Here’s the text of my presentation on the loss and recovery of beauty in the modern period for my Theology of Beauty Class:

The loss and recovery of beauty in the modern period is fundamentally about identity.

Who are we? Who am I? Who are you? Art and society in general broke away from the religious and cultural impositions of identity, striking out for independence and assertion of being. Instead being defined rigidly by outside forces, there was a new expectation of discovery, discovery of new land, new vocation, new wealth, new spirituality. Much of this came from the understanding that the old models of control were bankrupt, unable to offer fulfillment or meaning, even if they offered a settled reality. There was a yearning for progress, and this meant striking out on your own to become your own person instead of who you were told you had to be.

So, it is not surprising that Willis, in his article on discovering creative symbolism outside of formal art, specifically chooses to look at ‘young people’. Erik Erikson, in his stages of psychosocial development, has as his fifth stage “Identity vs. Role confusion”, a stage which typically begins in adolescence. Those in this stage are, as Erikson puts it, “primarily concerned with what they appear to be in the eyes of others as compared with what they feel they are”. One website adds that a person in this stage, “needs to develop a sense of self and personal identity. Success leads to an ability to stay true to yourself, while failure leads to role confusion and a weak sense of self.”

There are two parts to this. One is a rejection of the impositions others demanded. This rejection is not only about not feeling a fitting, but also in a heightened perception of the inadequacy, or worse, of what was insisted on. Beauty was a victim of this early identity assertion.

“Beauty is not always right.” (Danto 112)

“If there is to be art, it should not be beautiful, since the world as it is does not deserve beauty. Artistic truth must accordingly be as harsh and raw as life itself is, and art leached of beauty serves in its own way as a mirror of what human beings have done. Art, subtracted of the stigma of beauty, serves as what the world has coming to it.” (Danto 118)

Beauty was seen as a false assertion of a false reality, not in keeping with the often grotesque realities of society, and one’s own soul.

But, where to go from here? If we reject the cultural impositions of identity what are we left with? Incomplete selves. Where do we find a resolution for our identity that can encompass both aspects of reality—the beautiful and the grotesque.

It is here I think the works of the early monastics are helpful, especially as found in the writings contained in the Philokalia. Defined as ‘love of the beautiful’ these were, in essence extremely advanced texts on progressing in the Christian life, towards what the eastern would call, theosis. A love of the beautiful, according to the monastic texts, is a desire for our own progress and transformation, not just for ourselves, but for our communities, for those who come after us. This cannot be a mere form of limited beauty that treats our hope as an idyllic future. Our hope comes in this present, and we move beyond our depravity towards a restoration of the likeness of God, in which we participate with God, seeing this world and acting within it as his agents.

Cassian writes on the holistic understanding of beauty (Philokalia, v.1, 96ff.) that encompasses what is spiritual, and physical, and dark, and light.

With this came a very strong awareness of reality as it was. The sharpening of the sense of this was considered the most important trait called discretion or discernment. Those who had mastered this were able to see the essence of things, good and bad, with it all able to point towards a sharpening and progression. This is why sins became so parsed and discussed, as in the lists of deadly sins. The more one knew about the darkness the better one was able to move past it, using the evil to propel towards goodness, using temptations to become stronger and more whole.

Brown writes “Our effort is to discern what is required of Christian artistry and taste if it is to have hopes of progressing from minimally spiritual exploration to maturely Christian transformation.”

And according to the monastics this means being willing to see the difficult and ugly as part of our own realities, not to be dwelled upon for its own sake, but to be used as a tool for progression.

“One has to work at seeing a painting as good despite its not being beautiful, when one had been supposing that beauty was the way artistic goodness was understood.” Danto 89

“My thought has been that it is important to recognize that the works might still be perceived as ugly even when we have come to see ‘artistic excellence’. The recognition of excellence need not entail a transformation in aesthetic perception.” Danto 107

But what do we bring to the art? Not in terms of aesthetics, though that is a part. In terms of spiritual maturity. Does the person who knows God the best have the best aesthetics? Should we train people to know art theory or to know God? The monks sought God, but also perceived the world.

Evagrios writes, “Spiritual knowledge has great beauty: it is the helpmate of prayer, awakening the noteic power of the intellect to contemplation of divine knowledge.”

“We have no idea how much extra-aesthetic information comes with the first glimpse.” Danto 107. How do we sharpen and hone this extra-aesthetic information? What we bring to art is often dismissed. Often what is emphasized is what we take away, but that is entirely dependent on not only the art, but what we bring to the art. The work, the scene, the place, the words, the object is like sound, not communicating in a vacuum.

