But it takes a Laozi or a Thomas Merton to map it. "Maybe the key word in all the world's religions is emptiness. At no time in human history have we needed a prophetic voice like Christie's as we do now." - Gary Paul Nabhan, Ecumenical Franciscan Brother and author of Jesus for Farmers and Fishers As our most poetic and compassionate scholar of contemplative practice, Douglas Christie guides us on a most profound journey into the darkness that underlies many mystical experiences, one that is ultimately redemptive. "With all the tumult, chaos and uncertainty in our world, we need a spiritual compass to navigate the pain and suffering that is part and parcel of being soulfully alive today. Holmes, author of Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church The end result is breathtaking!" - Barbara A. So, how do you write about something that cannot be captured in words? Christie uses vulnerability, life stories and memories as well as excellent scholarship. In The Insurmountable Darkness of Love, Douglas Christie invites readers to embark on a journey of 'silent attention' awakening, shedding, and finally the embrace of what cannot be known. "I have been pursuing the love 'born of and nurtured by darkness' all of my life. Seekers and contemplatives from other traditions, or no tradition, will find in The Insurmountable Darkness of Love a deep and attractive point of access to the riches of contemplative Christianity." - Cistercician Studies Quarterly "In his powerful, original and important new work, Douglas Christie explores the intersection of personal loss, atrocity, and apophatic mystical texts, suggesting how a contemplative ethos can discover in the isolating experience of personal and social trauma the ground of a renewed and deepened solidarity. In the many sites, texts and personal memories it explores, Douglas Christie's book invites us to recognize and reflect on our own heterotopias, and what we might then offer the world, by dwelling in these spaces of otherness." - Constance Furey, Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana University - Bloomington "Intimacy and absence have rarely been explored in tandem with the care and attention manifest in The Insurmountable Darkness of Love, a book as valuable for the extraordinary range of voices it collects as for its conviction that loss and desolation are experiences from which we have much to learn. Isaac Slater, Abbey of the Genesee, Cistercian Studies Quarterly
"Seekers and contemplatives from other traditions, or no tradition, will find in The Insurmountable Darkness of Love a deep and attractive point of access to the riches of contemplative Christianity." - Fr. It is a welcome addition for theologians who are seeking ways to bring the wisdom of the mystics to bear on the existential, political, and spiritual challenges of our time." - Amy Maxey, Theological Studies
"The range of mystical interlocutors and C.'s deft weaving of mystical voices with artists, intellectuals, and others engaged with ongoing struggles for justice make this work a fruitful read. It argues that our experience of contemplative spiritual practice can be revitalized by attending more carefully to the darkness that so often surrounds and courses through it, not only as part of personal practice but also as part of the shared work of recovering and deepening what the Christian mystical tradition often refers to simply as "the common life." Or what the thirteenth-century Flemish mystic Hadewijch of Antwerp calls "the insurmountable darkness of love." This book considers how critical retrieval of this poetry-especially that arising from ancient Christian traditions of the via negativa-can help us engage and respond to our own experiences of loss and absence. Contemplative practice rooted in unknowing reflects a deep respect for the unsayable, but also comes to expression in a rich and varied poetry of darkness that limns loss and absence with great delicacy, grace and courage. The book examines how a sustained, critical attention to apophatic spiritual traditions can help us respond to the gaps, silences, and empty places that have become such a prominent feature of contemporary experience. The primary aim of this book is to reconsider the meaning of darkness within mystical and contemplative thought and practice-especially as the ground and source of love. Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Global Public Health.
INSURMOUNTABLE LOVE IN A SENTENCE SERIES
The European Society of Cardiology Series.
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