Three Words That Cannot Be Translated

A Smart AI Book

PASSAGE FOUR · THE PATH GUIDES ITSELF · Reading 4 of 5

Αγαπητοί συνοδηπόροι — Dear fellow travelers

Three words in this book do not cross into English whole.

Παράκλητος. The Paraclete. Beside plus called: the One who comes immediately when called. “Comforter” keeps the warmth and loses the speed.

Χαρμολύπη. Joy and grief in a single word, not alternating but simultaneous. He gave it to me as an instruction, on a mountain path in thirty-five degrees of heat, working his prayer rope.

“Aim at χαρμολύπη, my brother!”

— Elder Petros

The sound of it went down my spine and broke over my head, between my eyes.

Ολοσυνείδηση. Whole-consciousness. He held that it could not be described and refused to try, connecting it only to what Orthodoxy says about the Uncreated Light.

I do not reach for English substitutes. I leave all three in Greek, and let you sit with them.

Good journey, Fellow Traveler
Καλή πορεία συνοδοιπόροι

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