On being lost and found (and lost again...) on The Way beyond The End of Greatness

From a trip on which i met 4 of my best friends as the seasons changed and rode in a tow truck to get ice cream after midnight. Mimetic progeny of discourses with the unknown.

What is your address? Not just your house number or the name of your street. Where, actually, are you? In a town or a city, which is in a country, on a continent, on Earth. But, where is Earth? It’s in the solar system between Venus and Mars, you might say. But, where is that? The solar system is the main part of the Oort cloud—a vast collection of comets, asteroids and icy objects swirling at the fringes of the Sun’s sphere of influence. The Oort cloud resides in the Local Interstellar Cloud, which is in the Local Cavity of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with beautiful, sweeping arms of millions upon millions of stars—all rotating around a bright galactic core with a dark supermassive black hole at its center. At over 100,000 light years across, the Milky Way is vast; but, it is still just a sliver of what we can see.

Zoom out further, and you’ll see a Local Group with 30-50 small galaxies and a monster on a collision course: the Andromeda Galaxy. Twice the size of the Milky Way, Andromeda is speeding towards us. We will collide in a few billion years, tearing each other apart before coalescing into 1. But, when you zoom out even further, the impending collision of 2 galaxies seems inconsequential.

At the scale of millions of light-years, the structure of the Virgo Supercluster—a collection of thousands of galaxies—becomes apparent. And, dwarfing, even, that is the Laniakea Supercluster—hundreds of millions of light-years across, containing several other superclusters like our Virgo, which is itself part of the Pisces–Cetus Supercluster Complex: a galactic filament almost a billion light years long. And, it is, now, that the cosmic web becomes visible. There are more filaments like our own as well as great strings of superclusters.

There are also giant stretches of space with virtually nothing in them like the Boötes Void—an area 330 million light-years across in which we have discovered barely 60 galaxies. An inkblot on the speckled sky. Zooming out further, we finally reach the edge of the observable Universe where primordial light has been traveling since nearly the beginning of time—13.8 billion years—to reach our eyes. But, since, then: the Universe has expanded further, meaning that the true distance to the edge of the Universe is about 46 billion light-years in one direction, meaning the full observable Universe is a sphere 93 billion light-years in diameter.

Structures any larger than a few billion light-years are hard to define with our current technology, partially because we are trying to map something we inhabit and partially there may well be a limit—something scientists call The End of Greatness. But, at every level up to this point—planets, solar systems, galaxies, clusters superclusters—the Universe is full of structure. It is not a random and chaotic jumble; it seems organized. Yet, the Universe started as a hot, dense soup of particles.

Why should it be structured? Why did that hot soup evolve into a Universe where some parts are filled with beautiful, sweeping arms of stars while others are barren deserts? And, more importantly: how do we know?

~ History of the Universe, Why Does The Universe Look Like This?, Introduction

The train's doors open in Alexandria—the Virginia suburb of Washington D.C. that bears the name of the ancient city where scholars translated the Septuagint, where the Great Library preserved humanity's collected wisdom, where Philo first contemplated how God's Logos orders all being. The ancient city named after one of history's greatest men. Oh, how fitting!

And, they heard The Voice of The Lord God walking in the garden in the afternoon; and, both Adam and his wife hid themselves from The Face of The Lord God in the midst of the trees of the garden. And, The Lord God called Adam and said to him:

Adam ~ where art thou?

And, he said to Him:

I heard Thy Voice as Thou walkedst in the garden, and I feared because I was naked and I hid myself.

~ Genesis 3:8-10

This journey across miles of American landscape will inspire inquiry into a different kind of distance—not the measurable space between cities but the immeasurable gap between a creature and the Creator, between sin and sanctity, between being lost and being found. God asking Adam "Where art thou?" calls him to recognize spiritual displacement rather than geographical coordinates—a question about being not location. This essay argues: the seemingly simple question 'Where are you?' ultimately requires not a spatial answer but an existential one: a confession of where we stand in relation to He Who Is.

Over approximately 2 weeks, my trips will take me from Alexandria to Long Island, Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago and back to Alexandria—a journey that embodies the perpetual cycle of wandering and return that St. Ephrem the Syrian understood as the pattern of the spiritual life. We are simultaneously lost and sought, distant yet intimately known, wandering yet already found. Always "On The Road to Being", we are a dynamic but never complete becoming.

In the midway of this our mortal life,

I found me in a gloomy wood, astray

Gone from the path direct: and e’en to tell

It were no easy task, how savage wild

That forest, how robust and rough its growth,

Which to remember only, my dismay

Renews, in bitterness not far from death.

~ Dante Alighieri, Inferno

My journey spans ~1,660 miles across the American Northeast, Canada and the American Midwest. I can know this information because our maps visually represent quantitative data. Supposedly, GPS can tell me where i am at this moment, but can it really tell me where i really am?

Fully written, my current cosmic address would read: Train car → Alexandria Station → Northern Virginia → Mid-Atlantic → United States → North America → Northern Hemisphere → Earth → Inner Solar System → Orion Arm → Milky Way Galaxy → Local Group → Virgo Supercluster → Observable Universe. Each level contains the previous like nested Russian dolls, so i simultaneously inhabit all of these places but none more than another.

However, to make such a claim, i must critically assume a stable reference frame. But, relative to what? The train platform or, more generally, the Earth? But, Earth rotates at ~ 1k mph at the equator. The Earth orbits around the Sun at ~67k mph, and the Sun moves through the Milky Way Galaxy at ~514k mph. Then, the Galaxy barrels through space at ~1.3mm mph. Material stability does not exist at the largest scales. Despite our illusion of stillness, we hurry through space at speeds that mock any notion of a fixed reference point.

Yet, matter especially makes no provision for stability at the smallest scales. For example: in a hydrogen atom, electrons hastily orbit their proton at blistering speeds: ~2.2mm mph or 1/137th of the speed of light, give or take. Because material stability exists at neither macro nor micro scales, it cannot exist at the anthropocentric scale—the mesoscale within which humans perceive ordinary phenomena. Perception frame the experience of stillness more than reality in and of itself.

Man puts the longest distances, behind him in the shortest time. He puts the greatest distances behind himself and thus puts everything before himself at the shortest range...What is incalculably far from us in point of distance can be near to us. Short distance is not in itself nearness. Nor is great distance remoteness.

What is nearness if it fails to come about despite the reduction of the longest distances to the shortest intervals? What is nearness if it is even repelled by the restless abolition of distances?

~ Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought

Thus, my stable reference frame for truly answering the "wya?" question cannot consist of material substance. Nothing is still; every coordinate proves provisional. Properly answering the crucial question necessarily involves ontology, for your measurement perspective conditions every where. I can only claim to move with respect to something that does not move itself (i.e., with respect to Being Itself).

At the level of being, i can say that i am. Yet, i am not because of myself. Said differently, i am not the cause of my am-ness.

Throughout this inquiry, i employ a specific conceptual framework: ontological distance. This term designates a metaphysical measurement as the degree of separation between a creature and Being Itself. Ontological distance measures not miles but participation: the extent to which a being actualizes The Divine Image in which it was created relative to that which sin corrupts its mode of being (tropos) and separates it from communion with Divine Energies.

This distance simultaneously operates on 2 levels. It is absolute because human effort cannot bridge the chasm between finite and Infinite, between contingent being and necessary Being—the Creator-creature distinction remains essential and permanent. Yet, ontological distance is also relative because, within this fixed structure, vice increases the degree of separation whereas virtue cooperates with Grace to decrease it. A soul in mortal sin stands further from God than a soul in sanctity, even, though both remain infinitely distant in the absolute sense.

When God asks "Where art thou?", He invites you to recognize where you stand on the spectrum between total participation in Divine Life and utter separation from it. Every answer to 'Where am i?' must ultimately reckon with this ontological positioning. Therefore, genuinely answering the 'Where are you?' question requires locating yourself on the spectrum between non-being and Being Itself—the only stable reference frame in a cosmos of perpetual motion: The I Am Who I Am.

That being can spontaneously emerge from non-being seems particularly indefensible, so something else other than me must be the cause of my being and of things like me. This thing inexplicably must be Being Itself in its purest sense, The Very Essence of All That Is. Considering The Being to be The Creator and myself to be a creature seems within reasonable bounds.

As far as being is concerned, the distance between God and me is naturally massive—the essential difference between God and me is greater than that between zero and infinity, than that between the Observable Universe and a quark. Yet, God created me in His Image, so some part of me—ostensibly, the deepest part of myself—participates in The Being of God: He Who Is without needing another to be.

Ontically, of course, Dasein is not only close to us—even that which is closest: we are it, each of us, we ourselves. In spite of this, or rather for just this reason, it is ontologically that which is farthest.

~ Martin Heidegger, Being and Time

If humanity bears God's Image as Genesis declares, This Image must reside in our truly unconditioned aspect—that completely immaterial dimension of self whose existence introspection cannot deny, for The Image cannot consist of matter because God is immaterial. It must precisely manifest in the aspect of humanity that transcends physicality.

Since it is God's nature not to be like anyone, we have to come to the state of being nothing in order to enter into the same nature that He is. So, when I am able to establish myself in Nothing and Nothing in myself, uprooting and casting out what is in me, then I can pass into the naked being of God, which is the naked being of the spirit.

~ Meister Eckhart, Sermon 7

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me: my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing and one love.

~ Meister Eckhart, Sermon 75

As i attempt to find my original face, i sense an awareness that sits just ever so slightly before attachment. Naturally unconditioned, the eye through which i see God is the same eye through which God sees me. The mystical tradition vividly describes this transformation.

A certain person came to the Friend's door and knocked.

Who's there?

It's me.

The Friend answered:

Go away. There's no place for raw meat at this table.

The individual went wandering for a year. Nothing but the fire of separation can change hypocrisy and ego. The person returned completely cooked, walked up and down in front of the Friend's house, gently knocked.

Who is it?

You.

Please come in, my self, there's no place in this house for two. The doubled end of the thread is not what goes through the eye of the needle. It's a single-pointed, fined-down, thread end, not a big ego-beast with baggage.

~ Rumi, Two Friends

As i increasingly identify with my false conditioned self, i further increase the spiritual separation between myself and God—a corruption of my mode of being that withdraws me from Divine Life. Only the false conditioned self sins, so identifying with it necessarily intensifies the corruption of being that sin introduces.

