Praying in the Cellar
Praying in the Cellar: A Guide to Facing Your Fears and Finding God
(A Voice from the Monastery Series)
By Anthony DeLisi, O.C.S.O.
Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2005
Review by Carl McColman
Okay, first a disclaimer: not only have I known Fr. Anthony for over a year now, but I work for him (he’s one of the monks in charge of the Abbey Store, where for my day job I manage the website and do marketing) and he is also a spiritual father of mine, since I have (as of April 1) become a novice of the Lay Cistercians at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit. So I suppose it is with fear and trembling that I dare to review this book (I guess if I didn’t like it, I would have just kept my mouth shut). But thankfully, I do like this book — on several levels. For starters, it is simply a pleasant, enjoyable read. But on another level it’s an unusual and distinctive glimpse into the life of prayer as experienced by an American Trappist monk, while it also functions as a singular memoir of a distinctive life of faith.
The title is a take-off of Matthew 6:6: “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (NIV) Father Anthony discerns that the room into which we must go to pray in secret exists, in fact, within our own heart and soul: and is often a “room” of the memory. So in his case, he retreats, courtesy of his mind’s eye, into the cellar of the home where he grew up, in order to cultivate his life of prayer. And so the book becomes a lyrical dialogue between themes and passages from scripture, vivid memories from throughout Fr. Anthony’s life, and his present-day prayer (most often recorded during the early morning silent time in the Abbey church of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit). In this book, he does not attempt to explicitly teach the reader how to pray (although a brief epilogue offers a few observations on the nature of contemplative prayer); rather, he teaches by example, inviting the reader to “listen in” on his own rich inner colloquy with the Lord.
What I found most memorable about this book had nothing to do with the kind of dry (and all too often insufferable) didacticism that marks most books on prayer. Instead, I came away with an appreciation for Sicilian cooking (although I think I’ll pass on the homemade sausage), a warm appreciation of a close-knit immigrant family during the first decades of the twentieth century, and an awe-inspiring sense of the challenges facing both monks and laypersons in Africa today. All of this comes courtesy of Fr. Anthony’s homespun remembrances of significant (or not-so-significant) moments throughout a life fully lived. The horror of a public Nigerian execution, the poignancy of receiving a “Dear John” letter from a college sweetheart, and the fear engendered when a family member ran afoul of the Mafia all come vividly alive in the unadorned prose of this book. But what’s important is how each of these memories becomes yet another jumping-off place for Fr. Anthony’s continual life of prayer. As a result, Praying in the Cellar quietly leads the reader to grasp one of the most important lessons that Christian spirituality can teach us: that a “life of prayer” is just as much about life as it is about prayer.
Rounding out the book are several pages of discussion questions that individuals can use for journaling about their prayer life, or a small prayer group could use for shared reflection.
Neo-Cenobitic
I’m not sure if I know what the “new monasticism” is, but this weekend event sure sounds interesting:
Inhabiting the Church: New Monasticism and God’s Revolution
If nothing else, the website for this event lists two books that sound interesting: Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution and an anthology called School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism.
A Sign of the Apocalypse???
Modern day likenesses indeed! These nine figurines depict Jesus, always sporting his fashionable crown of thorns, in these ultra-contemporary manners:
- Playing Soccer
- Playing Football
- On a Skateboard
- On a bucking bull (shown above)
- Riding a motorcycle
- Surfing
- Rock climbing
- As a homeless person holding a sign “Will work 4 food”
- Dressed in army camouflage and holding a dove
You can visit their website and see all nine of these designs in excruciating detail. Just surf on over to www.wearefishermen.com.
Soularizing the Bahamas
Looking for a good excuse to go to the Bahamas? Now you no longer have to pretend it’s just because you want to visit Anna Nicole Smith’s gravesite. Instead, you could be participating in this event that looks like it will be just too much fun for its own good:
SOULarize (A Learning Party) — October 25-27, 2007
Nassau, Bahamas
Join TheOOZE‘s global community for a learning experience that will truly be one of a kind … Soularize 2007 is a yearlong online collaborative learning journey which will culminate with a three day learning party, hosted by Spencer Burke, in Nassau, Bahamas, October 25-27, 2007, where you will hear from and interact with N. T. Wright, Brennan Manning, Rita Nakashima Brock, and Fr. Richard Rohr on the future of the Church.