What do we take away from art? This is tied to what we bring and what the artist is seeking to propel us towards. Artists too are those seeking identity, or having found it, are asserting it so as to push others in the direction they found helpful.

“But the artists were not simply concerned that the viewers should know what they were doing. Those viewers were themselves part of the society the artists were concerned to change. The problems were their problems too. The implication is that you are not just to look at what we, the artists have done: you have to help us change the world.” (Danto, 106; see also 133)

“We must endeavor to grasp the thought of the work, based on the way the work is organized.” (Danto, 139) .

We participate with the artist, learning from the embodied meaning of a work that contains a source for our own progression.

“Christian artistry and taste, I proposed, would do well to find new ways of being popular without being cheap; and Christianity would benefit, as well, from cultivating further a capacity for intelligent and imaginative religious exploration that is demanding enough to be unpopular.” (Brown, 230)

With this, like the monastics understood, there is a need for humility. We cannot always perceive what is there without training and guidance.

“Far from being a sign of excessive pride, therefore, submitting to artistic training and discipline can show a degree of humility that is all too often missing from programs of self-expression and from those kinds of artistry that consistently settle for easy or splashy effects.” (Brown, 254)

But is this only true for artistic guidance? Do we bring only our artistic perceptions to art? We bring our whole selves, so we are called to progress as whole selves, with our progression in one way bringing new light to other aspects.

Nor can we teach with an arrogance towards those who would seek to learn. Is transforming art only for the discerning? If theosis is a path, should there not be a path of aesthetics which allows for growth, milk to meat, in perception and depth?

The problem also comes in that we are unevenly ‘divinized’. We do not progress at the same speed, in the same directions, in the same modes. The area our imagination tends to occupy is our own area of strength, and we may tend to dismiss other forms. Thus, we have to allow for other forms of imagination, accepting that we participate as a community—as teachers and learners in turn. Those who are most advanced allow for those who are not. Because they perceive the nature of things and the person. Those who are not, who are striving or trying to prove, become the elitists or snobs. The most advanced monks were immensely accepting.

We have what we bring, and we have what the artist brings, often neither fully formed in identity, each trying to assert identity in expression and reception, while also still searching for the real self.

Where are we to go? To change the world as the artist, or other creative symbols suggest? If we are lost in despair, in the darkness of our sins or the chaos of the grotesque we lose our impetus for progress. Without hope we stay static or retreat.

Hope is found in beauty.

“It is as though beauty works as a catalyst, transforming raw grief into a tranquil sadness, helping the tears to flow, and at the same time, one might say, putting the loss into a certain philosophical perspective. Recourse to beauty seems to emerge spontaneously on occasions where sorrow is felt.” Danto 111

In moments of emotional need we feel drawn to hope and healing, the perichoretic attracts, drawing us back towards wholeness, or at least our comfortable approximation of it that we are used to in prior assumptions of our identity.

“Beauty is a necessary condition for life as we would want to live it.” Danto 160

But, this kind of beauty itself can be restrictive, becoming a mere solace rather than a driving force for our continued advancement.

This beautiful solace in art is often considered ‘kitsch’.

“Much art that aims at sublimity borders on kitsch.” (Brown, 230)

Kitsch is a judgment based on a particular, supposedly advanced, aesthetic. Is it, however, a valid judgment? The art we value is an expression of what we bring to it and what it brings to us. Thus the art we have is the art we deserve. See the art someone loves and we can see where they are at emotionally and spiritually.

Art becomes a tool for discernment, not only in how we view the art, but also in how we view the art viewer. Kitsch, maybe more properly defined not according to our aesthetic place, but rather according to how it works in the life of a particular person. Kitsch is, we might say, that which stifles progress or allows for stagnation. A precious moments figurine, or chapel, might be profoundly spiritual for one, a spiritual wasteland for another. Under the perspective of theosis we judge according to the situation and individual, not according to the object

“If taste is matter of perception, appreciation, and appraisal, and if it is always influenced by context and community, the first step in assessing claims regarding religious aesthetic taste is a move that is no less important for being almost a cliché. It is to try to listen to and through the rhetoric and sometimes curious logic of particular claims regarding music and worship so as to discern the underlying musical and religious perceptions, values, and judgments.”

