Meister Eckhart, Marguerite Porete and the soul who wants nothing

In this essay I compare two mystical texts that share such an affinity of thought and language that many commentators have found it difficult to imagine they could have emerged independently of one another. The texts both belong to the early decades of the 14^th century and are classics of the Christian mystical tradition. The first is The Mirror of Simple Souls, whose author was not until the 1960s conclusively identified as Marguerite Porete, the French beguine condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake in 1310. The second text is Beati pauperes spiritu, German Sermon (Predigt) 52, a work regarded by many as the literary and theological high point in the career of the German Dominican Meister Eckhart.

Beginning with Herbert Grundmann’s groundbreaking work in the 1960s, considerable research has been invested in establishing a direct line of influence from Marguerite’s Mirror to Eckhart’s so-called ‘Poverty Sermon.’ Portrayals, by Kurt Ruh, Alois Haas and others, of Eckhart as a sympathetic interpreter seeking to give philosophical and theological legitimacy to Marguerite’s thought and to Beguine mysticism in general, would have benefited immensely from direct historical or forensic proof of textual lineage. But, to date, the evidence, such as that detailed in an influential 1984 essay by Edmund Colledge and Jack Marler, has been almost entirely circumstantial. The fact remains, however, that while there is a paucity of external evidence linking these works, internal indicators of their semantic affinity abound. And the numerous influential studies to have presumed Eckhart’s access to the Mirror primarily on the strength of this perceived affinity attest to this. Whether this presumption of direct lineage is warranted by the conceptual resonances alone is a question that requires much more investigation. And this raises a range of methodological questions. According to which criteria, for example, could one determine whether the intertextual similarities are so compelling as to necessitate the reception of the Mirror by Eckhart, or whether the perhaps more economical hypothesis, that the two writers simply shared a common metaphysical framework and Dionysian vocabulary, is sufficient to explain the affinity? In the absence of compelling historical evidence, (and perhaps even, in spite of it), it seems that the weighing of such explanatory hypotheses requires an in-depth analysis of all significant instances of verbal and semantic convergence.

The interplay between texts is described in poststructuralist literary theory as ‘intertextuality.’ Intertextuality occurs when meanings in one text are constructed in relation to another text. It may be the intended device of the author, such as a reference or allusion to another text, or even the ‘re-contextualization’ of meanings from one text to another. Intertextuality may also occur purely from the subjective perspective of the reader, whereby, regardless of authorial intent, a text is interpreted in the light of the reader’s own knowledge of another text or texts. There is a range of ways in which texts may stand in relation to one another and intertextuality furnishes a framework for analyzing and describing such relationships. In the following analysis, I examine a single example of intertextuality, where Beati pauperes spiritu reflects almost word-for-word an expression coined by Marguerite in the Mirror of Simple Souls. Giving attention to differences as much as to similarities, I compare the deep meanings in each text in the hope of gauging where this instance of Eckhart’s ‘mirroring of the Mirror,’ as Maria Lichtman called it, might fall on a continuum between the intentional device of the author (obligatory intertextuality) and the perception of the reader (accidental intertextuality).

A recurrent theme in Meister Eckhart’s teaching is the realization, in the human person, of indistinct union with God. In the vernacular works this breaking-through to union, famously represented through the metaphor of the ‘birth of God in the soul,’ is accompanied by a disposition of self-relinquishment that Eckhart describes in a variety of terms including abegescheidenheit (detachment) and gelassenheit (resignation or letting-go). Beati pauperes spiritu, Predigt 52, sees Eckhart adopt a new vocabulary to convey this teaching: the soul in whom union is realized is portrayed as a ‘poor man’ who ‘wants nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing.’ This identification of mystical union with the impoverishment of the soul is present also in Marguerite Porete’s earlier spiritual allegory, the full title of which is The Mirror of simple annihilated souls and those who only remain in will and desire of love. Despite its convoluted construction the title flags well the book’s central concern, the ‘annihilation’ or ‘bringing to nothing’ of the soul. The realization of union with God converges with the realization of the absolute nothingness of the created self. In Chapter 42 Marguerite describes the relationship of the annihilated soul to its natural “powers” of will and intellect. The chapter title announces that the Holy Spirit is to reveal, “what such a Soul knows, and what she wishes for, and what she has.” (Mirror: Babinsky, 121) It is this statement and its ensuing elucidation that, perhaps more explicitly than anything else in the Mirror, resonates with Eckhart’s Poverty Sermon.

