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The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance
Author: Dorothee Soelle (Author)
Description
Exploring the religious impulse known as mysticism — the "silent cry" at the heart of all the world's religions.
Mysticism, in the sense of a "longing for God," has been present in all times, cultures, and religions. But Soelle believes it has never been more important than in this age of materialism and fundamentalism. The antiauthoritarian mystical element in each religion leads to community of free spirits and resistance to the death-dealing aspects of our contemporary culture. Religion in the third millennium, Soelle argues, either will be mystical or it will be dead.
Therefore, Soelle identifies strongly with the hunger of New Age searchers, but laments the religious fast food they devour. Today, a kind of "democratized mysticism" of those without much religious background flourishes. This mystical experience is not drawn so much of the tradition as out of contemporary experiences. In that sense, each of us is a mystic, and Soelle's work seeks to give theological depth, clarity, and direction.
This, her magnum opus, conjoins Soelle's deep religious knowledge and wisdom with her passion for social justice into a work destined to be a classic of religious literature.
Price: $29.00
Release date: April 17, 2001
Pages: 336
Endorsements
"Soelle, author of the best-selling Against the Wind: Memoirs of a Radical Christian, explores mysticism as a major stream of Christian faith. She explores contexts that often give rise to mystical experiences, and then probes the ways mysticism creates a powerful resistance to materialism, violence, and globalization. Soelle sees mysticism as the silent cry at the heart of all authentic spirituality; the place from which visions of creative resistance and alternatives come."
— The Other Side
Read how " Best This Month" reviews this book.
— Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, The Lutheran July 2001
Excerpts
Excerpt from the Introduction
Why, when God's world is so big,
did you fall asleep in a prison
of all places?
— Rumi
For many years I have been drawn to and borne by mystical experience and mystical consciousness. Within the complex phenomenon of religion, they appeared to be central. All living religion represents a unity of three elements that, in the language of the great Catholic lay theologian Friedrich von Huegel (1852–1925), we may call the institutional, the intellectual, and the mystical (see chapter three). The historical-institutional element addresses itself to mind and memory; in Christianity it is the "Petrine" dimension. The analytical-speculative element is aligned with reason and the apostle Paul. The third element, the intuitive-emotional one, directs itself to the will and the action of love. It represents the Johannine dimension. The representatives of all three elements tend to declare themselves to be absolute and to denigrate the others as marginal; however, without reciprocal relationships among the three elements, religion does not stay alive. Reciprocity between institutional, intellectual, and mystical elements of religion may take the form of polarization, or the exchange may be dialectical.
What enticed me to the lifelong attempt to think God was neither the church, which I experienced more as a stepmother, nor the intellectual adventure of post-Enlightenment theology? I am neither professionally anchored nor personally at home in the two institutions of religion—the church and academic theology. It is the mystical element that will not let go of me. In a preliminary way, I can simply say that what I want to live, understand, and make known is the love for God. And that seems to be in little demand in those two institutions. At best, what Protestant theology and preaching articulate in what they designate as "gospel" can be summed up as follows: God loves, protects, renews, and saves us. One rarely hears that this process can be truly experienced only when such love, like every genuine love, is mutual. That humans love, protect, renew, and save God sounds to most people like megalomania or even madness. But the madness of this love is exactly what mystics live on.
What drew me to mysticism was the dream of finding a form of spirituality that I was missing in German Protestantism. What I was seeking had to be less dogmatic, less cerebral and encased in words, and less centered on men. It had to be related to experience in a two-fold sense of the word: how love for God came about and what consequences it has for life. I was not looking for what Thomas Müntzer refers to as "made-up, fictitious faith," that is, something that is fine for the head and keeps the institution functioning. Instead, I searched for the mystical element of faith; in the Bible and other sacred writings, in the history of the church, but also in the everyday experience of lived union with God or the divinity. The distinction between the ground of being perceived in personal terms, or, in transpersonal terms, need not concern us here. For are "mindfulness" or "pure attentiveness" of Buddhist tradition not other words for what the Abrahamic traditions call "love for God"?
