The Christmas Tales

This volume offers Eastern Orthodox Christian mystical theology for the Western reader. It has different kinds of spiritual writing, treating the realities of the knowledge that drinks in the realities it knows, wisdom from the timeless desert, living the life of Heaven here on earth, symbols that manifest what they represent, the inner world of spiritualities that is no one's merely private possession, a fairy tale pouring forth a wilder reality, shadow and reality, shadowy treasure on earth and real treasures in Heaven, and the God who became man that men might become god. A quote: The Icon was an Icon the color of sunrise--or was it sunset? Then he saw something he hadn't seen before, even though this was one of his favorite Icons. It was an Icon of the Crucifixion, and he saw Christ at the center with rocks below--obedience in a garden of desolation had answered disobedience in a garden of delights--and beyond the rocks, the Holy City, and beyond the Holy City a sky with bands and whorls of light the color of sunrise. Now he saw for the first time that where Christ's body met the sky there was a band of purest light around it. Christ had a halo that was white at the center and orange and red at the sides--fitting for the Christ who passed through the earth like a flame.