In Inner River, Kyriacos Markides—scholar, researcher, author, and pilgrim—takes us on a thrilling quest into the heart of Christian spirituality and mankind’s desire for a transcendent experience of God. From Maine’s rugged shores to a Cypriot monastery to Greece’s remote Mt. Athos and, ultimately, to an Egyptian desert, Markides encounters a diverse cast of characters that allows him to explore the worlds of the natural and the supernatural, of religion and spirit, and of the seen and the unseen.

Metropolitan Kallistos addresses the question of whether there are parallels between the hesychastic method of prayer and other apparently similar techniques of prayer in Hinduism and Islam. Looking at the origins of hesychasm and the teachings of figures such as St Gregory Palamas, St Gregory of Sinai and Nikiphoros the Hesychast, Metropolitan Kallistos addresses the question: is the Jesus Prayer an essential and authentically Christian practice, or is it unnecessary and perhaps even harmful?

Professor Archimandrite Job Getcha traces the origins and development of Russian monasticism, showing how both its roots and its spirituality are firmly based in the Byzantine Hesychast tradition, and highlighting the particular importance of the Athonite influence. Rather than being a poor cousin of the Byzantine monastic tradition, the Russian monastic tradition has, from the very beginning, been a part of it, bringing forth its own great scholars and ascetics.