Vincent Rossi is Director of Education for the American Exarchate of the Jerusalem Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church. Rossi's talk, Presence, Participation, Performance, is a brief but far-ranging summary of Hesychast thought and practice. The clip that we are offering of this talk/essay (which must be read to be fully appreciated) gives some key definitions of terms and demonstrates the great profundity of the way of the Hesychasts. Although Rossi does not often draw explicit parallels between Hesychasm and Sufism, many will occur to the careful listener or reader.

Perhaps the most obvious parallel is the insistence upon the practice of invocation as the way to the heart. For Hesychasts, says Rossi, the Prayer of Jesus is the necessary means to achieving hesychia, the "abyss of divine intellections" that permits the practitioner to bridge the "infinite gulf between the Uncreated and the Created." Students and practitioners of Sufism should find some deep resonances with the way to God described by Rossi.