In the tenth century lay people began withdrawing directly into solitude without passing through a period of monastic formation. Living...

You are not focused. You ignore the akme (ἀκμή). You are missing the larger picture. This is how one eremitic encouraged another who was...

is not the goal of the Christian life. The direct experience of God in Christ is found by traveling a way that is new and disconcerting...

A disciple despairs because he feels like a failure: I am tormented because I can't fast and I get distracted when I try and weave mats. ...

'God's will' is a principle. It can even be a principle that people experience as an interiour invitation of personal love. But even as...

So many take the first step toward solitude, but in their own mind the experience itself is so defeating and confusing that they can only...

Should the need for solitude be fully accepted, the need, efficacy, and relationship of other practises that are beneficial for the...

It should go unsaid that the most important part of using solitude as preparation for the possibility of the direct experience of God is...

There is a certain order that the contemplative life needs to be taken in. First and foremost is in yielding oneself to the possibility...

The single most important thing for someone who is committed to finding out the truth that solitude has to offer in terms of encountering...

In reality there is no way to ever give a perfectly satisfactory reason for contemplative faith to those who have not experienced it or...

...that I have experienced God in such a manner so that I have no alternative than to overwhelmingly respond by being fully present to...

The contemplative life is not one that indulges in merely thinking about the good. Instead, it is a life of holistic responsiveness that...

Those who are contemplative eventually come to recognize that their ability to experience this is tied to the grace of God on a direct...

...for people who understand the Church institutionally, or in regard to it's programs, or who participate and support it as a way to...

It seems that solitude does not nurture madness well. It is just not a satisfactory setting for it, or at least not for the...

To simply be alive is to be happy.

Living contemplatively requires no escape from the threats that modern society makes, namely, that without some sort of stimulation one's...

Genuine contemplative life, which has as its goal the direct experience of God, bears witness to the fact that certain basic claims about...

There is no doubt that to be convinced that what you are all about as a contemplative is somehow revolutionary, or to even be conscious...