Our Order
We are an Order of women and men devoted to a path of contemplative wisdom and practice.
Who We Are
Spiritual pilgrims the world over who find themselves searching for transformation are forming communities of support that help to sustain their personal contemplative practices and build networks of awakening.
One such community is the Oriental Orthodox Order in the West, which sees itself to be in solidarity with other contemplative bodies not only in the Christian world, but also in other of the world’s Sacred Traditions who support and sustain the transformational process.
Oriental Orthodoxy is a visionary tradition, coming from the original wisdom and teachings of Yeshua spreading East. These were brought to the West and transmitted in the last two centuries. The Order’s work has been to receive and make this original, “lost Christianity” available to contemporary seekers in new ways.
At the beginning of the Christian faith, the teachings of Jesus moved out in many different directions from their central homeland in Palestine. There were cultural manifestations that went East into the Semitic world, and West into Greco-Roman society of the Mediterranean Basin. Those that went West (Occidental Christianity) are the ones we know best today. Those that continued on in the East (Oriental Christianity), while lesser known, maintained an important early spirit of the Christian faith. Western Christianity was characterized by conformity of belief and uniformity of practice under the Roman Empire. Those forms that prospered in the East were more concerned with a vision of hope and a generosity of spirit that sustained a vibrant sense of the original message of Jesus. This form of Christian life and practice is being recalled and recovered today in the West complementing and balancing our more familiar understanding of the Christian faith. That restoration is something we call “Oriental Orthodoxy.”