Flying under the radar (The mystic path)

Wonderful and Dark Is This Road: Discovering the Mystic Path

by Emilie Griffin; 191 pp. paper $15.95

Because of the hiddenness of mystical knowledge, mysticism has sometimes been described as the experience of “God as a ray of divine darkness.” For Emilie Griffin, it is “a deep and sustained intimacy with a loving God.” While there have been instances in which a mystic gains unusual abilities or receives stigmata, which lead us to imagine that mystics are not present in our lives today, Griffin suggests that many mystics are quiet and anonymous, and their unique spirituality is invisible to the casual observer. This book explores mysticism thematically, drawing on an assortment of mystical experiences recorded both in Scripture and Christian history. Griffin lays out the mystic path for those who wish to travel it—noting, however, that one can never ask, “Lord, please make me a mystic,” but rather, “Lord, I want to know you better.”

From the book:

I believe that we are meeting mystics every day, but we do not recognize them. Their humility and modesty is such that they pass into the crowd ("So they picked up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple" John 8:59). Perhaps we could spot them by their spiritual disciplines: prayer, meditation, fasting, study, simplicity, solitude, submission, service, confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. It is possible, but not likely. For real mystics practice their deep love and service to God in ways that may fly below the radar, unobtrusively, transforming the lives of others in ways that seem sublimely plain spoken and level-headed. Except when they receive extraordinary mystical gifts (not everyone does) it is hard to pick them out in a crowd. We have noted earlier that Padre Pio looked much like the next monk in the procession. More to the point, the Roman soldiers needed Judas to point Jesus out to them. To them, he looked more or less like any other Galilean.

Both Thomas Merton and Karl Rahner, a major modern theologian, insist on a mysticism of ordinary living. For Merton, the incarnation has sanctified all of human living. Far from taking the contemplative above and beyond the ordinary, contemplation, if authentic, roots the human being in the ordinary. The ordinary routine of daily life becomes the texture of contemplation for the devoted Christian. Merton insists that there is a "latent, or implicit, infused dimension to all prayer." 

Books for Lent: The Third Part

[In a recent post, we mentioned some lists for Lenten reading. Read on for the third in the series.]

If the primary aim of fasting is to make us conscious of our dependence on God and to enable us—as the Lenten Triodian puts it—to "draw near to the mountain of prayer," the following books are hammers, saws and levels for the task.

When You Fast
by Kallistos Ware
Maybe the all-time best use of a dollar (fifty)—it’s actually an excerpt from the introduction to The Lenten Triodion.

Celebration of Discipline (email or call for availability) 
by Richard Foster
Foster’s chapter on fasting is excellent, like nearly everything he writes regarding spiritual discipline.

The Spirit of Food: 
Thirty-four Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God
edited by Leslie Leyland Fields
A poetic rendering of spirituality's physicality and the ways attentive living can be an act of prayer. 

Tools Matter for Practicing the Spiritual Life
by Mary Margaret Funk
Like Foster, Funk’s thoughts on fasting are not to be missed. The teachings of John Cassian and other desert masters are palpable throughout.

Great Lent: Journey to Pascha
by Alexander Schmemann
Especially helpful is the section titled “The Two Meanings of Fasting.” 

Books for Lent: The Second Part

[In a recent post, we mentioned some lists for Lenten reading. Read on for the second in the series.]

The inner significance of Lent is best summed up in the triad of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. To quote Bishop Kallistos Ware, "Divorced from prayer and from the reception of the holy sacraments, unaccompanied by acts of compassion, our fasting becomes pharisaical or even demonic. It leads, not to contrition and joyfulness, put to pride, inward tension and irritability."

That said, here are our picks (among the myriad available) on prayer...

Beginning to Pray
by Anthony Bloom
"The day when God is absent, when He is silent—that is the beginning of prayer."

Orthodox Prayer Life: The Interior Way (email or call for availability) 
by Matthew the Poor
A contemporary Egyptian monastic points the way to those who desire, and are willing to sacrifice for, an existence formed by the practice of unceasing prayer.

Earthen Vessels: The Practice of Personal Prayer According to the Patristic Tradition
by Gabriel Bunge, O.S.B.
Written by a Benedictine monk and patristic scholar, this book belongs in the hands of anyone who seriously desires a life of prayer.

Prayer for Beginners (email or call for availability)
by Peter Kreeft
A clear and eminently reasonable approach to prayer for people not very good at praying.

Clinging: The Experience of Prayer
by Emilie Griffin
A simple, elegantly written, and warmly felt invitation to prayer.

First Fruits of Prayer (email or call for availability)  
by Frederica Mathewes-Green
A fine exposition of the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete.

Prayer: Living With God
by Simon Tugwell
Focuses on our relationship with God and ways we can learn to enjoy and appreciate that relationship through prayer.

Prayer in Practice
by Simon Tugwell
An unblinkingly honest and even humorous treatise on different forms of prayer.

Three Prayers
by Olivier Clement
A meditation on three of the most essential prayers of the Christian tradition.

The Art of Prayer
compiled by Igumen Chariton
A privileged glimpse into a sort of working journal of a monk intent on achieving unceasing prayer.

On the Prayer of Jesus (email or call for availability)  
by Ignatius Brianchaninov
Blunt and trustworthy advice about the right and wrong ways to approach the practice of the Jesus Prayer.