Just as the light of the sun attracts a healthy eye, so through love knowledge of God naturally draws to itself the pure intellect. A pure intellect is one divorced from ignorance and illusion by divine light. (Maximos the Confessor)

Ignorance is clear enough and, while tough to avoid, easy to acknowledge.

Illusion is the tricky one. The human mind perceives through narrative. I observe a beginning, often in retrospect. I experience a middle extending from that beginning.

Then I anticipate, hope for, or dread a culmination.

That projecting into the future is how my species survived. It is also the source of my greatest anxiety. It is what separates me from God.

Dearest God, work with me to purify my intellect.

Just as the thought of fire does not warm the body, so faith without love does not actualize the light of spiritual knowledge in the soul. (Maximos the Confessor)

The Greek tradition - or at least the big three of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle - gives primacy to intellectual contemplation. Light without heat.

But Aristotle also comments that, "happiness is activity in accord with virtue." The activity most purely virtuous is contemplation, but the activity can extend into politics. In his Eudemian Ethics Aristotle even remarks, almost in passing, that the ideal life is "the contemplation and service of God."

I am concerned that Greek philosophy in many ways contaminates the teaching of Jesus. But as long as we recall the primacy of love-in-action, heat and light, philosophy has much to offer.

You should know that you have been greatly benefited when you have suffered deeply because of some insult or indignity; for by means of the indignity self-esteem has been driven out of you. (Maximos the Confessor)

I recently thumbed through a bookstore copy of The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement. Maximos might be their patron saint. I did not buy the book. But just the table of contents had me nodding affirmatively.

Yet we also know those who through significant effort make a substantial contribution and nonetheless feel like a failure. Sometimes we meet them in the mirror.

The issue is wrapped up in what we value and why. Esteem comes from the same Latin root as estimate and means to set a value, typically a price. What gives this life - your life - value? How can we invest for a sustained increase in value?

When you are insulted by someone or humiliated, guard against angry thoughts, lest they arouse a feeling of irritation, and so cut you off from love and place you in the realm of hatred. (Maximos the Confessor)

Several months ago I was at a Capitol Hill party. I knew one other person there. I could not hear well through the din. Within ten minutes I was cut off and put down by a stranger. I left shortly after.

It was not really an insult and far less than a humiliation. But I have been irritated by the memory ever since.

When I was in high school we had an airplane context. Just for fun, I worked on an over-complicated, almost Rube Goldberg design. I was, in many ways, making fun of my own tendency to overcomplicate.

The daily newspaper from a near-by town covered the contest. My airplane did not do well, and I explained why, in a self-mocking way, to the reporter.

My picture and explanation was prominent in the story. Somehow it seemed I was being laughed at rather than laughed with.

Each instance should have been forgotten quickly. The second should not veritably spring to mind nearly four decades later.

Gracious God, calm my pride and displace it with love for you.

He who has realized love for God in his heart is tireless, as Jeremiah says, in his pursuit of the Lord his God, and bears every hardship, reproach and insult nobly, never thinking the least evil of anyone. (Maximos the Confessor)

The reference to Jeremiah is, supposedly, chapter 17, verse 16 where Jeremiah is praying.

The prophet ends his prayer with, "Let my persecutors be shamed, but do not let me be shamed; let them be dismayed, but do not let me be dismayed; bring on them the day of disaster; destroy them with double destruction."

Is this an example of "never thinking the least evil of anyone"? I don't think this even counts as nobly bearing every hardship, reproach, and insult.

We are victims. We are oppressed by others. We suffer as an accident of birth, or time, or place. We are persecuted without good cause.

We are children of God. We are blessed beyond imagination. We are the undeserving recipients of beauty, beneficence, and joy, simply because we are loved.

Each is true, often in the same second.

He who has genuinely renounced worldly things, and lovingly and sincerely serves his neighbor, is soon set free from every passion and made a partaker of God's love and knowledge. (Maximos the Confessor)

I don't have access to the original Greek of Maximos. But in renouncing the worldly, I expect he was renouncing either kosmikos or bebelos.

