This anonymous fourteenth-century text is the glory of English mysticism, and one of the most practical and useful guides to finding union with God ever written. Carmen Acevedo Butcher's new translation is the first to bring the text into a modern English idiom--while remaining strictly faithful to the meaning of the original Middle English.
"The Cloud of Unknowing" consists of a series of letters written by a monk to his student or disciple, instructing him (or her) in the way of Divine union. Its theology is presented in a way that is remarkably easy to understand, as well as practical, providing advice on prayer and contemplation that anyone can use. Previous translations of the "Cloud" have tended to veil its intimate, even friendly tone under medieval-sounding language. Carmen Butcher has boldly brought the text into language as appealing to modern ears as it was to its original readers more than five hundred years ago.
Also included in the volume is the companion work attributed to the same anonymous author, "The Book of Privy Counsel," which contains further advice for approaching God in a way that emphasizes real experience rather than human knowledge.

For the medieval mystical tradition, the Christian soul meets God in a "cloud of unknowing," a divine darkness of ignorance. This meeting with God is beyond all knowing and beyond all experiencing. Mysticisms of the modern period, on the contrary, place "mystical experience" at the center, and contemporary readers are inclined to misunderstand the medieval tradition in "experientialist" terms. Denys Turner argues that the distinctiveness and contemporary relevance of medieval mysticism lies precisely in its rejection of "mystical experience," and locates the mystical firmly within the grasp of the ordinary and the everyday. The argument covers some central authorities in the period from Augustine to John of the Cross.

Julian's Literary Legacy is a study of A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman from the inside out. Julian's writing is systematically studied by Fr Luke Penkett, Librarian and Archivist at the Julian Centre, drawing attention to her linguistic brilliance and clarifying complicated passages with greater comprehension for twenty-first-century readers in mind. The ways in which Julian's literary style and her use of earlier and contemporary material are seen to illuminate each other, offering new and previously under-studied aspects without which little new research along well-worn paths is feasible. The Middle English words - and their use - are given their fullness of meaning, heightened by her use of rhetoric, allowing their potential richness to come to the surface, opening up possibilities for Julian's readers to be increasingly aware of God's goodness and the fact that they are loved for who they are.

Laughing at the Devil is an invitation to see the world with a medieval visionary now known as Julian of Norwich, believed to be the first woman to have written a book in English. (We do not know her given name, because she became known by the name of a church that became her home.) Julian "saw our Lord scorn [the Devil's] wickedness" and noted that "he wants us to do the same." In this impassioned, analytic, and irreverent book, Amy Laura Hall emphasizes Julian's call to scorn the Devil. Julian of Norwich envisioned courage during a time of fear. Laughing at the Devil describes how a courageous woman transformed a setting of dread into hope, solidarity, and resistance.

This study reveals how women's visionary texts played a central role within medieval discourses of authorship, reading, and devotion. From the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, women across northern Europe began committing their visionary conversations with Christ to the written word. Translating Christ in this way required multiple transformations: divine speech into human language, aural event into textual artifact, visionary experience into linguistic record, and individual encounter into communal repetition. This ambitious study shows how women's visionary texts form an underexamined literary tradition within medieval religious culture. Barbara Zimbalist demonstrates how, within this tradition, female visionaries developed new forms of authorship, reading, and devotion. Through these transformations, the female visionary authorized herself and her text, and performed a rhetorical imitatio Christi that offered models of interpretive practice and spoken devotion to her readers. This literary-historical tradition has not yet been fully recognized on its own terms. By exploring its development in hagiography, visionary texts, and devotional literature, Zimbalist shows how this literary mode came to be not only possible but widespread and influential. She argues that women's visionary translation reconfigured traditional hierarchies and positions of spiritual power for female authors and readers in ways that reverberated throughout late-medieval literary and religious cultures. In translating their visionary conversations with Christ into vernacular text, medieval women turned themselves into authors and devotional guides, and formed their readers into textual communities shaped by gendered visionary experiences and spoken imitatio Christi. Comparing texts in Latin, Dutch, French, and English, Translating Christ in the Middle Ages explores how women's visionary translation of Christ's speech initiated larger transformations of gendered authorship and religious authority within medieval culture. The book will interest scholars in different linguistic and religious traditions in medieval studies, history, religious studies, and women's and gender studies.

Mystics and Miracles offers twenty-four compelling biographies that explore the lives of ordinary people chosen by God to do his extraordinary work. From visions and healing to prophecies and miracles, mystics provide a direct connection between the human and the divine.

If the western world knows anything about Zen Buddhism, it is down to the efforts of one remarkable man, D.T. Suzuki. The twenty-seven-year-old Japanese scholar first visited the west in 1897, and over the course of the next seventy years became the world's leading authority on Zen. His radical and penetrating insights earned him many disciples, from Carl Jung to Allen Ginsberg, from Thomas Merton to John Cage. In Mysticism Christian and Buddhist Suzuki compares the teachings of the great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart with the spiritual wisdom of Shin and Zen Buddhism. By juxtaposing cultures that seem to be radically opposed, Suzuki raises one of the fundamental questions of human experience: at the limits of our understanding is there an experience that is universal to all humanity? Mysticism Christian and Buddhist is a book that challenges and inspires; it will benefit readers of all religions who seek to understand something of the nature of spiritual life.

Guy Aiken provides a critical appreciation of Quaker mystic Thomas Kelly (1893-1941) and his classic A Testament of Devotion (1941). This examination of Kelly's life and devotional writings is largely viewed through an Augustinian lens; Augustine's Confessions was a touchstone for Kelly after his mystical transformation in 1937-38. Aiken argues that Kelly's vision of Quakerism transcended religious and historical boundaries, while still speaking directly, and prophetically, to mid-twentieth-century liberal Quakerism and Christianity in the United States. The volume treats, in turn, Kelly's melding of liberal and evangelical theology, his prophetic call to his contemporaries, and his revival of an ancient ethic, before concluding with helpful suggestions for further research.

One of the world's foremost spiritual guides responds to the modern hunger for self-awareness and holistic living with a series of spiritual exercises blending psychology, spiritual therapy, and practices drawn from both Eastern and Western traditions of meditation.

The Christology and Mystical Theology of Karl Rahner delineates what Rahner means by the mysticism of daily life, the mysticism of the masses, the mysticism of the classical masters, the difference between infused and awakened contemplation, the relation of mysticism to Christian perfection, and Rahner's controversial view that the mystical life does not require a special grace. It explores how Rahner embraces the person of Jesus Christ - whom Rahner sees as Christianity's center - both with his acute theological mind but also with his Jesuit heart. Who has better defined the human person as the ability to be God in the world, understood Jesus' humanity as God's human in the world, and boldly stated the difference between Jesus and other human beings that is only he is God's humanity in the world. The book also looks at Rahner's view of Jesus as the absolute savior, his ascending and descending Christology, his creative re-interpretation of Christ's death and resurrection, his seeking Christology, and his controversial anonymous Christian theory. Finally, it emphasizes the influence of St. Ignatius of Loyola on Rahner's thinking. Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises, especially their emphasis on God working immediately with the person, its Christology, and the rules for the discernment of spirits plays a key role in Rahner's overall theological view. Few Catholic theologians have taken Christian saints and mystics as theological sources as seriously as Rahner has.