austraLasia #2895
Treasure within
BOLTON (UK): 26 July 2011 -- There are at least two good reasons why a brief review of Fr Michael Cunningham's latest book, Treasure within, Rediscovering the Mystics, is appropriate at this point. One is that Don Bosco Publications are always good enough to send along a 'first off the press' version in the hope that through our modest medium we might be able to 'spread good books' as our Founder and Father put it on one occasion! Don Bosco Publications is an outstanding example of doing just that. The other is that we are still savouring a diet of parables from Matthew in the Sunday and weekly readings - at least for a day or two yet, and some of these deal directly with the 'treasure within', the 'pearl of great price', as Michael relates it to at one point of his reflections.
This is the fifth book stemming from the long experience Michael Cunningham has a spiritual director, retreat preacher, provincial no less, and several other roles that see him engaged directly with an often frenetic, sometimes very disturbing, but always 'yearning' world - and it is the yearning he speaks to particularly this time.
Because of the image we have of mystics and mysticism we might consider this book a potentially difficult read. None of Michael's books are like that! He addresses a broad readership and certainly not a 'confessional' one; Treasure Within will be read, I am certain, by people of many persuasions or of just one - that they yearn for their deepest selves but are neither sure what they will find there, nor who will guide them. The book will help them; they will be guided either by the author's many personal reflections and real life experiences as they find them described, or by the many guides he suggests. There is someone for every taste: Merton, Julian, Therese, Bede, and John O'Donohue who may be less known and less expected by those who do know of him.
There is an insistent point made throughout - away with the dualism of our past (and present) and be open instead to wholeness, connection, oneness, integration, a new consciousness. In practice Michael is suggesting a more contemplative spirituality, and making the point that mysticism is not something odd but, as Karl Rahner reminded us, the vocation of every Christian. That said, it has to be accepted that 'the mystics' (that group from which he draws his examples) were liminal persons, lived at odds with established norms, were a bit twixt and between, as Victor Turner put it.
I have one, perhaps two small quibbles with the book. Because I was doing something else at the time (working on the question of spirituality of and for the digital era), I could not help but note that every (and I mean every) mention of technology, contemporary communications, was negative. This may not have been intentional. I mean 'negative' in the Bayesian sense that if the word you are seeking is surrounded by any other word (say, as distant/close as six either side) with negative connotations, then you come away with certain feelings about it. I found 'swamped', 'overload', 'endless', 'but', 'no', 'nothing', 'doesn't' and so on, each time. Let's put it down to the same trap of dualism Michael wants us to escape if possible. It stands in contrast to the messages of Benedict XVI over the last three World Communication Days where he is suggesting directly that we can find "God's loving care for all people in Christ.... in the digital world" or rather, that we must find it or introduce it.
The other is just a little thing, really, an editorial decision: the longer citations were all in a larger font than the normal text. That had the effect of over-emphasising them, for me, and broke the flow, a bit, of Michael's very fluent, very engaging, personal style of writing.
------------
Further information on Don Bosco Publications is available from joyce@salesians.org.uk or www.don-bosco-publications.co.uk
_________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . RSS feeds - just go to Bosconet, click on austraLasia 2011 in the sidebar. You will see the RSS orange icon in your browser address bar - add it from there. Or be interactive with the EAO blog Cetera Tolle. Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at http://sdl.sdb.org
Treasure within
BOLTON (UK): 26 July 2011 -- There are at least two good reasons why a brief review of Fr Michael Cunningham's latest book, Treasure within, Rediscovering the Mystics, is appropriate at this point. One is that Don Bosco Publications are always good enough to send along a 'first off the press' version in the hope that through our modest medium we might be able to 'spread good books' as our Founder and Father put it on one occasion! Don Bosco Publications is an outstanding example of doing just that. The other is that we are still savouring a diet of parables from Matthew in the Sunday and weekly readings - at least for a day or two yet, and some of these deal directly with the 'treasure within', the 'pearl of great price', as Michael relates it to at one point of his reflections.
This is the fifth book stemming from the long experience Michael Cunningham has a spiritual director, retreat preacher, provincial no less, and several other roles that see him engaged directly with an often frenetic, sometimes very disturbing, but always 'yearning' world - and it is the yearning he speaks to particularly this time.
Because of the image we have of mystics and mysticism we might consider this book a potentially difficult read. None of Michael's books are like that! He addresses a broad readership and certainly not a 'confessional' one; Treasure Within will be read, I am certain, by people of many persuasions or of just one - that they yearn for their deepest selves but are neither sure what they will find there, nor who will guide them. The book will help them; they will be guided either by the author's many personal reflections and real life experiences as they find them described, or by the many guides he suggests. There is someone for every taste: Merton, Julian, Therese, Bede, and John O'Donohue who may be less known and less expected by those who do know of him.
There is an insistent point made throughout - away with the dualism of our past (and present) and be open instead to wholeness, connection, oneness, integration, a new consciousness. In practice Michael is suggesting a more contemplative spirituality, and making the point that mysticism is not something odd but, as Karl Rahner reminded us, the vocation of every Christian. That said, it has to be accepted that 'the mystics' (that group from which he draws his examples) were liminal persons, lived at odds with established norms, were a bit twixt and between, as Victor Turner put it.
I have one, perhaps two small quibbles with the book. Because I was doing something else at the time (working on the question of spirituality of and for the digital era), I could not help but note that every (and I mean every) mention of technology, contemporary communications, was negative. This may not have been intentional. I mean 'negative' in the Bayesian sense that if the word you are seeking is surrounded by any other word (say, as distant/close as six either side) with negative connotations, then you come away with certain feelings about it. I found 'swamped', 'overload', 'endless', 'but', 'no', 'nothing', 'doesn't' and so on, each time. Let's put it down to the same trap of dualism Michael wants us to escape if possible. It stands in contrast to the messages of Benedict XVI over the last three World Communication Days where he is suggesting directly that we can find "God's loving care for all people in Christ.... in the digital world" or rather, that we must find it or introduce it.
The other is just a little thing, really, an editorial decision: the longer citations were all in a larger font than the normal text. That had the effect of over-emphasising them, for me, and broke the flow, a bit, of Michael's very fluent, very engaging, personal style of writing.
------------
Further information on Don Bosco Publications is available from joyce@salesians.org.uk or www.don-bosco-publications.co.uk
_________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . RSS feeds - just go to Bosconet, click on austraLasia 2011 in the sidebar. You will see the RSS orange icon in your browser address bar - add it from there. Or be interactive with the EAO blog Cetera Tolle. Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at http://sdl.sdb.org