Soularize 2007 offers a learning environment where you can wrestle with the issues your church is facing today by interacting with the leading voices of today and tomorrow. Open your eyes to see new ideas from unexpected places and people. Share your story, learn from others and celebrate this transitional time in the life of the Church.
Come and lend your voice, your experience, and your dreams as we explore the Evolving Church – rethinking and reinvent what the Church could be in years ahead.
Thanks to Mike Morrell of Sites Unseen for bringing this one to my attention.
Rosaries of Divine Union
All too often in contemporary Catholicism, the “rosary crowd” and the “centering prayer crowd” inhabit opposite ends of the theological spectrum. So I was happy to find this site that celebrates the contemplative dimension of using the rosary — bringing the kataphatic and apophatic dimensions of spiritual practice together.
Rosaries of Divine Union: The Contemplative Dimension of Prayer
On the website you will find a variety of different tools to use with the rosary, integrating a wide array of devotional prayers and litanies from both the eastern and western churches. For example, the “Rosary of St. Francis” integrates the “Canticle of the Sun” with other Franciscan prayers into the ordinary round of the Hail Mary and the Our Father. On this page you’ll also find the “Rosary of the Archangels,” “Rosary of Psalms,” and the “Rosary of the Living Parables,” among others. Quotations from mystics and contemplatives ancient and modern (from Mechthild of Magdeburg and Teresa of Avila to Thomas Keating) dance through the site as well. You can access all these goodies directly from the website, or download a 129-page PDF book filled with all these devotional resources that will keep your beads clicking for months to come.
Thomas Merton’s Newest Titles…
It seems as if Thomas Merton has become the Jimi Hendrix of Christian mystics. After Hendrix’s death, the record labels went into a tizzy as they set about to release (and re-release) just about any Hendrix recording, regardless of its quality. Likewise, almost forty years after Merton’s death, the books are still coming out thick and fast, featuring both recycled material as well as the occasional “never-before-published” gem. Fortunately, Merton’s life and creativity were far less mercurial than Hendrix’s, so at least one can take comfort that all these new releases from his oeuvre will not disappoint by their failure to live up to Merton standards. Indeed, based on what I’ve seen so far, the following three books (all released within the last six months) are all worth owning…
- Cold War Letters is probably the most significant of the new Merton titles. It gathers together a collection of letters Merton wrote during the height of the Cold War, about the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which his prophetic views on war and peace are clearly articulated. Merton was struggling with censorship at the time, and had even been ordered not to write on matters concerning war and peace. Hence, the private nature of these letters, at least at the time of their writing. It’s a sad commentary on our world that now, as they finally are published nearly half a century later, their message is as urgent and timely as ever.
- Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing is one of countless thematic anthologies culled from Merton’s previously published work that seem to be popping into existence these days. In recent years titles have been published gathering together Merton’s writings on Advent, Lent, Nature, and now, Writing. Well, I suppose I have a built on weakness for this title. But it seems to me that anyone who is interested in the balance between writing-as-creative-expression and the life of prayer would find numerous nuggets of wisdom in this anthology.
- A Book of Hours is a lovely, gift-quality hardback that gathers devotional selections from Merton’s work and arranges them into a sort of “daily office,” with four prayer times for each day of the week: dawn, day, dusk, and dark. A bit contrived, maybe, but if nothing else it’s a nice tool for allowing Merton’s writing to function as a tool for nurturing your prayer life.
I hope to eventually post more in-depth reviews of each of these. But for now, follow the links and buy your own copies.
Into Great Silence (continued)
Maria of the Spiritual Birdwatching blog posted this review of Into Great Silence. And from her post I found this review by Benedicta Cipolla.
I don’t think I’ve been this excited about an upcoming movie since The Return of the King.
Raimon Panikkar, Richard of St. Victor, and Ken Wilber
Here’s a sweet little quote from interreligious theologian Raimon Panikkar’s newest book, The Experience of God: Icons of the Mystery:
Without purity of heart, not only can one not “see” God, but it is equally impossible to have any idea of what is involved in doing so. Without the silence of the intellect and the will, without the silence of the senses, without the openness of what some call “the third eye” (spoken of not only by Tibetans but also by the disciples of Richard of Saint Victor), it is not possible to approach the sphere in which the word God can have a meaning. According to Richard of Saint Victor, there exist three eyes: the occulus carnis, the occulus rationis, and the occulus fidei (the eye of the body, the eye of reason, and the eye of faith). The “third eye” is the organ of the faculty that distinguishes us from other living beings by giving us access to a reality that transcends, without denying, that which captures the intelligence and the senses.
