“Eckhart does not counsel anyone to seek suffering for its own sake, nor even as a special mode of God’s presence. In this he differs considerably from most of his contemporaries, and even some of his own disciples. Eckhart’s way is to seek God in all things, and all things in God, even suffering, not with fatalistic resignation as inescapable, but as a gift of God’s presence and companionship.”
Woods, Richard. Meister Eckhart: Master of Mystics. New York: Continuum, 2011, p. 177
“To leave the present moment in search of anything else is to cut a path to a pigpen.”
Haase, Albert. Coming Home to Your True Self: Leaving the Emptiness of False Attractions. Foreword by M. Robert Mulholland, Jr. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2008, p. 64
“Although God lives in the souls of men who are unconscious of Him, how can I say that I have found Him and found myself in Him if I never know Him or think of Him, never take and interest in Him or seek Him or desire His presence in my soul? What good does it do to say a few formal prayers to him and then turn away and give all my mind and all my will to created things, desiring only ends that fall far short of Him?”
Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation. Introduction by Sue Monk Kidd. New York: New Directions Books, 2007, ©1961, p. 43.
“In Christian scripture, following the Septuagint tradition, tselem was normally translated by the Greek term eikon (see Col. 1:15, etc.). ‘Likeness’ was rendered by homoiosis or homoioma and their cognates, a linguistic fact that would bear difficult fruit in the great Christological controversies that split the early Church between Orthodoxy and Arianism. Eikon, of course, is the same as ‘icon’ in English, and still refers to the sacred image. It is worth noting that the centuries-long dispute in the Eastern Church, as well as later in Puritan England and New England regarding the propriety of sacred images, has its roots in the apophatic rejection of any representations of the unseen, invisible, incomprehensible God.”
Woods, Richard. Meister Eckhart: Master of Mystics. New York: Continuum, 2011, p. 141.
“Mysticism is a story that begins in silence and only takes on the form of language and narrative after the fact. We say that mysticism involves experience: the experience of union with God, or of the presence of God, or something as extraordinary as Teresa’s encounter with the angel, or Merton’s street corner lovefest. But experience is not the entire story, either. The problem with experience is that it can be driven by the human ego, a self-directed phenomenon that can too easily become self-absorbed. Mysticism affirms the mystery of God more than mere experience. Sometimes God chooses to encounter us deep beneath the horizon of our awareness. That’s one of many reasons why we call this type of spirituality ‘mysticism’–it ushers us into mystery, deeper than what our minds or even our hearts can comprehend.”
McColman, Carl. The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism: an Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2023, pp. 15-16.
"At first the quiet may feel like just another place of emptiness. We may even feel a sense of dread or fear that we are going to be judged or punished for parts of ourselves we have now brought into the light of day.
“But if we stay in this moment, eventually – like Elijah – we begin to notice that this silence is qualitatively different from the emptiness we experienced before. The silence that comes after the chaos is pregnant with the presence of God.”
Barton, Ruth Haley. Invitation to Solitude and Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004, p. 110.
“God is everywhere. The purpose of meditation and prayer is to become aware of that presence and live in relationship with God. It is not so much that ‘God fills us,’ even though scripture uses that language to describe it from our perspective. God is already here. We simply enter into a relationship by being in the Presence of the One who Is.”
Talbot, John Michael. The World is My Cloister: Living From the Hermit Within. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010, page 107.
“God is everywhere. The purpose of meditation and prayer is to become aware of that presence and live in relationship with God. It is not so much that ‘God fills us,’ even though scripture uses that language to describe it from our perspective. God is already here. We simply enter into a relationship by being in the Presence of the One who Is.”
Talbot, John Michael. The World is My Cloister: Living From the Hermit Within. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010, page 107.
“For Luther God exists literally as a vibrant and vigorous force in every creature, also in inanimate creatures, in fire, in water, in a leaf, in a stone. Luther rejects the childishly anthropomorphizing picture of the Creator, who, after creating the world, now sits enthroned in heaven far away from it; he rejects the God of naive preachers, the God who so tormented Jakob Boehme, for example. Mysticism never expressed the idea of God’s immanence in the world more forcefully than Luther did.”
Heinrich Bornkamm. Luther’s World of Thought. Translated by Martin H. Bertram. St. Louis: Concordia, 1958, page 113.
"At first the quiet may feel like just another place of emptiness. We may even feel a sense of dread or fear that we are going to be judged or punished for parts of ourselves we have now brought into the light of day.
“But if we stay in this moment, eventually – like Elijah – we begin to notice that this silence is qualitatively different from the emptiness we experienced before. The silence that comes after the chaos is pregnant with the presence of God.”
Barton, Ruth Haley. Invitation to Solitude and Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004, p. 110.
Pathology: the Study of a Path 