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Pendle Hill Pamphlets
On Hallowing One's Diminishments
John R. Yungblut
4.20
15 ratings
From the candid beginning of this essay to its conclusion, John Yungblut shares a sensitive discussion of the many forms of diminishment we experience in life, including birth defects, sudden natural disasters, unwilled separations, aging, and finally death itself.
From his study of Teilhard de Chardin and his experience of contemplative prayer, he invites the reader into practices of mind, body, and soul that may help open us to God.
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28 pages, Kindle Edition
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28 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 1, 1990
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About the Author
A graduate of Harvard College and the Episcopal Divinity School Cambridge, Massachusetts, John Yungblut served twenty years in the in the Episcopal ministry. He joined the Religious Society of Friends in 1960, and became successively Director of Quaker House in Atlanta, Director of International Student House in Washington, D.C., a member of the faculty at Pendle Hill, and Director of the Guild for Spiritual Guidance at Wainwright House in Rye, New York. He is currently Director of Touchstone, Inc. in Lincoln, Virgi¬nia. In addition to offering spiritual guidance and counseling in a Jungian context, he conducts seminars, retreats, and quiet days.
Yungblut has been a life-long student of mysticism. First inspired by Rufus Jones while an undergraduate at Harvard, he later pursued the study of evolution and depth psychology, particularly the converging mythologies of Teilhard de Chardin and CO. Jung, two contemporary mystics and prophets who speak to his condition.
He is the author of four Pendle Hill pamphlets:
Quakerism of the Future: Mystical, Prophetic, and Evangelical;
Sex and the Human Psyche:
Seeking Light in the Darkness of the Unconscious:
Speaking as One Friend to Another: On the Mystical Way Forward and
four books:
Rediscovering Prayer:
Rediscovering the Christ;
Discovering God Within; and
The Gentle Art of Spiritual Guidance.
R.M. Bryan
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April 8, 2021
Informative
I learned that there are words for things I am going through and that people have studied them and written about them in a way that was helpful to me.
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Drick
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November 5, 2021
This brief Pendle Hill pamphlet deals with the sense of loss that one experiences as they age or face serious illness or other limiting factors in their life. Yungblut calls us to see that all life is sacred, even the loss that comes with ageing and disease can be consecrated and given over to God. The phrase, "hallowing our diminishments" comes from Teilhard de Chardin. who is referenced and quoted throughout.
personal-growth spirituality
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Robin
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April 13, 2020
A friend mentioned this pamphlet one Sunday during discussion at church and it took me until Holy Saturday to take the hour to read it. Pendle Hill, the publisher, is a Quaker retreat center in Pennsylvania, and Yungblut spent much of his life as a Quaker. He wrote this book around the age of 77, after he had had several physical ailments. The 27-page booklet begins with discussion of de Chardin's "The Divine Milieu" in which he speaks of "divinizing one's activities" in the first half of one's life and "hallowing one's diminishments" in the second half.
Yungblut has meditations on diminishments "like little deaths" and bereavements, then discusses "some blessings that accompany aging" and "hallowing the great diminishment, death." His final essay on "hallowing diminishments through the practice of contemplative prayer" is where he finally moves from theory (with some experience) to practice. Suggesting ways to practice contemplation/meditation, he ends, "The practice of contemplation is, in effect, a practice in dying, a practice in letting go of the insistent demands of the ego in favor of the realization of the self . . . Contemplative prayer is a way of knowing one's self under the aspect of the eternal. . . . At that moment, when one has finally let go of the diminishment, one is aware that nothing has been lost and that all is well. The diminishment has been hallowed" (26, 27). I have a sense I will return to this small book as aging and my own diminishment increase.
non-fiction retirement-aging
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