Andrew Mayes Diving for Pearls


‘Superficiality is the curse of our age… The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people’. Andrew Mayes quotes Richard Foster from over 30 years ago in presenting an aspiration for deeper living and praying through engagement with seventh century Isaac the Syrian. ‘Diving for Pearls’ picks up on discovery of God and self drawing on the rediscovery of Isaac’s writings in the Bodleian, Oxford and an antiquarian bookshop in Teheran. With his knowledge of Christian spirituality and experience of the Middle East Andrew Mayes writes with excitement about this recent discovery opening up Isaac as a timely spiritual guide bringing to us the depth and never fading newness of God in Christ as inspiration for the future-oriented journey of faith.


It is a refreshing book drawing on Isaac’s maritime, nautical and underwater imagery strongly yoked to Christ’s parable of the ‘the kingdom of heaven as like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it’ (Matthew 13:45). The merchant becomes a diver as this rediscovered Syriac writer explores the spiritual life as less ascent to God and more descent into his ‘everlasting arms’ (Deuteronomy 33:27). Mayes writes: ‘Ascent encourages us to think in terms of hierarchy. The goal is achieving success, spiritual attainment. It also seems to emphasize the place of human effort in the spiritual quest and downplay the role of the divine. The model of descent, rather, leads us towards surrendering, sinking into God, letting go, unlearning…This contrasts with ideas of ascendency and advancement – mastery, conquest of mountains, and yes, prideful achievement. The idea of elevation of soul sounds like superiority. We notice a contrast between gritted determination and exertion required in climbing the mountain of prayer and a gentle sinking into the ocean of grace, as Isaac commends. Will we desire to sink or strive? Cling on or let go?’


This inspirational resource complements the aspirations of Christian spiritual writers through the centuries to ‘look up to the Lord’ (Psalm 34:5) with Isaac’s invitation to ‘let go and let God’ built around a vision of God of the depths summoning us from and to our own depth of soul. ‘As the scripture has said, "Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water' (John 7:37). Building on Christ’s teaching about and provision of the Holy Spirit’s empowerment and leading, Andrew Mayes opens up faith from Isaac as ‘taking the plunge’ in seeking the depth of God’s mercy, ‘like the wideness of the sea’ (Faber) which counters our narrowness as it warms our hearts. The continual reference in the book to the warm blue seas of the Middle East familiar to both Isaac and its author make for an inviting feel in digesting the recently discovered teaching of this holy man. ‘Isaac alerts us to both the ever-present pull of this world, with its lure of attachment and the reality that the Holy Spirit is powerfully at work in our lives – we could say, like a powerful life-giving Gulf Stream drawing into its transformative flow our turbulent waters… He speaks of wandering in a sense of roaming playfully and curiously and inquisitively, seeking God amidst the cloudy waters of prayer: ‘For there is a good kind of wandering and a bad kind of wandering. When you are in prayer, do not seek to be entirely free of mental wandering, which is impossible, but seek to wander following something that is good’’.


‘Diving for Pearls’ is a valuable resource, especially for preachers and spiritual directors. It has questions and prayer exercises for individuals or groups at the end of every chapter. As Isaac writes of the pearl of Jesus Christ forming within us: ‘Let us consider as oysters the prayers upon which the intellect alights, the contemplative insights, divine knowledge, wisdom, joy in spirit… The primary pearl is Jesus Christ himself – a deeper appreciation of him’.


Andrew Mayes  Diving for Pearls Exploring the depths of prayer with Isaac the Syrian

Cistercian Publications 2021 £14.41 ISBN 978 0879071639 184pp

Canon John Twisleton 16 September 2021

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