Prosaic, sometimes dull, without undue drama: similarities between the monasticism of the Christian East and Old High piety?
When we consider the characteristics of Old High piety (sober, rational but not rationalistic, modest, reserved), its consistent critique of Enthusiasm, and its suspicion of excessive asceticism, the monastic spirituality of the Christian East may not, to say the least, be the first tradition we think in terms of identifying similarities. However, reading Rowan Williams' recent little book on this spirituality - Passions of the Soul - has led me to wonder about such similarities. Consider, for example, Williams' account of how the early Eastern monastic classics responded to the reality of temptation in the Christian life: In the long run, the pattern of integrated, restored human life that we're called to and drawn to in the labour of prayer and service and love is in all sorts of ways - quite appropriately - a prosaic matter, a matter of doing the next thing (p.16). This would function very well as an Old High description of what the Christian life is like: not a matter