Often an expression like "longing for God"—which could be a different rendering of "mysticism"—evokes embarrassment; yet, tradition declares that our greatest perfection is to need God. But it is precisely that longing that is taken to be a kind of misguided indulgence, an emotional excess. In recent years, when two of my friends converted to Roman Catholicism, I could not approve. In the first place, the denominational divisions of the sixteenth century are no longer substantive for me. Second, in the Roman institution—with its unrelenting "nyet" to women, to a humane sexuality, and to intellectual freedom—I only find in double measure the coldness from which both my friends were fleeing. But what these two women were seeking they found, above all, in the liturgy of the Catholic Church. The experience of mysticism made them feel at home. That is what I am looking for, too, and that is what this book is about.
The history of mysticism is a history of the love for God. I cannot conceive of this without political and praxis-oriented actualization that is directed toward the world. At the beginning of the seventies, I wrote Death by Bread Alone (Die Hinreise), a book with autobiographical undertones. Many of my friends on the political and Christian left became worried. "Dorothee is leaving," I heard them say in Holland, "will she ever return?" But that was not my worry; what I was particularly trying to do was to hold together what Roger Schütz, the founder of the Protestant monastic community in Taizé, calls "lutte et contemplation" (struggle and contemplation). I did not want to travel on two distinct pathways. What in the late sixties we named "politicization of conscience," at the time of the political evensong of Cologne, has in the meantime become widely generalized. More and more Christians and post-Christians understand the connection between setting out and then coming back again (Hinreise and Rückreise). They need both.
There has been very little examination of the relationship between mystical experience and social and political behavior. Social-historical enquiry always recedes—especially in today's mysticism boom—in favor of a "perennial philosophy" (to borrow the name of Aldous Huxley's famous anthology), a way of thinking that is outside time. It looks at God and the soul alone, without any social analysis. To say the least, such an approach is an abridgment. What interests me is how mystics in different ages related to their society, and how they behaved in it. Was the demeanor of flight from the world, separation, and solitude adequate for mysticism? Were there not also other forms of expressing mystical consciousness to be found in the life of communities as well as individuals? Did mystics not have a different relation, communally and individually, to the "world," to the whole of society, both in practice and in theory? The prison, of all places, in which we have fallen asleep (Rumi)—is this what we are supposed to regard as the world's eternal condition, unaffected by real history?
My questioning is focused on social reality. This means that for the sake of what is within, I seek to erase the distinction between a mystical internal and a political external. Everything that is within needs to be externalized so it doesn't spoil, like the manna in the desert that was hoarded for future consumption. There is no experience of God that can be so privatized that it becomes and remains the property of one owner, the privilege of a person of leisure, the esoteric domain of the initiated. In my search for concepts that depict the possibilities open to mystics of their relation to the world, I find a series of different options. They lie between withdrawal from the world and the transformation of the world through revolution. But whether it be withdrawal, renunciation, disagreement, divergence, dissent, reform, resistance, rebellion, or revolution, in all of these forms there is a No! to the world as it exists now. The reformer Teresa of Avila; the Beguines of Flanders, who created their own new forms of life; Thomas Müntzer, the revolutionary leader of peasants; and Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit destroyer of weapons of mass destruction; all of them lived their mysticism in the repudiation of the values that ruled in their worlds. For those who want the world to remain as it is have already acceded to its self-destruction and, consequently, betrayed the love of God and its restlessness before the status quo.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I: What Is Mysticism?
1. We Are All Mystics
Mysticism of Childhood
Are Mystics Completely Different?
