Petre Tutea: Science As

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

This is a slightly amended version of the author's study, Petre

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

The initial study was published in the first issue of

Transdisciplinary Studies - Science, Spirituality, Society,
Curtea Veche Publishing House, Bucharest, 2011, pp. 157168.
General Background
Petre uea (1902-1991) was a Romanian economist and
diplomat who spent thirteen years in political prisons and
twenty-eight years under city arrest as a prisoner of conscience
during the communist era. A Doctor of Administrative Law, he
worked as a national economic adviser during the 1930s and
1940s, when Romania found itself caught between Nazi
Germany and Soviet Russia. Unlike such contemporaries of
his as the playwright Eugne Ionesco, the philosopher Emil
Cioran, and the historian of religions Mircea Eliade, uea

chose to remain in Romania in the early 1940s. For him,

national identity was essential to a humane civil society. He
first advocated, then in turn challenged both the abstract
universalized humanity of Marxism, and the idolatrous
glorification of the nation by right-wing nationalism. In 1990,
having never previously joined any political party, he
pointedly joined the National Liberal Party, of which he
remained a member until his death.

During the process of Soviet re-education in the Romanian

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

ueas joy in living, his intellectual brilliance and

exuberance, his fearless wit and irrepressible humour, and his
ability to relate on equal terms with all whom he met, made
him a legend in his lifetime, although for political reasons his
writings remained unpublished. Due to its allusive, elliptical

style, his written work (nearly all of it published

posthumously) remains largely unexplored. However, it
contains insights of immediate relevance to a world in which
ethnic intolerance, global injustice, and ever more invasive
forms of exploitation and conflict threaten the sustainability of
human life on the planet.

He had a high respect for all human disciplines. Yet he viewed

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

Human disciplines and technology can never deliver us from

our human condition of finitude, experienced as captivity to
incompleteness. Beneficent progress is possible. Yet such
progress, whether mental, technological, or social, is
necessarily inspired in-breathed with the divine r u a h / p n
e u m a / s p i r i t u s rather than the result of unaided
human effort. Not everyone is able to recognize and
acknowledge this. Those who profess religious certainty
without being grounded in something akin to the vocational
living of a Christian life, in the spirit of Christs Sermon on the

Mount, exemplify the "desacralized" mind, equivalent to the

technological attitude of the scientistic non-believer.

Introduction

Today, I seek to present ueas contribution to our discussion

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

- First: I shall give a short biographical account of the master/

disciple relationship between uea, the spiritual teacher, and
myself, as an occasionally practising Christian living under a
regime hostile to religion.

- Second: We shall see a brief video filmed in 1990 which

gives a flavour of our relationship.

- Third: I shall attempt to tease out some of the implications of

what has been presented, through reflections on this video
clip, with reference to the Gospel story of Jesus
Transfiguration on Mount Tabor.

Personal account

I first met Petre uea on the surgical ward of the Municipal

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

However, after going away to check certain texts to which he

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

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

I was deeply influenced by ueas doxological vision of the

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

This is the Hebrew shekhinah, the fire and cloud of Exodus,

the mystical vision of Ezekiel (1, 4-28; 11, 22ff; 43, 1-5), and,
for the Christians, the mystery of the Johannine Word made

flesh, "the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of

grace and truth" (John, 1,14). As a spiritual guide uea
impacted on my life in a transformative way that was powerful
and testing, yet that also fostered the development of my own
creativity and identity. It was a privilege for me as a doctoral
and post-doctoral student in Oxford to study his life and
works, culminating in a book about him: Petre uea: Between
Sacrifice and Suicide (Ashgate, 2004). And it is a great
privilege to speak about him here, under the auspices of the
John Templeton Foundation and the Romanian Academy.

Video presentation

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

authorities, but also with some of the great European

intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett.