In Titus 2:12 we read of kosmikos, "instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age..."

The First Letter of Timothy 6:20 uses bebelos, as in, "O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called "knowledge."

We can recognize cosmic in kosmikos. There is certainly the possibility for esoteric issues of philosophy, art, politics, and such to become godless.

Bebelos literally means a stone threshold, something good for walking on. Vulgar issues of sports, sex, gossip, and so on can also be godless.

If we were in conversation with God, we would probably ask more than argue. We would be unlikely to assume a sophisticated stance with God. Would we chat about the world series?

I am sure God understands the passion that will soon mark the Phillies and the Yankees, and will hear the thousands of prayers with compassion.

I certainly hope God is forgiving when I waft into speculative analysis of the human condition or swoon over some piece of art.

If baseball is a way to God, baseball is good. If art and philosophy is a way to God, it is good. But when we exclude God from our passions whatever they may be - when we wallow in complaint or surround our self with sensuality or try to fly to the heights of ecstasy without God, we are going in the wrong direction.

The state of love may be recognized in the giving of money, and still more in the giving of spiritual counsel and in looking after people in their physical needs. (Maximos the Confessor)

Yesterday my wife and I discussed the pledge we will make to the church for the year ahead.

In recent years we have given more than ten percent of our pre-tax income. We have not increased our pledge for at least three years. But we have continued to give the same amount as our income fell.

I will not be in church today to participate in stewardship Sunday. I am in meetings to plan mass casualty care for a large city. My profession involves looking after people's physical needs.

In neither case do I feel "in love." In each case it is more a matter of there being a need, an opportunity to contribute to filling the need, and a disciplined process of applying resource to need and opportunity.

That sounds soulless and cold. But I wonder if we too often mistake love for a fervor that is more self-affirming than self-giving.

God, who is by nature good and dispassionate, loves all men equally as His handiwork. But He glorifies the virtuous man because in his will he is united to God. At the same time, in His goodness He is merciful to the sinner and by chastising him in this life brings him back to the path of virtue. Similarly, a man of good and dispassionate judgment also loves all me equally. he love the virtuous man because of his nature and the probity of his intention; and he loves the sinner, too, because of his nature and because in his compassion he pities him for foolishly stumbing in the darkness. (Maximos the Confessor)

Just before writing my own morning meditation, I read another. This morning the writer is reacting to Psalm 30.

Desire for control also comes into play when we believe that God visits disaster upon us to punish us for our sins. That stance, though frightening, allows us to cling to the thought that we have some control. If we believe that God favors us because of our good actions, then when God's face seems hidden from us, we can do something about it. Such thinking pushes the grace of God and the work of Christ right out of the picture. If we believe God punishes our sins by sending earthly adversities, it's a short step to believing we can save ourselves through our own actions. But the truth is that I am saved by the grace of God, not by my own actions.

It seems to me that God has given us freedom. This freedom of choice -- exercized by billions of people, trillions of creatures, and the whole natural system -- has consequences. Some consequences are good, some are bad. Some are good as intended, many are bad despite the best intentions. Most often there is no intention whatsoever.

We can complain that God, in this grant of freedom, allows injustice and all sort of evil to run riot. But the alternative is a frozen stasis of non-creation.

We often stumble. We often leave the path of virtue. But God does not push us and God is always welcoming our return.

He who gives alms in imitation of God does not discriminate between the wicked and the virtuous, the just and unjust, when providing for men's bodily needs. He gives equally to all according to their need, even though he prefers the virtuous man to the bad man because of the probity of his intention. (Maximos the Confessor)

Is virtue a matter of outcome or "probity of intention"?

Probity is derived from the Latin probus for good or proper. There is also just a touch of action. We take probe and prove from the same root.

