PHILOKALIA MINISTRIES

Chapter Five The Slow Emptying: Learning to Descend There comes a moment in the city, often when the night has settled like a thin veil over the streets, when the soul feels a quiet pressure drawing it inward. It is not dramatic. It does not arrive with clarity or consolation. It comes almost imperceptibly, like a hand resting on the back of the neck, guiding you into a darkness that is not hostile but unbearably honest. Most turn away from it because the world is too full of

Chapter Three — The City a Desert There is a moment in every ascetical life when one realizes the desert is not a place you go. It is a place that rises within you when God strips away everything that once held you together. The Fathers fled to the wilderness to confront their thoughts. I was drawn into a different kind of wilderness: the ordinary streets of a city, the quiet neighborhoods of suburbia, the silent rooms of a house where responsibilities and solitude coexist in