Immediately this calls to mind Wilber’s theory of the “nested holarchy” (holarchy basically means a non-oppressive heirarchy) of the cosmos: from the physiosphere, the biosphere emerges; from the biosphere, the noosphere emerges; from the noosphere, the theosphere emerges. From matter emerges life; from life emerges mind; from mind emerges spirit. And the three eyes are the means by which consciousness apprehends each of these emergents: the occulus carnis sees within the biosphere; the occulus rationis sees within the noosphere; and the occulus fidei sees within the theosphere. Each “sphere” can only be observed by its appropriate eye; so it is useless to “look for God” using only the eyes of the body or of the intellect. Kind of gives a whole new shade of understanding to the notion of “seeing is believing.”
Into Great Silence
Here’s a motion picture I want to go see — Into Great Silence, a documentary about the Carthusians, contemplative monks whose lives are profoundly silent and mostly solitary. Go to the website and read the description, it sounds like the director truly respects the nuances of the contemplative life — and captured it, at least as best as can be done given the limitations of film. Watch the trailer.
It will be playing in Atlanta at the Tara Theatre starting April 27. Anyone from around here up for a group outing?
John Cassian on Prayer
I’m about 2/3 of the way through the Paulist Press abridged edition of John Cassian’s Conferences — and what a wonderful book it is. Conference 10, which I began this morning, treats the subject of prayer, and reveals that Cassian was not only a true contemplative, but a gifted teacher as well. Conference 10 is often cited as a source for Centering Prayer. Fr. Anthony DeLisi at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit loves to point out that this is a bit of a misinterpretation of Cassian, for he does not advocate a sacred word or mantra (which is the heart of Centering prayer), but rather the repetition of a specific Bible verse, similar to what would later develop in the eastern church as the Jesus Prayer. The verse in question comes from the Psalms; in most modern translations it is verse 70:2, but in the Douay-Rheims Bible it is Psalm 69:2:
O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me.
This is the verse that the monks begin their vigil with, every morning at 4 AM. So there’s a way in which Cassian is honored at the start of every monastic day.
Here’s a taste of Cassian’s wisdom for you:
Then there will be accomplished in us what our Savior prayed for when, speaking to His Father about His disciples, He said: ‘So that the love you have for me may be in them, and they in us’ (Jn 7:26). … The perfect love with which God ‘first loved us’ (1 Jn 4:10) will come into our hearts, for our faith tells us that this prayer of our Savior will not be in vain. And these will be the signs of God being all that we love and all that we want. He will be all that we are zealous for, all that we strive for. He will be all that we think about, all our living, all that we talk about, our very breath. … As God loves us with a love that is true and pure, a love that never breaks, we too will be joined to Him in a never-ending unshakable love, and it will be such a union that our breathing and thinking and our talking will be ‘God.’ And we will come at last to that objective … the goal which the Lord prayed to be fulfilled in us: ‘That they may all be one as we are one, as I am in them and you in me so that they are utterly one’ (Jn 17:22-23). ‘Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am’ (Jn 17:24).
Just a few new books that look tasty…
Okay, I haven’t read any of these — at least, not yet. But they look interesting, and so here’s your chance to get to them before I do…
- Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
- Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — and Doesn’t by Stephen Prothero
- Failing America’s Faithful: How Today’s Churches Are Mixing God with Politics and Losing Their Way by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
- Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion (The Spiritual Memoir of a Twenty-First Century Christian) by Sara Miles
Quote for the Day
“Prayer is not perfect when the monk is conscious of himself and of the fact that he is actually praying.”
