Petre Tutea: Science As Doxology

by Alexandru Popescu-Prahovara Balliol College, Oxford, United Kingdom

This is a slightly amended version of the author's study, Petre uea: Science as Doxology A Romanian Master of the Socratic Dialogue between Science and Spirituality in the Contemporary World communicated to the 9th Congress of the Association for the Dialogue between Science and Theology in Romania, "Romania, as Laboratory of the Dialogue between Science and Spirituality in the Contemporary World", organised in Bucharest between 19-20th of October 2009, under the patronage of the Romanian Academy, the John Templeton Foundation, and the UNESCO National Comission for Romania.

The initial study was published in the first issue of Transdisciplinary Studies - Science, Spirituality, Society, Curtea Veche Publishing House, Bucharest, 2011, pp. 157-168. General BackgroundPetre uea (1902-1991) was a Romanian economist and diplomat who spent thirteen years in political prisons and twenty-eight years under city arrest as a prisoner of conscience during the communist era. A Doctor of Administrative Law, he worked as a national economic adviser during the 1930s and 1940s, when Romania found itself caught between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Unlike such contemporaries of his as the playwright Eugne Ionesco, the philosopher Emil Cioran, and the historian of religions Mircea Eliade, uea chose to remain in Romania in the early 1940s. For him, national identity was essential to a humane civil society. He first advocated, then in turn challenged both the abstract universalized humanity of Marxism, and the idolatrous glorification of the nation by right-wing nationalism. In 1990, having never previously joined any political party, he pointedly joined the National Liberal Party, of which he remained a member until his death.

During the process of Soviet re-education in the Romanian political prisons (1948-1964), his experience of torture led him paradoxically to re-affirm the fundamental Christian vision of humanity as created in the image and likeness of God. In every aspect of his being, uea testified to the love and power of God his testimony not merely a conceptual apologetics, but an informed and joyous affirmation of the relationship between humanity and God. This relationship can never be fully described or experienced as a conceptualized abstraction, but it is realized in the incarnational context of individual human lives, with their personal gifts, ethnic and national identity, history, and aspirations.

ueas joy in living, his intellectual brilliance and exuberance, his fearless wit and irrepressible humour, and his ability to relate on equal terms with all whom he met, made him a legend in his lifetime, although for political reasons his writings remained unpublished. Due to its allusive, elliptical style, his written work (nearly all of it published posthumously) remains largely unexplored. However, it contains insights of immediate relevance to a world in which ethnic intolerance, global injustice, and ever more invasive forms of exploitation and conflict threaten the sustainability of human life on the planet.

He had a high respect for all human disciplines. Yet he viewed methodological intelligence and techniques of being (the psychoanalytical "free association", the attempt at self-perfection through disciplines such as Yoga or arcane gnosis, or science based on purely "forensic" empirical research) as incomplete. He believed that all human activity is informed by a higher discernment, one that is ultimately sustained and penetrated by divine mystery.

Human disciplines and technology can never deliver us from our human condition of finitude, experienced as captivity to incompleteness. Beneficent progress is possible. Yet such progress, whether mental, technological, or social, is necessarily inspired in-breathed with the divine r u a h / p n e u m a / s p i r i t u s rather than the result of unaided human effort. Not everyone is able to recognize and acknowledge this. Those who profess religious certainty without being grounded in something akin to the vocational living of a Christian life, in the spirit of Christs Sermon on the Mount, exemplify the "desacralized" mind, equivalent to the technological attitude of the scientistic non-believer.

Introduction

Today, I seek to present ueas contribution to our discussion of the interface between science and spirituality in a way that reflects the asymptotic nature of his thinking and mode of communication. Such a methodology stands in the Socratic tradition of interplay between master and disciple that was so central to ueas intellectual mode of being.

- First: I shall give a short biographical account of the master/ disciple relationship between uea, the spiritual teacher, and myself, as an occasionally practising Christian living under a regime hostile to religion.

- Second: We shall see a brief video filmed in 1990 which gives a flavour of our relationship.

- Third: I shall attempt to tease out some of the implications of what has been presented, through reflections on this video clip, with reference to the Gospel story of Jesus Transfiguration on Mount Tabor.

