My dear friend, Ralph Lane, wrote poetry in his retirement years. One such poem, entitled, “I Will Never Be a Mystic,” reads: “I will never be a mystic and to be honest, I am not really trying though ...

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis said Wednesday that Christian meditation is a way of encountering Jesus and not “a withdrawal into ourselves.” Speaking at his general audience April 28, the pope reflected ...

Mysticism is a dirty word for some Christians. “They think of it as the bizarre,” said Bernard McGinn, a retired religion professor at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. “But that is an ...

Is mysticism only for the rarefied few? The Meister Eckharts in the Christian tradition, the Isaac Lurias in the Kabbalah of Jewish mystical thought, the Rumis in the Sufi tradition within Islam? Or ...

As a seminarian taking classes in church history, spirituality and mission formation, and women of the Reformation, I learned a key fact about mysticism: from Christianity’s triumph in the fourth ...

The late Douglas Shrader was a SUNY distinguished teaching professor and the chair of the Philosophy Department at SUNY Oneonta. He participated in the SUNY Oneonta Yoga Institute between 2001 and ...

Notable theologian and author John Piper has warned Christians not to pursue mysticism or believe that one can connect with God in a supernatural realm to gain hidden knowledge. In a recent episode of ...