Skip to main content

Answering the Contemplative Call -a review

The subtitle of this book is "First steps on the Mystical Path". And that's about where it is pitched -so; does what it says on the tin. In the bumph I got through about it, it was also described as "Open-source mysticism. For everyone". Which is certainly intriguing to someone like me who is with the program on open-source! I think that this latter description is reaching for the sense that the book seems to be trying, in a way, to demystify mysticism. Which I like. And certainly there's been a lot of enjoyment by some of the cachet of the mystical, so it's good to 'open-source' it.

It's very easy to read this book. The chapters are a good length: not too long but long enough for some good stuff to be passed on. The style is accessible; some story, some helpful explanation. I'd be very confident in this book to put it into the hands of someone just starting to look at the Christian traditions of mystical prayer. It gives some basic perspectives in a helpful way and offers a way in to some of the most helpful writings. It also gives really helpful  explanations of some of the more enduring ideas and approaches that have shown up in the history of Christian mystical traditions. There's even some mind-blowing philosophical theology wrapped up in an accessible way. The style is sane with some gentle humour and a pastoral concern for healthy habits and proper support and self-care shines through.

So all in all, if it is possible to have open-source mysticism, this book is probably as good an introduction as we'll get.

For me one of the personal 'likes' is that the discussion about God's 'existence' (and the problems with attributing existence to God as if God were on a par with created things) helped me to make a connection with the ontological argument which I'd never really found plausible before. So not only does it give good, sensible, down-to-earth wholesome and intriguing but it's not lightweight; there's food for thought on several levels. Worth getting, worth giving to people beginning to explore prayer and spirituality more deeply.

  Answering The Contemplative Call: First Steps on the Mystical Path

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Foundation, Empire -and the mission of the church

 I've been watching the TV series 'Foundation'. I read the books about 50 years ago (I know!) but scarcely now remember anything but an outline and some character names. A lot has happened in my life since I read the series and now watch it adapted to television. For one thing, I committed my ways to Christ and have a role which involves official ministry in the church's mission. In the intervening years, a constant companion for me has been concern for ecology, for creation. Latterly this has become a more urgent concern and I have realised that we have collectively run out of time. We are living on borrowed time. In fact, some of us, globally speaking, are not even living on borrowed time. All through my adult life I have unconsciously (I now realise) assumed that we would have time, that there was time to persuade and to change and to head off the worst. That assumption, that naive hope, has now been stripped from me. The situation of living on borrowed time  needs t

Pray ceaselessly, but how?

I've just had an article published on emergingchurch.info. It's an adaptation of some of my book, but I thought I'd share it and give you a taster... ... ask ourselves whether there is a way of understanding the command to pray ceaselessly in a way that doesn't conflict with loving our neighbour. Paul may have meant his readers to pray as much as they could, whenever they could. However that would be to read a meaning into the text based, perhaps on a sense of realism faced with an understanding of prayer that involves giving God full and exclusive attention. We don't have to be bound by that interpretation. I'm going to suggest a deeper fulfilment of the exhortation. One that makes contact with Paul's command to his Roman readers to offer their bodies as living sacrifices to God (Romans 12.1-2). Perhaps Paul was suggesting making life into prayer rather than making prayer into a life emergingchurch.info > reflection > andii bowsher : Filed in: prayer

The Lords Prayer in Aramaic

I came across this a year or two back and was quite concerned that it was being purveyed as a translation when it quite clearly is not. Now my Hebrew is not extensive but enough that when combined with training in linguistics and biblical interpretation I can tell when a 'midrash' is being offered. [PS inserted here. Since I wrote this originally and noting that this post gets a lot of hits, I have continued to research and would like to encourage readers to visit more recent posts here and here and I tend to add thinngs from time to time to a Squidoo Lens dedicated to the topic of Aramaic Lord's prayer] Anyway, see for yourself the discrepancy between the quantity in the original and the English (as far as I can tell, the orthography is vaguely german, so 'j' is a 'y' sound etc.) The Prayer To Our Father (in the original Aramaic) Abwun "Oh Thou, from whom the breath of life comes, d'bwaschmaja who fills all realms of sound, light and vibration.