Beati pauperes spiritu is a homily on the gospel for the Feast of All Saints (1 November), which was then as it is to this day Matthew 5:1–12, the Matthean beatitudes. The focus is the first beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The entire sermon is an interpretive gloss on the three words, “poor in spirit.” Against a background of bitter controversy over the place of ascetic poverty in monastic and ecclesiastical life Eckhart here embarks on a radical re-imagining of spiritual poverty. He begins provocatively by challenging the wisdom of one of the great religious authorities of the era, the Dominican luminary, Albert the Great.

Bishop Albert says a poor man is one who finds no satisfaction in all things that God ever created, and this is well said. But we shall speak better, taking poverty in a higher sense: a poor man is one who wants nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing. (Pr. 52: Walshe, 420)

For Albert poverty was determined by one’s relationship to “things.” Eckhart’s “higher sense” understands poverty in terms of one’s relationship to oneself. In framing his ideal of the “poor man” thus Eckhart comes very close to Marguerite’s description in Chapter 42 of what the annihilated soul “knows, and what she wishes for, and what she has.”

This soul knows nothing but one thing, and that is that she knows nothing; and she wishes for nothing but one thing, and that is to wish for nothing. And this knowing nothing and wishing for nothing give her everything, says the Holy Spirit, and they enable her to find the secret and hidden treasure, which is eternally enclosed in the Trinity. (Mirror, Ch. 42: Colledge, 61. See also Babinsky, 121)

Marguerite’s construction lacks the economy and elegance of Eckhart’s threefold formula but in linking knowing, wanting (or wishing), and having the two are clearly in alignment. The point of greatest convergence is in the negating of will and intellect through wanting nothing and knowing nothing. The realization of the nothingness of the individual created self and, indeed, of all created ‘things’ is the fulcrum in the teaching of both texts on union with the divine. The most significant point of difference here is in the treatment of the third aspect, “having.” For Marguerite, knowing nothing and wishing for nothing are the means whereby the soul comes to have “everything.” The annihilation of will and intellect furnishes the soul with the “secret and hidden treasure, which is eternally enclosed in the Trinity.”

Eckhart treats “having” entirely differently, giving it the same ‘semantic shape’ as he does wanting and knowing. As the third element in his three-fold definition of poverty “having,” like wanting and knowing, is an egoic capacity that is negated in the realization of nothingness. Thus, in contrast to Marguerite’s annihilated soul, Eckhart’s poor man has absolutely nothing. Furthermore, as the third point in a three-point sermon, “having nothing” is, by homiletic design, the sermon’s climactic high point. If Eckhart’s re-imagining of wanting and knowing nothing shatters conventional understandings, this final twist takes poverty to another level again. For “having nothing” means that one cannot “have” even a place within oneself for God to work. And this, Eckhart observes, is the “strictest poverty,” (Pr. 52: Walshe, 423)

Let us now locate these two approaches to wanting, knowing and having within the broader context of each text respectively. We begin with the Mirror, where Marguerite maps seven stages or steps in the realization of union. The ultimate stage is the eternal enjoyment of beatific union that comes at death. The sixth stage is a momentary flash or “spark” of the eternal bliss of the seventh. Marguerite describes this “spark” as the opening or “aperture of the sweet movement of glory,” which then closes over again. The crucial fifth stage is a lasting state of inner freedom in which the soul, in her “knowing-nothing” and “willing nothing,” is “unencumbered from all things.” In the first four stages the soul is still in servitude to creaturely desires. Various ascetic practices help one to advance through these early stages but the fifth stage is entirely dependent on the working of God in the soul. The soul is passive. The “work” or “movement” of God, the “spark,” arises and disappears so quickly that it is imperceptible, yet it leaves a lasting and irreversible affect. This encounter, which Marguerite describes in the ecstatic language of courtly love as the “ravishing” or “overflowing” of “the Farnearness” within the soul, leaves the soul wanting and knowing nothing other than what God wants and knows. After this transformative encounter “the Soul keeps herself freely at the fifth stage” and there can be no return to the fourth. (Mirror: Babinsky, 135) At the fifth stage the Annihilated Soul, bereft of will and knowledge, also has no life of her own, for she is now living “the divine life.” If her life is now the Divine life, where does this leave the soul herself? The truth is that there is no more any ‘self,’ no ‘I’ at the centre of this soul’s subjectivity and agency, or more accurately perhaps, no ‘self’ or ‘I’ for her now, except God. In union with her Beloved the soul is, thus, without her ‘self.’