Mystical Sensibility
"I Am What I Do": C. S. Lewis
2. Ecstasy
Stepping Out and Immersing Oneself
Commotion and Unity: Martin Buber
Rabi'a and Sufi Mysticism
Mansur al-Hallaj: Agnus Dei Mohamedanus
We Have Not Been Created for Small Things
3. Definitions, Methods, Delimitations
From the Hermeneutic of Suspicion to a Hermeneutic of Hunger
Pluralism of Methods and Contextuality
The Distinction between Genuine and False Mysticism
4. Finding Another Language
The Cloud of Unknowing and the Cloud of Forgetting
Sunder Warumbe: Without a Why or Wherefore
A Language without Dominance
The Via Negativa, the Way of Negation
The Paradox
Silence
5. The Journey
Ladders to Heaven and Stations on Earth
Purification, Illumination, Union: The Three Ways of Classic Mysticism
Traces of a Different Journey: Thomas Müntzer
Being Amazed, Letting Go, Resisting: Outline of a Mystical Journey for Today
Part II: Places of Mystical Experience
6. Nature
Places and Placelessness
A Morning Hymn: Harriet Beecher Stowe
Monotheism, Pantheism, Panentheism
Sharing and Healing: A Different Relation to the Earth
7. Eroticism
Heavenly and Earthly Love and Their Inseparability
The Song of Songs
Marguerite Porète and the Enrapturing Far-Near One
The Bitterness of Ecstasy: D. H. Lawrence and Ingeborg Bachmann
Sacred Power
8. Suffering
Job: The Satanic and the Mystical Wager
Between Dolorousness and Suffering
"Even When It Is Night": John of the Cross
"Better in Agony than in Numbness": Twentieth-Century Mysticism of Suffering
9. Community
The Hidden Sacred Sparks: Hasidim
Community, the Sinai of the Future: An Examination of Buber's Relation to Mysticism
Without Rules and Poor, Persecuted, and Free: The Beguines
The Society of Friends and the Inner Light
10. Joy
The Mystical Relation to Time: Thich Nhat Hanh
Publicans, Jesters, and Other Fools: The Abolition of Divisions
Dancing and Leaping: The Body Language of Joy
The Relation of Mysticism and Aesthetics
Part III: Mysticism Is Resistance
11. As If We Lived in a Liberated World
The Prison We Have Fallen Asleep In: Globalization and Individualization
Out of the Home into Homelessness
Acting and Dreaming: Becoming Martha and Mary
The Fruits of Apartheid
12. Ego and Ego-lessness
The Ego: The Best Prison Guard
"Go Where You Are Nothing!"
Asceticism: For and Against
Tolstoy's Conversion from the Ego to God
Freedom from the "Ring of Cold": Dag Hammarskjöld
Success and Failure
13. Possession and Possessionlessness
Having or Being
Naked and Following the Naked Savior: Francis of Assisi
John Woolman and the Society of Slave Owners
Voluntary Poverty: Dorothy Day
Middle Roads and Crazy Freedoms
14. Violence and Nonviolence
The Unity of All Living Beings
The Duty of Civil Disobedience: Henry David Thoreau
Mahatma Gandhi and Ahimsa
"Our Weapon Is to Have None": Martin Luther King Jr.
Between Hopes and Defeats
15. A Mysticism of Liberation
The Death and Life of Severino: João Cabral
Kneeling Down and Learning to Walk Upright: The Theology of Liberation
"When You Dance with Death, You Must Dance Well": Pedro Casaldáliga
The Voice of the Mute: Dom Helder Camara
Learning to Pray and a Different Mysticism
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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Goodreads Reviews
The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance
by
Dorothee Sölle,
Martin Rumscheidt (Translator),
Barbara Rumscheidt (Translator)
====
4.43 · Rating details · 120 ratings · 15 reviews
Exploring the religious impulse known as mysticism - the "silent cry" at the heart of all the world's religions. Mysticism, in the sense of a "longing for God," has been present in all times, cultures, and religions. But Soelle believes it has never been more important than in this age of materialism and fundamentalism. The antiauthoritarian mystical element in each religion leads to community of free spirits and resistance to the death-dealing aspects of our contemporary culture. Religion in the third millennium, Soelle argues, either will be mystical or it will be dead. Therefore, Soelle identifies strongly with the hunger of New Age searchers, but laments the religious fast food they devour. Today, a kind of "democratized mysticism" of those without much religious background flourishes. This mystical experience is not drawn so much of the tradition as out of contemporary experiences. In that sense, each of us is a mystic, and Soelle's work seeks to give theological depth, clarity, and direction. This, her magnum opus, conjoins Soelle's deep religious knowledge and wisdom with her passion for social justice into a work destined to be a classic of religious literature. (less)
Paperback, 325 pages
Published May 1st 2001 by Augsburg Fortress Publishing (first published 1997)
Original Title
Mystik und Widerstand: "Du stilles Geschrei"
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Jan 08, 2015Andrew Marr rated it it was amazing
Shelves: religion, social-issues
A powerful overview of mysticism, mostly Christian but with helpful references to Hasidic rabbis & Sufi masters as well. What is unique about this book is that the author is a committed social activist & her interest in mysticism is centered on the intersection between mysticism & social outreach. This is a very intense book that should set the heart on fire for mystical prayer and social concerns both.