— Attributed to St. Antony by John Cassion in Conferences
The New Jerusalem Bible: Saints Devotional Edition
The New Jerusalem Bible: Saints Devotional Edition
Introduction, Selections, and Commentary by Bert Ghezzi
General Editor, Henry Wansbrough
New York: Doubleday, 2002
Review by Carl McColman
Selecting a Bible for personal use is no easy task. On the one hand, any intellectually honest student of scripture will quickly recognize the need to select a Bible that is annotated — such as The Catholic Study Bible or the New Oxford Annotated Bible — in order to read the text intelligently. Unless one happens to be a Bible scholar, the average layperson simply lacks the cultural, historical and theological knowledge to unravel the many mysterious knots presented within the Biblical text.
As wonderful as annotated Bibles are, however, they betray a weakness of their own. It is one thing to study the Bible; another matter altogether to pray it. Those who seek to integrate a mystical or contemplative dimension to their Christian walk need to integrate the Benedictine practice of lectio divina (“divine reading”) into their spiritual practice — but lectio stands at odds with the cognitive exercise of Bible study. With lectio, one reads not for information, but simply for formation. In other words, lectio is a slow, reflective, meditative practice of allowing the text to read us as much as we seek to read it. It is a tool for encountering God (or, rather, opening ourselves up for God to encounter us) through the devotional exercise of reading the Bible. Obviously, for such a practice, the thousands of footnotes and annotations in a study Bible serve only as intellectual distractions, cognitive seductions that can all too easily lead us away from the purpose of lectio divina.
The solution, of course, is to own at least two Bibles: an annotated edition for the more academic pursuit of Bible study, and one without annotations for spiritual reading. In recent years, the evangelical world has responded to this marketing opportunity by producing all sorts of Bibles with the word “devotional” in their title: when I searched Amazon this morning, I found over two thousand entries with both the words “Devotional” and “Bible” in them! Sadly, though, many of these so-called devotional Bibles are often little more than “study-Bible-lite” editions: still crowded full of annotations, footnotes, and other “helps.” Maybe that kind of format can help some forms of devotion, but for the contemplative pursuit of lectio divina, it just doesn’t pass muster.
Well, forget about all the other devotional Bibles. Thankfully, one towers above all the rest and is ideal not only for lectio divina, but even as a tool for deepening your knowledge of Christian mysticism! The New Jerusalem Bible: Saints Devotional Edition combines what is arguably the most beautiful (while still scholarly) modern English translation of the Bible with two hundred excerpts from the writings of saints (and mystics). Do the math: 200 devotional sidebars in a 1600-page Bible means that the text of the scripture is only “interrupted” by the supplemental devotional text about every eight pages or so. So for the most part, what you get in this Bible is, well, the Bible — with only the sparse, textual footnotes that are part of this particular translation. But when you do get a devotional “help,” it’s not something that was cobbled together by a junior editor at Zondervan Publishing; it’s a poetic and spiritually-nourishing quotation from the likes of Gregory the Great, Catherine of Siena, Bernard of Clairvaux, John Ruysbroeck and even Julian of Norwich. Each excerpt is tied in with a specific verse — for example, Julian’s “glad and merry” vision of the wound in Christ’s side is linked to John 19:34: “One of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance; and immediately there came out blood and water;” alongside Song of Songs 1:4 (“Draw me in your footsteps”) you’ll find Thérèse of Lisieux’s meditation on how Christ draws us to him. The excerpts from the saints are wonderful enough that they would stand alone in their own book as an anthology of mystical scripture meditations; how wonderful it is to have these nuggets of wisdom interspersed in a beautifully bound and typeset edition of the Bible. The book also features two 16-page sections called “The Saints on Scriptures” with more in-depth quotations from the saints and the mystics on twenty themes, such as “The Benefits of Meditating on Scripture” and “A Method of Continual Prayer.” Among the indexes are a biographical list of all the saints whose work is featured in this Bible, and a table of key scriptural themes.
The New Jerusalem Bible: Saints Devotional Edition is bound in a pictorial hardcover with dustjacket. It’s a beautiful edition of a wonderful translation with spiritually nourishing supplemental text. Get it. And read it — slowly.
John Cassian’s Three Renunciations
As a text written for monks, John Cassian’s Conferences often feels a bit harsh if not extreme to me, as a secular reader here in the twentieth century. But even so, there are still surprisingly relevant treasures hidden within this 1600-year-old text. The third conference, called The Three Renunciations, includes this tantalizing insight, in which Cassian considers three renunciations essential to the vocation of a monk: to illustrate, he quotes Genesis 12:1′s description of Abraham’s renunciations as he seeks to live into his calling:
‘Come away from your native land and from your family and from the house of your father.’
