Category: Mystical Theology
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The Sacrament of All Things
How many sacraments does the Orthodox Church have? This is a question that an inquiring 16th century European might have posed. The Catholics had seven, while the Lutherans (and some other Protestants) said there were only two. “Of course,” thought the Orthodox in struggling to answer a question that had never been spoken in the…
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The Everything of Orthodoxy
“He can’t see the forest for the trees,” the saying goes. It’s a recognition that attention to detail can obscure an overall pattern. Of course, someone could respond by saying, “He’s so overwhelmed with the forest that he can’t see the trees.” In point of fact, human beings are hard-wired for both trees and forest,…
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What’s In A Name?
I do not know its cause, but, on occasion, I hear my mother’s voice call my name. Perhaps it’s a random set of neurons going off, or something more mystical and spooky. I do not know. I know, however, that it is powerful and goes deep into my soul. Names are like that. There is…
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The Pilgrimage We Must Learn to Make
There is a short comment in a letter by St. Gregory of Nyssa that has raised eyebrows for centuries on the topic of pilgrimages. Going to a holy place was big business in the Middle Ages (cf. The Canterbury Tales). Thus this epigrammatic thought of a Church Fathers, who carried the titled, “The Father of…
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Taking My Mental Shoes Off
I approach spirituality as a social scientist who believes that whether or not God exists, spirituality is a deep part of human nature, shaped by natural selection and cultural evolution, and central to human flourishing and self-transcendence. – Jon Haidt The above quote is a sentiment that I see more and more often these days. It…
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Hiding in Plain Sight
In the time of their visitation they will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble. (Wisdom 3:7) ____ The story is told of St. Macarius that he was falsely accused of fathering a child by a young woman in the village. After being beaten and humiliated by the people there, he returned…
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Looking Like Christmas
One of the most striking features of the Gospels is the frequent response of the Disciples after the resurrection of Christ: doubt. I have always been sympathetic to the doubts and hesitations that accompanied the Disciples’ experience during the ministry of Christ. They are almost endearing in their inability to grasp what Christ is all…
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The Life of the Cosmos
This is a reprint from 2016. I ran across it this morning and found it speaking very much of where my mind and heart have been of late. May it be of use to you. What does it mean to be alive? This is a question whose answer would seem so obvious that it is…
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The Gratuitous Wonder of Unbounded Joy
Any number of Orthodox conversations turn around the topic of “theosis” (to become “like God”). I’m never quite sure what people have in mind when they invoke the term. Do they imagine divine power or a transfiguration in divine light? In a culture marked by success stories, it’s easy to imagine theosis as just that.…
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A Faith You Can Sink Your Teeth Into
In a now-famous experiment, volunteers were fitted with inverting lenses, such that everything they saw appeared upside-down. In a few days their brains adjusted and what they saw appeared correctly. When the lenses were removed, their naked eyes now saw things inverted, though again, after a few days their vision returned to normal. We are…
Matthew, I think you do not understand what I have written (or what I’m saying). Love is not something we…