This Soul, says Love, who lives the divine life, is always without herself.
And when, for God’s sake, says Reason, is she without herself?
When she belongs to herself, says Love.
Reason responds, and when does she belong to herself?When she is no part of herself, says Love, neither in God nor in herself, nor in her neighbours: but in the annihilation by which this Spark opens her by the approach of His work. (Mirror, Ch. 59: Babinsky, 136)

This theme is taken up again later in the poetic “song of the Soul.”

I have said that I will love Him.I lie, for I am not. It is He alone who loves me: He is, and I am not; And nothing more is necessary to me than what He wills, And that He is worthy. (Mirror, Ch. 122: Babinsky, 201)

Even from this brief summary it is clear that Marguerite teaches that what the soul ‘has,’ is not of herself, for there is no longer a self but only God. The soul ‘has’ nothing. Yet in ‘living the divine life’ she has everything that is in God.

We turn now to Sermon 52 and the ideal of the “poor person” as a soul who wants nothing, and knows nothing, and has nothing. Meister Eckhart opposes his understanding of “wanting nothing” to that of well-intentioned people who believe that to be spiritually poor one “should so live that he never does his own will in anything, but should strive to do the dearest will of God,” (Pr. 52: Walshe, 421). Eckhart counters that, “as long as a man is so disposed that it is his will with which he would do the most beloved will of God, that man has not the poverty we are speaking about: for that man has a will to serve God’s will – and that is not true poverty!”

To unlock the truth about wanting nothing Eckhart invites his hearers to use their ‘metaphysical imagination’ and conceptualize their own non-existence. “For a man to possess true poverty, he must be as free of his created will as he was when he was not.” The prior non-existence of “when he was not” is not, for Eckhart, an absolute cessation of being, but non-existence as a creature. It is existence prior to existence as a creature wherein the creature is “free of his created will” and therefore “wants nothing.” This distinction, which is fundamental to Eckhart’s teaching on poverty, has its foundation in his quasi-Platonic metaphysics. In Eckhart’s metaphysics existence as a particular creature, the esse formale, is distinguished from existence itself, the esse virtuale. ‘Being in this particular form’ (esse formale) is secondary to and contingent upon ‘being in itself’ (esse virtuale). Creatures have no real existence in themselves. They are in that sense nothing. For, existence – that I am – does not arise from what I am: it is not a property of my created self. Rather, that I am is the necessary pre-condition of what I am (as creature). Eckhart refers to this transcendental ‘pre-existence’ as “when I stood in my first cause.” The first cause, a category borrowed from the Liber de causis, is the primary creating cause of all existence and is necessarily also the cause of itself. Aquinas identified this uncaused first cause with God. Eckhart claims this standing for himself: “When I stood in my first cause, I then had no ‘God,’ and then I was my own cause,” (Pr. 52: Colledge, 200). He makes clear, though, that this “lofty status” (rîcheit) is enjoyed equally by God, the highest angel, the soul and the fly. “The least of these beings possesses in God as much as he possesses.” (Pr. 52: Colledge, 200). When, prior to “receiving created being,” Eckhart stood in his first cause, he was uncaused “bare being” (ledic sîn). In that pure and formless state nothing needed to be added to what he was in order for him to be complete. Not even God. “Then I wanted myself and wanted no other thing: what I wanted I was and what I was I wanted, and thus I was free of God and all things.” (Pr. 52: Walshe, 421).