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Jul 17, 2017Dawna Richardson rated it really liked it
I found this to be a thought provoking read. It is somewhat dated in terms of current world issues but the essence of the mysticism of oneness remains the same. Mysticism is indeed the experience of the oneness and wholeness of life where one acts without any why or wherefore.
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Nov 24, 2013Glen Grunau rated it really liked it
I chose this book because it was recommended by a small group of Soulstream partners who read it together and then shared their enthusiasm with the rest of us. A highlight for me was the broad introduction given to mysticism throughout the ages in many different Christian traditions as well as in other religions. The world wide mystical community is breathtaking in its expanse. To be a part of this tradition is an encounter in unitive consciousness.
A chapter was devoted to each of several places where mystical encounter is often likely to be discovered: in nature, eroticism, suffering, community, and joy.
Contrary to popular opinion, mysticism embraces activism - resistance. Mysticism is by definition activist. It is particularly resistant to any society of consumerism, which by its very nature, is rife with injustice. Soelle makes the case that we resist such injustice best when we seek ego-lessness, possessionlessness, non-violence, and liberation.
Such mystical resistance is relatively new territory for me. I have until present, often been content simply to "hold an opinion" on such matters of injustice. I was struck by the criticism of Henry David Thoreau against all who are merely content to hold an opinion and unwilling to engage in "a deliberate denial of the state's authority".
Yet I was also taken by the suggestion that any focus on what my efforts of resistance may achieve is superfluous in the face of mystical prayer which is free of any investment of outcome. It is the silent cry which "gives away its own ears and eyes to let itself be given those of God" . (less)
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Feb 25, 2017Petra Steinmair-Pösel rated it it was amazing
One of my favourite books ever!
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Oct 29, 2015Carter West rated it really liked it
This arresting volume offers us a view into the heart of one of the most dynamic theologians of the last 50 years. Sölle's last work brings together her longtime passions for the self's Christ-realization and for social transformation, demonstrating their inseparability. Her mastery of the literature of classical Christian mysticism is especially impressive – Meister Eckhart is a constant companion. She keeps returning to Eckhart's call to act "*sunder warumbe* (without a why and wherefore)" as one essential lever to lift one's understanding of the contemplative life. Such holy gratuitousness proves essential in building a bridge between mysticism and political engagement. "Resistance" is the key theme here, and there Sölle rightly perceives a commonality between the two. Both are lives lived across the grain of the culture of dominance, the former in hope of a self authenticated in love, the latter determined to bring about whatever liberating power is available to us. A serene carelessness for any "must" as to consequences and outcomes in either realm enables the disciple to claim maximum freedom of action and maximum sustained effort. In those two spheres of living, Sölle perceives one united human spirit, and she is very persuasive.
As much as I feel compelled to affirm this book as an essential work for the development of my faith, though, I had to give it only four stars (only!). The final few chapters, those dealing with the witness of several politically engaged mystics, tended to lose their focus. The incisive analysis of the "mystics" of the book's first two-thirds gave way to a more loose and wandering style, making it difficult at points to boil her prose down to the essence of the thought of each figure (Henry David Thoreau, e.g., or Dom Helder Camara). Her rambling here, though, only served at last to highlight the vitality of the first sections of the book. Reading it, I realized how long I'd been in need of an author who could bring together the social and the personal, the political and the mystical. Sölle fills that bill admirably. (less)
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Jun 20, 2012Naum rated it really liked it
Mysticism. Suffering, Resistance.
In an age of materialism and fundamentalism, "mysticism" is of essence to Jesus followers.
The word itself may be confusing to Americans, and I am not sure the early plodding in this book succeeded in expository. Or it could be until my reading synced with the writer style, a difficult chore I find with works translated from German. But wading through the early chapters was well worth the effort, as the read kept getting better and better, until final parts detail stories of saints engaged in "mysticism" resistance and liberation -- St. Francis, John Woolman, Dorothy Day, MLK and others with foreign spelled names that I would mangle at the tip of my keyboard. (less)
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Aug 22, 2012Curtis rated it it was amazing
Best Soelle that I've read yet. Although it is also the longest. For those with less time to read, Theology for Skeptics is great as well. This one, however, establishes mysticism as an important focus for postmodern religion as well as fuel for resistance.
