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Title: The Other Side of Nothingness: Toward a Theology of Radical Openness
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Manufacturer: State University of New York Press
List Price: $18.95
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| The Other Side of Nothingness: Toward a Theology of Radical Openness by State University of New York Press World Peace through Mystics of All Faiths | | Lanzetta is GOOD. Only drawback -- she never met a long Greek word she didn't like. HOWEVER after one looks them up a few times, her deep knowledge of the world's mystics gives the reader a sense of how beautiful the world could be if we all moved to the other side of nothingness. I give copies away to friends. Maggie Ross recommended this book. As a Christian lover of silence Ross also sees the bond we can find there with everyone in the whole world without exception. Lanzetta reminds me of a lecture on COMPASSION which Karen Armstrong gave last year. The thoughtless, threadbare, and facile statements that "we are all going to the same place" may actually have a truth that is beyond our imagination. | | The Other Side of Nothingness: Toward a Theology of Radical Openness by State University of New York Press Be still and know that I am God | In THE OTHER SIDE OF NOTHINGNESS, Beverly Lanzetta tells a story, a love story. This is a love story between God and humankind, told for the new millenium. In it, she reflects on the divine encounter from the apophatic tradition of particular Christian mystics. She develops her story, in part, through a lucid witnessing of the writings of pseudo-Dionysius, the anonymous author of THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING, and Meister Eckhart. Although these mystics are of western origin, she recognizes the experience to be a universal one. She knows, as do I, that the love story that occurs between man and God happens in the deepest parts of ourselves and is a treasure that can be found in any of us.
Key to her tale is the contemplative life. Dr. Lanzetta shows us, in her exploration of these writings, the ultimate ways we might embrace God and that God might embrace us. At the core are vulnerability, mercy and non-violence. At the core is a fluidity that cannot be named, trapped, or reached. But deeper and deeper we go, and our Beloved goes with us, the unnameable, the unreachable, the unknowable, into a Self-emptying nothingness and embrace. It is a love story that has no beginning or end because it is all Mystery. Spirit and matter embrace as One in the eternal present. It is always happening.
This story is retold for us today, that we as a global community, might know the plurality and the Oneness that is forever and eternally our heritage. Dr. Lanzetta reminds us of the twentieth-century prophets and social mystics, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Abraham Heschel, and Howard Thurman, whose desire to be transformed takes place in social climates with the marginalized and those who are materially and spiritually poor among us.
Dr. Lanzetta speaks about the unknowable in a manner that is masterful and eloquent. She is a visionary who writes on mystical openness "motivated by a desire to recover what has remained unheard in the history of theology, and to put it to use in overcoming religious exclusiveness and the violence associated with absolute truth claims." She speaks from her heart for our hearts. Over and over, I am reminded: Be still and know that I am loved. Be still and know that I am God. | | The Other Side of Nothingness: Toward a Theology of Radical Openness by State University of New York Press Book Description | | Provides an innovative theology based in mysticism, one that acknowledges the pain of spiritual repression and values religious pluralism. |
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