Spiritual book roundup
“Dangerous Mystic” by Joel F. Harrington, Penguin, 384 pages, $30
There is a depth of nuanced clarity that is the heart of biography: to place a historically significant character in the context of a time, its politics and prevailing currents is to secure or topple a perch in history.
Even more so in the realm of religion. There, the masterfully executed biography revivifies from the dregs of history a religious figure in ways that illuminate sacred paths.
So it is with historian Joel Harrington’s “Dangerous Mystic,” a rich work that brings to life the fevered religious landscape of medieval Christianity and examines the rise and ecclesiastical ruptures of the German mystic Meister Eckhart, a Dominican friar who taught that anyone “could experience the birth of God directly within his or her own soul.”
In an age — and in a church — steeped in hierarchy, Eckhart’s message of direct access to the divine verged on heretical.
Yet centuries after his death, Eckhart has been embraced across a vast religious spectrum. He belongs on a short roster of essential theologians and thinkers whose work demands to be understood.
Harrington, the Centennial professor of history at Vanderbilt University, takes on the “mystic’s mystic” with a historian’s capacity to immerse the reader in the 14th century.
“The Fox Hunt” by Mohammed Al Samawi, William Morrow, 336 pages, $27.99
It’s not often that a nailbiting adventure story finds its way to the religion bookshelf. But “The Fox Hunt,” a memoir by Mohammed Al Samawi, a Muslim Yemeni peace-builder who had to flee his homeland, is not simply the tale of harrowing escape. It’s a story built on the threads of four strangers, three faiths and one improbable plot to save Al Samawi, an activist trapped in a civil war and besieged by death threats. It becomes a thriller that turns on faith, unlikely friendship and redemption.
Al Samawi has a gift for suspense, drama and heartwrenching detail.
His is a fast-paced telling, retracing his childhood plunge into religion and a deepening devotion to the Quran, along with an indoctrination that made him see Jews — and all of Western culture — as “the enemy.” That thinking shatters when he befriends a teacher who is Christian and Western, and the two exchange Quran and Bible; Al Samawi begins to see that both sacred texts share a core message of love.
Thus begins his lifework preaching interfaith peacebuilding. With civil war erupting all around him, Al Samawi’s lifeline became the dodgy internet connection across the globe to a network of peace-builders — two American Jews and two women living in Israel.
“How to Live” by Judith Valente, Hampton Roads, 211 pages, $16.95
From ancient sacred text comes instruction for these troubled times.
In Judith Valente’s “How to Live: What the Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning, and Community,” she unearths a monastic code from the sixth century, and breathes soulfulness and relevance into its wisdom.
Written in the turbulence of ancient Rome, the Rule, through Valente’s lens, reads as antidote for the 21st century.
While “How to Live” might sound overly ambitious, Valente — a journalist, poet and essayist — masterfully explores one spiritual facet at a time, delving into silence, humility, forgiving and living simply. Well before the midpoint in her text, she’s convinced her reader that the prescription for living a gentler, more openhearted existence is found in St. Benedict’s code, which Valente likens to a “Magna Carta for ethical living.”
There is a quiet that comes in reading Valente and soon a stirring that this book is one you’ll turn to whenever you’re wondering just how you might best live your life.
Barbara Mahany’s latest book,“The Blessings of Motherprayer: Sacred Whispers of Mothering,” was published in April.