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Oct 27, 2013Russ Booton rated it it was amazing
I loved this book. Solle connects the dots between mysticism, liberation theology, and political activism, with examples from the lives and writings of prominent figures. In my mind, this is a perfect sequel to the writings of Evelyn Underhill. I heartily recommend it.
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May 14, 2012Carrie rated it it was amazing
Amazing book to understanding suffering and human real people to reference. A core base for my theology of jeong.
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Sep 09, 2014Bob Seabury rated it liked it
very intense and dense. I feel this might turn out to be an important book in my life, but there was too much to absorb in one reading. will most likely go back to it.
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Sep 28, 2007Monica marked it as to-read
my kind of woman, dorothee is
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Dec 28, 2008Debbie Blane rated it it was amazing
Finished at long last! This book is STUPENDOUS! It is well written and thought provoking, and a perfect read for me on my way out of China and on my way towards Sudan.
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Sep 08, 2012Dougw rated it it was amazing
Brilliant analysis of mysticism and it's place in contemporary culture. The ideas in this indispensable book bear deep reflection. A book to be read and re-read.
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Jan 16, 2012Steve Allison rated it it was amazing
Shelves: mysticism, women-authors
I read this several years ago. Gave away my hardcopy. So, recently downloaded to Kindle and plan to read again. More later.
===
Exploring the religious impulse known as mysticism - the "silent cry" at the heart of all the world's religions. Mysticism, in the sense of a "longing for God," has been present in all times, cultures, and religions. But Soelle believes it has never been more important than in this age of materialism and fundamentalism. The antiauthoritarian mystical element in each religion leads to community of free spirits and resistance to the death-dealing aspects of our contemporary culture. Religion in the third millennium, Soelle argues, either will be mystical or it will be dead. Therefore, Soelle identifies strongly with the hunger of New Age searchers, but laments the religious fast food they devour. Today, a kind of "democratized mysticism" of those without much religious background flourishes. This mystical experience is not drawn so much of the tradition as out of contemporary experiences. In that sense, each of us is a mystic, and Soelle's work seeks to give theological depth, clarity, and direction. This, her magnum opus, conjoins Soelle's deep religious knowledge and wisdom with her passion for social justice into a work destined to be a classic of religious literature.
From the Publisher
From the Foreword (pre-publication version):
What is more splendid than gold? asked the king.
The light, replied the serpent.
What is more refreshing than light? the former asked. Conversation,” the latter said.
Goethe, The Fairy Tale
---
When I began writing this book, Fulbert Steffensky read the first pages of the manuscript and spontaneously made some critical comments. I responded and the following spousal conversation ensued.
Fulbert: What bothers me about mysticism is that it’s really not something for simple folk. I can’t imagine that my mother or my father could get anything from what you’re trying to do here.
Dorothee: (humming) Into his love [In seine Lieb versenken] I will wholly plunge myself, [will ich mich ganz hinab,] my heart is to be his [mein Herz will ich ihm schenken] and all that I have. [und alles was ich hab.]
Fulbert: Piety, yes, but mysticism?
Dorothee: I suppose that mysticism is always piety, even when it takes on utterly degenerate forms such as Satanic Masses. If I understand the meaning at all of this Christmas carol by Friedrich von Spee (1591-1635), then I can also talk about syntheresis voluntatis. Your mother wouldn’t have known what to do with that, but perhaps it could be useful to her clever grandchildren, who live without Christmas carols but not without philosophy.
Fulbert: Back again to my mother. I believe that she can appropriate every sentence of the New Testament tradition as nourishing bread on which one can live a normal and burdened life. But what is she to do with the curious religious ingenuities of a Jacob Böhme, or John of the Cross? Surely, the Gospel itself deals more with the simple and sensible desires of people: to be healthy and not having to despair of life, to be able to see and hear, to live for once without tears and to have a name. It’s not about spiritual artistry but about the possibility of simply living.
Dorothee: But aren’t mystics concerned precisely with the bread of life? As I see it, the problem is that people, including your mother, but certainly her children and grandchildren, encounter not just the Gospel but something that has been distorted, corrupted, destroyed and long been turned into stone.
