Contemplative Christianity Reading List
I wrote this reading list after a recent discussion with another student of contemplative Christian spirituality. My hope here is to present a few titles that have been helpful to me in exploring both the methods, theology and experience of Christian contemplation. This list deliberately avoids the classics of ‘Centering Prayer’ authors (e.g., Richard Rohr, Thomas Keating, Cynthia Bourgeault, etc.) since these are already well known and are generally more accessible. I have opted for a mixture of historical classics and contemporary works that, in my opinion, are both well-written and helpful, while remaining firmly within the Christian tradition. This list is by no means complete, but it may be a good place to start for someone interested in exploring the mystical and contemplative dimensions of Christian practice.
Into The Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation by Martin Laird OSA
This is a brilliant introduction to Christian contemplative spirituality, practice and theology, including ‘how to’ instructions regarding posture, sitting, breath, and the Jesus Prayer. Laird draws upon traditions from throughout Christian history including the Church Fathers and the Philokalia.
An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation by Martin Laird OSA
This book is the perhaps the most beautifully written book of Christian spirituality I have come across. Laird explores the levels of contemplative practice, common challenges, and penetrates the nondual dimension of Christian contemplation: the illusory nature of our ‘separation’ from God and the path back to the divine abundance at the true centre of our being. Laird’s work is accessible, profound, and sober, free of any esoteric psychobabble or pseudoscience. His books are masterworks of contemporary spiritual writing.
New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton
Merton’s New Seeds is a reworking of his earlier book, Seeds of Contemplation, which he edited and expanded. His prose is brilliant and captivating. Merton masterfully explores the concepts of integrity, the ‘true self’ vs. the ‘false self,’ and apophatic spirituality for which he is known, among other topics such as asceticism, faith, love, basically all topics related to the stages of contemplation. He presents contemplation as a way of experiencing God, the self and the world at the depths of our being, rather than a single practice or even set of meditative practices. This is not so much a ‘how to’ guide, but rather a deep dive into a contemplative Christian worldview.
The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation by Thomas Merton
This book was never intended for publication and was published posthumously; it is by some accounts Merton’s most mature and sophisticated exploration of Christian contemplation, including comparisons with Eastern contemplative philosophies (particularly Zen). His sources range from the Church Fathers (including some lesser known Greek and Syriac Fathers), to the medieval scholastics, to Eastern philosophers. This book is more challenging but is perhaps the best ‘no-BS’ book on Christian contemplation published in the 20th century.
Presence and Process: A Path Towards Transformative Faith and Inclusive Community by Daniel Coleman
While not my favourite, this book is useful as it compares diverse forms of both Christian and Eastern meditation and contemplative practice: the Jesus Prayer, centering prayer, ‘Christian mediation’, Quaker silent worship, Zen, transcendental meditation, mindfulness, etc. Coleman shows the essential similarities between these practices and advocates a perennialist view, similar to Rohr, emphasising the common experiential core at the heart of all religious traditions. He also introduces process theology as a metaphysical framework for mysticism. Coleman’s metaphysics did not fully convince me, but I definitely benefited from his side-by-side comparisons between meditative practices across both Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Quakerism (whether Quakerism is a form of Christianity anymore is controversial, which is why I mention it separately).
The Cloud of Unknowing
This text was written by an anonymous 14th century English priest, probably a Cistercian monk, and is since been translated into modern English. It is an excellent example of both medieval ‘love mysticism’ and the contemplative method according to the tradition of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The author discusses the active and contemplative life and introduces his method of contemplative prayer, using a one-syllable prayer word, which became the inspiration later for Thomas Keating’s ‘Centering Prayer’ method. According to the Cloud-author, we cannot know God by the intellect, but can experience God by love; the reach God experientially this way, we have to move beyond every concept and idea of God, forgetting both our ideas and ourselves, entering into the darkness of the ‘cloud of forgetting’ and the ‘cloud of unknowing.’ The combination of apophaticism, love-mysticism and the author’s clear instructions for a simple method of meditative prayer make this book essential reading.
The Mystical Theology and The Divine Names by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
These two texts form part of the so-called Corpus Areopagiticum, a body of works written in the 5th or 6th Century by a Syrian monk who took the pseudonym Dionysius the Areopagite. These works draw upon neo-Platonic philosophy to outline a Christian apophatic theology, the so-called ‘negative way,’ by which the the soul draws near to God by negating, or denying, all positive descriptions and predicates, to “plunge into the darkness, where there dwells the One who is beyond all things.” For Pseudo-Dionysius, God is the “inscrutable One that is out of reach of every rational process… it is gathered up by no discourse, no intuition, no name.” This negative theology is paradigmatic for the Christian mystical tradition, and these two texts have arguably influenced Christian mysticism more than any other.
The Life of Moses by Gregory of Nyssa
This work is challenging but worthwhile. Gregory of Nyssa, the 4th century Cappadocian bishop and theologian, uses the narrative of Moses’ biography to demonstrate not only his mystical, allegorical method of biblical interpretation, but also key contemplative theological ideas such as divine darkness, divine mysteries ‘beyond the comprehension of the intellect,’ and the infinite progress in virtue and knowledge of God known as epektasis. Not the easiest introduction but a classic of mystical patristic theology.
The Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila
This is a classic of counter-Reformation Carmelite mysticism, exemplifying not only 16th century Catholic spirituality at its finest, but also a rich itinerary of the interior life. Teresa of Avila outlines seven stages of the interior life, each describing a step closer to God, ranging from active prayer and asceticism to the ‘prayer of quiet’ and eventually the ‘prayer of union,’ ecstatic rapture of divine union, and finally the transforming union of ‘spiritual marriage’ of the soul to God. Teresa’s Interior Castle contains some of the most well-known and well-loved images of contemplative experience, such as her description of the soul being united with God the way rain is united with a lake, one filling the other and the two becoming indistinguishable.
The Way of the Pilgrim
Written in 19th century Russia by an anonymous author, this book tells the story of a pilgrim who walks across Russia seeking to learn how to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17). The pilgrim eventually encounters a Russian elder, or starets, who teaches him the practice of the Jesus Prayer and gives him a copy of the Philokalia, initiating him into the contemplative practices of Orthodox Hesychia. The pilgrim, through the extensive repetition of the Jesus Prayer, achieves spiritual joys and ecstasies that he describes in beautiful, easy-to-read passages on page after page. An absolute classic and essential reading for anyone interested in contemplative prayer.
The Spiritual World of St Isaac the Syrian by Hilarion Alfeyev
In this book, Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev — practically the second-most senior bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church — provides a deep and wide-ranging survey of the spirituality of Isaac the Syrian, the 7th century monk from Qatar who became bishop of Nineveh in Iraq, only to soon quit his post as bishop to live a solitary life as a hermit in the desert. Isaac is considered one of the greatest spiritual masters in all of Christian history and his works integrate the themes of contemplation, silence, compassion, love, union with God, asceticism, and his hope for the universal reconciliation of all things. Isaac’s works on contemplation and prayer are alone worth reading, but his unconventional views on the afterlife and universal salvation are refreshing and powerful, providing an important alternative perspective to unhappy European visions of judgement and eternal hell.