The producer knew very little about uea; his main focus was
Cioran, and the initial suggestion was that uea should share
pre-World War II memories about his friend. But uea had
other ideas and was to take the lead in a now classic
documentary about his relationship with Cioran. Two days
before the interview, uea asked me to help him write down a
Declaraie (Declaration, see [note 1]) to Cioran, that he
dictated to me because of the disabling tremor of his hands.
He actually changed the very rules of a television interview,
insisting that he could not be "intelligent to order", and
demanding that his written statement be read in front of the
cameras before any interview with him could commence.
Having left my medical job in the late evening and climbed to
ueas eighth floor room, it took me a while to "tune in" to
his complex and idiosyncratic Declaraie especially as he
would revise phrases in his head almost every minute, asking
me to insert corrections within the handwritten text. This was,
of course, before the days of computers. Even typewriters had
had to be registered annually with Ceauescus police. We
worked through the night, and around 4 oclock in the
morning I was nodding off. As usual, I was asked, as his
scribe, to write down or delete sometimes verb-less phrases
and exclamatory lists of nouns, or references inserted in the

main text, endless appositions, and bracketed quotations. I

remember, on that particular summer morning, before the
arrival of the TV crew, feeling very tired and confused,
thinking I should tidy up the text, only to be told: "I asked you
to write that phrase, with no verb, why are you adding verbs?
Im an old man dictating to you. Stay awake, lazy bones!"

The cameraman was very observant, as you will see in a

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

Video Clip Transcript

The clip can also be watched on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI8-er2bTqo

YouTube:

Editorial note: this YouTube videoclip contains a different

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

STATEMENT by Petre uea, to be communicated to Emil

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

1.) Modern research employs three methodological terms:

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

Newton again, when asked what gravity is, replied: "God". I

think this is recorded in his Principia.
2.) Another source of my disquiet has to do with the legend
around me, that I have been unable to justify.

3.) Then, Emil Ciorans friendly but inflated picture of me also

causes me unease. Let me refer here to a point that he himself
makes, in his portrait of Joseph de Maistre, who disturbed the
Pope by over-fulsome praise. One can assassinate, observes
Cioran, by enthusiasm. Christian dogma enables me to live on
what Blaga calls the "horizon of mystery". Elsewhere I have
written that the dogma is a "revealed mystery" (Lalande).
Mystery is all that can free us from the anxieties arising from
personal boundedness, cosmic and social captivity, and the
prospect of infinity and death. Christianity, the religion of
freedom, teaches that freedom needs to be conceived
dogmatically. This is no paradox, since freedom is experienced
here through ritual in church, and beyond, for the redeemed, it
is eternal. In church and in the world to come, the dogma
reigns: "Enslave me, Lord, that I may feel free" (Imitatio
Christi).
As for Cioran, I have this to say: he sees himself as "the oncall sceptic of a world in decline", living in conflict with St.
Paul and the Divine Absolute. He says in his book, On the
Heights of Despair, recently re-published: "However much I

might have struggled in this world, and however much I might

have separated myself from it, the distance between it and
myself has simply made it more open to me. Although I can
find no meaning in this world no objective meaning, no
transcendent end-point revealing the direction in which the
world is evolving and the goal of the universe , the multiform variety of existence has nevertheless been for me a
source of eternal delight and sadness". This calls to mind the
two worlds the transitory visible world, and the eternal
invisible world of St. Paul, with whom Cioran takes issue.
Transcendence, as referred to in this text, defines the meaning
of Ciorans existence in the universe, whether he wishes it or
not. This passage leads me to see Emil Cioran, in the twilight
of his existence, as reconciled with himself. The interplay of
the two Pauline worlds leads him to salvation, since the
meaning of his existence is determined by the Divine
Absolute, once free of the pessimism and anxieties of this
world. I believe that my great friend Emil Cioran will find
redemption in setting aside both his disagreement with St.
Paul, and his unfinished quarrel with Divinity, subordinating
himself to the Divine Absolute.