Personal account

I first met Petre uea on the surgical ward of the Municipal Hospital in Bucharest, where he had been admitted for an operation in the fall of 1980. At that time, I was a first-year medical student and, one morning, due to an administrative muddle, uea was assigned to me as a patient. Because of the Securitate guard at his bedside, I was only able to speak freely with him in the middle of the night, during on-call hours. At first, I thought he was slightly deranged or even "spinning yarns": he talked about famous philosophers, thinkers, writers, artists, and politicians including Stalin, Hitler, and Brncui as though they had actually been there, in his room.

However, after going away to check certain texts to which he had referred, I discovered that, far from being deranged, he had accurately remembered and explained to me some very complex ideas. When he was discharged from hospital, I gradually learnt from him facts about my countrys recent history, which had been distorted by my teachers at school and university. Between the two World Wars, I was to find, he had actually met Stalin and Hitler in person, as a member of diplomatic delegations from Romania, and he had interviewed the famous Romanian sculptor Constantin Brncui.

The way ueas life developed could not have been more different from the life into which he was born, as the son of an Orthodox village priest. A cosmopolitan intellectual "enemy of the people", he lived under constant surveillance on the eighth floor of a block of flats in a room provided by the State, complete with covert listening devices. My visits to his flat were to become stages of a spiritual pilgrimage. Here was a man, in a society affected in every aspect by Marxist-Leninist materialism, who never ceased to affirm that the human race will destroy itself if it continues to live "by bread alone", rather than "by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Matthew, 4, 4). The "solutions" he pointed to lay in the realm not of economics and politics, but of the spirit.

I was deeply influenced by ueas doxological vision of the dialogue between the scientific method and the spiritual insight, unfolded to younger friends informally in the parks and cafs of Ceauescus Bucharest (1965-1989), and later, after 1989, in his interviews and writings. By "doxological" (from the Greek d o x a, "glory"), I mean a celebratory self-offering both of, and to, the glory of God the glory of creaturely love and creativity informed by, and directed to, that very glory that is God.

This is the Hebrew shekhinah, the fire and cloud of Exodus, the mystical vision of Ezekiel (1, 4-28; 11, 22ff; 43, 1-5), and, for the Christians, the mystery of the Johannine Word made flesh, "the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" (John, 1,14). As a spiritual guide uea impacted on my life in a transformative way that was powerful and testing, yet that also fostered the development of my own creativity and identity. It was a privilege for me as a doctoral and post-doctoral student in Oxford to study his life and works, culminating in a book about him: Petre uea: Between Sacrifice and Suicide (Ashgate, 2004). And it is a great privilege to speak about him here, under the auspices of the John Templeton Foundation and the Romanian Academy.

Video presentation

I would like to show you a short video made in June 1990, just six months after the revolution that overthrew Ceauescu, and just days before a student demonstration in Bucharests University Square was broken up by miners armed with pickaxes, bussed in from the Jiu Valley region by the revolutionary Government of the National Salvation Front. The film producer had actually asked uea to speak about the distinguished philosopher of pessimist "nothingness", Emil Cioran, an old friend of ueas, who had left Romania in 1937 and gone to live in Paris. Banned from the Romanian media for half a century, Cioran had never taken French citizenship, and had notoriously refused some of the most prestigious French awards. He had engaged in witty and uncompromising criticism, not only of the communist authorities, but also with some of the great European intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett.

The producer knew very little about uea; his main focus was Cioran, and the initial suggestion was that uea should share pre-World War II memories about his friend. But uea had other ideas and was to take the lead in a now classic documentary about his relationship with Cioran. Two days before the interview, uea asked me to help him write down a Declaraie (Declaration, see [note 1]) to Cioran, that he dictated to me because of the disabling tremor of his hands. He actually changed the very rules of a television interview, insisting that he could not be "intelligent to order", and demanding that his written statement be read in front of the cameras before any interview with him could commence. Having left my medical job in the late evening and climbed to ueas eighth floor room, it took me a while to "tune in" to his complex and idiosyncratic Declaraie especially as he would revise phrases in his head almost every minute, asking me to insert corrections within the handwritten text. This was, of course, before the days of computers. Even typewriters had had to be registered annually with Ceauescus police. We worked through the night, and around 4 oclock in the morning I was nodding off. As usual, I was asked, as his scribe, to write down or delete sometimes verb-less phrases and exclamatory lists of nouns, or references inserted in the main text, endless appositions, and bracketed quotations. I remember, on that particular summer morning, before the arrival of the TV crew, feeling very tired and confused, thinking I should tidy up the text, only to be told: "I asked you to write that phrase, with no verb, why are you adding verbs? Im an old man dictating to you. Stay awake, lazy bones!"

