Category: Mystagogy
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Conversation: Here Is It Works
Here is how it works: I’ll say something, and you say something back, and our hearts are fixed on caring for each other. Upon this ground we will hear God join our talk. There really isn’t much more to know than this. Though I’m glad to tell you what I’ve learned about how…
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Conversation Is A Specific Way, And Experience, In Talking
“Conversation” is not a subjective term. It has as precise a meaning as “tree” or “rock”. In a conversation, each pericope advances upon the last. It is warm, sweet, structured, disciplined, highly idiosyncratic yet full of role-discipline — all at once. What most people call “conversation” is not. Most verbal encounters are just serial monologues,…
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Conversations Never Stop
To build a comment fully on my friend’s comment — comment, subsume it and then add to it, requires all discipline and creativity. Nothing is more difficult. We either subsume or we evade. Tradition is just a long conversation, and a conversation is a microcosmic picture of how tradition works — by a canonical respect…
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Conversation: All That is in Your Heart Matters
Say something, say anything. Which means nothing in your heart is unimportant. Yes, you are right. There was a time when nothing in your heart was important. Now, it is the opposite. It usually comes after a few months. You’re seeing that the slightest twinge in your heart – the slightest flicker of a feeling,…
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The Mystical Ladder, for Husbands
Note: this is secret mystical knowledge, for men alone. Let the deacons now show the women out and let the doors be shut. Stage 1, the New Convert: If I talk to her about it, I can understand why she is crying and help her understand why she doesn’t need to cry. Stage 2, the…
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Beyond the Prayer of Incompetence
I happen to be a world-class expert in the prayer of incompetence — aridity, ennui, ligature, choose your own classical jargon — with decades of practice. Let me offer a few advanced pointers, in no certain order: It’s ok to give up in prayer emotionally, intellectually, and every way except physically. Make your body show…
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The White Stone
Adam named Eve when she was found to be a companion just for him. Mary’s eyes were opened to the Resurrected Christ when He called her by name: “Mary!” Religious conversions of all kinds prompt the adoption of a new name to go along with the new identity. Saul becomes Paul, Simon becomes Peter, and…
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“Pneuma” Became “Nous”
Sometime around Constantine the Christian writers on the spiritual life adopted Greek Terminology to describe spiritual events, and in the process imbibed Greek metaphysics and corrupted native biblical anthropology. For example, “Nous” was substituted for the NT “pneuma”, because the nous, in late Greek anthropology, was the seat of the soul and the noblest part…
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That There Are Multiple Darknesses
Man is called into existence by the word of God, so God’s first impingement on his cognition has describable shape. For some individuals, later, there is contact with God the Spirit, and through this process the man moves from one epistemological universe to another, since each Trinitarian person, being a person, exudes a unique…
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Anger’s Entire Function is to Enact Justice
Injustice or unfairness, real or perceived, makes us mad. It is a precognitive force, discovered within us at some point in those moments after the Fall when we were rearranging all our internal powers to make sure we were dealt with fairly…. just after that bliss when “fair” was an unknown concept. Fish don’t know…