The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance

by Soelle, Dorothee

• ISBN13: 9780800632663
• ISBN10: 0800632664
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-01
• Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Pub

Summary

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 a 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 litera

Author Biography

Dorothee Soelle was a professor of theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City from 1975 to 1987.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(8)
Part I: What Is Mysticism?
We are all Mystics	9	(18)
Mysticism of Childhood
Are Mystics Completely Different?
Mystical Sensibility
``I Am What I Do'': C. S. Lewis
Ecstasy	27	(18)
Stepping Out and Immersing Oneself
Commotion and Unity: Martin Buber
Rabi'a and Sufi Mysticism
Mansur al-Hallaj: Agnus Dei Mohammedanus
We Have Not Been Created for Small Things
Definitions, Methods, Delimitations	45	(10)
From the Hermeneutic of Suspicion to a Hermeneutic of Hunger
Pluralism of Methods and Contextuality
The Distinction between Genuine and False Mysticism
Finding Another Language	55	(22)
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
The Journey	77	(20)
Ladders to Heaven and Stations on Earth
Purification, Illumination, Union: The Three Ways of Classic Mysticism
Traces of a Different Journey: Thomas Muntzer
Being Amazed, Letting Go, Resisting: Outline of a Mystical Journey for Today
Part II: Places of Mystical Experience
Nature	97	(16)
Places and Placelessness
A Morning Hymn: Harriet Beecher Stowe
Monotheism, Pantheism, Panentheism
Sharing and Healing: A Different Relation to the Earth
Eroticism	113	(20)
Heavenly and Earthly Love and Their Inseparability
The Song of Songs
Marguerite Porete and the Enrapturing Far-Near One
The Bitterness of Ecstasy: D. H. Lawrence and Ingeborg Bachmann
Sacred Power
Suffering	133	(24)
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
Community	157	(18)
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
Joy	175	(16)
The Mystical Relation to Time: Thich Nhat Hanch
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
As if we Lived in a Liberated World	191	(18)
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
Ego and Ego-Lessness	209	(24)
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 Hammarskjold
Success and Failure
Possession and Possessionlessness	233	(26)
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
Violence and Nonviolence	259	(20)
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
A Mysticism of Liberation	279	(20)
The Death and Life of Severino: Joao Cabral
Kneeling Down and Learning to Walk Upright: The Theology of Liberation
``When You Dance with Death, You Must Dance Well'': Pedro Casaldaliga
The Voice of the Mute: Dom Helder Camara
Learning to Pray and a Different Mysticism
Afterword: A Conversation	299	(4)
Notes	303	(14)
Bibliography	317	(6)
Index	323