Adding to this with right perception, maturity in spirit and aesthetic, art, music, the sorts of personal expressions Postrel emphasizes becomes a very precise way of perceiving the observer or aesthetic chooser not only the underlying aspects of the artistic object itself. We can diagnosis souls, knowing where one is and where one needs to go, in both the artist and those who resonate with particular expressions, as long as this resonance is about the real identity and not about assertions of a false identity in order to adopt someone else’s identity, which might be comfortable but is ultimately problematic.

But, moving past the false hopes of solace, we come to real beauty that both inspires, enlightens, and transforms.

“One cannot aspire toward the most developed and discerning taste without recognizing that taste must be discriminating—that not everything is beautiful and not all beauties are equal. Yet there comes a moment or state in which taste at its very highest, and the art associated with it, allows one to relish all that one hears and sees and touches, perceiving it as blessed in the eyes of God, and so to take delight in the whole world as beautiful and entirely enjoyable ‘in God’.” Brown, 264

Postrel and Willis offer us illustrations of a broader expression of the inherent spiritual in art, not in the formal production of art as communication, but rather aesthetics as choice and aesthetics as participation, what we select and what we express, that becomes a vital symbol of who we are.

However, we are left with a question. What we produce is a static representation of our selves. Is there more? People can express a diminished being, so expression itself is not inherently theosis. We can learn about people through their expressions and choices, and sometimes what we learn is that creativity is solely expressing ‘keeping up with the Jones’. Not by being same, but by expressing an artificial independence, a different look within the same overall, broader life philosophy and shallowness. Though, there are cues within to suggest a real glimmer of being. Is that enough? Especially if the materialistic shunts further, and deeper, expression. Is the ability to choose really an embrace of a deeper aesthetic? Are we a more reflective society because we can choose our toilets and faucets?

“We are here to be transformed.” Danto, 131.

This transformation cannot be simply an external beautification, but insists on whole transformation if we are to really find our identity.

But again, what is the direction of our identity? The monastics sought their identity in God, with God, participating with him now and through eternity, leading to a transformation into the likeness of God, something they realized goes beyond assertion of rhetoric or outside trappings, indeed transformed in a way that often is blocked by pure intellectual, rational methods.

“Philosophy is simply hopeless in dealing with the large human issues.” Danto, 137

“Perhaps we should also acknowledge that thought and further experience can, in turn, give rise to the symbol—the aesthetic and artistic symbol that, even as words begin to fail, is lifted up by illumined imagination, however imperfect, or by what has traditionally been called inspiration.” (Brown, 227)

In contemporary considerations we can see the embrace of beauty and disgust in the framework of perichoretic participation in the works of Moltmann whose theology of hope is, in part, coming out of his core question of where was God in Auschwitz. Theology too sought to exalt humanity, running into the wall of humanity’s deprivation, which brought a loss of theology. Classical liberal theology was found bankrupt in the face of human depravity.

Beauty and theology often go together, it seems.

The texts we read for this class session were quite, quite interesting really and I heartily recommend them: The Abuse of Beauty: The Paul Carus Lectures 21 (The Paul Carus Lectures) by Arthur Danto and Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste: Aesthetics in Religious Life by Frank Burch Brown. We also read an excerpt from The Substance of Style by Virgina Postrel and Common Culture by Paul Willis

My postings have fallen off again. Sometimes, I don’t know why that happened. This time I do. I was absolutely swamped by life.

October was one of those months. Not bad. Just pushed me, the whole of me, along in its waves.

Amy was here at the beginning of the month, which was wonderful fun.

We saw The Swell Season in Concert.

I taught a couple of seminary classes in the middle of the month, taking over in stepped-up TA duties as the professor I’m working for was off in Thailand. I get to do the same in the middle of November. Taught on Moltmann’s, Grenz’s, and Bloesch’s Christology the first day (I’m getting better at Christology apparently), and on “the incarnation” the second.

Had a birthday. I’m 34 as of a couple of weeks ago.

Went up to Oregon. Amy’s brother got engaged a month after us, and married two months before us. A delight and joy and wonderful event. A wee stressful for the immediate planning, and a trip more about meeting and schmoozing future family for me than hanging out with Amy. Also, a trip that had a fair bit of our own wedding planning re-assessment.

The day before I left for that I got an email from the professor of a class I’m taking asking if I would switch my 1 1/2 hour presentation from November 5 to October 29. I couldn’t really say no, even with all my being I realized I had utterly no time to work on this presentation that meant discussing theological issues of 2 books and 2 long articles. Airports and airplanes became the center of my theological musings on the topic, which happened to be on the loss and recovery of beauty in the modern period. I had to pull together all this in the midst of the strongest illustration of loss and recovery of beauty in the modern period: weddings and wedding planning.

