Mysticism REL 396 Prof. Ed Mooney
Books:
Kathleen
Norris: Cloister Walk
Thoreau,
"Walking"
Book of Job, Mitchell, trans.
Emily Dickinson, ed. Joyce Carol Oates
Bugbee, Inward Morning
Melville, Moby Dick,
Penguin
1) Jan-16 Norris: Cloister Walk
2) Jan-23 “”
3) Jan-30 “”
4) Feb-6 Thoreau: “Walking”
5) Feb-13 Bk of Job
6) Feb-20 “
7) Feb- 27 Sufi Poems
8) Mar-6 Inward Morn [break 13-15]
9) Mar-20“
10) Mar-27
11) Apr-3 Melville
12) Apr-10 Melville
13) Apr-17 Melville
14) Apr-24 Dickenson, Sufi
15) May-1 Sufi
I’ll provide handouts to indicate which Dickinson and Sufi poems, which Melville pages, which Bugbee pages.
Reflection Papers:
In your reading and writing, be alert
for moments that strike you in some
fashion, and make marginal notes of
these moments. Why do they ring a bell
or jump out at you (for good or ill)?
What triggers your imagination -- heart and mind?
I have a special format for the three
page (double spaced) papers.
Before your first
paragraph begins, set out in bold the sentences from the text that contain the images, descriptions, phrases, actions, or
situations that grab you. That’s the
focus.
The
paper then becomes an elaboration,
exploration, and clarification of that focus. You’ll find yourself drawing
on your own memories and experiences in this elaboration, exploration, and
clarification. And you’ll find yourself
remembering other passages or moments in the text that work in tandem with
whatever you put in focus in your opening sentences. If nothing grabs you, you’ll have nothing to say. You can, of course, use the first person.
Avoid anything that reads like a book report.
I should learn something about how
your mind and imagination work as I read your paper. Let your voice and personality and
sensibility speak. Mysticism is not the really an embrace of the esoteric
and ineffable, not well-represented by new-age fluff, but a persistent effort,
in writing and practice, to throw special light on the human condition. And this, after all, is your condition, as well as the condition of numberless others from
all times and places, some of whose writings will animate these morning hours.
Mysticism, as a strain
of religious as well as non-religious writing, practice, and experience, provides luminous accounts of a human sojourn, in all its varieties and complexities. It often springs from wounds or trauma yet
blossoms toward surpassing repose, beauty, and sublimity, toward wondrously
subtle appreciations of nature and spirit and others. Though its background may be unspeakable
horrors, in the writing of Thoreau and Teresa, St Francis, Rumi and endless others, it evokes, in its
alliance with art, literature, and philosophy, resources for celebration
of presence to whatever life delivers --
hence ways to stave off at least part of the suffering that afflicts us. The
texts we read evoke struggles no life can escape between defeat and defeat’s
defeat in hope or serenity. The quest
for the sort of vision and sensibility we call mystical is part of humanity’s effort,
individually and collectively, to shore up capacities for poise in the face of all that would crush us.