Wisdom from the Western Isles: The Making of a Mystic
David Torkington
Language: English
Pages: 396
ISBN: B00SK8I344
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
When he loses his son and his wife in childbirth James is totally bereft. An introduction to a hermit gradually changes his life irrevocably. Although the Hermit turns out to be a Roman Catholic, James finds he can completely identify with his profound spirituality, precisely because it is so scriptural and drawn from the same Christian Masters who had originally inspired him.
completely. Once this had happened, you no longer needed to gaze at the scene before you. You could close your eyes and savor what you had received in your mind and in your heart. ‘The physical senses, and the feelings and emotions that depend upon them, have no part in what is primarily a spiritual experience. When the experience vanishes, as it always will, the heart and mind mourn for what has been lost and the heart desires to receive it once more. The restless heart that yearns for love
that I felt somehow summed up how I felt at the time, how I related or didn’t relate to the God who seemed to have taken his leave of me. I chose the prayer Jesus himself made upon the Cross, most especially when everything seemed too much: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. Or the prayer he made in Gethsemane, particularly when temptations came thick and fast: “Father, may this chalice be taken away from me.” When I felt really in the pits I turned to the De Profundis: “Out of the
didn’t take away all the pain, but it did give meaning to it and made it bearable. What helped most was seeing that the sacrifice she had to make was exactly the sacrifice Mary made, with and through her own son on Calvary. She saw that the realization of her priesthood was as terrifyingly real. She was not only asked to offer her heart and mind in prayer, but her grief-stricken body too, in and out of prayer, and the most precious fruit of that body. This painful sacrifice that my mother had to
irrational behavior had been discovered in the unconscious mind and shown to the sufferer in the conscious mind, they would be cured of their affliction. I thought he was wrong at the time. Now I know that he was wrong. I was a racist although I’d not known it, and the mere fact that I knew what I didn’t know before didn’t change me at all. ‘I remember wandering through the streets of Johannesburg, looking at black African women and trying to imagine my brother married to one of them. I simply
the pattern of all prayer, the “Our Father”. There are many other liturgical prayers that you can use for personal prayer too. The “Gloria”, more properly a hymn, is an excellent example. I always recommend it to people because it immediately takes them out of themselves. The focal point of the prayer is God, his Glory; and this is the end of all prayer, as of man’s whole existence. ‘I believe the use of the liturgical texts for private prayer is important, since it helps to build a bridge