Abstract: McGinn’s Modern Mystics serves as a coda to his multivolume history, The Presence of God , but also stands as an introduction of sorts. It situates that historical project among the mystical authors of the twentieth century, but more importantly it begins to address the deeper connection between history and theology manifested in McGinn’s scholarship. To see this, one can attend to...
SpiritusSeptember 1, 2023Mark S. Burrows2 citations
"What Deepens the Deep for Us":Poetry, Contemplation, and the Art of Reading Mark S. Burrows (bio) The sole archives of the divine are poems, and an address to the god, more than any other kind, requires a conversion in language or an entirely different attitude within it. —Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe This essay undertakes the task of unfolding Lacoue-Labarthe's bold claim,1 exploring poetry as a...
Reviewed by: Modern Mystics: An Introduction by Bernard McGinn Glenn Young (bio) Modern Mystics: An Introduction. By Bernard McGinn. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2023. viii + 340 pp. $49.95. I admit to having felt some disappointment when Bernard McGinn announced that the seventh volume of his landmark study of Western Christian mysticism—The Presence of God—would bring the series to...
Spirit, Spirituality, and Contemplative Method Mary Frohlich, RSCJ (bio) The goal of the “Evolving Methodologies in the Study of Spirituality” conference, held at the Antonianum in Rome in September 2019, was for spirituality scholars from both Latin (that is, Italian or Spanish speakers) and English-speaking worlds to converse and to learn from one another. In view of that goal, I begin by...
Reviewed by: The Soul of Higher Education: Contemplative Pedagogy, Research, and Institutional Life for the Twenty-First Century ed. by Margaret Benefiel and Bo Karen Lee Anita Houck (bio) The Soul of Higher Education: Contemplative Pedagogy, Research, and Institutional Life for the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Margaret Benefiel and Bo Karen Lee. A volume in Advances in Workplace...
Reviewed by: Introducing Contemplative Studies by Louis Komjathy, and: Contemplative Literature: A Comparative Sourcebook on Meditation and Contemplative Prayer ed. by Louis Komjathy Margaret Benefiel (bio) and Jessie Smith (bio) Introducing Contemplative Studies. By Louis Komjathy. Hoboken: Wiley, 2018. 410 pp. $39.95 Contemplative Literature: A Comparative Sourcebook on Meditation and...
Reviewed by: The Thirst of God: Contemplating God's Love with Three Women Mystics by Wendy Farley Shannon M. McAlister (bio) The Thirst of God: Contemplating God's Love with Three Women Mystics. By Wendy Farley. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015. 182 pp. $25.00 In The Thirst of God, Wendy Farley introduces "frustrated Christians" to the works of Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite...
Spiritus2016Bernadette Flanagan, Michael B. O'Sullivan2 citations
Spirituality in Contemporary Ireland:Manifesting Indigeneity1 Bernadette Flanagan (bio) and Michael O’Sullivan (bio) The focus of this essay is an examination of a few of the contours of the spiritual search in contemporary Ireland, a society where the form and structures of a long dominant Roman Catholic tradition are becoming less influential and are being resisted, opposed, or rejected by...
Reviewed by: African American Female Mysticism: Nineteen-Century Religious Activism by Joy R Barbara A. Holmes (bio) African American Female Mysticism: Nineteen-Century Religious Activism. By Joy R. Bostic, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 179pp. $100.00 Joy Bostic’s work offers unique insights into the lives of black women mystics of the nineteenth century. When most of us hear the word...
On the Emerging Field of Contemplative Studies and Its Relationship to the Study of Spirituality Jacob Holsinger Sherman (bio) Scholars working within the fields of Christian Spirituality, spirituality studies, the study of mysticism, and other related areas may have noted the appearance of a cognate field, emerging largely over the last decade or so, now commonly identified as Contemplative...
The Colorful Depictions of God in Mystical Consciousness1 Paul C. Martin (bio) Introduction In 1960 Walter T. Stace suggestively wrote that “[t]here are underground connections between the mystical and the aesthetic (whether in poetry or in other forms of art) which are at present obscure and unexplained.”2 Since that statement there has been tremendous work done by commentators and scholars on...
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...
SpiritusMarch 1, 2012Lawrence S. Cunningham1 citation
Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism: An Appreciation Lawrence Cunningham (bio) Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) published her best-known work Mysticism in 1911. It has never gone out of print.1 In fact, Bernard McGinn has judged that it is one of the best-known books on Christian mysticism ever to be published in the English language.2 The year 2011 marked the one hundredth anniversary of its publication;...
Reviewed by: Modernists and Mystics Brenna Moore (bio) Modernists and Mystics. Edited by C.J.T. Talar. Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009. 152 pp. $44.95 The term "Catholic modernist" typically conjures images of turn-of-the century marginalized pariahs, fixated on the Church's relationship with critical exegesis, philosophy, or science. C. J.T. Talar challenges...
Reviewed by: The Participatory Turn: Thinking Beyond the Philosophies of Consciousness and Constructivism in the Study of Religion Ann Gleig (bio) The Participatory Turn: Thinking Beyond the Philosophies of Consciousness and Constructivism in the Study of Religion. Edited by Jorge N. Ferrer and Jacob H. Sherman. Albany: SUNY Press, 2008. 396 pp. $34.95 If we recognize the radically creative...
Lost—Found Douglas Burton-Christie St. Augustine famously described the soul's ultimate meeting with God as a homecoming, a recognition of something known and familiar that has been lost. His uncanny sense of knowing what he was looking for even in the midst of the most intense experience of dislocation is part of what gives the Confessions such evocative power. It captures the strange but...
SpiritusMarch 1, 2005Beverly J. Lanzetta3 citations
Accounts within the Christian mystical tradition of moral behavior in the lives of the great mystics are manifold, among them the suffering gentleness of Francis who tended to beggars, lepers, and the crippled; the speculative incisiveness of Meister Eckhart who demarcated the importance of helping those in need from the practice of mystical piety; and the verdant voice of Catherine of Siena...