Another thing in relation to Cioran: there is no intellectual

worthy of that name, who does not experience Ciorans
metaphysical disquiet, but not every true intellectual has his
total sincerity. The whole of human existence is in fact a
continual play of dialectics (to employ a much abused word). I

have a request for Cioran: I ask him not to present me in such

inflated terms, because this exaggeration, coming from
someone of his stature, prompts within my soul a painful sense
of un-fulfilment. This is the fruit of the concrete and the ideal
ego. For the rest, please ask me any questions and I will try to
give an appropriate answer.

[End of Videoclip transcript. The Statement was recorded on

paper by Alexandru Popescu-Prahovara on June 4th, 1990].

[note 2: Traian Crian, former Greek-Catholic priest from the

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

Reflections on the video clip with reference to the light of

Tabor

Having just watched this with you, I am moved again to see on

screen the moment which, retrospectively, I recognize as a rite
of initiation when uea, as if from his deathbed, asked me to
become a porte-parole, his mouthpiece, to read publicly, in
front of a television crew and virtually in front of the whole
country, his philosophical assessment of his great friend and
the eschatological message he wanted to send him. It was
neither the revolutionary turmoil of the present, nor the
fascinating glamour and turmoil of the past that interested
him: what concerned him was the timeless nature of truth, the
status of mere human achievement (in relation also to his own
"legend"), and the vital importance of a personal relationship
for the salvation of a soul.
It is as if he were saying to Cioran, whom he knew he would
never meet again in the flesh: "You believe in God, as I do. We
dont know how long any of us has left to be in this world.
Dont be stupid, you can lose your life, so stop hating God.
You know He is the God of love, even though you call him the
"mauvais dmiurge". You, like all of us, are on a road. We can
come to salvation even in our final hour." uea was no
theologian, nor was he a scientist, although he had an
intelligent and informed laymans knowledge and respect for
science. In his view, there are two generic and, to some extent,
complementary levels at which human reason may function:

that of the "inquiring" reason, in which the search for

knowledge is initiated by the human mind (when not aware of
its limitations, this form of reason may be susceptible to a
phenomenology of the diabolic); and that of the "acquiring"
reason, in which knowledge is communicated by grace,
through inspiration. It would be reductive to see "acquiring"
and "inquiring" knowledge as merely binary. More accurately,
the way of "inquiring" knowledge might be compared with the
ascetic path, in which creaturely needs can overcome us by
sheer biological force, and the "acquiring" way with the
contemplative path, in which creaturely weakness is
"transfigured" by a new spiritual vision.
Let us turn to the story of Christs Transfiguration to explore
this further. Remember that Jesus took Peter, John, and James
with Him up the mountain. "As He prayed, the appearance of
His face was altered, and His robe became white and
glistening. And behold, two men talked with Him, who were
Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His
death, that He was about to accomplish in Jerusalem" (Luke,
9, 29-31). According to St. Luke, who gives the most
developed account of this incident, Peter and the other
apostles "were heavy with sleep" almost as if they had
found refuge in the creaturely weakness, being overwhelmed
by their own incapacity to absorb and make sense of this
mysterious talk of suffering and death; then suddenly, without
explanation, "they were fully awake" and "saw His glory and
the two men who stood with Him" (Luke, 9, 32). At that

moment, Peter, not comprehending what he was seeing, cried

out: "Let us make three tabernacles" three shrines to
preserve, record, revisit, analyze, immortalize the experience;
privileged to see something beyond his understanding, he leapt
to a proposal, "not knowing what he says", working within the
assumptions of the epistemology he had brought with him up
the mountain, unable to recognize that the vision would
radically alter that epistemology: the response of what we
might call spiritual blundering is typical of the ascetic
inquiring mode of knowledge (Luke, 9, 33).