The train departs, lurching forward before settling into smooth motion. Soon, the sense of speed no longer impinges on my consciousness. The landscape streams past—rivers, bridges, trees, houses, towns—but i sit still. Modern travel collapses distance into stillness, so we move with a muted feeling of motion. Stillness doesn't exist materially, yet i often experience it.

Similar phenomena characterize my state of awareness. Just as i experience stillness while materially moving through space, i may experience stability of being while actually becoming something different with each passing moment. In every moment, i am that which i wasn't and that which i will no longer be—i am becoming something else. Thus, measuring the gap between myself and He Who Is offers me clues to answer the crucial question: who am i becoming?

Sin creates ontological distance from God through severing us from communion with Divine Energies. Such distance, though immeasurable in miles, proves more real than any mile. When God inquires into Adam and Eve's location after their fall, He does not request precise spatial coordinates. Surely, The Omniscient Creator knew which trees concealed them. Rather, He invited them to recognize their spiritual location—their spiritual displacement from Being through sin.

My intention to return back to where my journey began signals a deeply held belief in circular restoration and completion. However, despite my nostalgic ache to return home, Heraclitus warns: you cannot step into the same river twice because the river changes and you change. So, how can i return to a place that no longer exists?

Attention, rather than measurable distance, modulates proximity. Any idea mindfully held in consciousness—whether noble or base—stands nearer to me than the leather train seat pressing against my back. God's Presence becomes proximate through attentive prayer rather than physical pilgrimage, for bodily orientation and engagement structure our world before we ever measure it geometrically.

In his prayers, St. Ephrem the Syrian articulates a devastating spiritual paradox: the cycle of desiring repentance without ever truly repenting. His 10th Psalm—c.f. "interlude"—explores his willing bondage to sin, his self-deception of externally appearing reverent but internally filled with indecency. He's excruciatingly aware of 'hiding his dreadful shackles behind a noble appearance' and 'demolishing his weak foundations of repentance everyday'. He oscillates between wandering and return, not linear progress but waves, spirals and circumambulations toward holiness. Like him: i drift from God, recognize my distance, repent, draw near—then, drift again. The patterns repeats but never in the precisely same way.

For this inquiry's purposes, we can understand theosis—becoming by Grace what God is by nature—as the process of laboring with Grace to narrow the participation gap between creature and Creator. This does not bridge the absolute chasm, for we remain creatures not God. However, it increases the intensity and purity of our participation in Divine Energies.

The true seeker will notice the paradoxical characteristic of this movement: the more purification narrows the participation gap, the more acutely you perceive the infinite ontological chasm that no creaturely effort can bridge. You are simultaneously approaching more closely (entering more deeply into Divine Life) and discovering deeper distance (recognizing more clearly the inexhaustible excess of divine infinity over finite capacity). I am found yet perpetually losing myself. The prodigal returns, only to realize: he must return again.

[This] promise is believed to be more magnificent and loftier than every theophany which had previously been granted to his great servant. How then would one, from what has been said, understand this height to which Moses desires to attain after such previous ascents and to which he who turns everything to their good cooperates with all those who love God makes the ascent easy through his leadership? Here is a place, he says, beside me.

The thought harmonizes readily with what has been contemplated before. In speaking of "place" he does not limit the place indicated by anything quantitative (for to something unquantitative there is no measure). On the contrary, by the use of the analogy of a measurable surface he leads the hearer to the unlimited and infinite. The text seems to signify some such understanding:

Whereas ~ Moses ~ your desire for what is still to come has expanded and you have not reached satisfaction in your progress and whereas you do not see any limit to the Good, but your yearning always looks for more, the place with me is so great that the one running in it is never able to cease from his progress.

~ St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses

Instead of claiming to show us to them or to teach us about them, The Word—in a word—explicitly identifies Himself with The Way, The Truth and The Life. More than a lifeless path, The Way represents a Person: He Who Is. Moving toward Being and Life Itself is not like approaching a destination but like growing intimate with a person who is, Himself, The Journey.

Jesus said to him:

I am The Way, The Truth and The Life. No one comes to The Father but by me.

~ John 14:6

Pilgrimage traditionally requires effort—walking, pain, sacrifice. The journey fundamentally transformed them, so they are different people when they arrive. The destination matters less than the process of becoming someone who can arrive. Such journeys enable contemplation because, embodying rhythms of thought, physical movement disrupts habitual patterns.

On the surface, my journey seems easy. A comfortable seat supports me as i type; a fruit bowl and a cold brew satiates me; and, scenery entertains me. Yet, beneath the surface, my mind struggles to express a genuine evaluation of myself. The ease confers a value on this journey because i enjoy both the time to transform and the freedom to think. Somehow, the journey temporally and spatially suspends me.

However, as the prior discussion of matter confirms, size and duration don't directly determine value or meaning. Upon boarding a train traveling on a planet orbiting a star in an unremarkable galaxy lost among billions, i contemplate my relationship with My Creator. Suddenly, whether i matter in the Universe matters far less than whether the Universe matters in me, whether my consciousness constitutes a cosmic inflection point in which Being becomes aware of itself.

True movement occurs only when your tropos—your mode of being, how you actually live—shifts relative to The Divine Logos, regardless of your space-time coordinates. Orthodox theology distinguishes between logos (Divine Intention, the answer to "Why do i exist?") and tropos (the manner of existing, the corruption or actualization of that intention). Sin doesn't simply make you morally bad; it creates ontological separation between your being and Being Itself. Considered in this light, sin operates as the rate at which your being diverges from Being—each sinful act progressively widening the delta between your actual self and your intended self, a corruption of mode that constitutes genuine privation of being.

Cenobitic and eremitic monastics intimately recognize: fleeing from place to place prevents you from dredging your interior depths, for you can only discern internal patterns when you remain still. Unresolved problems and unhealed wounds follow you everywhere, rendering geographical escape meaningless. From the 3rd through 5th centuries, the Desert Fathers abandoned Alexandria, Antioch and Rome to pursue union with God in radical solitude. The desert's physical emptiness mirrored the soul's landscape—its phenomenological topology—so they struggled to navigate a challenging interior geography. The demons attacked St. Anthony more fiercely in the desert than in the city because urban distractions camouflage spiritual reality. In the desert, what's really there confronts you without mediation. The question "Where are you?" ultimately demands an existential answer about your interior position not a geographical report about your exterior coordinates.

We experience God as absent when we feel spiritually lost. Yet, since God essentially pervades all being—existing everywhere not as matter occupies space but as cause sustains effect—such experience of absence may actually represent a deluded distortion of God's Constant Presence. When God asks Adam and Eve where they are after the Fall, He initiates His pursuit of humanity from its first moment of separation. Humanity impulsively hides from God's Presence in the immediate aftermath. However, from that first instance of sinful displacement, He has told us: we are lost, but He has come to find us. Christ stands at the door of individual hearts, actively pursuing real relationship with us despite our flight.

Sin creates a partition wall dividing humanity from God, breaking our communion with Him. Without a shepherd, we wander like aimless sheep with no memory of home or rest. Spiritual exile contains both judgment and promise—judgment because the exiled find no resting place, promise because repentance fulfills the possibility of return. The true desire for return manifests as intense longing for God's Presence from one in exile, a desperate thirst that metaphorically represents the soul's recognition of how it anguishes without Him.

Perhaps, we can understand repentance through physical metaphor: achieving escape velocity from sin's gravitational pull toward eternal non-being. Just as a rocket must generate sufficient thrust to overcome Earth's gravity and enter orbit, the soul must cooperate with Grace to generate sufficient force—through confession, contrition and transformation—to arrest its descent toward ontological dissolution. This metaphor captures both the violence and the necessity of conversion: you cannot casually drift away from sin's gravity any more than you can casually drift into orbit. The force required matches the depth of the fall.

God establishes Himself as The Good Shepherd Who personally seeks, restores, heals, and strengthens His scattered sheep. The prodigal son's journey to "a far country" typifies how we cause our spiritual alienation from God, and the father's embrace reveals God's eager forgiveness. Our Savior's double emphasis—"he was lost and is found"—thoroughly underscores His mission: actively seek and save the lost because He desires that none should perish. As The Good Shepherd, Christ not only seeks His sheep but sacrifices Himself for them so that they may live.

The Harrowing of Hell—Christ's descent into Hades between Crucifixion and Resurrection—demonstrates the full extent of His mission. He notably traversed the furthest ontological distance possible: that between death and God, between absolute privation and absolute fullness of being. In the house of ultimate separation, He proclaimed victory before His exalted ascent. The distance between myself and the observable universe's furthest edge cannot compare to the distance Christ covered when Life willingly visited death so that the dead could live. Thus, no one exists too far, too lost or too dead for Christ to reach. The ontological chasm's vastness does not deter Him; rather, The Incarnation reveals that crossing it constitutes precisely His Purpose.

Here the ontological meets the material: Our Lord Jesus Christ—The Word of God, The Lamb slain before the foundation of the world—became what we are because of His Transcendent Love so that we might learn how to become God. The Incarnation doesn't transcend matter but redeems it, doesn't escape physicality but sanctifies it. My train journeys across the storied American landscape, through all its materiality and motion, participates in this sanctified physical reality. The doors opening in Alexandria, the rocks, rivers and trees streaming past, my typing on this device—all exist within matter that The Incarnation has fundamentally reoriented toward its original purpose. When God became flesh, He didn't merely visit Creation; He permanently restored the possibility that matter itself might participate in The Divine Life for which He intended it.

On this train, i appear to other passengers as yet another traveler. My indecencies hide behind a reverential façade. They see me type but know neither the first nor final cause of my work. Before anything else, i need sight because i am spiritually blind. He has done everything necessary except the last part: actualizing this relationship requires me to willingly change my mode of being—my tropos— and lovingly conform to His will. Letting Christ find me means allowing myself to totally transform into a new creation. There is no pleasant end in remaining in sin. The question "where am I?" ultimately resolves into: Am i facing toward or away from The Light?

Before Thy Glory ~ Oh, Christ, My Savior ~ I will announce all my misconduct and confess the infinitude of Thy Mercies, Which Thou pourest out upon me according to Thy Kindness.

From my mother's womb, I began to grieve Thee; and, utterly have I disregarded Thy Grace, for I have neglected my soul. Thou ~ Oh, My Master ~ according to the multitude of Thy Mercies, hast regarded all my wickedness with patience and kindness. Thy Grace has lifted up my head; but, daily, it is brought low by my sins.

