How to read the mystics
In A History of Christian Spirituality, Urban T. Holmes lists five essential questions to bear in mind whenever engaging in spiritual reading—which naturally would include reading the great mystics.
Here are Holmes’s questions, in my words…
- How does the writer describe the experience of spiritual yearning—that sense of the void within, which can only be filled by the Divine?
- What does the writer say about the possibility of mystical union between humanity and the Divine?
- What does the writer say about ethical and moral development, as experienced in the spiritual life?
- What is the writer’s vision of spiritual maturity? What does spiritual maturity look like, and what needs to be done to attain it?
- How does the writer relate his or her mystical experience to the traditions, doctrines, and sacred writings of his or her faith? In other words, what does this writer say about the relationship between mysticism and religion?