The cameraman was very observant, as you will see in a minute. While I read the Declaraie, the camera moves from me to a close-up of ueas face. Having memorized the content of his statement, he repeats it in unison with me, as if in prayer. This culminates in his way of wishing well to his friend, confidently affirming, gently willing, hoping that Cioran the rebel of Prcis de dcomposition and Le mauvais dmiurge will see how his own philosophy of rejection of God contains within it the possibility, if not the necessity, of reconciliation with God. The video is obviously in Romanian: for those who wish it, an English translation of the Declaraie is available on the handout. [note 1: ueas use of the word Declaraie is intriguing: in political prisons "Declaraie" had been the term used to refer to a forced statement extracted by the Securitate.]

Video Clip Transcript The clip can also be watched on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI8-er2bTqo

Editorial note: this YouTube videoclip contains a different translation from the original Romanian, in the form of annotations that can be toggled on and off. The YouTube translation is not associated with Popescu. Alexandru Popescu's translation is the transcript below. MOTTO: "I have the same great admiration for Petre as you have. What an extraordinary man! With his incomparable verve, if he were living in Paris, he would enjoy a worldwide reputation today. I often speak of him as a genius for our times, or more often as the only genius whom it has been granted to me to meet in my lifetime." Emil CIORAN (Paris, April 1970) in a letter to his brother Aurel in Sibiu, Transylvania

STATEMENT by Petre uea, to be communicated to Emil Cioran, through Mr. Gabriel Liiceanu An interview to discuss myself and Cioran? Not possible. In an interview one cannot reflect. So, I make the following statement. Preparing for this meeting with you, I felt uneasy, at a metaphysical level:

1.) Modern research employs three methodological terms: observation, experimentation, and reasoning. These cause me some intellectual disquiet, since, having never worked in a laboratory, I am unfamiliar with experimentation. Like the ancients, I have only observation and reasoning. I do also have the advantage of books. However, the absence of inspiration, in my case, and, in the case of Socrates, the search for god in order to understand wisdom, makes both of us seekers who seek but do not find, who know but do not know truth. This is "mans way" as opposed to "Gods way" (Bossuet). Mans way must cede to Gods way, which takes two forms: inspiration (divine favour) and revelation (direct action of the Divine), according to Traian Crian [see note 2], head of the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, who cites an Orthodox theologian whose name I do not remember. In this theologians view, endorsed by Crian, the whole of the Bible is inspired, from Genesis to Revelation, but not all of it is canonical, i.e., revealed: it is for the Orthodox Church to decide which canons are obligatory for believers. I recall that Newton, when asked how he had discovered the universal law of gravity, declared: "I was inspired!" So, inspiration, rather than the fall of an apple, led him to this law. Man, solitary, lives amid the phenomena of outer and inner worlds, whose laws are silent. Thus, our supposedly autonomous human readings of the phenomena are illusory. Newton again, when asked what gravity is, replied: "God". I think this is recorded in his Principia. 2.) Another source of my disquiet has to do with the legend around me, that I have been unable to justify.

3.) Then, Emil Ciorans friendly but inflated picture of me also causes me unease. Let me refer here to a point that he himself makes, in his portrait of Joseph de Maistre, who disturbed the Pope by over-fulsome praise. One can assassinate, observes Cioran, by enthusiasm. Christian dogma enables me to live on what Blaga calls the "horizon of mystery". Elsewhere I have written that the dogma is a "revealed mystery" (Lalande). Mystery is all that can free us from the anxieties arising from personal boundedness, cosmic and social captivity, and the prospect of infinity and death. Christianity, the religion of freedom, teaches that freedom needs to be conceived dogmatically. This is no paradox, since freedom is experienced here through ritual in church, and beyond, for the redeemed, it is eternal. In church and in the world to come, the dogma reigns: "Enslave me, Lord, that I may feel free" (Imitatio Christi). As for Cioran, I have this to say: he sees himself as "the on-call sceptic of a world in decline", living in conflict with St. Paul and the Divine Absolute. He says in his book, On the Heights of Despair, recently re-published: "However much I might have struggled in this world, and however much I might have separated myself from it, the distance between it and myself has simply made it more open to me. Although I can find no meaning in this world no objective meaning, no transcendent end-point revealing the direction in which the world is evolving and the goal of the universe , the multi-form variety of existence has nevertheless been for me a source of eternal delight and sadness". This calls to mind the two worlds the transitory visible world, and the eternal invisible world of St. Paul, with whom Cioran takes issue. Transcendence, as referred to in this text, defines the meaning of Ciorans existence in the universe, whether he wishes it or not. This passage leads me to see Emil Cioran, in the twilight of his existence, as reconciled with himself. The interplay of the two Pauline worlds leads him to salvation, since the meaning of his existence is determined by the Divine Absolute, once free of the pessimism and anxieties of this world. I believe that my great friend Emil Cioran will find redemption in setting aside both his disagreement with St. Paul, and his unfinished quarrel with Divinity, subordinating himself to the Divine Absolute.