Walked out to my car at the end of it, and my right rear tire was flat.

I knew exactly how that tire felt.

What I realized was I got, understandably, emotionally and mentally exhausted, on top of not sleeping well for quite a few weeks in quite a few different locations in Lake Arrowhead, Canby, and Pasadena.

My introversion caught up with me, and kept after me until yesterday when I just about climbed into a hole for the day and got absolutely nothing accomplished. And I realize that blogging is an extroverted activity, oddly enough, and suffered a bit of my month o’ real life.

Feeling my way back. Hope to post some pictures soon.

Interestingly enough, while my daily philokalia fell off here on the blog, those writings became central to my presentation, helping me coalesce the topics together in a somewhat curious fashion. Hurray for obscure devotional texts!

Viewing Modern Art

As a wee personal note.

I’m at Fuller this week in fact. Class tomorrow. TA duties today and Thursday. The professor is off to Thailand speaking at missions gathering. I’m teaching his Systematic Theology 2 class this week.

Odd things are afoot in my life. For those who’ve followed along the last four years of blogging they’ll understand.

Good odd, mind you. Good odd.

It went well today. Helps that the first hour was on the Christology of Moltmann.

Although it doesn’t really seem like it with my recent posts I’m still interested in and engaging emerging church stuff. Indeed, it’s still likely an aspect of my PhD dissertation. But for now, I’m re-grounding on the theology side and getting myself restored in the spirituality side, and preparing for the marriage side, so I’ve not entirely been chatty on the subject.

Things are moving along in that world, however, and it’s all quite interesting.

For instance, Fuller Seminary (showing why I decided to study at Fuller) dedicated it’s theology magazine to emerging churches within denominations.

Have a look over at Ryan Bolger’s blog. Reminds me that I need to touch base with him before too long.

From Mark the ascetic:

When harmed, insulted, or persecuted by someone, do not think of the present but wait for the future and you will find he has brought you much good, not only in this life but in the life to come.

After the first part, I expected there to be something along the lines of God will judge, or will make right, or will avenge. Something Old Testamenty.

But it doesn’t go that direction. Instead it stays with us. By enduring those things we can gain spiritual wisdom and patience. Something I’ve realized again and again, as I’ve been seemingly perpetually bothered by nearby construction that day after day violates the seeming expected quiet of the forest. Needless construction that has taken far too long.

I’ve gone up and down about it. Realizing all that noise entirely undermines attempts to find quiet prayer or spiritual focus.

Then I realized I was growing in different ways. A training of sorts.

There have been a lot of these things in my life, persistent bothers and greater frustrations. That’s just the one on my mind today that makes me realize exactly how right Mark the Ascetic is, even as I wish it wasn’t true, and that God would send a lightening bolt to end the bother and always step in to solve every frustration.

When you sin, blame your thought, not your action. For had your intellect not run ahead, your body would not have followed.

To add to this, and echo a little other Philokalia, blame the thoughts but also analyze them. Learning my own mental state, path, influences, and whole mental context has been a wonderful way to address my deeper faults. Sinful actions are more often than not more symptom than the direct disease. There’s often some faithlessness, or entitlement, or something underneath it that provokes the sin, often in not always obvious ways.

Do not say: “I do not know what is right, therefore I am not to blame when I fail to do it.” For if you did all the good which you do know, what you should do would then become clear to you, as if you were passing through a house from one room to another. It is not helpful to know what comes later before you have done what comes first. For knowledge without action ‘puffs up’, but ‘love edifies’, because it ‘patiently accepts all things.’ (1 Cor 8:1; 13:7).

I always want to know what comes next so that I have a good basis to do what comes first. Learning how to just go ahead and do that first thing has been quite freeing. When I do it. Truth be told, it’s sometimes exhausting to step without seeing. But, we’re not called to see the giants as wee or weak. We’re called to attack them anyhow, even if they’re huge and strong.

After fulfilling a commandment expect to be tempted; for love of Christ is tested by adversity.

I’ve not been political this time around, unlike in 2004 when I was just getting a blog started. There are a lot of reasons for that. Mostly, it’s because politics is bad for the soul, seeking partisan answers to deeper questions, inflicting disunity among communities for reasons that have, on the surface, logical reasons but are really more to do with aesthetic and social preference, which we then package with all kinds of more objective sounding arguments.