Bad habits entangle me like snares, and I rejoice at being thus bound. I sink to the very depths of evil, and this delights me. Daily, the enemy gives me new shackles; for, he sees how this variety of bonds pleases me.

The fact that I am bound by my own desires should provoke weeping and lamentation, shame and disgrace. And, yet: more terrible is the fact that I bind myself with the shackles that the enemy places upon me, and I slay myself with the passions that give him pleasure.

Although I know how dreadful these shackles are, I hide them behind a noble appearance from all who might see. I appear to be robed in the beautiful clothes of reverence, but my soul is entangled with shameful thoughts. Before all who might see, I am reverent; but, inside: I am filled with all manner of indecency.

My conscience accuses me of all this, and I act as if I wish to be freed of my shackles. Everyday, I worry and sigh over this; yet, I, ever, remain bound by the same snares. How pitiful I am; and, how pitiful is my daily repentance, [for] it has no firm foundation. Everyday, I lay a foundation for the building; and, again: with my own hands, I demolish it.

My repentance has not even made a good beginning as yet, yet there is no end to my wicked negligence. I have become a slave to passions and to the evil will of the enemy who destroys me.

Who will give the water to my head and the founts to my eyes for tears so that I may ever weep before Thee ~ Oh, Merciful God ~ that Thou mightest send Thy Grace and draw me—a sinner—out of the sea, furious with the waves of sin that hourly convulses my soul? For, my desires are worse than wounds that cannot be bandaged. I wait hoping for repentance and deceive myself with this vain promise until my death. Ever do I say:

I will repent.

But, never do I repent. My words give the appearance of heartfelt repentance; but, in deed: I am always far from repentance.

What will happen to me in The Day of The Trial when God unveils all things at His Court! Certainly, I shall be sentenced to torment if, here, I have not moved Thee to mercy ~ Oh, My Judge ~ by my tears.

Someone may seem to be silent, but his heart may be turbulent. Insofar as you don't speak any unprofitable words (e.g., expressions of condemnation, pride, envy, sloth, etc.) that produce inner turbulence, you may speak but remain truly silent.

In his highly well-known The Ladder of Divine Ascent, St. John Climacus metaphorically represents the spiritual life as a ladder with 30 rungs—each representing the achievement of virtue or the conquest of vice. Naturally, his visualization suggests a vertical geography in which one ascends towards God but descends towards sin. However, he crucially warns us of our notoriously unreliable ability to self-assess our spiritual location; so, you can be on the 3rd rung thinking you're on the 30th, or vice versa.

Demons attack monks through bad logismoi (i.e., intrusive thoughts). Not mere temptations but territorial invaders, these thoughts claim space in the soul like occupying armies. If alien powers colonize the interior geography of the spiritually lost, repentance represents the annexation of space that already belongs to you.

Ordinary laziness differs from acedia (i.e., spiritual listlessness). Acedia is a geographical malady in which the mind wanders everywhere but where it is. For example, the monk afflicted with acedia imagines that he'd be holier somewhere else under different circumstances. Such spiritual restlessness wears seeking as a disguise.

Accordingly, Abba Moses instructed his disciples to "sit in [their cells], and [their cells] will teach [them] everything." In your cell, you cannot hide. You cannot flee from yourself. The desert strips away social masks to reveal who you are when no one watches.

The mind is The Intellectual Image of God; so, after purifying it and separating it from bodily matters, you may use the mind to know The Nature of Divinity—at least partially. God made us for Him, so our hearts restlessly stir until finding repose in Him. The further i—arrogantly dejected yet restlessly weary—ran away from God, the more i encountered the lifeless monuments of sorrow.

The cyclicality of St. Ephrem the Syrian's understanding of spiritual life can certainly feel like failure, for shouldn't we progress beyond our aberrations? However, he seemingly suggests that the cycle itself teaches us, conferring upon us a good unlike anything else. The self-knowledge of being lost surpasses most miraculous powers. The simple awareness of "I am far from God" is more worthy than accomplishing a mighty work without recognizing the distance.

Thinking i've reached the summit, i climb. Yet, i discover 10 more peaks beyond. Each return to God unravels layers of lostness, previously imperceivable. I was more lost than i knew, so each return penetrates deeper.

Physical realities mysteriously yet symbolically point beyond themselves to spiritual truths. The train racks up mileage, while my soul wanders. The track curves; Grace guides. The destination approaches; The Lord draws near. The lines between symbol and reality blur.

Be wary of pious hypocrisy (i.e., performing religious acts with a distant heart). You can fast, pray and attend Liturgies, but you can remain comfortably far from God. Thus, the appearance of seeking—its very symbol!—replaces true seeking.

Christ's Parable of The Vineyard Owner potentially terrifies those who've faithfully served God and never disobeyed His Commandments because It reveals: Compassion and Mercy not cold justice—as purely logical computational—suffuses how God applies Grace. However, for the wanderer, the sinner and the lost sheep, it typifies his only hope. I've squandered years; but, The Father will run to meet you if you return, even, now at the 11th hour.

Dromic ontology—from the Greek dromos that refers to race, running and course—identifies human beings as dynamic movements toward God not as static substances. I am always "on the road to being": never complete, never finished. Who i am, who you are, who we are—all, in its finality and completion, shall be revealed beyond The End of Greatness!

As we established earlier through the tropos concept, sin represents the delta between logos (who God created you to be) and tropos (how you're actually living). Holiness emerges from harmonizing these: bringing your actual life into conformity with Divine Intention. Every creature participates in God's Logos (The 2nd Person of The Holy Trinity) through its particular logos. As trees participate through fully being a tree, human beings participate through fully being a human. The logoi of all creatures eternally exists in God's Logos, so your logos—your true self, who you're meant to be—already exists in God outside of time.

His Divine Power has granted to us all things that pertain to Life and Godliness through The Knowledge of Him Who called us to His Own Glory and Excellence by Which he has granted to us His Precious and Very Great Promises; that, through These, you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion and become partakers of The Divine Nature.

~ 2 Peter 1:3-4

Paradoxically, as a result of Theosis, deification represents the crown jewel of becoming fully human. God created me to transcend my nature with Divine Grace and become "partakers of The Divine Nature". Human freedom gives you the freedom to synergize with God. Thus, your will truly expresses freedom when it wills what God wills: Life. Though a poor caricature of freedom, sin represents slavery to non-being.

Instead of discovering myself ex nihilo, i discover and actualize what God always intends for me through virtuous action. Conversely, since sin distorts the true self like smudging a photograph, repentance restores the original image.

The soul progresses through warfare. God allows warfare to stir up so that you can regain the humility that you lost. Do not boast of your good works because anyone who trusts in himself will fall. After fall: Judas the Apostle lost his reward in one night, but Christ justified The Thief on The Right who confessed one faith.

Like the myth of Sisyphus, you can make a lot of effort but no progress. Insofar as you've climbed up, you've fall down with double the force and triple the pain. The effort naturally feels futile. God Himself must draw the human mind upward to Him, for it lacks the strength to ascend such a distance and independently apprehend some Divine Illumination.

Be wary of prelest—the spiritual delusion resulting from either mistaking emotional consolation for union with God or confusing feelings of piety for genuine transformation. Establish a trusted relationship with a spiritual father because the test is not how you feel when you pray but how you act when no one watches.

The Incarnation reveals matter not as the spirit's enemy but as its proper partner. Christ took His Body to Heaven during His Ascension. That Glorified Matter exists at this very moment altogether redeems physicality.

Thus, my journey from Alexandria back to Alexandria isn't separate from my spiritual journey. The miles matter; the motion matters. My body seated in the chair; my eyes watching trees and streams pass by. All represent material engaged in spiritual movement toward or away from God.

Although the devil can cast you down from the height of virtue into depths of vice, God can revive you and not only restore your former confidence but also make you much happier.

The prison-house represents the visible word in Plato's Allegory, and the journey upward represents the soul's ascent into the intellectual world. Wings naturally carry a heavier body upwards. The virtues nourish the wings of the soul, but vileness and evil destroys them. On seeing beauty, man remembers True Beauty. He eagerly aspires to flutter upwards, but he tragically cannot leave the ground on which he stands.

Living harmoniously with nature never begets poverty, but living according to what others think never begets wealth. You'll reach an end on any road; but, astray, you'll wander limitlessly.

Being-in-the-world is less like water in a glass (i.e., like a thing inside a container) but more like a way of being always already "in" the world existentially—what Heidegger terms as Dasein. Rather than occupying space, my being there spatializes it. Physically close things can be existentially distant, or vice versa. Existentially, a loved one thousands of miles away is nearer than the stranger sitting next to me.

Not a mind piloting a meat-robot through space, i am a unified being-in-the-world who's spatially inseparable from my awareness. My body is the medium with which i generally interface with the world. I am of space and time but not in space and time. The phenomenal world represents the canvas on which being lays itself down not how pre-existing being explicitly expresses itself.

Daseins have 2 existential modes: living authentically or living inauthentically. Unlike their inauthentic counterparts, authentic Daseins own their existence, face death and choose deliberately.

If spiritual lostness induces anxiety, Grace strips away comfortable illusions to reveal existence's stark reality. Anxiety may pedagogical medicine rather than punitive punishment. In the face of such radical uncertainty, 'i am where i am' stands as the only honest answer i can offer to 'Where am i?' because it simultaneously acknowledges both presence and mystery.

We can also understand ontological distance in terms of receptive capacity, which reframes the spatial metaphor. Drawing near to God consists not of reducing actual separation—God is already maximally present—but of expanding and purifying our capacity to receive a presence that perpetually saturates finite consciousness.

If you stand in the sunlight with your eyes closed, opening your eyes doesn't bring the sun closer. Rather, the light that was already there overwhelms you. We can understand repentance as a perceptual transformation: becoming receptive to what Grace makes available rather than bringing God near through effort. In genuine revelation, we don't see perceive God as an object over there. Rather, God's Gaze sees us, and we become visible to ourselves in His Sight.

Qualitatively, an infinite ontological chasm exists between God and humanity. No amount of human effort can bridge this chasm—the gap between Infinite and finite, between Uncreated and created—remains definitionally absolute. Yet, Christ willingly crossed it for us through His Incarnation.

Kierkegaard identifies 3 stages of existence: aesthetic, ethical and religious. The aesthetic stage optimizes for pleasure, beauty and novelty; the ethical, for duty, principles and universal morality. The religious stage teleologically suspends the ethical stage and places its faith in God.