Cassian sees “native land” as symbolic of renouncing worldly wealth, while “family” suggests renouncing identity and “house of your father” implies renouncing “all worldly memory arising before our eyes.”
But I see another way of understanding these three renunciations: in light of Ken Wilber’s theories of the evolution of consciousness. In terms of moral development, Wilber speaks of consciousness moving from egocentric (“it’s all about me”) to ethnocentric (“my tribe is good, all others are evil”) to worldcentric (universal care and compassion). Ultimately, as consciousness traverses into transpersonal realms, even worldcentric consciousness is transcended. Now, the point is not so much that we renounce early modes of consciousness as we evolve, but it is important that we differentiate from an earlier stage in order to identify with a higher/later stage. Perhaps Cassian’s renunciations are not unlike what a psychologically savvy spiritual guide would mean today when talking about differentiation. And these three differentiations are indeed important: to transcend the egocentric (leaving behind the self-centered will to power), and then transcend the ethnocentric (leaving behind identification with the tribe), and ultimately even leaving behind the world-centric (disidentifying with the manifest realm in order to embrace the transpersonal dimensions). And this seems mighty similar to Cassian’s three renunciations of worldly wealth (the ego’s acquisitiveness), family and identity (the ethnocentric self) and finally even the “house of the father” — or the manifest realm itself.
111 Mystics Update
I fear that I have been remiss in keeping my blog up-to-date in regard to my 111 Mystics Project.
If you’re new to me and my blog, “111 Mystics” refers to a reading list I began about two and a half years ago. Originally it consisted of only seventy-seven mystics, but I’ve added to it a couple of times until it reached its current form. The idea was basically to create a reading list to help me systematically study and prayerfully read the great western mystics. Meanwhile, I intended to use this reading experience as blog-fodder; originally I created a LiveJournal blog exclusively for these posts (I am in the process of archiving all of those old LJ posts on this blog, but if you want to see them in their original habitat, go here). The last mystic I wrote about to any extent was Pseudo-Macarius; since then I have read Augustine and have just recently begun John Cassian. Coming soon: Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius, St. Benedict…
Creating the mystical bibliography for this blog/website has rejuvenated my interest in the 111 Mystics, so I hope to begin blogging about them again. I’m not going to bother revisiting ol’ Augustine; I’ll just pick up where I am. Stay tuned…
The Countdown Begins…
So what do I do when I’m not reading ancient mystics like John Cassian or the Pseudo-Dionysius, or modern mystics like Ken Wilber or Thomas Merton? Well, for at least between now and about the third week in July, I’ll be reading Harry Potter.
This morning I figured out that there are (counting today) 129 days until the seventh and final Harry Potter adventure is unleashed upon the world. Meanwhile, in volumes one through six there are a total of 162 chapters. See where I’m going? By reading a chapter or two a day, I can re-read all the previous six books and have the complete “story thus far” freshly in mind when I take on the Deathly Hallows come this July 21.
And still have time for reading Evelyn Underhill and Teresa of Avila and Julian of Norwich and all those other interesting mystical types.
No, really, I have a life. Don’t worry about me. My world is filled with loving and caring people, and while I don’t have a lot of money or possessions, I do have all that I need, with just enough wants to keep things interesting. I am without doubt one of the most lucky, blessed and fortunate of people I know. But if you geek out on the mystics as much as I do (which is likely, considering that you’re reading this blog), then maybe you need to toss off a chapter or two out of a kid’s book every night before you go to bed, too…
It’s Official…
I just received my letter requesting my presence for initiation into the novitiate of the Lay-Cistercians of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit, this coming Palm Sunday.
Thus will begin a five year (minimum) spiritual formation process, in which I will be instructed by Cistercian monks and other Lay-Cistercians on how to live according to the Rule of Benedict and the charisms of the Cistercian order, within my state of life as a married layman.
Wow. I’m excited — and a little bit nervous.
Metamorpha
Interested in Spiritual Formation from a primarily evangelical perspective? Then check out Metamorpha.