Another thing in relation to Cioran: there is no intellectual worthy of that name, who does not experience Ciorans metaphysical disquiet, but not every true intellectual has his total sincerity. The whole of human existence is in fact a continual play of dialectics (to employ a much abused word). I have a request for Cioran: I ask him not to present me in such inflated terms, because this exaggeration, coming from someone of his stature, prompts within my soul a painful sense of un-fulfilment. This is the fruit of the concrete and the ideal ego. For the rest, please ask me any questions and I will try to give an appropriate answer.

[End of Videoclip transcript. The Statement was recorded on paper by Alexandru Popescu-Prahovara on June 4th, 1990].

[note 2: Traian Crian, former Greek-Catholic priest from the Diocese Cluj-Gherla, was consecrated as archbishop and appointed by the Roman Curia as Secretary of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, at the end of 1981. The Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church vehemently protested against this, considering the consecration void and an interference in the Romanian ecclesiastical affairs.] [note 3: In a revised conclusion to the Principia (see General Scholium), Newton wrote: Hypotheses non fingo ("I feign no hypotheses") I have been unable to identify a quote for ueas statement here.] [note 4: I have been unable to find the phrase in Thomas Kempiss Imitatio Christi.]

Reflections on the video clip with reference to the light of Tabor

Having just watched this with you, I am moved again to see on screen the moment which, retrospectively, I recognize as a rite of initiation when uea, as if from his deathbed, asked me to become a porte-parole, his mouthpiece, to read publicly, in front of a television crew and virtually in front of the whole country, his philosophical assessment of his great friend and the eschatological message he wanted to send him. It was neither the revolutionary turmoil of the present, nor the fascinating glamour and turmoil of the past that interested him: what concerned him was the timeless nature of truth, the status of mere human achievement (in relation also to his own "legend"), and the vital importance of a personal relationship for the salvation of a soul. It is as if he were saying to Cioran, whom he knew he would never meet again in the flesh: "You believe in God, as I do. We dont know how long any of us has left to be in this world. Dont be stupid, you can lose your life, so stop hating God. You know He is the God of love, even though you call him the "mauvais dmiurge". You, like all of us, are on a road. We can come to salvation even in our final hour." uea was no theologian, nor was he a scientist, although he had an intelligent and informed laymans knowledge and respect for science. In his view, there are two generic and, to some extent, complementary levels at which human reason may function: that of the "inquiring" reason, in which the search for knowledge is initiated by the human mind (when not aware of its limitations, this form of reason may be susceptible to a phenomenology of the diabolic); and that of the "acquiring" reason, in which knowledge is communicated by grace, through inspiration. It would be reductive to see "acquiring" and "inquiring" knowledge as merely binary. More accurately, the way of "inquiring" knowledge might be compared with the ascetic path, in which creaturely needs can overcome us by sheer biological force, and the "acquiring" way with the contemplative path, in which creaturely weakness is "transfigured" by a new spiritual vision. Let us turn to the story of Christs Transfiguration to explore this further. Remember that Jesus took Peter, John, and James with Him up the mountain. "As He prayed, the appearance of His face was altered, and His robe became white and glistening. And behold, two men talked with Him, who were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His death, that He was about to accomplish in Jerusalem" (Luke, 9, 29-31). According to St. Luke, who gives the most developed account of this incident, Peter and the other apostles "were heavy with sleep" almost as if they had found refuge in the creaturely weakness, being overwhelmed by their own incapacity to absorb and make sense of this mysterious talk of suffering and death; then suddenly, without explanation, "they were fully awake" and "saw His glory and the two men who stood with Him" (Luke, 9, 32). At that moment, Peter, not comprehending what he was seeing, cried out: "Let us make three tabernacles" three shrines to preserve, record, revisit, analyze, immortalize the experience; privileged to see something beyond his understanding, he leapt to a proposal, "not knowing what he says", working within the assumptions of the epistemology he had brought with him up the mountain, unable to recognize that the vision would radically alter that epistemology: the response of what we might call spiritual blundering is typical of the ascetic inquiring mode of knowledge (Luke, 9, 33).

