“Where Heaven Bends Low”

In the East, the doors of the heart are taught to open slowly.

Not with the haste of acquisition

Or the clamor of a world that confuses motion with meaning,

But with the patience of God

Who waits behind the lattice of silence.

There is a liturgy older than speech,

Born before tongues were loosed in Eden.

It is the turning of the soul toward its Source,

The bowing of dust before Fire,

The trembling of clay at the touch of the Potter

Who shapes it again for glory.

Here incense rises like forgotten prayers

Finding again their mother-tongue.

Here light is not merely seen

But inhabited,

As though the soul wore brightness as a garment

And felt its weight like gold.

The beauty of the East is not luxury;

It is the rugged grace of transfiguration,

The beauty that scorches before it consoles,

Teaching the heart to be still enough

To burn without being consumed.

For in the ascetical heart

Fasting is not deprivation

But an unseen feast in the desert.

Silence is not emptiness

But the pregnant pause before God speaks.

Tears are not despair

But the baptism of the hardened earth of the soul.

The monk’s habit is woven of longing,

Threaded with Psalms and sorrow,

Cut in a pattern

No tailor but the Spirit knows.

Yet this path is not for monasteries alone.

Every living room may become a hesychasterion,

Every kitchen a place of offering,

Every whispered Jesus Prayer

A censing of the hidden sanctuary of the heart.

Eastern liturgy does not invite spectators;

It draws the soul into the movement of heaven.

Icons teach the eyes to listen,

Chant instructs the breath to pray,

And the faithful stand

Like trees planted beside living streams,

Rooted in stillness,

Risen in praise.

For here the Church is not a building,

But Eden reopened.

A taste of the world to come

Served in the chalice of the present moment.

And the one who steps inside

Finds that the true journey

Is not from earth to heaven,

But from exile to home,

Where the heart discovers at last

That it has always been

God’s beloved country

And the liturgy its native tongue.