John Crowder and Carolyn Myss
Christian mysticism has plenty of critics. Rationalists dismiss it as only so much fantasy, while postmodernists and new agers don’t so much criticize contemplative Christianity as simply ignore it in their rush to embrace everything from Asatru to Zen — but if pressed on this issue, I imagine many would simply equate mysticism with the rest of Christianity, denouncing it as sexist, elitist, homophobic, hierarchical, and so forth. But wait, there’s more: students of mysticism have to watch their back from within the Christian community itself. From ultra-traditionalist Catholics to ultra-evangelical Protestants, many Christians denounce mysticism as egocentric, anti-authoritarian, and (worst of all) too accepting of non-Christian faiths and spiritual practices.
Given these realities, imagine how delighted I have been to have two books brought to my attention this week, both of which offer sympathetic and positive presentations of Christian mysticism from authors who belong to communities that are traditionally unsupportive if not downright hostile to mystical Christianity. The first book, published last year, is Miracle Workers, Reformers and the New Mystics, by John Crowder. On the back of the book its subject is listed as “Charismatic Interest.” Indeed! Oftentimes, the most vocal Christian critics of Christian mysticism come from the charismatic community. The author is an Alaska-based itinerant revivalist. Charismatic to its core, the book calls for a revival of “supernatural experiences” within the ordinary Christian life, and profiles numerous wonder-workers throughout the history of the church to bolster its argument that this is something God wants. Among those many miracle workers are figures squarely within the mystical mainstream: Francis of Assisi, Bernard of Clairvaux, Teresa of Avila, George Fox, Brother Lawrence, Jan van Ruysbroeck, and John of the Cross. While I am a bit wary of the book because of its emphasis on supernatural wonders, I was heartened when I flipped through it and came across a passage that describes Christian mystics as:
those who flourished between the 14th and 17th centuries whose lives were marked by deep, contemplative prayer. In fact, the truest definition of a Christian mystic is one who lived a life of deep, extensive prayer. They were not all known for miracles and healings as much as intense prophetic experiences and, primarily, for intimacy with God.
Talk about hitting the nail on the head. On the strength of those three sentences alone, I’m willing to give this book a try. And even if I end up disagreeing with the author’s theology, I remain thrilled that a charismatic is offering such a positive representation of the mystics for today’s Christian reader.
Meanwhile, from just about as opposite the ideological continuum as you can get, comes Carolyn Myss, a well-known medical clairvoyant and darling of the new age world, whose brand-new book is called Entering the Castle: An Inner Path to God and Your Soul. The castle that Myss invites you to enter is Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle — one of the most sublime of western mystical classics, and about as orthodox Catholic/Christian as you can get (Teresa is one of only three women regarded as a “Doctor of the Church,” meaning that her writings carry a teaching authority officially recognized by the Catholic hierarchy). Myss was raised Catholic, and while I don’t think any of her work is necessarily anti-Catholic, as a clairvoyant her message has pretty much stayed beyond the pale of church dogma. While I don’t think Entering the Castle is by any stretch a submission to Catholic orthodoxy, it invites secular spiritual seekers (who, in my experience, are often as resistant to Christian teaching as they are eager to embrace just about any other wisdom tradition) to give the wisdom of mystical Christianity a fair chance. I think she was wise to enlist Ken Wilber to write the foreword; since Wilber’s integral theory has been far more congenial to mystical Christianity than most other writers who, fairly or not, get pigeonholed as “new age” voices.
From my perspective, I am sure that there will be plenty of times in reading both of these books that I will argue with the authors (in different ways, of course). Well, so be it. I’m just delighted that representatives from camps that have tended to either attack or dismiss Christian mysticism are at least engaging with it in a positive manner. As a devotee of contemplative Christianity, I’d so much rather have those who disagree with me be in dialogue with me, rather than just rejecting or ignoring me.
Smokin!
I first heard this one years ago (in a sacristy, of course), but it still makes me chuckle…
It’s Christmas eve, and a drunk wanders in to the Catholic Church right before midnight mass is about to begin. The procession is lined up in the vestibule. The drunk stumbles up to the thurifer, and suddenly his eyes grow wide. Gesticulating wildly, he shouts, “Hey, lady, look out — your purse is on fire!”
Thought for the day
To get to the Emerald City you must leave the poppies behind.