Helvetius wrote, "The most generous action can produce in the moral world an effect no more sensible than a stone thrown into the ocean can produce in the seas, by raising the surface. There is then no practical probity in relation to the universe. With respect to probity of intention, which is reduced to a constant and habitual desire of the happiness of mankind, and consequently to vague and inefficacious wishes for the universal felicity, I maintain that it is nothing but a platonic chimera."

Probity requires action. Intention requires proof. Each depend on taking risks.

God does not discriminate between wicked and virtuous. Often we cannot.

We can, however, be attentive to intention, shaping it towards God's purposes. We can take action - no matter how modest - to advance that purpose.

He who loves God will certainly love his neighbor as well. Such a person cannot hoard money, but distributes it in a way befitting God, being generous to everyone in need. (Maximos the Confessor)

Money is a problem if it is hoarded. Money is a vehicle of grace if it is distributed "in a way befitting God."

This insight is fundamental to the tension between spiritual and material; on this Maximos and I can agree.

The material world God has given us is beautiful, good, and true. We can engage this grace perversely, is also true.

But if we approach the material world in a way befitting God, we can through beauty better understand what is good, and through knowledge of what is good we can edge closer to the truth.

The journey begins and ends with love for God and neighbor.

If you keep your body free from disease and sensual pleasure it will help you to serve what is more noble. He who forsakes all worldly desires sets himself above all worldly distress. (Maximos the Confessor)

Power, wealth, and sexual variety are top contenders for worldly desires. What about justice, daily bread, and love? Are these also worldly desires?

Power is entwined with justice, wealth with health, and sex with love. Is power the problem? Or does the problem come from seeking to serve the self?

I love a fine meal, even if I am eating alone. This is self-serving. It is certainly sensual. How does it detract from what is more noble?

I vividly recall and give thanks for a Eucharist celebrated in Salzburg nearly 40 years ago. The incense, the music, the art and architecture ... the divine has never seemed more present to me.

There is a potential problem with self-serving sensuality. Appreciation can too easily become obsessive. I can too easily seek to control and amass that which only has value when it comes and goes as grace.

But there is also a problem when, in seeking to avoid the sensual, we reject authority, prosperity, and affection offered by God.

If you make provision for the desire of the flesh and bear a grudge against your neighbor on account of something transitory, you worship the creature instead of the Creator. (Maximos the Confessor)

Today I will meet with someone who holds a grudge against me. He has asked to see me. There are signals of a weirdly renewed anger.

I will listen. I am not sure what he may say, we have not talked for over two years. I roughly understand the source of the grudge. In the past I actively sought reconciliation.

Today I am prepared to give him a sense of vindication. I hope he will come away with a sense of victory. For me his source of anger is entirely unreal.

Blessed is he who is not attached to anything transitory or corruptible. Blessed is the intellect that transcends all sensible objects and ceaselessly delights in divine beauty. (Maximos the Confessor)

Buddhism teaches non-attachment. But for the Buddhist this is not separation. Zen teacher John Daido Loori writes,

... according to the Buddhist point of view, nonattachment is exactly the opposite of separation. You need two things in order to have attachment: the thing you’re attaching to, and the person who’s attaching. In nonattachment, on the other hand, there’s unity. There’s unity because there’s nothing to attach to. If you have unified with the whole universe, there’s nothing outside of you, so the notion of attachment becomes absurd. Who will attach to what?

Is this what Maximos is attempting to teach? Are we to seek union with God, union with the very ground of being, in order to transcend a separate sense of self and all its ills?

He who loves Me, says the Lord, will keep My commandments; and "this is My commandment, that you love one another". Thus he who does not love his neighbor fails to keep the commandment and cannot love the Lord. Blessed is who who can love all men equally. (Maximos the Confessor)

Both of the commandments are from the Gospel of John. In each Jesus is quoted using the Greek agape.

Greek distinguishes between eros or physical love, philia or the love of friends, and agape or a love that is beyond sexual or friendly.

Aramaic, the language in which Jesus was almost certainly speaking, rakhma and khuba are two forms of love, the first unconditional and the second reciprocal.

