The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality
The spiritual traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church are all but  unknown to most Christians in the West, who often think of Christianity as split into two  camps: Bible-based Protestantism and sacramental Catholicism. Yet inThe Mountain of  Silence, sociologist Kyriacos Markides suggests that Orthodox spirituality offers rich  resources for Western Christians to integrate the head and the heart, and to regain a more  expansive view of Christian life. The book combines elements of memoir,  travelogue, and history in a single story. Markides journeys to a cluster of monasteries  on Mount Athos, an isolated peninsula in northern Greece and one of the holiest sites in the  Orthodox tradition. He also visits the troubled island of Cyprus, largely occupied by Turkey since 1974, and makes the acquaintance of a monk named Father Maximos, who has established churches, convents, and monasteries. Markides, a  native Cypriot, tells the tale of this journey in a tone that's loose and light, with many excursions on Church history and Greek and Turkish politics. But despite the easygoing tone, the importance of this book is potentially immense.The Mountain of Silenceintroduces a world that is entirely new to many  Western readers, and unveils a Christian tradition that reveres the mystical approach to God as much as the rational, a tradition that Markides says "may have the potential to inject Christianity with the  new vitality that it so desperately needs."--Michael Joseph Gross--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.