The Wounded Stag PDF
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title: The Wounded Stag author: Johnston, William. publisher: Fordham University Press isbn10 | asin: 0823218406 print isbn13: 9780823218400 ebook isbn13: 9780585171203 language: English subject Mysticism. publication date: 1998 lcc: BV5082.2.J63 1998eb ddc: 248.2/2 subject: Mysticism. Page iii The Wounded Stag Christian Mysticism Today William Johnston "The Wounded Stag Appears On the Hill" ST JOHN OF THE CROSS FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS New York 1998 Page iv Copyright © 1998 by W J ILLIAM OHNSTON All rights reserved. LC 97-39109 ISBN 0-8232-1839-2 (hardcover) ISBN 0-8232-1840-6 (paperback) Published by arrangement with HarperSanFrancisco, a division of HarperCollins, Publishers, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Johnston, William, 1925- [Christian mysticism today] The wounded stag / William Johnston. p. cm. Originally published: Christian mysticism today. London :: W. Collins & Sons: New York: Harper & Row, 1984. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8232-1839-2. ISBN 0-8232-1840-6 (pbk.) 1. Mysticism. I. Title. BV5082.2.J63 1998 248.2'2dc21 97-39109 CIP Printed in the United States of America Page v Contents Preface vii 1 1 The Desert 2 12 Christian Mysticism 3 24 Moses the Mystic 4 36 Presence and Absence (1) 5 45 Presence and Absence (2) 6 54 Conflict (1) 7 63 Conflict (2) 8 72 Covenant and Conversion 9 86 Jesus Mysticism 10 94 Eucharistic Mysticism (1) 11 105 Eucharistic Mysticism (2) 12 116 Mysticism and Life 13 127 Mysticism and Poverty 14 138 Mysticism and Peace 15 156 The Irish Conflict 16 182 The Woman Epilogue 197 Index 199 Acknowledgments 204 Page vii Preface In the summer of 1996 I spent a month in my native Belfast. This was a time when the cease-fire had broken down and the threat of renewed violence was very real. Dublin and Downing Street were still making efforts to bring peace to troubled Ulster. On the day I left I hailed a cab and climbed into the front seat beside the young taxi driver. He opened the conversation. "What do you think of the peace-process?" he said in his broad Belfast accent. I did not hesitate. "Dialogue is the only answer," I said. "We must get round a table and talk. I would talk to anyone. I would talk to Gerry Adams. I would talk to Ian Paisley. I would talk to John Major or to David Trimble. I would talk to anyone." Then I turned to him and said, "What do you think?" In his drawling Belfast accent he said, ''We must pray to God.'' I was shocked. How much wiser he was than E I think of the Dalai Lama, who has led his people in the path of non- violence to the admiration of the whole world. It is not just that violence would be counter-productive, though the Dalai Lama knows well that it would be so. Rather than that, his conviction of the rightness of non-violence stems from his religious faith, his silent meditation, his compassion for all sentient be- Page viii ings. He speaks not only to Tibet and China but to the whole worldto Ireland, to Israel, to Sri Lanka, to Latin America, and to wherever there is strife. And so the Dalai Lama and my young taxi driver remind us that there is a spiritual and religious dimension to human life and to all our problems. We will not build a peaceful world just by economic and political reforms. We will not build a peaceful world just by creating good laws. All this is necessary, but if we neglect the spiritual dimension, we are lost. Needless to say, I still believe in dialogue. We must talk and talk. We must work for a just solution that will satisfy everyone. But we must never neglect the spiritual dimension of the peace-process. For every hour of dialogue we must have two hours of silencein which people will meditate at the ground of being and pray to their God. In this way we can hope to build a peaceful world. There is no other way. We can learn from one of the great spiritual movements of the twentieth century, Alcoholics Anonymous, with its twelve steps. In the first step one admits one's powerlessness. "My life has become unmanageable." Only then can one raise one's eyes to a Higher Power and ask for help. And the same twelve steps can be applied to the anguishing problem of violence. History and bitter experience have taught us that we are powerless, that violence is never the answer, that the one who takes the sword perishes by the sword, that human effort alone will not solve our problems. Let us, then, turn to a Higher Power that dwells in Heaven above or in the depth of our being. When I wrote The Wounded Stag almost twenty years ago, I was asking myself about the relevance of mysticism in the modem world. Now I see that the mystics are the key persons in the process of building world peace. WILLIAM JOHNSTON SOPHIA UNIVERSITY Page 1 1 The Desert I In the year of Our Lord 1981, when Menachem Begin was Prime Minister in Israel and Anwar Sadat was President of Egypt, I had the privilege of spending six months in Jerusalem. I lived at an institute on the outskirts of the holy city with a motley group of scripture scholars, each of whom pursued his or her biblical project with admirable enthusiasm and devotion. My project (and what a project!) was to study the roots of Christian mysticism. Having spent many years comparing Christian mysticism with its Buddhist counterpart, having searched for similarities and explored common ground, I felt that the time had come to investigate the unique dimension of the Christian experience and to look for its distinctive features. In doing this I wanted to go beyond St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila, beyond Meister Eckhart and The Cloud of Unknowing, beyond Augustine and Gregory, to the very origins of that mystical prayer which assumes increasing significance in the lives of contemporary men and women. I suspected that I would find What I wanted in the desert. After all, was it not in the desert that the people of Israel Page 2 Sinai: The Great and Terrible Wilderness
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