I’ve sat and listened, or read, a lot of my good friends voicing their support for Obama, sat and listened mostly in silence, not because I respect Obama but because I respect my friends and want to hold onto unity. I’ve sat and watched the people who were most appalled by the Christian Right take on a lot of the Christian Right’s arrogance and style, inflicting their opinions on vague issues and calling it the “Christian Way.”

We can and should discuss issues like poverty and war. However, voicing opposition to poverty and war does not end these or solve these. Indeed, sometimes, as in the 1930s, it exacerbates both. The poor are not helped by self-righteous hand-wringing and the victims of violence are not helped by earnest sounding disapproval.

Both the poor and the victims need help.

How this help is best accomplished is the real conversation on politics, and the real disagreement among those of us of faith. I’ve seen hypocrisy and corruption on both sides, with each side ready to eviscerate the other while dismissing their own faults.

I lost a lot of respect for the Christian Right in the past, and this season I’ve lost a whole lot of respect for the Christian Left, and those who hold to its causes. They are the same to me, which is sad to see. But they are so clearly expressing the same pharisaic mentality, always eager to judge the other.

I lean to the right, still. And reject any attempt for any other Christian so-called to judge me for my political positions. Indeed, I reject their faith as valid if they attempt to do so, putting their politics above their religion, and putting their unity with those who mock the faith against those who share it.

I reject any attempt to enlist Jesus as a political compatriot, for Jesus offended Left and Right, having words for all those who sought to assault others, while denying their own blind hypocrisy.

I lean right because I reject the maybes, the hope so, the promises without foundation. If there was really clear, undeniable help for the poor, I would go that direction. But it’s all politics, as the recent financial crisis shows.

So, I stand on the things I can be assured of. Not that these are the whole of the Christian stance, but they reflect at least a guaranteed part, as opposed to rhetorical, bureaucratic dances.

Why am I voting Republican? This latest from Sarah Palin explains some reasons:

“In this same spirit, as defenders of the culture of life, John McCain and I believe in the goodness and potential of every innocent life. I believe the truest measure of any society is how it treats those who are least able to defend and speak for themselves. And who is more vulnerable, or more innocent, than a child?

When I learned that my son Trig would have special needs, I had to prepare my heart for the challenges to come. At first I was scared, and Todd and I had to ask for strength and understanding. But I can tell you a few things I’ve learned already.

Yes, every innocent life matters. Everyone belongs in the circle of protection. Every child has something to contribute to the world, if we give them that chance. There are the world’s standards of perfection … and then there are God’s, and these are the final measure. Every child is beautiful before God, and dear to Him for their own sake.

As for our beautiful baby boy, for Todd and me, he is only more precious because he is vulnerable. In some ways, I think we stand to learn more from him than he does from us. When we hold Trig and care for him, we don’t feel scared anymore. We feel blessed.

It’s hard to think of many issues that could possibly be more important than who is protected in law and who isn’t – who is granted life and who is denied it. So when our opponent, Senator Obama, speaks about questions of life, I listen very carefully.

I listened when he defended his unconditional support for unlimited abortions. He said that a woman shouldn’t have to be – quote – “punished with a baby.” He said that right here in Johnstown –“punished with a baby” – and it’s about time we called him on it. The more I hear from Senator Obama, the more I understand why he is so vague and evasive on the subject. Americans need to see his record for what it is. It’s not negative or mean-spirited to talk to about his record. Whatever party you belong to, there are facts you need to know.

Senator Obama has voted against bills to end partial-birth abortion. In the Illinois Senate, a bipartisan majority passed legislation against that practice. Senator Obama opposed that bill. He voted against it in committee, and voted “present” on the Senate floor. In that legislature, “present” is how you vote when you’re against something, but don’t want to be held to account.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat, described partial-birth abortion as “too close to infanticide.” Barack Obama thinks it’s a constitutional right, but he is wrong.

Most troubling, as a state senator, Barack Obama wouldn’t even stand up for the rights of infants born alive during an abortion. These infants – often babies with special needs – are simply left to die.

In 2002, Congress unanimously passed a federal law to require medical care for those babies who survive an abortion. They’re living, breathing babies, but Senator Obama describes them as “pre-viable.” This merciful law was called the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Illinois had a version of the same law. Obama voted against it.

Asked about this vote, Senator Obama assured a reporter that he’d have voted “yes” on that bill if it had contained language similar to the federal version of the Born Alive Act. There’s just one little problem with that story: the language of both the state and federal bills was identical.

In short, Senator Obama is a politician who has long since left behind even the middle ground on the issue of life. He has sided with those who won’t even protect a child born alive. And this exposes the emptiness of his promises to move beyond the “old politics.”

