Moving!

Dear Readers,



I have moved the blog to its new home. I hope to see you there. Here it is:



https://dialogueandtheself.wordpress.com

When?

Right now

It's the colour of the day

You cannot just be a good person. The world
is so bad, so very bad, that you need to be
very good, more than good, a saint.

The darkness is so thick that a little flashlight
won't do. You need a big butcher's knife to
cut through it.

The world needs saints, it needs many saints.
Please, go out there and do your best.

Fotis Kontoglou

Fotis Kontoglou started out as a babe and a child in a little part of the world, blessed with beauty and joy, protected by hills, by the vast ocean, by obscurity and unimportance.

The little valley - cuddled by the earth, smiled-on by the sun, protected and hidden by God – kept him and raised him and nourished him until he came to love it, so very much that he would never forget it.

So very much that his heart would long for that place and for those people always. And anywhere he went, he went, always, as an exiled man who remembers.

Wherever he travelled and wherever he went he was a rock of a different color, taken from the shallow ocean bed of that place, smelling of the sun that casts its light on that place, and the earth that showed its fullest glory there. Smelling of the sand and of the clearest sea water.

He was himself a little piece of that eden, and no matter what rains showered on him and what winds blew roundabout him, they couldn’t change his color, or dampen his warmth or disperse the scent of those people and that place that his souls was kneaded with. And so he walked the streets, and lived in the cities as a testimony of God’s secret art, and he lived his life as a sacrifice: for the world to know.

His body was a sacrifice: so that we may know that people come from somewhere. That we have a past and a meaning. That we have a significance. He was a memorial in the hard and broken streets of the city to the Man Who Knew God’s Love. And being there, for us, his days were a martyrdom.

I don’t think he ever forgave the sea that pulled him away and carried him far from the land of his birth. But I don’t think he ever stopped loving the sea, and burning with a longing for it, turning his mind to it, and visiting it, hoping always that that same sea might grab him again and take him back once again to the embrace from which he had come.

You know, it’s not everyone that God treats so roughly. It’s not everyone who lives a long death, torn apart by the beauty he has seen that he can never forget. This man must have been a great man and a very strong one.  Otherwise I truly don’t think God would have burned him so with the fire of an angel.

I hope that now he has become fully inflamed and that the light of that beauty that he bore and endured during his life has become his eternally now. And that it includes him and counts him as one of its own.

Messenger of God, burning with desire for the good and the beautiful, shine your light also on us so that we can see our way.

freshness

Do you know how when the air is clean and fresh the scent of the earth and the sea is stronger and richer and embraces the man like a blessing? And the flowers almost speak, and the sunlight tells of joy to every corner and every detail of the earth, and the music of creation is so obvious that only the most deaf can miss it?

Well it is the same thing with our souls. When our spirit is not burdened by pollution and we are pure: the grace of God will fill us and fulfill us and satisfy every ability of our heart like nothing else! Like nothing you can imagine.

Well that’s the problem, we cannot imagine. We are so tired and far away from the truth and from the beautiful that we bother not.

Oh, oh my soul! I lament because I don’t know how to convince you. You don’t miss what you don’t know the value of.

Tasks

It doesn't matter if your task is grand or small.
It matters if it is good or not.

I am waiting for the kingdom of heaven

The silence of the moment when the sun come in through your window

The refreshingness of cucumber

The rest felt when you have been doing hard work

The warmth on your face

The peaceful glimmer of your eye when you have a cold

The steadfastness of the Saints

The hope we have

I am awaiting the kingdom of heaven.

Is there something more beautiful than the Liturgy?

Is there something on earth deeper than the sea?

I have hope of Everything.                                     

Like spring that comes quietly, God's beauty makes everything alive.  

getting there

Because I seek the deepest joy. Because the deepest beauty is in my heart and melts my mountains to sand and livens my soul with pain.

Because I seek the real thing.

The whole thing

Because I need it and I live for it.

I will stay here right where I am. And do my best.

Because my life right here is a prayer

And with prayer I will get There.

Athena

It is a fertile land
it begets ideas and thoughts
it is inhabited by Reality.
and it is a meeting place
where Reality and I look upon each other's face.

the sunlight and the way it falls.
the colour of the light.
the smells.
the texture of the sounds.

The movement and the sounds of the nature growing so freely between the cracks of civilisation.
the seasons there, and the times of the day!

It inspires me into wakefulness
Into perceptiveness
Into relatedness

Attentiveness and perception
Peace and relation are your children.
They are present with you and decorate your home and table like grapes on a grapevine.


You have been a home for ideas
like you are my window into the brightness of Reality.

Oh Athens, strong and alive.
I don't expect my readers will recognise you in how I refer to you,
in how I call your name.
But even from far away. As I call you to mind, you are my window.
And I am glad I have known you.

Reality is now here with me. I know her because I love her.
Reality is ever joyful.
Ever complete.

So if you are in sorrow my friend, do not be fooled.
This isn't it.
There is more.
There is better.

I realized it myself

I realized it myself.

The amount of nonsense we say, just because we want to draw the other person’s attention

Just because we love them.

So now I cut it short

And I just say I love you.

The life of a Christian

The life of the Christian is about loving the good. Seeking true goodness; desiring it deeply; needing it fully.

Hoping in the good,

Loving it,

Desiring it more than anything else; rather than anything else.

Seeking the peace and joy of goodness, rather than your own benefit

Wanting to know God

Seeking to know God

Becoming able to know God

Becoming more akin to the good yourself

Living a life more filled with grace, kindness, charity and love. Being washed through and through of evil, becoming free to be with the good.

Being disgusted by evil

Wanting to have nothing to do with it

Needing the good

Needing it all the time

The truth is this is who you are.

The life of Orthodoxy is about the struggle to seek the most true knowledge of God. It is about knowing what you seek, and how to approach it, as precisely as possible. It is about wasting as little time as possible on error whole you desperately seek the truth that you need.