The Hebrew Scriptures, and especially the book of Isaiah, often refer to racham as God's compassion or mercy. In Isaiah 54:10 we read, "'For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, But My lovingkindness will not be removed from you, And My covenant of peace will not be shaken,' Says the Lord who has compassion on you."

I don't know about Maximos, but I perceive that Jesus was referring to a relationship where we self-identify with the other, we love our neighbor as our self.

A soul filled with thoughts of sensual desire and hatred is unpurified. If we detect any trace of hatred in our hearts against any man whatsoever for committing any fault, we are utterly estranged from love for God, since love for God absolutely precludes us from hating any man. (Maximos the Confessor)

God is love. We cannot be of God without fully participating in love.

This is not sentimentality. This is a rigorous valuing of ourselves, others, and God.

Love is seeing ourselves in the other. Love is seeing God in the other; even - especially - when the other is behaving hatefully. Even when we behave hatefully.

Love does not enable the hateful behavior. But love distinguishes between present behavior and essential being.

Love is an alchemy revealing what is precious. God is the alchemist.

The person who loves God cannot help loving every man as himself, even though he is grieved by the passions of those who are not yet purified. But when they amend their lives, his delight is indescribable and knows no bounds. (Maximos the Confessor)

True grief does not patronize. True grief requires empathy.

Empathy is to fully experience another's reality. Empathy is most complete when it comes from memory rather than imagination.

In grief I recognize my own weakness and failure. Joyfully I celebrate the victory of another and am renewed in my own.

With thanks and praise, I perceive the grace of God that is the source of every strength.

Without the pain of failure, would we experience the delight of being fulfilled?

When the intellect is ravished through love by divine knowledge and stands outside the realm of created things, it becomes aware of God's infinity. It is then, according to Isaiah, that a sense of amazement makes it conscious of its own lowliness and in all sincerity it repeats the prophet's words: "How abject I am, for I am pierced to the heart; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips; and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." (Maximos the Confessor)

The intellect is finite. The body is finite. I am finite.

The spirit is infinite. God's creating does not end. God's love is perpetual.

The contrast is stark. The chasm between what is finite and infinite stretches beyond the intellect's grasp.

Yet God has bridged the gap with grace. Finite I am, yet I am lifted across the divide.

Though abject and unclean, I may abide in grace with infinity.

All the virtues co-operate with the intellect to produce this intense longing for God, pure prayer above all. For by the soaring towards God through this prayer the intellect rises above the realm of created things. (Maximos the Confessor)

There is an intense longing for completion, wholeness, fulfillment.

There is an intense longing for healing, for wounds to be closed, for scars to fade.

There is an intense longing for purpose to be revealed and achieved.

Since the light of spiritual knowledge is the intellect's life, and since this light is engendered by love for God, it is rightly said that nothing is greater than divine love.When in the intensity of its love for God the intellect goes out of itself, then it has no sense of itself or of any created thing. For when it is illumined by the infinite light of God, it becomes insensible to everything made by Him, just as the eye becomes insensible to the stars when the sun rises. (Maximos the Confessor)

Many of us have experienced when our "intellect goes out of itself."

When it happens we are usually engaged in a task of such intensity or importance that everything else -- even our sense of time and space -- is compressed.

The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has described this as the experience of flow. He writes, "By creating a temporary world where one can act with total commitment, flow provides an escape from the chaos of the quotidian. But this escape does not represent a descent into entropy, as when one dulls one's senses with drugs, or simple pleasure; it is an escape forward into higher complexity, where one hones one's potential by confronting new challenges." (The Evolving Self)

In describing this state-of-flow, Csikszentmihalyi also uses a term that Maximos would find familiar: autotelic, auto (self) plus telos (purpose).

For Maximos the fundamental purpose of the self is to love God.

If you distract your intellect from its love for God and concentrate it, not on God, but on some sensible object, you thereby show that you value the body more than the soul and the things made by God more than God Himself. (Maximos the Confessor)

Distraction is a problem.