And it is only now that the full significance of the story unfolds. Even while Peter was speaking, "a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were fearful as they entered the cloud" (Luke, 9, 34). The very moment of "revelation", of insight, of human apprehension of meaning, is followed immediately by a loss of vision, a clouding of understanding, a fea rfulness of experience. As a rather crude human comparison: the depressive passage that can follow a "manic" creative episode? Yet it is precisely in this "cloud", the other aspect of the glory of God, that "acquiring" knowledge comes in. For in that overshadowing "bright cloud" (Matthew, 17, 5) is the mystery of direct communication, affirmation of love, and, above all, the injunction to be receptive, to listen: "a voice came out of the cloud, saying: This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!" (Luke, 9, 35).

The route to true knowledge is not simply that of a long climb and watchful, exhausting observation rewarded by a vision that can be recorded in terms of the "old covenant", of already existing models. Jesus face, while He was praying, became "different" (h e t e r o n, in Greek). Rather than impose our stamp of recognition upon this otherness, in an excited scientistic, technological manner, we are to receive its imprint to accept, to "hear", to share, even without comprehending, the unearthly "otherness" (heteron-ness) that is the source of all genuine new understanding. According to uea, even scientific advance he cites Newtons discovery of the law of gravity is dependent not only on human endeavour or intellectual genius, but on the inspiration of Divine grace. Within this framework, the whole history of scientific discovery is directly linked to the shekhinah the presence and journeying and settling of the glory of God , which is both beyond our grasp, but also the source of what we can grasp.

Those who are granted what uea calls canonically defined "revelation" or "acquired knowledge" have an experience of the personal, transformative understanding of meaning. The narrative of Christs Transfiguration (M e t a m o r p h o s i s, in Greek) suggests that, at the very moment of proposing a rational hypothesis for what has been glimpsed, revelation is lost to be recovered only when we are overtaken by the cloud and our lost-ness is annihilated by the synergy of human ecstatic passivity and divine action.

"When the voice had ceased, Jesus was found alone. But they kept quiet, and told no one in those days any of the things they had seen" (Luke, 9, 36). This is part of Gods injunction to humility. The apostles (those "sent out") are invited, so to speak, to keep the rule of silence within the cloud of unknowing, thus actively participating in the energy of the unknowing, and to refuse the temptation to communicate this mystery to those who are not prepared to receive it, i.e., not reducing the "acquired" knowledge to a reconfiguration of conventional wisdom, pseudo-knowledge. Yet there is a difference between revelatory silence, awe in the face of incomprehensible mystery, and mere aloof muteness. Silence exists in creative tension with sound. Similar tension exists between meaning in its wholeness and human articulation of meaning: meaning in its wholeness is beyond expression in human terms, since our human capacity for expression of meaning is itself part of what we feel makes life "meaningful", and this we constantly strive to express. Hence our metaphysical disquiet.

The disciples experience on Tabor was subsequently spoken about, appearing as a succinct narrative in the Gospels. The divine injunction to "hear" is not a simple commandment to refrain from speaking, but relates to the Word made flesh, realization of truth through human articulation. In theological terms, the apophatic (negative) way exists in symbiosis with the cataphatic (positive) way. And all articulation of truth involving language, whether scientific, philosophical, theological, or artistic, necessarily has this symbiotic aspect, in which there is both contradiction, and harmony. The fullness of "inspired" experience (to use ueas word) cannot be spoken about, for it is the very condition of a new capacity for speech, meaning, and knowledge. Yet, through canonically received text and (to use another key-word of ueas) dogma, authoritative expression can be given to this power of mystery to generate knowledge.

