Preparing the Mind for Prayer: The Wanderer, Hesychasm and Theosis

Abstract

This article reads the celebrated Old English lament The Wanderer within the context of the early monastic tradition of hesychasm, the harnessing of meandering thoughts prior to approaching the stillness of prayer, and the doctrine of theosis, the belief that humankind can share in the divine nature of God through grace. In identifying new analogues and possible sources in scriptural and patristic writings, it suggests how the poem might have been understood within an Anglo-Saxon monastic milieu.