Another word for austerity could be ‘poverty of spirit’, which is when you don’t feel you have anything but you are everything – the kingdom of God. And this poverty of spirit – it sounds negative of course, poverty, like the word emptiness – is actually the portal of paradox that takes us through into the fullness. There is a deep Christian resistance to this today, and a deep Western cultural resistance to this ancient wisdom, and to this idea that we leave self behind. But if we dig deep into the tradition, our own tradition, we find it again. Before the loss of our contemplative wisdom, St Anthony of the Desert said that the monk who knows that he is praying is not truly praying; the monk who doesn’t know that he is praying is truly praying. So this is what we mean by silence.
The portal of paradox
-
Most Recent Posts