The Self is a concept that dynamically relates the knower to its own self. If you're constantly becoming yourself through relating to yourself, sin represents a failed self-relation. These failures of self-relation manifest as increased separation from Being Itself. When you insist on being self-made, desperately denying your creaturely dependence, your prideful defiance widens the participation gap. When you—despairing over your weakness—refuse to believe God can transform you, you widen that same gap through self-rejection. Although psychologically opposite, both forms of despair produce an identical effect on being: withdrawal from The Divine Life you were created to share.

In despairing over something, he really despaired over himself, and now he wants to get rid of himself. For example, when the ambitious man whose slogan is "Either Caesar or nothing" does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it. But this also means something else: precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he now cannot bear to be himself. Consequently he does not despair because he did not get to be Caesar but despairs over himself because he did not get to be Caesar...Consequently, to despair over something is still not despair proper...To despair over oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself—this is the formula for all despair.

~ Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death

Sin operates as ontological gravity, pulling you progressively toward non-being along the spectrum from Being Itself. Each sin increases the spiritual displacement and momentum builds—the further you distance yourself, the more forcefully sin's gravity accelerates the descent. Repentance—an exception to ontological gravity—requires Grace to arrest and reverse the movement. I cannot lift myself by my own bootstraps any more than i can flap my arms and fly, yet Grace constantly does the impossible.

The man who is conscious of his sins is greater than he who profits the whole world by the sight of his countenance. The man who sighs over his soul for but one hour is greater than he who raises the dead by his prayer while dwelling amid many men. The man who is deemed worthy to see himself is greater than he who is deemed worthy to see the angels, for the latter has communion through his bodily eyes, but the former through the eyes of his soul. The man who follows Christ in solitary mourning is greater than he who praises Christ amid the congregations of men.

~ St. Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies of Isaac the Syrian, Homily 64

Techniques solve problems because you can stand outside them, analyze them and fix them. Mysteries involve you; you cannot stand out them because they implicate you. Thus, spiritual lostness is a mystery not a problem. Because of my brokenness, i cannot fix it with a technique. True Hope comes from deeply entering into the mystery, into relationship with God Who enters your lostness.

If ontological proximity to God maps onto love better than it does to geography, then rational calculation can't measure it. Although theology helps, i can't syllogize my way to God. The non-rational leap risks trust: am i falling or flying?

The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. I say that the heart naturally loves the Universal Being, and also itself naturally, according as it gives itself to them; and it hardens itself against one or the other at its will. You have rejected the one, and kept the other. Is it by reason that you love yourself?

~ Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Fundamentally, my receptivity characterizes my ontological position because i receive existence from Another, depend on Another's Sustaining Power and respond to Another's Initiative. Such receptivity defines creaturely being. Knowing 'where i am' requires me to recognize my dependent posture as recipient rather than source, as responder rather than initiator. Sin rebels against creaturely nature itself through grasping for self-caused autonomy that no creature can achieve.

[It] is most fitting and necessary, if the soul is to pass to these great things, that this dark night of contemplation should first of all annihilate and undo it in its meannesses, bringing it into darkness, aridity, affliction and emptiness; for the light which is to be given to it is a Divine light of the highest kind, which transcends all natural light, and which by nature can find no place in the understanding.

~ St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul

For the soul to pass beyond The End of Greatness, the dark night of contemplation should annihilate it first. The night undoes all of the soul's imperfections through introducing it to the dry darkness and the affliction of emptiness. However, in this context, darkness refers to a lack of knowing. Paradoxically, this mental dimness and lostness proves attainment. This darkness essentially differs from sin's separation because sin creates ontological distance through corrupting the being and withdrawing from Divine Energies. Conversely, mystical darkness indicates ontological proximity so extreme that conceptual frameworks collapse under the weight of overwhelming presence.

This is the life of gods and of the godlike and blessed among men, liberation from the alien that besets us here, a life taking no pleasure in the things of earth, the passing of solitary to solitary.

~ Plotinus, Enneads

You are not far from God but so near that your finite categories cannot contain the encounter. The not-knowing reflects a poverty of concept not a poverty of communion. Let nothing live in your working mind except intention nakedly stretching into God without the clothing of any special thought of God.

Reason is in the dark, because love has entered “the mysterious radiance of the Divine Dark, the inaccessible light wherein the Lord is said to dwell, and to which thought with all its struggles cannot attain.”

~ Evelyn Underhill, The Cloud of Unknowing, Introduction.

Perhaps the most important context of all we have saved for last: the interior life of the individual reader. What we get out of the Bible will largely depend on how we approach the Bible. Unless we are living a sustained and disciplined life of prayer, we will never have the reverence, the profound humility, or the grace we need to see the Scriptures for what they really are.

You are approaching the "word of God". But for thousands of years, since before he knit you in your mother's womb, the Word of God has been approaching you.

~ Ignatius Study Bible, Introduction

Before you seek Him, God finds you. You were never actually lost from His Perspective, only from your own. Therefore, finding yourself constitutes recovering God's Vision of your location. The ontological distance sin creates is simultaneously real (it genuinely separates you from Divine Life through corruption of being) and illusory (it cannot separate you from God's Knowing and Loving, which eternally hold you in being). From God's Eternal Now, He sees both your current wayward position and your full restoration not as sequence but as single reality. From your temporal now, you experience distance and seeking. Finding yourself means learning to see as God sees: recognizing that the 'distance' you traverse exists within an embrace you've never left.

And, [the prodigal son] arose and came to his father. But, while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him, had compassion, ran, embraced him and kissed him.

~ Luke 15:20

Although i will return to same starting point when my journey concludes, i cannot return to the same Alexandria. For, time has passed, and i have changed. Each return to God is as much a first encounter as it is a return. The paradox we explored in St. Ephrem's spiral—approaching more closely while discovering infinite chasm—now reveals its deepest truth through mystical unknowing. The homecoming is forever new yet forever familiar, for the wandering transforms both the seeker and his understanding of The Sought.

This investigation, despite its density of philosophical musings, ultimately addresses an extremely ordinary question: Do you know where you are? However, neither GPS coordinates, cosmic addresses nor quantified spiritual states weigh on my judgment.

Am i nearer to God now than when i first boarded the train in Alexandria? Measuring ontological distance requires standing outside it to adopt a perspective that i cannot access while remaining myself. However, although i cannot objectively measure my distance from God, this epistemological limit reveals that i can recognize movement: moments of clarity vs confusion, presence vs absence, openness vs closure. The qualitative and participatory question best expresses itself not as "How near am i?" but as "Am i facing towards or away from The Light?"

Perhaps, no philosophical abstraction captures the dynamic of revelation better than the ordinary experience of discovering what was never truly lost. Revelation operates through overwhelming consciousness with an always already present Presence not through bringing distant objects closer. The blind man's healing consists of Christ opening his eyes to see what surrounded him all along.

I couldn't find my earbuds after my Michigan trip in October 2023. For months, i assumed them lost—the victims of chaotic travel, of perpetual motion. But, digging through my leather bag for a wedding invitation, i discovered them in the joey pouch of a sweatshirt that i had tucked into the bag's depths. They had traveled with me all along, just inches from my searching hand, present but unnoticed.

[The man born blind from birth who Jesus healed] answered:

Whether He is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I know that though I was blind: now, I see.

~ John 9:25

This discovery phenomenologically recapitulates my central insight: often, the things we most need are nearer than we know. Our own inattention, our own refusal to look in the right place hides what we seek not actual distance. The earbuds didn't move toward me; rather, my awareness moved towards recognizing a presence that remained constant throughout my search.

Suddenly recognizing otherwise unnoticed blessings illuminates, even, the darkest of days. Perceiving good fortune—either purposefully or accidentally—naturally calls goodness into mind. Like its sister value beauty, goodness also abides in the eye of the beholder.

We are found before we seek, known before we know ourselves, surrounded by a presence that our sin-distorted vision fails to perceive. The question 'Where are you?' finds its answer in recognizing our true position in relation to what has been present all along. The ontological distance is not something God must traverse to reach us—Christ already crossed that chasm—but something we must recognize to see truly where we stand.

If finding such a simple thing as earbuds positively boosted my mood and brightened my vision: wouldn't discovering the most precious thing—The Truth Himself—uplift me forever? Of course, the answer is that The Truth has already discovered me. The true question is whether i will become receptive to what has already found me.

Truthfully, i've lost many things. I've "misplaced" socks, phones, water bottles, gift cards, passwords, wallets and travel bags. Perhaps, worst of all: i've lost my soul many times. I've regained it with God's Grace and, then, promptly lost it again. On and on, again and again.

Yet, i highly doubt that i’ve describe a truly unique experience. On this trip alone, my life path intertwined with thousands—maybe, even, a few orders of magnitude more. Some for the first time and some for the last. Some, i'll see tomorrow; and, some, i'll never see again. Although every face represents another chapter in the ever-unfolding book of human experience, suffering—i.e., the experience of suffering—binds each of us together. Find me one man or woman who isn't dealing with something...one!

Suffering characterizes the experience of this age, but i can't run away from my problems. Even, if you sacrifice everything else, they'll still stalk you and skillfully torment you. Instead of fleeing, i can only courageously confront them. With vigilant watchfulness, steadfastly hold onto the chorus of Faith, Hope and Love into which your fathers initiated you. Let every thought, word, action and habit reflect an explicit recognition of being close to Heaven yet far from God.

May all glory and honor be to The Blessed Trinity—to The Father from Whom i beg for our forgiveness; to The Son from Whom i beg for our mercy; and, to The Holy Spirit from Whom i beg for our enlightenment—now and always, forever and ever. amin. ☦️

• Luke 15:20 (RSV)

• John 9:25 (RSV)

• John 14:6 (RSV)

• 2 Peter 1:3-4 (RSV)

• Genesis 3:8-10 (LXX)

• St. Ephrem the Syrian, A Spiritual Psalter, Psalm 10

• St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, Book II: Contemplation on the Life of Moses, Eternal Progress, §241-242

• St. Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies of Isaac the Syrian, Homily 64, page 461; Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Boston, MA: 2011).

• The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible Revised Standard Version, 'Introduction to The Ignatius Study Bible', "Putting It All in Perspective"

• Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Section IV: Of The Means Of Belief, §277.

• Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto I, lines 1-7.

• Evelyn Underhill, The Cloud of Unknowing, Introduction.

• History of the Universe, Why Does The Universe Look Like This?, Introduction

• Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 36-37

• Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, page 163.

• Meister Eckhart, 

first time reading? please check out the sailing manual for helpful guidance!

