num_pages: 368
description: Mystics are path-breaking religious practitioners who claim to have experience the infinite word-defying Mystery that is God. Many have been gifted writers with an uncanny ability to communicate the great realities of life with both a theologian's precision and a poet's lyricism. They use words to jolt us into recognizing ineffable mysteries surging beneath the surface of our lives and within the depths of our hearts and by their artistry can awaken us to see and savor fugitive glimpses of a God-drenched world.In Mystics  William Harmless S.J. introduces readers to the scholarly study of mysticism. He explores both mystics' extraordinary lives and their no-less-extraordinary writings using a unique case-study method centered on detailed examinations of six major Christian Thomas Merton Bernard of Clairvaux Hildegard of Bingen Bonaventure Meister Eckhart and Evagrius Ponticus. Rather than presenting mysticism as a subtle web of psychological or theological abstractions Harmless's case-study approach brings things down to earth restoring mystics to their historical context.Harmless highlights the pungent diversity of mystical experiences and mystical theologies. Stepping beyond Christianity he also explores mystical elements within Islam and Buddhism offering a chapter on the popular Sufi poet Rumi and one on the famous Japanese Zen master Dogen. Harmless concludes with an overview of the century-long scholarly conversation on mysticism and offers a unique multifaceted optic for understanding mystics their communities and their writings. Geared toward a wide audience Mystics balances state-of-the-art scholarship with accessible lucid prose.
language: English
title: Mystics
publisher: Oxford University Press