mysticism

Faith Matters

The sound of silence

Dec 17, 2010 by Suzanne Guthrie

I was the only woman in a seminary course on negative theology. One day, a young man raised his hand and asked, “What about an ordinary housewife? How could a person like that live this life of prayer?”

Living by the Word

Theophany

Isaiah 6:1–8; 1 Corinthians 15:1–11; Luke 5:1–11

Jan 26, 2010 by Bruce G. Epperly

The reading from Isaiah reminds us that the world is a turbulent and unsettling place. Even Isaiah is not immune; his time was one of great national grief and uncertainty, and he retreats to the temple to try and recover a sense of perspective and peace of mind.

Books

Radical Wisdom: A Feminist Mystical Theology

Beverly J. Lanzetta

Radical Wisdom: A Feminist Mystical Theology

Sep 20, 2005 reviewed by Lauve H. Steenhuisen

Feminism and mysticism have always held a wary view of each other: feminists borrowed from Marx the belief that spirituality functions as a narcotic that anesthetizes the pain of oppression rather than harnessing it to fuel the engine of social change; religious leaders feared that committed social activists would lose their souls

Features

Lost in God

What can we learn from mystics?
Mar 22, 2003 by Sara Miller
To think that that mystics are engaged in a series of private, transcendent encounters with God betrays a superficial understanding, says Bernard McGinn. Christian mystics, in particular, are not breakaway contemplatives who find their own way to God.
Features

The impossible God

An interview with David Tracy
Feb 13, 2002 by Lois Malcolm
With books like Blessed Rage for Order (1975) and The Analogical Imagination (1981), David Tracy became widely recognized as an important revisionist theologian—one who revised Christian categories in view of modern categories of thought.