Jakob Boehme (1575-1624) was one of those remarkable teachers, like Meister Eckhart, who pushed language to its limits to describe an experience that happens above and beyond rational thought. He was a Bohemian shoemaker who, in response to the overwhelming visionary experiences he began to undergo as a teenager, wrote a series of theosophical treatises that explored the relationship between the One and the many, existence and nonexistence, the inner process of divine emanation toward self-consciousness, the relationship of good and evil, and the personal and cosmic urge toward reintegration. Some hear in him resonances with alchemy, kabbalah, and Platonism. His influence is seen in the Quakers, the German Romantics, Pietism, various American utopian experiments, and in the European mystics who came after him. The great scholar of mysticism Evelyn Underhill called him "one of the most astonishing cases in history of a natural genius for the transcendent."
Michael Birkel and Jeff Bach's translation liberates Boehme into modern English. Previous editions have tended toward the academic, or have been couched in intentionally archaic language reminiscent of the King James Bible. This collection includes five essential texts, among them "Life Beyond the Senses," Boehme's explanation of the relationship between God and the soul.

Today's world cries out for lives of integrity, for Christian models that integrate "the inward life of devotion and the outward life of the activist for justice and peace." We can find no better example than eighteenth-century Quaker, John Woolman. Birkel writes of the profound impact Woolman has had on his own life. He invites readers to become acquainted with the spiritual disciplines and resources that nurtered Woolman's empathy with the stranger and empowered him to engage the world as a witness on behalf of the disenfranchised. Includes a group discussion guide.