“Our unspoken, silent assumptions are the most powerful,” Frederica says. They lurk in the shadows,
subverting conscious thought. But,
“We are fully known, even in the depths we ourselves cannot see, cannot bear to
see.”
Metanoia is a Greek word meaning change (meta) your mind
(noia). “Fighting the forces that
lead us away from God requires disciplines that involve our whole selves…. Ancient
prayers saturate the whole person and heal a distorted vision of self and
world.”
She explains the “nous” is the eye of the soul; our primary
awareness or basic consciousness – or at a minimum level of definition, the conscience. “The task of the Christian is to train
the nous to dwell in the heart – to ‘capture the nous in the heart’ or ‘bring
the mind down into the heart.’”
This is a major shift, a matter requiring mercy. “The problem is not in God’s
willingness to have mercy, but in our forgetting we need it. We keep lapsing into ideas of
self-sufficiency, or get impressed with our niceness, and so we lose our humility. Asking for mercy reminds us we are
still poor and needy, and fall short of the glory of God. Those who do not ask
do not receive, because they don’t know their own need.”
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