What Makes Us Oriental?

From an historical point of view, there is much to commend the term "oriental" in relationship to the Order. Obviously the Order's origins in the Eastern Church (Syrian Orthodox) has a lot to do with why it is in the name of the Order. More specifically, it designates those forms of Christianity that grew up outside the Roman empire all the way East to China. That brings a whole other viewpoint forward, and a very important one when you think of the cultural significance of its contrast--the Occident.

There is, however, another and in some ways a more significant meaning, and that is the Order's interior orientation to the vertical Orient. In contrast to the geographic orient (the East), this significance points us toward the homeland of Light, the Source at the apex of the vertical axis. We seek this inner orientation (which is what the term "orientation" itself means: oriented towards light).

Vertical oriention means fundamentally that our pathway seeks out light wherever we can find it, and the inner light it receives is not primarily about external realities (though those have their place and light is shed upon them as well), but about seeking to understand the inner dimensions of things--their deep-structural realities. Oriental wisdom, then, taught us by the Spirit (the same Spirit that infused Yeshua), teaches us about the interior of things (essences, qualities, meanings) verses the occidental exteriors concerned primarily about facts, histories, objects, and human agendas. The longing to know the inner axis at the heart of all reality is, I believe, what makes us oriental. -- L. Bauman