And it is only now that the full significance of the story

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

The route to true knowledge is not simply that of a long climb

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

Those who are granted what uea calls canonically defined

"revelation" or "acquired knowledge" have an experience of
the personal, transformative understanding of meaning. The
narrative of Christs Transfiguration (M e t a m o r p h o s i s,
in Greek) suggests that, at the very moment of proposing a
rational hypothesis for what has been glimpsed, revelation is
lost to be recovered only when we are overtaken by the

cloud and our lost-ness is annihilated by the synergy of human

ecstatic passivity and divine action.

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

The disciples experience on Tabor was subsequently spoken

about, appearing as a succinct narrative in the Gospels. The
divine injunction to "hear" is not a simple commandment to
refrain from speaking, but relates to the Word made flesh,

realization of truth through human articulation. In theological

terms, the apophatic (negative) way exists in symbiosis with
the cataphatic (positive) way. And all articulation of truth
involving language, whether scientific, philosophical,
theological, or artistic, necessarily has this symbiotic aspect, in
which there is both contradiction, and harmony. The fullness
of "inspired" experience (to use ueas word) cannot be
spoken about, for it is the very condition of a new capacity for
speech, meaning, and knowledge. Yet, through canonically
received text and (to use another key-word of ueas) dogma,
authoritative expression can be given to this power of mystery
to generate knowledge.

The Transfiguration sheds light on ueas understanding of

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

It is the creative tension and symbiotic dynamic between these

different dimensions of spiritual enlightenment that uea

alludes to in his distinction between "inspiration" and

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

Conclusion

Essential to ueas understanding of truth is the belief that

God and divine action within creation are "objectic", i.e., they
exist independently of human powers of observation and/or
verification, in a category beyond "objectivity" (which uea
viewed as merely a different perspectival degree of

"subjectivity"). The light of Tabor is certainly real, but is it

merely "objectively" real? uea maintains that its "objectic"
reality can only be mediated mystically, through the supernatural presence and gift of God. Empirically discernible laws
are themselves governed by laws discernible only through
attentive listening to the Word through whom "all things were
made" (the Nicene Creed).

The Transfiguration, as a historical event in Jesus life, is, for

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

My own relationship with uea models something of the

dynamic of the Transfiguration story. In this sense, it is itself
part of what uea offers as a spiritual teacher rather as the
teachings of the Desert Fathers are often conveyed anecdotally
by disciples rather than by pedagogic elaboration, embodying
the relational and actual epistemology of religious awareness,
as opposed to the abstracted and conceptual epistemology of
empirical science. In this master/disciple relationship, the
teacher becomes, by the grace of God, the Teacher who calls
his chosen disciples upward, on to the mountain, as it were, to

concentrate on the spiritual world, while he himself maintains

an introspective focus on the spiritual reality his vigilant,
neptic, eye full of light and "life more abundant" (cf. John, 10,
10). But, while trying to follow their masters call, the
disciples resources are exhausted. They reach their very
human limitations, after the climb into the rarefied
atmosphere: they become inattentive, careless, they fall short
in their task, only to be redeemed by the Divine grace, in the
confusion, the seeming failure, the confinement of the "cloud".
Having interrupted for a few years my work on uea, I have
now started to write about him again and find that I feel less
prepared to embark on this new journey. Yet perhaps it is in
the "cloud" of my preoccupations as a practising psychiatrist,
professionally committed to the requirements of my medical
vocation, that I may "hear" more precisely the word of truth
entrusted to me in that hospital encounter, nearly thirty years
ago. The work requires ongoing askesis, vigilance similar, I
think, to that described by the Desert Fathers: the absolute
attentiveness of careful observation; but, more importantly, the
recognition, too, that "joy comes in the morning" (Psalm 30,
5). The glory is not in human accuracy, mastery of nature, or
elaboration of contrived explanations, but in the loving,
relational reality that makes it possible even to conceive of
such things. Thanks be to God.

Acknowledgements

Reverend James Ramsay, formerly Anglican Chaplain in

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