Alexandra Chubachi’s Reviews > Short Trip to the Edge: Where Earth Meets Heaven--A Pilgrimage > Status Update

“All creation is implicated in this phenomenon we call salvation, redemption, and reconciliation”

“For the Orthodox, salvation, or “being saved”, indicates a process rather than a moment. It is a process of being redeemed from separation from God, both now and later...The Orthodox have insisted that salvation belongs to all humankind, not just to members of the Orthodox Church”

“Sometimes I think there are two Orthodoxies (as, perhaps, there are two Christianities)-the mystical faith of those who glimpse how little we know (and are drawn and driven by love) and the cranky faith of those who know everything already (and wish the rest of us would either catch up or disappear.”

No one is ever able to partake (of the holy sacraments) in any state except unworthily; it is our partaking that assists in our worthiness.

The way, it now became clearer to me, was inevitably a slow one, with prayer and stillness becoming only slightly more apprehensible as you go.

“One would watch each of the familiar metaphors-king, father, judge, for example- fail and fall away, revealing a glimpse of appalling immensity far beyond any of the gestures by which we attempt to define God”

“...prayer rather than recitation”

“...the issue has less to do with God’s drawing nigh, and everything to do with the degree of our own apprehension of what is always so: His absolute proximity.”