The Transfiguration sheds light on ueas understanding of dogma as "mystery revealed" which in turn can illuminate the notions of "canon" and "heresy" in both religion, and science. Three aspects of creaturely apprehension of truth emerge from that mountain-top experience of "uncreated light": vital (Biblical "fear-full") silence, observant listening, and enlightened hearing. The disciples cease from speech, and know "fear"; they listen to the divine injunction; and they "hear" the living Word not merely as a consumers religious privilege, but through discipleship of the One who teaches that truly to hear is to follow.

It is the creative tension and symbiotic dynamic between these different dimensions of spiritual enlightenment that uea alludes to in his distinction between "inspiration" and "revelation" and his reference to living "on the horizon of mystery". Dogma, "mystery revealed", is that which by Gods grace can be spoken: not the exclusive sum of "inspired" experience, but that which, through the observant, careful, Spirit-led a s k e s i s of loving discipleship, in the light of "inspired" experience and human companionship in the Church, can meaningfully be termed "revealed". As we know only too well, however, and as uea was well aware, "revealed" texts and ideas, historically formalized as "canonical", can, in science as well as religion, become fossilized. They become stone tabernacles, "dogma" in the common derogatory sense. But precisely in using these terms, uea challenges us, whatever our fundamental values and beliefs, to look again at our canonical assumptions, to question and revisit our a p r i o r i dogmas, to review our motives for dismissing certain concepts as "heresy", and to re-sensitize ourselves to the possibility that life may be radically other than what we suppose it to be.

Conclusion

Essential to ueas understanding of truth is the belief that God and divine action within creation are "objectic", i.e., they exist independently of human powers of observation and/or verification, in a category beyond "objectivity" (which uea viewed as merely a different perspectival degree of "subjectivity"). The light of Tabor is certainly real, but is it merely "objectively" real? uea maintains that its "objectic" reality can only be mediated mystically, through the super-natural presence and gift of God. Empirically discernible laws are themselves governed by laws discernible only through attentive listening to the Word through whom "all things were made" (the Nicene Creed).

The Transfiguration, as a historical event in Jesus life, is, for me, the paradigm of the spiritual experience of Christian discipleship discipleship being the way of truly living "in" the world of empirical causation, without being "of" it, to use the language of the New Testament. The disciple of Christ is called to engage lovingly, intimately, with the world of creaturely phenomena, but not to be immured in constructed tabernacles within it.

My own relationship with uea models something of the dynamic of the Transfiguration story. In this sense, it is itself part of what uea offers as a spiritual teacher rather as the teachings of the Desert Fathers are often conveyed anecdotally by disciples rather than by pedagogic elaboration, embodying the relational and actual epistemology of religious awareness, as opposed to the abstracted and conceptual epistemology of empirical science. In this master/disciple relationship, the teacher becomes, by the grace of God, the Teacher who calls his chosen disciples upward, on to the mountain, as it were, to concentrate on the spiritual world, while he himself maintains an introspective focus on the spiritual reality his vigilant, neptic, eye full of light and "life more abundant" (cf. John, 10, 10). But, while trying to follow their masters call, the disciples resources are exhausted. They reach their very human limitations, after the climb into the rarefied atmosphere: they become inattentive, careless, they fall short in their task, only to be redeemed by the Divine grace, in the confusion, the seeming failure, the confinement of the "cloud". Having interrupted for a few years my work on uea, I have now started to write about him again and find that I feel less prepared to embark on this new journey. Yet perhaps it is in the "cloud" of my preoccupations as a practising psychiatrist, professionally committed to the requirements of my medical vocation, that I may "hear" more precisely the word of truth entrusted to me in that hospital encounter, nearly thirty years ago. The work requires ongoing askesis, vigilance similar, I think, to that described by the Desert Fathers: the absolute attentiveness of careful observation; but, more importantly, the recognition, too, that "joy comes in the morning" (Psalm 30, 5). The glory is not in human accuracy, mastery of nature, or elaboration of contrived explanations, but in the loving, relational reality that makes it possible even to conceive of such things. Thanks be to God.

Acknowledgements

Reverend James Ramsay, formerly Anglican Chaplain in Bucharest, Sister Isabel Mary, SLG, and Mother Helena for helping with the English translation; Lavinia Spandonide for sponsoring my participation in this Congress. All biblical passages are from The Orthodox Study Bible, New Testament and Psalms, New King James Version, Nashville (Tennessee), Thomas Nelson, 1993.