On being lost and found (and lost again...) on The Way beyond The End of Greatness

From a trip on which i met 4 of my best friends as the seasons changed and rode in a tow truck to get ice cream after midnight. Mimetic progeny of discourses with the unknown.

What is your address? Not just your house number or the name of your street. Where, actually, are you? In a town or a city, which is in a country, on a continent, on Earth. But, where is Earth? It’s in the solar system between Venus and Mars, you might say. But, where is that? The solar system is the main part of the Oort cloud—a vast collection of comets, asteroids and icy objects swirling at the fringes of the Sun’s sphere of influence. The Oort cloud resides in the Local Interstellar Cloud, which is in the Local Cavity of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with beautiful, sweeping arms of millions upon millions of stars—all rotating around a bright galactic core with a dark supermassive black hole at its center. At over 100,000 light years across, the Milky Way is vast; but, it is still just a sliver of what we can see.

Zoom out further, and you’ll see a Local Group with 30-50 small galaxies and a monster on a collision course: the Andromeda Galaxy. Twice the size of the Milky Way, Andromeda is speeding towards us. We will collide in a few billion years, tearing each other apart before coalescing into 1. But, when you zoom out even further, the impending collision of 2 galaxies seems inconsequential.

At the scale of millions of light-years, the structure of the Virgo Supercluster—a collection of thousands of galaxies—becomes apparent. And, dwarfing, even, that is the Laniakea Supercluster—hundreds of millions of light-years across, containing several other superclusters like our Virgo, which is itself part of the Pisces–Cetus Supercluster Complex: a galactic filament almost a billion light years long. And, it is, now, that the cosmic web becomes visible. There are more filaments like our own as well as great strings of superclusters.

There are also giant stretches of space with virtually nothing in them like the Boötes Void—an area 330 million light-years across in which we have discovered barely 60 galaxies. An inkblot on the speckled sky. Zooming out further, we finally reach the edge of the observable Universe where primordial light has been traveling since nearly the beginning of time—13.8 billion years—to reach our eyes. But, since, then: the Universe has expanded further, meaning that the true distance to the edge of the Universe is about 46 billion light-years in one direction, meaning the full observable Universe is a sphere 93 billion light-years in diameter.

Structures any larger than a few billion light-years are hard to define with our current technology, partially because we are trying to map something we inhabit and partially there may well be a limit—something scientists call The End of Greatness. But, at every level up to this point—planets, solar systems, galaxies, clusters superclusters—the Universe is full of structure. It is not a random and chaotic jumble; it seems organized. Yet, the Universe started as a hot, dense soup of particles.

Why should it be structured? Why did that hot soup evolve into a Universe where some parts are filled with beautiful, sweeping arms of stars while others are barren deserts? And, more importantly: how do we know?

~ History of the Universe, Why Does The Universe Look Like This?, Introduction

The train's doors open in Alexandria—the Virginia suburb of Washington D.C. that bears the name of the ancient city where scholars translated the Septuagint, where the Great Library preserved humanity's collected wisdom, where Philo first contemplated how God's Logos orders all being. The ancient city named after one of history's greatest men. Oh, how fitting!

And, they heard The Voice of The Lord God walking in the garden in the afternoon; and, both Adam and his wife hid themselves from The Face of The Lord God in the midst of the trees of the garden. And, The Lord God called Adam and said to him:

Adam ~ where art thou?

And, he said to Him:

I heard Thy Voice as Thou walkedst in the garden, and I feared because I was naked and I hid myself.

~ Genesis 3:8-10

This journey across miles of American landscape will inspire inquiry into a different kind of distance—not the measurable space between cities but the immeasurable gap between a creature and the Creator, between sin and sanctity, between being lost and being found. God asking Adam "Where art thou?" calls him to recognize spiritual displacement rather than geographical coordinates—a question about being not location. This essay argues: the seemingly simple question 'Where are you?' ultimately requires not a spatial answer but an existential one: a confession of where we stand in relation to He Who Is.

Over approximately 2 weeks, my trips will take me from Alexandria to Long Island, Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago and back to Alexandria—a journey that embodies the perpetual cycle of wandering and return that St. Ephrem the Syrian understood as the pattern of the spiritual life. We are simultaneously lost and sought, distant yet intimately known, wandering yet already found. Always "On The Road to Being", we are a dynamic but never complete becoming.

In the midway of this our mortal life,

I found me in a gloomy wood, astray

Gone from the path direct: and e’en to tell

It were no easy task, how savage wild

That forest, how robust and rough its growth,

Which to remember only, my dismay

Renews, in bitterness not far from death.

~ Dante Alighieri, Inferno

My journey spans ~1,660 miles across the American Northeast, Canada and the American Midwest. I can know this information because our maps visually represent quantitative data. Supposedly, GPS can tell me where i am at this moment, but can it really tell me where i really am?

Fully written, my current cosmic address would read: Train car → Alexandria Station → Northern Virginia → Mid-Atlantic → United States → North America → Northern Hemisphere → Earth → Inner Solar System → Orion Arm → Milky Way Galaxy → Local Group → Virgo Supercluster → Observable Universe. Each level contains the previous like nested Russian dolls, so i simultaneously inhabit all of these places but none more than another.

However, to make such a claim, i must critically assume a stable reference frame. But, relative to what? The train platform or, more generally, the Earth? But, Earth rotates at ~ 1k mph at the equator. The Earth orbits around the Sun at ~67k mph, and the Sun moves through the Milky Way Galaxy at ~514k mph. Then, the Galaxy barrels through space at ~1.3mm mph. Material stability does not exist at the largest scales. Despite our illusion of stillness, we hurry through space at speeds that mock any notion of a fixed reference point.

Yet, matter especially makes no provision for stability at the smallest scales. For example: in a hydrogen atom, electrons hastily orbit their proton at blistering speeds: ~2.2mm mph or 1/137th of the speed of light, give or take. Because material stability exists at neither macro nor micro scales, it cannot exist at the anthropocentric scale—the mesoscale within which humans perceive ordinary phenomena. Perception frame the experience of stillness more than reality in and of itself.

Man puts the longest distances, behind him in the shortest time. He puts the greatest distances behind himself and thus puts everything before himself at the shortest range...What is incalculably far from us in point of distance can be near to us. Short distance is not in itself nearness. Nor is great distance remoteness.

What is nearness if it fails to come about despite the reduction of the longest distances to the shortest intervals? What is nearness if it is even repelled by the restless abolition of distances?

~ Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought

Thus, my stable reference frame for truly answering the "wya?" question cannot consist of material substance. Nothing is still; every coordinate proves provisional. Properly answering the crucial question necessarily involves ontology, for your measurement perspective conditions every where. I can only claim to move with respect to something that does not move itself (i.e., with respect to Being Itself).

At the level of being, i can say that i am. Yet, i am not because of myself. Said differently, i am not the cause of my am-ness.

Throughout this inquiry, i employ a specific conceptual framework: ontological distance. This term designates a metaphysical measurement as the degree of separation between a creature and Being Itself. Ontological distance measures not miles but participation: the extent to which a being actualizes The Divine Image in which it was created relative to that which sin corrupts its mode of being (tropos) and separates it from communion with Divine Energies.

This distance simultaneously operates on 2 levels. It is absolute because human effort cannot bridge the chasm between finite and Infinite, between contingent being and necessary Being—the Creator-creature distinction remains essential and permanent. Yet, ontological distance is also relative because, within this fixed structure, vice increases the degree of separation whereas virtue cooperates with Grace to decrease it. A soul in mortal sin stands further from God than a soul in sanctity, even, though both remain infinitely distant in the absolute sense.

When God asks "Where art thou?", He invites you to recognize where you stand on the spectrum between total participation in Divine Life and utter separation from it. Every answer to 'Where am i?' must ultimately reckon with this ontological positioning. Therefore, genuinely answering the 'Where are you?' question requires locating yourself on the spectrum between non-being and Being Itself—the only stable reference frame in a cosmos of perpetual motion: The I Am Who I Am.

That being can spontaneously emerge from non-being seems particularly indefensible, so something else other than me must be the cause of my being and of things like me. This thing inexplicably must be Being Itself in its purest sense, The Very Essence of All That Is. Considering The Being to be The Creator and myself to be a creature seems within reasonable bounds.

As far as being is concerned, the distance between God and me is naturally massive—the essential difference between God and me is greater than that between zero and infinity, than that between the Observable Universe and a quark. Yet, God created me in His Image, so some part of me—ostensibly, the deepest part of myself—participates in The Being of God: He Who Is without needing another to be.

Ontically, of course, Dasein is not only close to us—even that which is closest: we are it, each of us, we ourselves. In spite of this, or rather for just this reason, it is ontologically that which is farthest.

~ Martin Heidegger, Being and Time

If humanity bears God's Image as Genesis declares, This Image must reside in our truly unconditioned aspect—that completely immaterial dimension of self whose existence introspection cannot deny, for The Image cannot consist of matter because God is immaterial. It must precisely manifest in the aspect of humanity that transcends physicality.

Since it is God's nature not to be like anyone, we have to come to the state of being nothing in order to enter into the same nature that He is. So, when I am able to establish myself in Nothing and Nothing in myself, uprooting and casting out what is in me, then I can pass into the naked being of God, which is the naked being of the spirit.

~ Meister Eckhart, Sermon 7

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me: my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing and one love.

~ Meister Eckhart, Sermon 75

As i attempt to find my original face, i sense an awareness that sits just ever so slightly before attachment. Naturally unconditioned, the eye through which i see God is the same eye through which God sees me. The mystical tradition vividly describes this transformation.

A certain person came to the Friend's door and knocked.

Who's there?

It's me.

The Friend answered:

Go away. There's no place for raw meat at this table.

The individual went wandering for a year. Nothing but the fire of separation can change hypocrisy and ego. The person returned completely cooked, walked up and down in front of the Friend's house, gently knocked.

Who is it?

You.

Please come in, my self, there's no place in this house for two. The doubled end of the thread is not what goes through the eye of the needle. It's a single-pointed, fined-down, thread end, not a big ego-beast with baggage.

~ Rumi, Two Friends

As i increasingly identify with my false conditioned self, i further increase the spiritual separation between myself and God—a corruption of my mode of being that withdraws me from Divine Life. Only the false conditioned self sins, so identifying with it necessarily intensifies the corruption of being that sin introduces.