Even when I fully intend to concentrate on God, I can later find that I focused on something other than God.

For years I have been persuaded I was doing the will of God, only to realize in the fullness of time that my own will was much more in the lead. Lead us not into temptation.

But these temptations have - so far - been prompted by mental abstraction much more than sensible objects.

In attending to natural or man-made beauty, I have - so far - only been inspired, refreshed, and brought closer to God.

Since the soul is more noble than the body and God incomparably more noble than the world created by Him, he who values the body more than the soul and the world created by God more than the Creator Himself is simply a worshipper of idols. (Maximos the Confessor)

There is an important difference between Creator and created. Finally Maximos and I agree.

I also agree that neither body nor world have a greater value than soul or God.

But there is great value in body and world. Each is endowed by the Creator with an aspect of God's own nobility.

In focusing on what is noble, I expect Maximos used a form of kratos. In the Illiad kratos is the power that endows one with the ability to subdue an adversary. We know it best in democracy or demos kratos, power of the people.

The power of my body is matched to the power of this world, each is finite. But if treated as emanations of soul and God, this body and this world can be helpful in approaching the infinite.

It is not necessary to reject Creation, in order to encounter the Creator.

When your intellect is concentrated on the love of God you will pay little attention to visible things and will regard even your own body as something alien. (Maximos the Confessor)

I hear much more of Plato than Jesus in this calculation.

It suggests a God who disdains His own creation. That is not the God of scripture.

If any Christology has value, the body is held in honor. God was made manifest in a human body. It was the body that was tortured and died on the cross. It was a resurrection of the body.

Yes, the body can also distract. The visible world can be temptation, idol, or worse.

But to deny the physical universe, is to be alienated from the wholeness of God.

If everything that exists was made by God and for God, and God is superior to the things made by Him, he who abandons what is superior and devotes himself to what is inferior show that he values things made by God more than God Himself. (Maximos the Confessor)

I wonder how Maximos would have judged Isaac Newton. He would have seen a life devoted to the study of the material universe. Yet Newton explained,

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being. … This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called “Lord God” παντοκρατωρ [pantokratòr], or “Universal Ruler”. … The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect.

As a young man Newton had hoped to become a priest, but could not afford the expense of theological education. Nonetheless Newton was devoted to better understanding God through a more accurate understanding of God's creation.

The person who loves God values knowledge of God more than anything created by God, and pursues such knowledge ardently and ceaselessly. (Maximos the Confessor)

Socrates would say it is better to pursue the form rather than the shadow. In itself, I agree.

Yet where to begin? With the concept of God I have created in my mind? Is that not a shadow of a shadow?

At least the created world is less susceptible to the manipulations of ego than my interior self.

That which God has created is good. To ardently and ceaselessly seek God in creation can also be a way to God.

But Maximos disagrees and for the next few days I will listen and respond to his argument.

Scripture says: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." Just so, blessed are those who feel that grace has been withdrawn from them and no longer find any consolation in their hearts, only constant tribulation and a dark abyss, but even so do not give in to despair. Instead, they take strength from their faith so as to bear up courageously, secure in the thought that in this way they are experiencing the vision of the Invisible One. (John of Karpathos)

When I have fallen into an abyss, I cannot blame it on being pushed. I have, as far as I can tell, always stumbled into the darkness of my own accord.

Getting out is another matter. There have been occasions when I have pulled my way out mostly on my own. But more often I need help. So far, God has always been there.

This does not mean the tribulation suddenly ends. It does not mean I am lifted out on the wings of angel. The darkness has sometimes persisted for a very long time.

But God has joined me in the darkness and strengthens me in struggling with tribulation. There is grace even - especially - in the deepest pit of despair.

Perhaps God withdraws only from those much stronger than me. Or is there a difference between withdrawal of grace and the absence of God?