Mysticism has helped those who were gripped by it to face powerful but petrified institutions that conformed to society; it still helps them today, albeit in a manner that is often very odd. What you call spiritual artistry may figure in it, but the essence of mysticism is something very different. One evening, without knocking first, I entered your mother’s room. And there she was, the old lady, sitting on her chair with her hands folded--no needlework! I don’t know whether to call what she was doing “praying” or “reflecting.” But great peace was with her. That is what I want to spread abroad.
Fulbert: Perhaps my reticence towards mystics is not meant so much for them as it is for a certain craving for mysticism prevalent in the present religious climate. The high regard for categories of religious experience is in an inflationary growth rate. The religious subject wants to experience the self without mediation, instantly, totally and authentically, in the manner she or he shapes personal piety. Experience justifies substance and becomes the actual content of religiousness. And then direct experience stands against institution, against the slowness of a journey, against the crusty, dark bread of the patient dealing with oneself. In this craving for experience, everything that occurs suddenly and is direct rather than institution-mediated becomes ever so interesting; everything that’s oriented to experience and promises religious sensation. I know, genuine mysticism is completely different from this. But that’s how it’s perceived.
Dorothee: I’m also concerned when immediacy becomes the chief category. I think that the great figures of the tradition of mysticism have chewed on some of your crusty, dark bread. As Huxley once said, there is no “instant Zen-Buddhism.” The “now” of the mystics is an experience of time that is no common experience. This has nothing to do with a teenage sense of life, the “right this moment” of wanting a certain kind of sneaker or ice-cream.
I cannot agree with your covert pleading for the institution--as if the bread it baked were edible! I think there must be a third entity, next to voguish “religious sensation,” and the homespun institutions that are in charge of such things. You are seeking something like that yourself, except that you call it spirituality.
Fulbert: When I speak of spirituality I always rule out the ideas of particularity and extraordinary experience. It’s the name, more than anything else, that makes “spirituality” so alluring. What spirituality itself actually is has much to do with method, order and repetition. It’s a matter of constituting the self, in the midst of banality and everydayness. And everyone who is not utterly beaten down by life can work at it. Spirituality is not a via regia, an elevated pathway, but a via laborosa, a labor-intensive regimen for determining one’s own vision and life-options. And so I stick doggedly to the notion that something is important only when it’s important for everyone.
But it’s possible that in mysticism, what manifests itself in dramatically concentrated form and artistic expression, so to speak, is what constitutes the nature of piety and faith. This would mean that mysticism may in fact be neither the road of all nor of many. Rather, it may be that in poetic density the nature of a faith that is meant for all is revealed within mysticism.
Dorothee: My most important concern is to democratize mysticism. What I mean to do is to reopen the door to the mystic sensibility that’s within all of us, to dig it out from under the debris of trivia--from its self-trivialization, if you like. An older woman in New York told me about meeting a guru. When she told her black minister about this, he asked only one question. It’s a question I too want to ask: “Didn’t he tell you that we’re all mystics?”
---
About the Author
Dorothee Soelle studied philosophy, theology, and literature at the University of Cologne and served as Professor of Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City from 1975 to 1987. Among her most influential writings are Christ the Representative (1967), Suffering (1975), To Work and to Love (1984), and Theology for Skeptics (1994). Soelle is a peace and ecological movements activist and lives in Hamburg, Germany.See all Editorial Reviews
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Product details
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Fortress Press (May 1, 2001)
Language: English
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Amherstbelle
5.0 out of 5 starsScholarly, Incisive, Fresh, Mind EspandingMarch 3, 2014
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
This is by no means an easy read, but if you are a student of the Christian Wisdom tradition, a practioner of Centering Prayer or a fan of Cynthia Bourgeault or Richard Rohr, you will be glad to explore this boo, even if you can only get through a portion of it.
6 people found this helpful
Larry Klinker
5.0 out of 5 starsenjoy this walk through a connection between mystism and political ...July 13, 2017
So, enjoy this walk through a connection between mystism and political action.
James H Smith
5.0 out of 5 starsProfound writingMarch 5, 2013
I've read through this book and really like the concepts presented by Soelle. She's a mystic and radical in the best sense. I'm reading it again, slowly to savor her astute observations. Definitely recommended reading for "followers" of Jesus, but it will upset most Christians...
