“Love’s deepest abyss is her most beautiful form,” so claims Hadewijch of Antwerp, the great medieval Flemish mystic. This strange and alluring idea, shared by many of the apophatic tradition, reflects the sense that the abyssal (sometimes conceived of as a void, a desert, or darkness) is essential to the work of love, and that love can only be known by relinquishing the narrow conception of...
The Christian mystical tradition gives expression to a varied, ambiguous, and shifting understanding of creation. The dialectical tension between kataphatic and apophatic mysticism frames this complex attitude towards creation. On the one hand, mystics regularly affirm the sacramental character of the created world, its capacity to reveal and make present the reality of God. Central to this...
Abstract “Christian Contemplative Thought and Practice in the Contemporary World” describes the growth and development of contemplative and meditative practices within contemporary Christianity, focusing especially on the retrieval of ancient contemplative practices in the contemporary period by Thomas Merton, John Main, and Thomas Keating. It also attends to the varied expressions of Christian...
Contact Douglas E. Christie In Henry David Thoreau’s account of his journey up Mt. Ktaadn, originally published in The Maine Woods in 1864, there is a particular moment when the usual categories for describing experience seem to fall short, when language itself strains under the weight of trying to encompass the experience: “What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries!—Think...