Touching Heaven
This is an intriguing little book about one man's journey to Orthodoxy. I thoroughly enjoy his writing style and he offers all sorts of insightfull gems. I offer a couple here that I found this morning.
I had known the god who exists only in the vacuous universe between the page and the mind. Many were the moments when I was afraid of the silence in a room or the whisper in my soul, and nervously reached for a book about the God who might be trying to confront me, precisely so that I could avoid confronting Him. Yes, illumination comes at the hands of those who not only know about God, but truly know Him, and share Him with us in a book. But something happens to impair our openness when we reach for a book not as a doorway into deeper understanding, but as a distraction. Our soul takes a subtle wrong turn, and we wind up still looking over some hill or across some field at the place where we really need to be.
Most of my Christian life has been spent seeking to learn more about God, than in actually trying to meet Him.
In another part of the book , the author laments the utter ignorance he had from his protestant upbringing in regards to the wisdom of the monastics, he writes:
Why had these treasures been discarded and forgotten? Have the monks and nuns gone there to escape the world, or to confront it in themselves?
Again...how much time have I spent trying to confront the world in me as compared to the time I often WASTED in trying to confront the world outside me? The Church keeps driving me inward...inward....inward. Violence, ala Matthew 11:12.
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