3 people found this helpful
Sweetooth
5.0 out of 5 starsComplex review of mysticismFebruary 7, 2019
Academic review of many theories on mysticism. Thought provoking.
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RSG
5.0 out of 5 starsThe Curch and Social IssuesJune 24, 2013
Dorothee Soelle writes fluently and goes to the point. She makes very simple to understand why mystic are so concern with social issues. A must read if you are interested in the Social aspects of the Church and Christianity.
2 people found this helpful
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Peace Maven
4.0 out of 5 starsFour StarsAugust 2, 2016
An interesting integration of two paths.
One person found this helpful
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Dr. Samuel Mahaffy
5.0 out of 5 starsLonging for the Divine: Questioning of Instituted ReligionMarch 19, 2014
This is a work of great depth that will deepen your longing for the Divine. It may also lead you to question presuppositions we make in faith traditions. In this work, Dorothy Soelle speaks with the genuine voice of the mystic. We do well to leave the towers and edifices of religious institutions and journey to the wilderness to listen to such voices.
3 people found this helpful
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Rainga
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent bookJuly 8, 2013
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
This book was highly recommended to me. It is easy to read and is a very good study of mysticism in general.
2 people found this helpful
When I began writing this book, Fulbert Steffensky read the first pages of the manuscript and spontaneously made some critical comments. I responded and the following spousal conversation ensued.
Fulbert: What bothers me about mysticism is that it’s really not something for simple folk. I can’t imagine that my mother or my father could get anything from what you’re trying to do here.
Dorothee: (humming) Into his love [In seine Lieb versenken] I will wholly plunge myself, [will ich mich ganz hinab,] my heart is to be his [mein Herz will ich ihm schenken] and all that I have. [und alles was ich hab.]
Fulbert: Piety, yes, but mysticism?
Dorothee: I suppose that mysticism is always piety, even when it takes on utterly degenerate forms such as Satanic Masses. If I understand the meaning at all of this Christmas carol by Friedrich von Spee (1591-1635), then I can also talk about syntheresis voluntatis. Your mother wouldn’t have known what to do with that, but perhaps it could be useful to her clever grandchildren, who live without Christmas carols but not without philosophy.
Fulbert: Back again to my mother. I believe that she can appropriate every sentence of the New Testament tradition as nourishing bread on which one can live a normal and burdened life. But what is she to do with the curious religious ingenuities of a Jacob Böhme, or John of the Cross? Surely, the Gospel itself deals more with the simple and sensible desires of people: to be healthy and not having to despair of life, to be able to see and hear, to live for once without tears and to have a name. It’s not about spiritual artistry but about the possibility of simply living.
Dorothee: But aren’t mystics concerned precisely with the bread of life? As I see it, the problem is that people, including your mother, but certainly her children and grandchildren, encounter not just the Gospel but something that has been distorted, corrupted, destroyed and long been turned into stone.
Mysticism has helped those who were gripped by it to face powerful but petrified institutions that conformed to society; it still helps them today, albeit in a manner that is often very odd. What you call spiritual artistry may figure in it, but the essence of mysticism is something very different. One evening, without knocking first, I entered your mother’s room. And there she was, the old lady, sitting on her chair with her hands folded--no needlework! I don’t know whether to call what she was doing “praying” or “reflecting.” But great peace was with her. That is what I want to spread abroad.
Fulbert: Perhaps my reticence towards mystics is not meant so much for them as it is for a certain craving for mysticism prevalent in the present religious climate. The high regard for categories of religious experience is in an inflationary growth rate. The religious subject wants to experience the self without mediation, instantly, totally and authentically, in the manner she or he shapes personal piety. Experience justifies substance and becomes the actual content of religiousness. And then direct experience stands against institution, against the slowness of a journey, against the crusty, dark bread of the patient dealing with oneself. In this craving for experience, everything that occurs suddenly and is direct rather than institution-mediated becomes ever so interesting; everything that’s oriented to experience and promises religious sensation. I know, genuine mysticism is completely different from this. But that’s how it’s perceived.
