Becoming Desert: A Journal of Hesychastic Struggle in the West - Part VI: Bearing the Absurd Commandments Entry 34

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.

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Part VI: Bearing the Absurd Commandments

Entry 34: The Folly of the Cross

Everything about this path looks absurd. To sit in a room muttering a prayer. To choose obscurity over achievement. To embrace weakness instead of power. The Western mind mocks it. But the more I live it, the more I see: this folly is wisdom, this weakness is victory, this Cross is life.