Next Contemplative Conversation Circles: Small Groups Journeying, Learning, and Practicing Together via Zoom
Reading Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark: Mysticism, Art, and the Path of Unknowing by JAMES K. A. SMITH
A 6-week Study: Beginning May 20th/21st/23rd. We meet for one hour via Zoom.
“As a philosopher whose business is to know, James K. A. Smith invites us into a different way of being―the experience of unknowing. In Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark, Smith shares his unknowable childhood experience of abandonment by his father, and his gentle book teaches liberation found in the down-to-earth contemplative wisdom of the medieval masterpiece The Cloud of Unknowing and of many other sages. May we join Smith in being vulnerable, open, beloved by God, and filled with wonder and loving.”―Carmen Acevedo Butcher, core faculty member at Center for Action and Contemplation, and award-winning translator of The Cloud of Unknowing
Purchase the Book: https://amzn.to/4cEPvMX
About the Book:
A philosopher journeys back to the mystics to learn how to live with uncertainty in the twenty-first century
How do we live when we don’t know what to believe, or who to believe, or how we could even know? In this deeply felt book, philosopher James K. A. Smith explores how radical uncertainty can be liberating, opening us to another way of being. The pain of his own profound uncertainty led Smith to a surprising source for modern consolation: the mystical experiences of St. Teresa of Ávila, St. John of the Cross, and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing. These mystics testify to a deeper truth beneath distraction, anxiety, and fear: love.
Drawing on ancient traditions of contemplation as well as on contemporary novels, poetry, film, and paintings, Smith speaks to the fundamental yearnings that persist in late modernity, including the philosophical quest for knowledge and certainty. He shows us how the gifts of the Christian contemplative tradition and the riches of creative works embody a liberating spirituality that recovers the fullness of being human.
In bringing a philosopher’s questions to the mystics, Smith brings a mystical heart back to philosophy.
About the Author:
James K. A. Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin University. He is the award-winning author of numerous books, including You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit and On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts. He lives in Grand Rapids, MI. His popular writing has appeared in magazines such as Christianity Today, Christian Century, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.