Friday, October 10, 2025

Becoming Desert: A Journal of Hesychastic Struggle in the West - Part V: "The First Light of Grace"

 


Introduction


I did not go into the wilderness. I was not tonsured on a holy mountain. I live in the West, where noise seeps into the bones and the air is thick with restlessness. Yet something in me aches for the desert, for that place where men and women once wrestled with God and were broken open until mercy filled them.


This is not a manual, not a polished theology, not a record of visions. It is simply a journal of one who seeks hesychasm in hiddenness. I am not a monk in the desert but a struggler in a room. Yet the Fathers said: “Go to your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” So I go.


What follows are fragments from that cell: noise, failure, temptation, tears, glimpses of grace. The desert is not far away. The desert is within.


Part V: The First Light of Grace


Entry 25: A Breath of Stillness


It comes without warning. One moment the usual swarm of thoughts, the next—stillness. Not because I fought them off, but because something greater hushed them. A few breaths of quiet, as if the heart itself bowed low. It doesn’t last, but it’s enough to keep me pressing forward. The Fathers say grace visits in flashes. I believe them now.

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