25 + 25 =
My new project, “The Cloud and the Hazelnut,” is not yet a week old but I have finished the first major chunk of it. On the Mystical Library page you’ll find two lists: Christian Mysticism: Twenty-Five Essential Books and World Mysticism: Twenty-Five Essential Books. These combined lists provide fifty books that I believe will give the interested reader an excellent, thorough grounding in historical, traditional Christian mysticism, as well as a nice introductory overview of the other great mystical spiritualites of the world. The first list was really pretty easy for me to draw up; but the “World Mysticism” list was harder, as it contains more material that I have not (yet) read. To draw up the list, I looked at the table of contents for Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions and tried to offer a balanced sampling of books by and about mystics from each of the major faith traditions. The only tradition found in Smith’s work that isn’t represented on my list is Confucianism, which is pretty widely accepted as not really a “mystical” path. In its place, I offered two post-modern, non-sectarian voices: Ken Wilber and Eckhart Tolle.
So there you go. My mysticism bibliography is off and running. Please let me know what you think of it, or if you have any suggestions to improve it. It will be a long, slow work in progress; I do have a day job, after all!
Changes are afoot…
Happy St. David’s Day! I was received into the Anglican Communion 21 years ago today. And even though I eventually wandered off from Canterbury to Rome (by way of Newgrange and Tara), I still hold this day as an anniversary/milestone in my spiritual life.
Now — looking forward — I’ve been pondering how I can give this blog a focus, and I’ve been leaning toward making it a resource center for those who want to read about mysticism or (better yet) read the great mystics themselves. After all, such literary ambition has been a passion of mine for quite some time now… If you’re reading this blog on my website and not via RSS, you’ll notice several changes to the site’s appearance and organization. In terms of the organization, I’ve set up a few additional pages on the website, aside from the blog. Here’s a tour of the house:
- Colophon: My bio, and I’ll expand this page to be about the blog and website as well as about me…
- Annotated Bibliography and A Mystical Library: Still in their embryonic form, eventually these pages will include an extensive bibliography covering a wide range of mysticism-related topics (deification, centering prayer, eucharistic devotion, the English mystics, the Spanish mystics, the Song of Songs, etc. etc.). Sections will also be devoted to non-Christian mysticisms and spiritualities, including Kabbalah/Jewish spirituality, Sufism, Buddhism, Vedanta, Integral Spirituality, and so forth. The mystical library will eventually be an in-depth book list, but without any descriptive content; while the annotated bibliography will be a shorter list that will include a sentence or two of my opinion (eek!) on each book. Each book will be linked to Amazon, making it easy for you to go buy yourself a copy or three (yes, that’s a hint).
- Newsletter: Basically just a link to subscribe to my Yahoo Groups email list.
- Reviews: When I write book reviews, I’ll post them to the blog. But then I’ll archive them on this page to make it easier for you (or people surfing around) to find them.
I might also create a “miscellaneous writings” page which will link back to various non-review writings I’ve done, including my Beliefnet articles and interviews I conducted back when I worked for New Leaf. We’ll see if I get inspired to do so.
The good news, for those of you who don’t want my blog to be just about books and book reviews: my thinking is that, by giving the website as a whole a bibliography-and-book-review focus, that frees the blog to remain about, well, just whatever I feel like writing about. So in other words: I’ll have a focus, but not a constraint. Which is how I think it needs to be.
Finally: you’ll notice my new banner, featuring a graphic shamelessly ripped off from the old Dutton paperback edition of Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism. (think of it as “sampling” an iconic image…). Yes, I’m once again retiring the old House of Breathings moniker, which I’ve used off and on online since 1995. It’s probably not gone for good; let’s just say the concept of the house of breathings (which comes from James Joyce) is lurking around in one of my current writing projects. Meanwhile, I’ve decided to give the site another name that I had in mind for a book proposal, but then I decided it’ll work just fine as a website name: The Cloud and the Hazelnut. Allusions to the English mystics, of course. And finally, to cap off the new and (hopefully) improved website-of-mine, I squandered another twenty bucks and bought my umpteenth domain name: www.bibliomystic.com!!! Follow it if you dare, it links to the basic bibliography page.
Of course, if you’re reading this via syndication, absolutely none of this makes any difference to you. But if that’s the case, come visit my website already!