Dorothee: I’m also concerned when immediacy becomes the chief category. I think that the great figures of the tradition of mysticism have chewed on some of your crusty, dark bread. As Huxley once said, there is no “instant Zen-Buddhism.” The “now” of the mystics is an experience of time that is no common experience. This has nothing to do with a teenage sense of life, the “right this moment” of wanting a certain kind of sneaker or ice-cream.
I cannot agree with your covert pleading for the institution--as if the bread it baked were edible! I think there must be a third entity, next to voguish “religious sensation,” and the homespun institutions that are in charge of such things. You are seeking something like that yourself, except that you call it spirituality.
Fulbert: When I speak of spirituality I always rule out the ideas of particularity and extraordinary experience. It’s the name, more than anything else, that makes “spirituality” so alluring. What spirituality itself actually is has much to do with method, order and repetition. It’s a matter of constituting the self, in the midst of banality and everydayness. And everyone who is not utterly beaten down by life can work at it. Spirituality is not a via regia, an elevated pathway, but a via laborosa, a labor-intensive regimen for determining one’s own vision and life-options. And so I stick doggedly to the notion that something is important only when it’s important for everyone.
But it’s possible that in mysticism, what manifests itself in dramatically concentrated form and artistic expression, so to speak, is what constitutes the nature of piety and faith. This would mean that mysticism may in fact be neither the road of all nor of many. Rather, it may be that in poetic density the nature of a faith that is meant for all is revealed within mysticism.
Dorothee: My most important concern is to democratize mysticism. What I mean to do is to reopen the door to the mystic sensibility that’s within all of us, to dig it out from under the debris of trivia--from its self-trivialization, if you like. An older woman in New York told me about meeting a guru. When she told her black minister about this, he asked only one question. It’s a question I too want to ask: “Didn’t he tell you that we’re all mystics?”
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About the Author
Dorothee Soelle studied philosophy, theology, and literature at the University of Cologne and served as Professor of Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City from 1975 to 1987. Among her most influential writings are Christ the Representative (1967), Suffering (1975), To Work and to Love (1984), and Theology for Skeptics (1994). Soelle is a peace and ecological movements activist and lives in Hamburg, Germany.See all Editorial Reviews
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Product details
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Fortress Press (May 1, 2001)
Language: English
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Amherstbelle
5.0 out of 5 starsScholarly, Incisive, Fresh, Mind EspandingMarch 3, 2014
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
This is by no means an easy read, but if you are a student of the Christian Wisdom tradition, a practioner of Centering Prayer or a fan of Cynthia Bourgeault or Richard Rohr, you will be glad to explore this boo, even if you can only get through a portion of it.
6 people found this helpful
Larry Klinker
5.0 out of 5 starsenjoy this walk through a connection between mystism and political ...July 13, 2017
So, enjoy this walk through a connection between mystism and political action.
James H Smith
5.0 out of 5 starsProfound writingMarch 5, 2013
I've read through this book and really like the concepts presented by Soelle. She's a mystic and radical in the best sense. I'm reading it again, slowly to savor her astute observations. Definitely recommended reading for "followers" of Jesus, but it will upset most Christians...
3 people found this helpful
Sweetooth
5.0 out of 5 starsComplex review of mysticismFebruary 7, 2019
Academic review of many theories on mysticism. Thought provoking.
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RSG
5.0 out of 5 starsThe Curch and Social IssuesJune 24, 2013
Dorothee Soelle writes fluently and goes to the point. She makes very simple to understand why mystic are so concern with social issues. A must read if you are interested in the Social aspects of the Church and Christianity.
2 people found this helpful
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Peace Maven
4.0 out of 5 starsFour StarsAugust 2, 2016
An interesting integration of two paths.
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Dr. Samuel Mahaffy
5.0 out of 5 starsLonging for the Divine: Questioning of Instituted ReligionMarch 19, 2014
This is a work of great depth that will deepen your longing for the Divine. It may also lead you to question presuppositions we make in faith traditions. In this work, Dorothy Soelle speaks with the genuine voice of the mystic. We do well to leave the towers and edifices of religious institutions and journey to the wilderness to listen to such voices.
3 people found this helpful
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Rainga
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent bookJuly 8, 2013
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
This book was highly recommended to me. It is easy to read and is a very good study of mysticism in general.
2 people found this helpful
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