The train departs, lurching forward before settling into smooth motion. Soon, the sense of speed no longer impinges on my consciousness. The landscape streams past—rivers, bridges, trees, houses, towns—but i sit still. Modern travel collapses distance into stillness, so we move with a muted feeling of motion. Stillness doesn't exist materially, yet i often experience it.

Similar phenomena characterize my state of awareness. Just as i experience stillness while materially moving through space, i may experience stability of being while actually becoming something different with each passing moment. In every moment, i am that which i wasn't and that which i will no longer be—i am becoming something else. Thus, measuring the gap between myself and He Who Is offers me clues to answer the crucial question: who am i becoming?

Sin creates ontological distance from God through severing us from communion with Divine Energies. Such distance, though immeasurable in miles, proves more real than any mile. When God inquires into Adam and Eve's location after their fall, He does not request precise spatial coordinates. Surely, The Omniscient Creator knew which trees concealed them. Rather, He invited them to recognize their spiritual location—their spiritual displacement from Being through sin.

My intention to return back to where my journey began signals a deeply held belief in circular restoration and completion. However, despite my nostalgic ache to return home, Heraclitus warns: you cannot step into the same river twice because the river changes and you change. So, how can i return to a place that no longer exists?

Attention, rather than measurable distance, modulates proximity. Any idea mindfully held in consciousness—whether noble or base—stands nearer to me than the leather train seat pressing against my back. God's Presence becomes proximate through attentive prayer rather than physical pilgrimage, for bodily orientation and engagement structure our world before we ever measure it geometrically.

In his prayers, St. Ephrem the Syrian articulates a devastating spiritual paradox: the cycle of desiring repentance without ever truly repenting. His 10th Psalm—c.f. "interlude"—explores his willing bondage to sin, his self-deception of externally appearing reverent but internally filled with indecency. He's excruciatingly aware of 'hiding his dreadful shackles behind a noble appearance' and 'demolishing his weak foundations of repentance everyday'. He oscillates between wandering and return, not linear progress but waves, spirals and circumambulations toward holiness. Like him: i drift from God, recognize my distance, repent, draw near—then, drift again. The patterns repeats but never in the precisely same way.

For this inquiry's purposes, we can understand theosis—becoming by Grace what God is by nature—as the process of laboring with Grace to narrow the participation gap between creature and Creator. This does not bridge the absolute chasm, for we remain creatures not God. However, it increases the intensity and purity of our participation in Divine Energies.

The true seeker will notice the paradoxical characteristic of this movement: the more purification narrows the participation gap, the more acutely you perceive the infinite ontological chasm that no creaturely effort can bridge. You are simultaneously approaching more closely (entering more deeply into Divine Life) and discovering deeper distance (recognizing more clearly the inexhaustible excess of divine infinity over finite capacity). I am found yet perpetually losing myself. The prodigal returns, only to realize: he must return again.

[This] promise is believed to be more magnificent and loftier than every theophany which had previously been granted to his great servant. How then would one, from what has been said, understand this height to which Moses desires to attain after such previous ascents and to which he who turns everything to their good cooperates with all those who love God makes the ascent easy through his leadership? Here is a place, he says, beside me.

The thought harmonizes readily with what has been contemplated before. In speaking of "place" he does not limit the place indicated by anything quantitative (for to something unquantitative there is no measure). On the contrary, by the use of the analogy of a measurable surface he leads the hearer to the unlimited and infinite. The text seems to signify some such understanding:

Whereas ~ Moses ~ your desire for what is still to come has expanded and you have not reached satisfaction in your progress and whereas you do not see any limit to the Good, but your yearning always looks for more, the place with me is so great that the one running in it is never able to cease from his progress.

~ St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses

Instead of claiming to show us to them or to teach us about them, The Word—in a word—explicitly identifies Himself with The Way, The Truth and The Life. More than a lifeless path, The Way represents a Person: He Who Is. Moving toward Being and Life Itself is not like approaching a destination but like growing intimate with a person who is, Himself, The Journey.

Jesus said to him:

I am The Way, The Truth and The Life. No one comes to The Father but by me.

~ John 14:6

Pilgrimage traditionally requires effort—walking, pain, sacrifice. The journey fundamentally transformed them, so they are different people when they arrive. The destination matters less than the process of becoming someone who can arrive. Such journeys enable contemplation because, embodying rhythms of thought, physical movement disrupts habitual patterns.

On the surface, my journey seems easy. A comfortable seat supports me as i type; a fruit bowl and a cold brew satiates me; and, scenery entertains me. Yet, beneath the surface, my mind struggles to express a genuine evaluation of myself. The ease confers a value on this journey because i enjoy both the time to transform and the freedom to think. Somehow, the journey temporally and spatially suspends me.

However, as the prior discussion of matter confirms, size and duration don't directly determine value or meaning. Upon boarding a train traveling on a planet orbiting a star in an unremarkable galaxy lost among billions, i contemplate my relationship with My Creator. Suddenly, whether i matter in the Universe matters far less than whether the Universe matters in me, whether my consciousness constitutes a cosmic inflection point in which Being becomes aware of itself.

True movement occurs only when your tropos—your mode of being, how you actually live—shifts relative to The Divine Logos, regardless of your space-time coordinates. Orthodox theology distinguishes between logos (Divine Intention, the answer to "Why do i exist?") and tropos (the manner of existing, the corruption or actualization of that intention). Sin doesn't simply make you morally bad; it creates ontological separation between your being and Being Itself. Considered in this light, sin operates as the rate at which your being diverges from Being—each sinful act progressively widening the delta between your actual self and your intended self, a corruption of mode that constitutes genuine privation of being.

Cenobitic and eremitic monastics intimately recognize: fleeing from place to place prevents you from dredging your interior depths, for you can only discern internal patterns when you remain still. Unresolved problems and unhealed wounds follow you everywhere, rendering geographical escape meaningless. From the 3rd through 5th centuries, the Desert Fathers abandoned Alexandria, Antioch and Rome to pursue union with God in radical solitude. The desert's physical emptiness mirrored the soul's landscape—its phenomenological topology—so they struggled to navigate a challenging interior geography. The demons attacked St. Anthony more fiercely in the desert than in the city because urban distractions camouflage spiritual reality. In the desert, what's really there confronts you without mediation. The question "Where are you?" ultimately demands an existential answer about your interior position not a geographical report about your exterior coordinates.

We experience God as absent when we feel spiritually lost. Yet, since God essentially pervades all being—existing everywhere not as matter occupies space but as cause sustains effect—such experience of absence may actually represent a deluded distortion of God's Constant Presence. When God asks Adam and Eve where they are after the Fall, He initiates His pursuit of humanity from its first moment of separation. Humanity impulsively hides from God's Presence in the immediate aftermath. However, from that first instance of sinful displacement, He has told us: we are lost, but He has come to find us. Christ stands at the door of individual hearts, actively pursuing real relationship with us despite our flight.

Sin creates a partition wall dividing humanity from God, breaking our communion with Him. Without a shepherd, we wander like aimless sheep with no memory of home or rest. Spiritual exile contains both judgment and promise—judgment because the exiled find no resting place, promise because repentance fulfills the possibility of return. The true desire for return manifests as intense longing for God's Presence from one in exile, a desperate thirst that metaphorically represents the soul's recognition of how it anguishes without Him.

Perhaps, we can understand repentance through physical metaphor: achieving escape velocity from sin's gravitational pull toward eternal non-being. Just as a rocket must generate sufficient thrust to overcome Earth's gravity and enter orbit, the soul must cooperate with Grace to generate sufficient force—through confession, contrition and transformation—to arrest its descent toward ontological dissolution. This metaphor captures both the violence and the necessity of conversion: you cannot casually drift away from sin's gravity any more than you can casually drift into orbit. The force required matches the depth of the fall.

God establishes Himself as The Good Shepherd Who personally seeks, restores, heals, and strengthens His scattered sheep. The prodigal son's journey to "a far country" typifies how we cause our spiritual alienation from God, and the father's embrace reveals God's eager forgiveness. Our Savior's double emphasis—"he was lost and is found"—thoroughly underscores His mission: actively seek and save the lost because He desires that none should perish. As The Good Shepherd, Christ not only seeks His sheep but sacrifices Himself for them so that they may live.

The Harrowing of Hell—Christ's descent into Hades between Crucifixion and Resurrection—demonstrates the full extent of His mission. He notably traversed the furthest ontological distance possible: that between death and God, between absolute privation and absolute fullness of being. In the house of ultimate separation, He proclaimed victory before His exalted ascent. The distance between myself and the observable universe's furthest edge cannot compare to the distance Christ covered when Life willingly visited death so that the dead could live. Thus, no one exists too far, too lost or too dead for Christ to reach. The ontological chasm's vastness does not deter Him; rather, The Incarnation reveals that crossing it constitutes precisely His Purpose.

Here the ontological meets the material: Our Lord Jesus Christ—The Word of God, The Lamb slain before the foundation of the world—became what we are because of His Transcendent Love so that we might learn how to become God. The Incarnation doesn't transcend matter but redeems it, doesn't escape physicality but sanctifies it. My train journeys across the storied American landscape, through all its materiality and motion, participates in this sanctified physical reality. The doors opening in Alexandria, the rocks, rivers and trees streaming past, my typing on this device—all exist within matter that The Incarnation has fundamentally reoriented toward its original purpose. When God became flesh, He didn't merely visit Creation; He permanently restored the possibility that matter itself might participate in The Divine Life for which He intended it.

On this train, i appear to other passengers as yet another traveler. My indecencies hide behind a reverential façade. They see me type but know neither the first nor final cause of my work. Before anything else, i need sight because i am spiritually blind. He has done everything necessary except the last part: actualizing this relationship requires me to willingly change my mode of being—my tropos— and lovingly conform to His will. Letting Christ find me means allowing myself to totally transform into a new creation. There is no pleasant end in remaining in sin. The question "where am I?" ultimately resolves into: Am i facing toward or away from The Light?

Before Thy Glory ~ Oh, Christ, My Savior ~ I will announce all my misconduct and confess the infinitude of Thy Mercies, Which Thou pourest out upon me according to Thy Kindness.

From my mother's womb, I began to grieve Thee; and, utterly have I disregarded Thy Grace, for I have neglected my soul. Thou ~ Oh, My Master ~ according to the multitude of Thy Mercies, hast regarded all my wickedness with patience and kindness. Thy Grace has lifted up my head; but, daily, it is brought low by my sins.

