#hesychasm

An opinion to ponder.

What does it mean to be a hesychast in the current world, living a modern life, in a modern culture?

Can a suburbanite try to embrace hesychasm while still dealing with a job, family, kids in college?

From Wikipedia -

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, a scholar of Eastern Orthodox theology, distinguishes five distinct usages of the term "hesychasm": 1. "solitary life", a sense, equivalent to "eremitical life", in which the term is used since the 4th century; 2. "the practice of inner prayer, aiming at union with God on a level beyond images, concepts and language"; 3. "the quest for such union through the Jesus Prayer"; 4. "a particular psychosomatic technique in combination with the Jesus Prayer", use of which technique can be traced back at least to the 13th century; 5. "the theology of St. Gregory Palamas", on which see Palamism.

Now, to be fair, I consider myself a failure in pretty much any metric used by our modern society to define success. I understand that this is a conceit. Some are homeless, while I do have a home. Some have no family, while I have at least a wife who tolerates me, if not children who do so too. I have a few other meager possessions, such as a car to get me to work. Nevertheless, scraping by is not really a measure of success in the modern world.

I have experienced modern "management", and am not impressed. The youngest generations are fighting back and I am supportive of their struggle.

To the specific points - I do not live a solitary life, so point one does not apply.

I have not followed "psychosomatic techniques" unless they were developed unconsciously by me, at least to my knowledge. So point four doesn't apply either.

I have not pursued the works of Gregory Palamas to the point where I understand his thinking at any depth, so point five does not apply to me either.

I would say that point two definitely, and possibly three are a focus in my life - I do want to aim "at union with God on a level beyond images, concepts and language", and it could be said that I, "quest for such union through the Jesus Prayer".

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Recently on the 23rd of December I lost my keys.

In hindsight I think they were stolen.

On the 3rd of January our family car disappeared, and has yet to be recovered. At this point, if found, it will probably be a total loss.

Throughout the whole process, walking the roads looking for my keys, dealing with the police and the insurance company after the car theft - through all this and more, the only things that kept me together were these…

The Jesus prayer - calling on God's mercy kept me from spiraling into waves of anger and depression. And the verse - "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God…" (Romans 8:28)

And especially parts of Matthew 6:25-34

“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

All these thoughts gave me hope that there was a larger purpose to my pain. Further thoughts included Job, the taunts of his friends, and Ecclesiastes.

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The point of all this is to meditate upon my usage of the Jesus prayer.

It is all I think of when I am troubled, or realize that my mind is wandering - is it an appropriation, and if so, does it matter?

It is so much a part of my default thinking anymore that I don't know how I could function without it running in the back of my mind whenever I'm not actively thinking of something else. If nothing more, it seems more healthy than anything else I could be meditating on when my mind is idling.

Should I even worry about it? Officially, I am not Orthodox. But I must confess, my idiosyncratic bastardization of Orthodox theology keeps me together and sane.

Maybe the highest praise I can ever eventually attain is to be called an Orthodox Heretic.

"Gather your nous and force it to enter into the heart and remain there.  When your nous is established in the heart, it should not remain empty, but allow it to continually perform this prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.  Never allow it to be silent.  Because of this, the entire chain of virtues will enter into you: love, joy, peace, and all others, because of which your every petition to God will be fulfilled later."

“The theological controversies about the nature of the light of the Transfiguration of Christ—controversies which, about the middle of the fourteenth century, divided the upholders of the doctrinal traditions of the Eastern Church from certain rationalizing theologians, related basically to a religious problem of the first importance. It concerned the reality of mystical experience, the possibility of conscious communion with God, and the nature of grace—whether it is created or uncreated. The questions of man’s ultimate destiny, his beatitude and deification, were at stake. It was a conflict between mystical theology and a religious philosophy, or, rather, a theology of concepts which refused to admit what seemed to it to be an absurdity, foolishness. The God of revelation and of religious experience was confronted with the God of the philosophers, on the battlefield of mysticism, and, once again, the foolishness of God put to nought the wisdom of men. Finding themselves obliged to define their position, to formulate concepts of realities utterly transcending philosophical speculation, the philosophers had finally to give a judgement which in its turn appeared ‘foolishness’ to Eastern tradition: they asserted the created nature of deifying grace. ... At the end of our study we must think of another aspect of the divine energies: that of the uncreated light in which God reveals and communicates Himself to those who enter into union with Him.

This light (φῶς) or effulgence (ε῎κλαμψις) can be defined as the visible quality of the divinity, of the energies or grace in which God makes Himself known. It is not a reality of the intellectual order, as the illumination of the intellect, taken in its allegorical and abstract sense, sometimes is. Nor is it a reality of the sensible order. This light is a light which fills at the same time both intellect and senses, revealing itself to the whole man, and not only to one of his faculties. The divine light, being given in mystical experience, surpasses at the same time both sense and intellect.”

"Even the gods are moved by the voice of entreaty" — Ovid

Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ ἐλέησόν με 

Kyrie Iesou Christe Eleison me

(KEE-ree-ay ee-SOO khree-STAY eh-lay-ee-SOHN meh)

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Eleison / mercy. Once I read this poem about mercy in Boston. The great poet Fanny Howe was in attendance. After the reading she asked me if I was raised Catholic (I was) and said she wished she had the whole night to think about the poem. "I was still myself before I was born"--she told me she had had the same thought recently. As a materialist, I am not even sure what I meant by that line, but the line--the poem--wrote itself through me. God? I'm not sure I believe in God. I left the Catholic Church long ago. But still I sense an absent presence and because I have the consciousness of Homo sapiens, I project a "mind" onto that absent presence. I would like to understand why we are wired this way, why we seem to have been made for prayer.