THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING and THE BOOK OF PRIVY COUNSELING are the first explorations in the English language of the soul’s quest for God. Written in Middle English by an unknown fourteenth-century mystic, THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING expresses with beauty a message that has inspired such great religious thinkers as St. John of the Cross and Teilhard de Chardin, as well as countless others in search of God. Offering a practical guide to the life of contemplation, the author explains that ordinary thoughts and earthly concepts must be buried beneath a “cloud of forgetting,” while our love must rise toward a God hidden in the “cloud of unknowing.” THE BOOK OF PRIVY COUNSELING, also included in this volume, is a short and moving text on the way to enlightenment through a total loss of self and a consciousness only of the divine. William Johnston, an authority on fourteenth-century mysticism and spirituality, provides an accessible discussion of the works, detailing what is known about the history of the texts and their author. In a new foreword, Huston Smith draws on his extensive knowledge of the varieties of religious experience to illuminate the relevance of these works for contemporary readers.

Contains The Cloud of Unknowing, The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, The Book of Privy Counselling, and An Epistle on Prayer. Against a tradition of devotional writings which focussed on knowing God through Christ's Passion and his humanity, these texts describe a transcendent God who exists beyond human knowledge and human language. These four texts are at the heart of medival mystical theology in their call for contemplation, calm, and above all, love, as the way to understand the Divine.

A “gripping” mystery revolving around a family tragedy, and a woman who may or may not be descending into madness (Entertainment Weekly). David Sears grew up terrorized by the ravings of his schizophrenic father, a frustrated literary genius who openly preferred David’s sister Diana for her superior intelligence. When the Old Man died, David thought the madness had finally died with him. But the Sears family was not through with its troubles. The drowning of Diana’s mentally ill son has been ruled a tragic “misadventure,” a conclusion she refuses to accept. After hastily divorcing her husband, she sets out to prove his culpability. Her increasingly manic behavior is becoming hard for David to ignore. He finds himself afraid for his own family’s safety—and choosing his words carefully when answering the detective. Edgar Award–winning author Thomas H. Cook explores the power of blood to define us, bind us, and sometimes destroy us, in a novel of “consuming suspense almost too concentrated to bear” (New York Daily News). “So spare and precise, it feels as if it has been chiseled in stone with something like a surgical instrument.” —Joyce Carol Oates “What’s at stake isn’t so much the resolution of a mystery as the integrity of a family.” —Time Out New York

The best-selling author of The Wisdom Jesus and The Meaning of Mary Magdalene demystifies the popular Christian meditation method rooted in contemplative prayer Centering Prayer is the path to a wonderful and radical new way of seeing the world. It is not, as is sometimes thought, simply an act of devotional piety, nor is it simply a Christianized form of other meditation methods. Cynthia Bourgeault here cuts through the misconceptions to show that Centering Prayer is in fact a pioneering development within the Christian contemplative tradition. She provides a practical, complete course in the practice and then goes deeper to analyze what actually happens in Centering Prayer: the mind effectively switches to a new operating system that makes possible the perception of nonduality. With this understanding in place, she then takes us on a journey through one of the sources of the practice, the Christian contemplative classic The Cloud of Unknowing, revealing it to be among the earliest Christian explorations of the phenomenology of consciousness. Cynthia Bourgeault’s illumination of the Centering Prayer path provides compelling evidence of how important the practice has become in the half-century since it first arose among American Trappist monks, and of its maturation and refinement over the ensuing years of sincere study and practice. It will resonate with beginners on the Centering Prayer path as well as with seasoned practitioners.

Those who turn to spiritual classics for guidance and inspiration often find their style daunting. The original texts still have much to offer but their diction and idiom, chosen for another era and audience, pose an obstacle to many contemporary readers. The Cloud of Unknowing for Everyone is the latest in a series that aims to make some of the greatest Christian teachers accessible to all. The Cloud of Unknowing, written by an unknown fourteenth century author, points out that all we can know of God is slight; God in Godself is unknowable to our limited intellect and thought. Only love can bridge the gap, love like an arrow of longing simple, straightforward and direct. All who feel called to a life of prayer will be captivated by the balanced, precise and practical insights of The Cloud. In her retelling of this classic, Obbard invites contemporary readers to join previous generations who have discovered the riches of this classic text.

Gathers six works by an anonymous fourteenth century mystic concerning spiritual life and faith.