As soon as your mind has experienced what the scripture says: "How gracious is the Lord," it will be so touched with that light that it will no longer want to leave the place of the heart. It will echo the words of the apostle Peter: "How good it is to be here." (Symeon the New Theologian)

But unlike Peter we have the opportunity to carry this place with us. We may abide there through every storm and tumult. Most of us have visited this place from time and time. It may have been a moon-lit morning when we were alone, or in the midst of battle surrounded by mayhem. Whatever our context, time is suspended, space opens, quiet descends as a soft breeze. We are embraced and at one with a profound wholeness. God invites us to return and, if we choose, to reside there.

With a modest mind and a humble heart let us repeat over and again the prayer that the great saint Arsenios used to offer to the Lord: "My God, do not abandon me, though I have done nothing good in your sight, but because you are compassionate, grant me the power to make a start." And how true it is that all our salvation lies in the mercy, and in the deep love that God has for us. To him be glory, dominion, and worship. (Theodorus the Ascetic)

Grant me the power to make a start.

May I start - today - to give thanks for all your blessings.

May I start - this hour - to be filled with the joy of your presence.

May I start - this minute - to live in partnership with you.

Dear God, give me the courage to make a start toward you, for I know that when I am closer to you, I am closer to all that is real, all that is good, and all that fulfills.

It is beyond our power to prevent obsessive thoughts from troubling and disturbing the soul. But it is within our power to forbid such imaginings to linger within and to forbid such obsessions to control us. (Theodore the Ascetic)

C. G. Jung's Red Book will be available in bookstores for Christmas.

For sixteen years the psychologist confronted - and recorded - his most obsessive, troubling, and disturbing thoughts.

According to various reports, the book's language is poetic, mystic, and strange; it's illustrations weirdly wonderful.

Jung did not try to prevent his obsessive thoughts. Theodore might argue C.G. lingered over them too long. But rather than passive lingering , Jung applied active engagement.

Jung did not deny his obsessions nor did he grant them control. He cultivated the unconscious to enrich the conscious. He opened consciousness to what the unconscious knows.

When you pray, be concentrated, without self-display, closely withdrawn into your heart, for the demons fear concentration more than thieves fear dogs. (John Klimakos)

When Jesus taught us to pray, he focused on content rather than technique.

Jesus emphasizes our relationship with God and each other. The prayer asks to experience God's reign, to have enough to eat, and to avoid temptation and evil.

In the Gospel of Matthew we read of Jesus praying at the Mount of Olives. In some of the ancient texts we are told, "In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became as great drops of blood falling down on the ground." But many dispute the authenticity of this description.

In the 18th chapter of Luke, Jesus teaches that prayer should be persistent and self-critical. This begins to suggest a technique.

But unlike many of the Desert Fathers, Jesus was not especially concerned with technique. He seems to tell us, come to God often, be open to God, and God will provide the rest.

Never pass judgment on anyone, for any cause. Never do evil to anyone. Discipline and purge yourself from material and spiritual evil. Cultivate a modest and gentle heart. If you can do all these things and see only your own faults, not those of others, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ will be with you abundantly. (Sayings of the Egyptian Fathers)

Grace is always offered, but seldom received.

The opportunity for grace can be neglected or rejected. I expect neglect is more common.

We become so distracted by desires, judgments, and even good works, that we sweep by moments of grace as a speeding car on a dusty road (with its radio blaring).

Grace abounds when we can cease our preoccupation with past and future.

Grace enters when we embrace the now.

Always to want your own way, becoming accustomed to having it, always to seek the easy path - all this leads to depression. But love, quietness, and contemplation of the inner life cleanses our heart. Sayings of the Egyptian Fathers.

My own way is often a dead end. If the destination I have chosen is wealth, fame, and power, then surely the path will end in death, if not before.

But if the way I have chosen leads to God, the pathways unfold toward an ever-expanding horizon.

So often my way involves accumulation, the gathering of burdens to carry, maintain, and guard. Each "success" entails more burdens.

But the more I have of love, quietness, and contemplation the lighter my load.

What I expect to be easy, is often hard. What I may consider too hard, is often as easy as falling into the arms of God.