Bad habits entangle me like snares, and I rejoice at being thus bound. I sink to the very depths of evil, and this delights me. Daily, the enemy gives me new shackles; for, he sees how this variety of bonds pleases me.

The fact that I am bound by my own desires should provoke weeping and lamentation, shame and disgrace. And, yet: more terrible is the fact that I bind myself with the shackles that the enemy places upon me, and I slay myself with the passions that give him pleasure.

Although I know how dreadful these shackles are, I hide them behind a noble appearance from all who might see. I appear to be robed in the beautiful clothes of reverence, but my soul is entangled with shameful thoughts. Before all who might see, I am reverent; but, inside: I am filled with all manner of indecency.

My conscience accuses me of all this, and I act as if I wish to be freed of my shackles. Everyday, I worry and sigh over this; yet, I, ever, remain bound by the same snares. How pitiful I am; and, how pitiful is my daily repentance, [for] it has no firm foundation. Everyday, I lay a foundation for the building; and, again: with my own hands, I demolish it.

My repentance has not even made a good beginning as yet, yet there is no end to my wicked negligence. I have become a slave to passions and to the evil will of the enemy who destroys me.

Who will give the water to my head and the founts to my eyes for tears so that I may ever weep before Thee ~ Oh, Merciful God ~ that Thou mightest send Thy Grace and draw me—a sinner—out of the sea, furious with the waves of sin that hourly convulses my soul? For, my desires are worse than wounds that cannot be bandaged. I wait hoping for repentance and deceive myself with this vain promise until my death. Ever do I say:

I will repent.

But, never do I repent. My words give the appearance of heartfelt repentance; but, in deed: I am always far from repentance.

What will happen to me in The Day of The Trial when God unveils all things at His Court! Certainly, I shall be sentenced to torment if, here, I have not moved Thee to mercy ~ Oh, My Judge ~ by my tears.

Someone may seem to be silent, but his heart may be turbulent. Insofar as you don't speak any unprofitable words (e.g., expressions of condemnation, pride, envy, sloth, etc.) that produce inner turbulence, you may speak but remain truly silent.

In his highly well-known The Ladder of Divine Ascent, St. John Climacus metaphorically represents the spiritual life as a ladder with 30 rungs—each representing the achievement of virtue or the conquest of vice. Naturally, his visualization suggests a vertical geography in which one ascends towards God but descends towards sin. However, he crucially warns us of our notoriously unreliable ability to self-assess our spiritual location; so, you can be on the 3rd rung thinking you're on the 30th, or vice versa.

Demons attack monks through bad logismoi (i.e., intrusive thoughts). Not mere temptations but territorial invaders, these thoughts claim space in the soul like occupying armies. If alien powers colonize the interior geography of the spiritually lost, repentance represents the annexation of space that already belongs to you.

Ordinary laziness differs from acedia (i.e., spiritual listlessness). Acedia is a geographical malady in which the mind wanders everywhere but where it is. For example, the monk afflicted with acedia imagines that he'd be holier somewhere else under different circumstances. Such spiritual restlessness wears seeking as a disguise.

Accordingly, Abba Moses instructed his disciples to "sit in [their cells], and [their cells] will teach [them] everything." In your cell, you cannot hide. You cannot flee from yourself. The desert strips away social masks to reveal who you are when no one watches.

The mind is The Intellectual Image of God; so, after purifying it and separating it from bodily matters, you may use the mind to know The Nature of Divinity—at least partially. God made us for Him, so our hearts restlessly stir until finding repose in Him. The further i—arrogantly dejected yet restlessly weary—ran away from God, the more i encountered the lifeless monuments of sorrow.

The cyclicality of St. Ephrem the Syrian's understanding of spiritual life can certainly feel like failure, for shouldn't we progress beyond our aberrations? However, he seemingly suggests that the cycle itself teaches us, conferring upon us a good unlike anything else. The self-knowledge of being lost surpasses most miraculous powers. The simple awareness of "I am far from God" is more worthy than accomplishing a mighty work without recognizing the distance.

Thinking i've reached the summit, i climb. Yet, i discover 10 more peaks beyond. Each return to God unravels layers of lostness, previously imperceivable. I was more lost than i knew, so each return penetrates deeper.

Physical realities mysteriously yet symbolically point beyond themselves to spiritual truths. The train racks up mileage, while my soul wanders. The track curves; Grace guides. The destination approaches; The Lord draws near. The lines between symbol and reality blur.

Be wary of pious hypocrisy (i.e., performing religious acts with a distant heart). You can fast, pray and attend Liturgies, but you can remain comfortably far from God. Thus, the appearance of seeking—its very symbol!—replaces true seeking.

Christ's Parable of The Vineyard Owner potentially terrifies those who've faithfully served God and never disobeyed His Commandments because It reveals: Compassion and Mercy not cold justice—as purely logical computational—suffuses how God applies Grace. However, for the wanderer, the sinner and the lost sheep, it typifies his only hope. I've squandered years; but, The Father will run to meet you if you return, even, now at the 11th hour.

Dromic ontology—from the Greek dromos that refers to race, running and course—identifies human beings as dynamic movements toward God not as static substances. I am always "on the road to being": never complete, never finished. Who i am, who you are, who we are—all, in its finality and completion, shall be revealed beyond The End of Greatness!

As we established earlier through the tropos concept, sin represents the delta between logos (who God created you to be) and tropos (how you're actually living). Holiness emerges from harmonizing these: bringing your actual life into conformity with Divine Intention. Every creature participates in God's Logos (The 2nd Person of The Holy Trinity) through its particular logos. As trees participate through fully being a tree, human beings participate through fully being a human. The logoi of all creatures eternally exists in God's Logos, so your logos—your true self, who you're meant to be—already exists in God outside of time.

His Divine Power has granted to us all things that pertain to Life and Godliness through The Knowledge of Him Who called us to His Own Glory and Excellence by Which he has granted to us His Precious and Very Great Promises; that, through These, you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion and become partakers of The Divine Nature.

~ 2 Peter 1:3-4

Paradoxically, as a result of Theosis, deification represents the crown jewel of becoming fully human. God created me to transcend my nature with Divine Grace and become "partakers of The Divine Nature". Human freedom gives you the freedom to synergize with God. Thus, your will truly expresses freedom when it wills what God wills: Life. Though a poor caricature of freedom, sin represents slavery to non-being.

Instead of discovering myself ex nihilo, i discover and actualize what God always intends for me through virtuous action. Conversely, since sin distorts the true self like smudging a photograph, repentance restores the original image.

The soul progresses through warfare. God allows warfare to stir up so that you can regain the humility that you lost. Do not boast of your good works because anyone who trusts in himself will fall. After fall: Judas the Apostle lost his reward in one night, but Christ justified The Thief on The Right who confessed one faith.

Like the myth of Sisyphus, you can make a lot of effort but no progress. Insofar as you've climbed up, you've fall down with double the force and triple the pain. The effort naturally feels futile. God Himself must draw the human mind upward to Him, for it lacks the strength to ascend such a distance and independently apprehend some Divine Illumination.

Be wary of prelest—the spiritual delusion resulting from either mistaking emotional consolation for union with God or confusing feelings of piety for genuine transformation. Establish a trusted relationship with a spiritual father because the test is not how you feel when you pray but how you act when no one watches.

The Incarnation reveals matter not as the spirit's enemy but as its proper partner. Christ took His Body to Heaven during His Ascension. That Glorified Matter exists at this very moment altogether redeems physicality.

Thus, my journey from Alexandria back to Alexandria isn't separate from my spiritual journey. The miles matter; the motion matters. My body seated in the chair; my eyes watching trees and streams pass by. All represent material engaged in spiritual movement toward or away from God.

Although the devil can cast you down from the height of virtue into depths of vice, God can revive you and not only restore your former confidence but also make you much happier.

The prison-house represents the visible word in Plato's Allegory, and the journey upward represents the soul's ascent into the intellectual world. Wings naturally carry a heavier body upwards. The virtues nourish the wings of the soul, but vileness and evil destroys them. On seeing beauty, man remembers True Beauty. He eagerly aspires to flutter upwards, but he tragically cannot leave the ground on which he stands.

Living harmoniously with nature never begets poverty, but living according to what others think never begets wealth. You'll reach an end on any road; but, astray, you'll wander limitlessly.

Being-in-the-world is less like water in a glass (i.e., like a thing inside a container) but more like a way of being always already "in" the world existentially—what Heidegger terms as Dasein. Rather than occupying space, my being there spatializes it. Physically close things can be existentially distant, or vice versa. Existentially, a loved one thousands of miles away is nearer than the stranger sitting next to me.

Not a mind piloting a meat-robot through space, i am a unified being-in-the-world who's spatially inseparable from my awareness. My body is the medium with which i generally interface with the world. I am of space and time but not in space and time. The phenomenal world represents the canvas on which being lays itself down not how pre-existing being explicitly expresses itself.

Daseins have 2 existential modes: living authentically or living inauthentically. Unlike their inauthentic counterparts, authentic Daseins own their existence, face death and choose deliberately.

If spiritual lostness induces anxiety, Grace strips away comfortable illusions to reveal existence's stark reality. Anxiety may pedagogical medicine rather than punitive punishment. In the face of such radical uncertainty, 'i am where i am' stands as the only honest answer i can offer to 'Where am i?' because it simultaneously acknowledges both presence and mystery.

We can also understand ontological distance in terms of receptive capacity, which reframes the spatial metaphor. Drawing near to God consists not of reducing actual separation—God is already maximally present—but of expanding and purifying our capacity to receive a presence that perpetually saturates finite consciousness.

If you stand in the sunlight with your eyes closed, opening your eyes doesn't bring the sun closer. Rather, the light that was already there overwhelms you. We can understand repentance as a perceptual transformation: becoming receptive to what Grace makes available rather than bringing God near through effort. In genuine revelation, we don't see perceive God as an object over there. Rather, God's Gaze sees us, and we become visible to ourselves in His Sight.

Qualitatively, an infinite ontological chasm exists between God and humanity. No amount of human effort can bridge this chasm—the gap between Infinite and finite, between Uncreated and created—remains definitionally absolute. Yet, Christ willingly crossed it for us through His Incarnation.

Kierkegaard identifies 3 stages of existence: aesthetic, ethical and religious. The aesthetic stage optimizes for pleasure, beauty and novelty; the ethical, for duty, principles and universal morality. The religious stage teleologically suspends the ethical stage and places its faith in God.