In both parties, Americans have many concerns to be weighed in the votes they cast on November fourth. In times like these, with wars and a financial crisis, it’s easy to forget even as deep and abiding a concern as the right to life. And it seems our opponent hopes that you will forget. Like so much else in his agenda, he hopes you won’t notice how radical his ideas and record are until it’s too late.

But let there be no misunderstanding about the stakes.

A vote for Barack Obama is a vote for activist courts that will continue to smother the open and democratic debate we need on this issue, at both the state and federal level. A vote for Barack Obama would give the ultimate power over the issue of life to a politician who has never once done anything to protect the unborn. As Senator Obama told Pastor Rick Warren, it’s above his pay grade.

For a candidate who talks so often about “hope,” he offers no hope at all in meeting this great challenge to the conscience of America. There is a growing consensus in our country that we can overcome narrow partisanship on this issue, and bring all the resources of a generous country to the aid of both women in need and the child waiting to be born. We need more of the compassion and idealism that our opponent’s own party, at its best, once stood for. We need the clarity and conviction of leaders like the late Governor Bob Casey.

He represented a humanity that speaks to all of us – no matter what our party, our background, our faith, or our gender. And no matter your position on this sensitive subject, I hope that spirit will guide you on Election Day. I ask you to vote for McCain-Palin on the November fourth, and help us to bring this country together in the rational discussion of compassion and life.”

Amy was around all weekend, keeping me, for the most part, away from the computer. So, she’s gone away, again, and I’m back to my posting.

This time the reading is from Mark the Ascetic, and since they are short little texts, I’m gathering a few that stuck out to me in my reading today:

First of all, we know that GOd is the beginning, middle, and end of everything good; and it is impossible for us to have faith in anything good or to carry it into effect except in Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

This isn’t particularly a new revelation. But, I feel it worth quoting because it’s not uncommon for people to charge monastics with a form of works righteousness. First, God works. Always, first God works.

When reading the Holy Scriptures, he who is humble and engaged in spiritual work will apply everything to himself and not to someone else.

This has been an important, continual, reminder for me. It’s so easy, especially when mad at church and christian leaders, to read the challenges in Scripture and say, “Yeah! They should have done that.” It builds the ego and adds a bit of righteous justification. Only, no one is helped by that. The Spirit is speaking to me, not to them, in my own personal reading. I have to trust God’s ability to speak to others. Meanwhile, I cannot settle in my own deficiencies just because someone else has other deficiencies. Instead, I should say, “Yeah, I should do that.” Everyone wins.

If a man has some spiritual gift and feels compassion for those who do not have it, he preserves the gift because of his compassion. But a boastful man will lose it through succumbing to the temptation of boastfulness.

Boasting can take a lot of forms. Sometimes the worst are not through words, but through self-promotion and denigrating others. We alienate others who we do not want to shine as we want to shine. The spiritual gifts are, according to 1 Corinthians 14, for the edification of the body of Christ. We are to help others, not highlight ourselves. We are to build others up, not promote our own abilities. We are to participate with others in a shared journey towards maturity, not put on a show so everyone can see how talented or spiritual we are. God is watching, and the gifts he gives he can also take away.

At the times when you remember God, increase your prayers, so that when you forget Him, the Lord may remind you.

The Holy Spirit, out of compassion for our weakness, comes to us even when we are impure. And if only He finds our intellect truly praying to Him, He enters it and puts to flight the whole array of thoughts and ideas circling within it, and He arouses it to a longing for spiritual prayer.

While all else produces thoughts, ideas and speculations in the intellect through changes in the body, the Lord does the opposite: by entering the intellect, he fills it with whatever knowledge he wishes; and through the intellect he calms the uncontrolled impulses in the body.

Whoever loves true prayer and becomes angry or resentful is his own enemy. He is like a man who wants to see clearly and yet inflicts damage on his own eyes.

If you long to pray, do nothing that is opposed to prayer, so that God may draw near and be with you.

Spiritual knowledge has great beauty: it is the helpmate of prayer, awakening the intellect to contemplation of divine knowledge.

~Evagrios

Embrace prayer. Embrace holiness. Embrace knowledge. These three go hand in hand to lead us to fullness and stillness.

Though, doing this does not necessarily mean we’ll be free from storms and persecution. Maybe even the opposite. We do these things and we become dangerous to those who are opposed to fulness and stillness. And such can be found in all kinds of places, even the places where we might trust the most.