" (a personal experience of loss), I became aware of the grace in it all---the charismatic, supernatural action of the Holy Spirit to strip me of anything natural, even good things, that might bring me happiness.
When the ego is stripped of all superficial things that usually bring it happiness or comfort, it's natural to lament the loss and become anxious or despondent. The ego is used to being propped up.
But crisis, loss, and trouble come into our lives and can be experienced or received as grace. They have the power to strip us of the shackles of our lesser attachments. Then ours souls can soar free into unrestrained happiness. We are those who can no longer be separated from God by any-thing.
This is true freedom.
How to become wise
From my journals. Sunday, May 20, 2007 St. Macarius Monastery. Wadi Natrun, Egypt
Father Zeno and I spoke for quite a while tonight. I asked him about the path to wisdom.
"Remember that you are nothing," he said. "And remember that you are everything---bought as precious by Christ. And if you're everything, so are others; you are to love them, embrace them. You will find yourself in them, and you will find them in you. Love is the path to wisdom. When you are nothing, you have nothing and need nothing and you are free to live in love."
A great enemy of good living
I wonder how differently we'd tread this sacred earth today if our praying taught us to do this:
"Not to run from one thought to the next, says Theophane the Recluse, but to give each one time to settle in the heart."
From Thomas Merton's journals
How would you treat the clerk at the grocery store? Your child at the dinner table? Your spouse? Balancing the check book, paying bills online? Driving? Talking with a friend? Arguing with a foe?
Our distraction, the scatter of our thoughts, our inability to concentrate, our hurry and worry . . . all this is a great enemy of good living, of spiritual awareness, of holiness.
The heart of Christianity
Many today are ignorant of the treasures of Eastern Orthodoxy. But much of what I write here on this blog simply mines those treasures, making them available to modern people, and in particular, Prostestants---all who seek a deeper and richer experience of God. In this short video interview, Bishop Kallistos Ware of Oxford, talks about what Protestants (especially evangelicals) can learn from the Orthodox, and the Orthodox from Protestants.
Ware winsomely explores our inner experience with Christ in the Holy Spirit . . . that Christianity is not an ideology or philosophical system, dogma or a list of moral rules, but an experiential reality.
You'll enjoy this delightful little interview:
I've referred to Kallistos Ware elsewhere and heartily suggest his writings, especially his little book, The Power of the Name (listed here on my Recommended Books page).