The Self is a concept that dynamically relates the knower to its own self. If you're constantly becoming yourself through relating to yourself, sin represents a failed self-relation. These failures of self-relation manifest as increased separation from Being Itself. When you insist on being self-made, desperately denying your creaturely dependence, your prideful defiance widens the participation gap. When you—despairing over your weakness—refuse to believe God can transform you, you widen that same gap through self-rejection. Although psychologically opposite, both forms of despair produce an identical effect on being: withdrawal from The Divine Life you were created to share.

In despairing over something, he really despaired over himself, and now he wants to get rid of himself. For example, when the ambitious man whose slogan is "Either Caesar or nothing" does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it. But this also means something else: precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he now cannot bear to be himself. Consequently he does not despair because he did not get to be Caesar but despairs over himself because he did not get to be Caesar...Consequently, to despair over something is still not despair proper...To despair over oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself—this is the formula for all despair.

~ Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death

Sin operates as ontological gravity, pulling you progressively toward non-being along the spectrum from Being Itself. Each sin increases the spiritual displacement and momentum builds—the further you distance yourself, the more forcefully sin's gravity accelerates the descent. Repentance—an exception to ontological gravity—requires Grace to arrest and reverse the movement. I cannot lift myself by my own bootstraps any more than i can flap my arms and fly, yet Grace constantly does the impossible.

The man who is conscious of his sins is greater than he who profits the whole world by the sight of his countenance. The man who sighs over his soul for but one hour is greater than he who raises the dead by his prayer while dwelling amid many men. The man who is deemed worthy to see himself is greater than he who is deemed worthy to see the angels, for the latter has communion through his bodily eyes, but the former through the eyes of his soul. The man who follows Christ in solitary mourning is greater than he who praises Christ amid the congregations of men.

~ St. Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies of Isaac the Syrian, Homily 64

Techniques solve problems because you can stand outside them, analyze them and fix them. Mysteries involve you; you cannot stand out them because they implicate you. Thus, spiritual lostness is a mystery not a problem. Because of my brokenness, i cannot fix it with a technique. True Hope comes from deeply entering into the mystery, into relationship with God Who enters your lostness.

If ontological proximity to God maps onto love better than it does to geography, then rational calculation can't measure it. Although theology helps, i can't syllogize my way to God. The non-rational leap risks trust: am i falling or flying?

The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. I say that the heart naturally loves the Universal Being, and also itself naturally, according as it gives itself to them; and it hardens itself against one or the other at its will. You have rejected the one, and kept the other. Is it by reason that you love yourself?

~ Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Fundamentally, my receptivity characterizes my ontological position because i receive existence from Another, depend on Another's Sustaining Power and respond to Another's Initiative. Such receptivity defines creaturely being. Knowing 'where i am' requires me to recognize my dependent posture as recipient rather than source, as responder rather than initiator. Sin rebels against creaturely nature itself through grasping for self-caused autonomy that no creature can achieve.

[It] is most fitting and necessary, if the soul is to pass to these great things, that this dark night of contemplation should first of all annihilate and undo it in its meannesses, bringing it into darkness, aridity, affliction and emptiness; for the light which is to be given to it is a Divine light of the highest kind, which transcends all natural light, and which by nature can find no place in the understanding.

~ St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul

For the soul to pass beyond The End of Greatness, the dark night of contemplation should annihilate it first. The night undoes all of the soul's imperfections through introducing it to the dry darkness and the affliction of emptiness. However, in this context, darkness refers to a lack of knowing. Paradoxically, this mental dimness and lostness proves attainment. This darkness essentially differs from sin's separation because sin creates ontological distance through corrupting the being and withdrawing from Divine Energies. Conversely, mystical darkness indicates ontological proximity so extreme that conceptual frameworks collapse under the weight of overwhelming presence.

This is the life of gods and of the godlike and blessed among men, liberation from the alien that besets us here, a life taking no pleasure in the things of earth, the passing of solitary to solitary.

~ Plotinus, Enneads

You are not far from God but so near that your finite categories cannot contain the encounter. The not-knowing reflects a poverty of concept not a poverty of communion. Let nothing live in your working mind except intention nakedly stretching into God without the clothing of any special thought of God.

Reason is in the dark, because love has entered “the mysterious radiance of the Divine Dark, the inaccessible light wherein the Lord is said to dwell, and to which thought with all its struggles cannot attain.”

~ Evelyn Underhill, The Cloud of Unknowing, Introduction.

Perhaps the most important context of all we have saved for last: the interior life of the individual reader. What we get out of the Bible will largely depend on how we approach the Bible. Unless we are living a sustained and disciplined life of prayer, we will never have the reverence, the profound humility, or the grace we need to see the Scriptures for what they really are.

You are approaching the "word of God". But for thousands of years, since before he knit you in your mother's womb, the Word of God has been approaching you.

~ Ignatius Study Bible, Introduction

Before you seek Him, God finds you. You were never actually lost from His Perspective, only from your own. Therefore, finding yourself constitutes recovering God's Vision of your location. The ontological distance sin creates is simultaneously real (it genuinely separates you from Divine Life through corruption of being) and illusory (it cannot separate you from God's Knowing and Loving, which eternally hold you in being). From God's Eternal Now, He sees both your current wayward position and your full restoration not as sequence but as single reality. From your temporal now, you experience distance and seeking. Finding yourself means learning to see as God sees: recognizing that the 'distance' you traverse exists within an embrace you've never left.

And, [the prodigal son] arose and came to his father. But, while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him, had compassion, ran, embraced him and kissed him.

~ Luke 15:20

Although i will return to same starting point when my journey concludes, i cannot return to the same Alexandria. For, time has passed, and i have changed. Each return to God is as much a first encounter as it is a return. The paradox we explored in St. Ephrem's spiral—approaching more closely while discovering infinite chasm—now reveals its deepest truth through mystical unknowing. The homecoming is forever new yet forever familiar, for the wandering transforms both the seeker and his understanding of The Sought.

This investigation, despite its density of philosophical musings, ultimately addresses an extremely ordinary question: Do you know where you are? However, neither GPS coordinates, cosmic addresses nor quantified spiritual states weigh on my judgment.

Am i nearer to God now than when i first boarded the train in Alexandria? Measuring ontological distance requires standing outside it to adopt a perspective that i cannot access while remaining myself. However, although i cannot objectively measure my distance from God, this epistemological limit reveals that i can recognize movement: moments of clarity vs confusion, presence vs absence, openness vs closure. The qualitative and participatory question best expresses itself not as "How near am i?" but as "Am i facing towards or away from The Light?"

Perhaps, no philosophical abstraction captures the dynamic of revelation better than the ordinary experience of discovering what was never truly lost. Revelation operates through overwhelming consciousness with an always already present Presence not through bringing distant objects closer. The blind man's healing consists of Christ opening his eyes to see what surrounded him all along.

I couldn't find my earbuds after my Michigan trip in October 2023. For months, i assumed them lost—the victims of chaotic travel, of perpetual motion. But, digging through my leather bag for a wedding invitation, i discovered them in the joey pouch of a sweatshirt that i had tucked into the bag's depths. They had traveled with me all along, just inches from my searching hand, present but unnoticed.

[The man born blind from birth who Jesus healed] answered:

Whether He is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I know that though I was blind: now, I see.

~ John 9:25

This discovery phenomenologically recapitulates my central insight: often, the things we most need are nearer than we know. Our own inattention, our own refusal to look in the right place hides what we seek not actual distance. The earbuds didn't move toward me; rather, my awareness moved towards recognizing a presence that remained constant throughout my search.

Suddenly recognizing otherwise unnoticed blessings illuminates, even, the darkest of days. Perceiving good fortune—either purposefully or accidentally—naturally calls goodness into mind. Like its sister value beauty, goodness also abides in the eye of the beholder.

We are found before we seek, known before we know ourselves, surrounded by a presence that our sin-distorted vision fails to perceive. The question 'Where are you?' finds its answer in recognizing our true position in relation to what has been present all along. The ontological distance is not something God must traverse to reach us—Christ already crossed that chasm—but something we must recognize to see truly where we stand.

If finding such a simple thing as earbuds positively boosted my mood and brightened my vision: wouldn't discovering the most precious thing—The Truth Himself—uplift me forever? Of course, the answer is that The Truth has already discovered me. The true question is whether i will become receptive to what has already found me.

Truthfully, i've lost many things. I've "misplaced" socks, phones, water bottles, gift cards, passwords, wallets and travel bags. Perhaps, worst of all: i've lost my soul many times. I've regained it with God's Grace and, then, promptly lost it again. On and on, again and again.

Yet, i highly doubt that i’ve describe a truly unique experience. On this trip alone, my life path intertwined with thousands—maybe, even, a few orders of magnitude more. Some for the first time and some for the last. Some, i'll see tomorrow; and, some, i'll never see again. Although every face represents another chapter in the ever-unfolding book of human experience, suffering—i.e., the experience of suffering—binds each of us together. Find me one man or woman who isn't dealing with something...one!

Suffering characterizes the experience of this age, but i can't run away from my problems. Even, if you sacrifice everything else, they'll still stalk you and skillfully torment you. Instead of fleeing, i can only courageously confront them. With vigilant watchfulness, steadfastly hold onto the chorus of Faith, Hope and Love into which your fathers initiated you. Let every thought, word, action and habit reflect an explicit recognition of being close to Heaven yet far from God.

May all glory and honor be to The Blessed Trinity—to The Father from Whom i beg for our forgiveness; to The Son from Whom i beg for our mercy; and, to The Holy Spirit from Whom i beg for our enlightenment—now and always, forever and ever. amin. ☦️

• Luke 15:20 (RSV)

• John 9:25 (RSV)

• John 14:6 (RSV)

• 2 Peter 1:3-4 (RSV)

• Genesis 3:8-10 (LXX)

• St. Ephrem the Syrian, A Spiritual Psalter, Psalm 10

• St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, Book II: Contemplation on the Life of Moses, Eternal Progress, §241-242

• St. Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies of Isaac the Syrian, Homily 64, page 461; Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Boston, MA: 2011).

• The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible Revised Standard Version, 'Introduction to The Ignatius Study Bible', "Putting It All in Perspective"

• Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Section IV: Of The Means Of Belief, §277.

• Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto I, lines 1-7.

• Evelyn Underhill, The Cloud of Unknowing, Introduction.

• History of the Universe, Why Does The Universe Look Like This?, Introduction

• Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 36-37

• Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, page 163.

• Meister Eckhart, 

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