Eckhart’s use of the first person ‘I’ here and throughout the sermon is significant. If ever there was the sound of heresy on his lips it is here, where he explicitly identifies himself with the uncaused cause and seems even to place himself above God. But this is not Eckhart’s intention at all. The subject of the ‘I’ in these statements is not the particular creature, Meister Eckhart, but uncaused ‘bare being’ itself. Eckhart is not making heretical claims for his created self, but expressing in intentionally confronting language the radical shift of identity that attends poverty of spirit. The poor person is one who ‘dis-identifies’ with the created self (which has a God), and identifies instead with uncreated being, (which, as cause of itself, has no ‘God’).

In his ‘return’ or “breaking-through” (durchbrechen) to this pre-created state the ‘poor man’ is complete and wants nothing other than what he is. In the same way his ‘return’ to the existential unity in which he stood prior to taking on existence as a particular creature liberates his knowing from the tyranny of distinction. Thus, the soul “is deprived of the knowledge that God is working in it: rather it just is itself, enjoying itself God-fashion.” (Pr. 52: Walshe, 422) Having nothing follows this trajectory to its ultimate conclusion. Not only is the uncreated soul unaware that God is working in it; but, freed from all distinctions, it has no ‘within and without.’ There is no-thing wherein God may work, and no ‘God’ to do the work, and no work to be done.

In my breaking-through, where I stand free of my own will, of God’s will, of all his works, and of God himself, then I am above all creatures and am neither God nor creature, but I am that which I was and shall remain for evermore. (Pr. 52: Walshe, 424)

This “breaking-through” reveals that in the “strictest poverty” of having no place in him for God to work the poor man “wins for himself what he has eternally been and shall eternally remain.” (Pr. 52: Walshe, 425) In this, Eckhart’s ‘poor man’ and Marguerite’s ‘annihilated soul’ are remarkably close. For, in “having nothing” the poor man breaks through to the same “secret and hidden treasure” that the annihilated soul has gained. Like the soul, he “has everything in God.” Conversely, the annihilated soul who, in the fifth stage, is “living the divine life,” experiences the poor man’s poverty of having nothing in that she is “always without herself (and) no part of herself, neither in God nor in herself.” (Mirror, Ch. 59: Babinsky, 136) As an aside, it should be noted there are even hints in the Mirror of the metaphysical notion of the pre-created state that is the theoretical foundation of Eckhart’s re-imagining of spiritual poverty. In Chapter 138 Marguerite speaks of the annihilated soul being “in the stage of her prior being,” and the unity that occurs “when the soul is melted in the simple Deity, who is one simple Being of overflowing fruition.” (Mirror, Ch. 138: Babinsky, 219 – 220)

In summary. We have sought to show that Eckhart’s threefold formula, “The poor man is one who wants nothing, and knows nothing, and has nothing,” mirrors in part Marguerite’s notion of the annihilated soul as “knowing nothing and wishing for nothing,” and that the negation of will and intellect is understood in both texts to mean fundamentally the same thing. We noted that Eckhart departs from Marguerite’s understanding of what this Soul ‘has.’ For Marguerite, the soul has everything. For Eckhart, the poor man, has nothing. Yet, on further analysis we saw that the two texts are not as dissonant on this matter as it might appear. For, in his ‘breaking-through’ the poor man ‘has’ in union with God what the annihilated soul has, which is everything that God has, and this he has through the poverty of having nothing in himself (as creature).

To conclude then, it is evident from this analysis that there exists between the two texts a remarkable and deep semantic affinity concerning what the realized soul wants, knows and has. Upon examination, even the one significant moment of dissonance between the two is resolved. Yet to conclude that this amounts to an intentional reference by Eckhart to Chapter 42 of Marguerite’s text, i.e., ‘obligatory intertextuality,’ is problematic. For, the question remains that if, at a deep level, he meant fundamentally the same thing as Marguerite, why did Eckhart depart from Marguerite’s verbal construction by changing ‘having everything’ to ‘having nothing?’ I suggest that the answer to this question lies somewhere in the difference between Marguerite as poetic allegorist in the tradition of the medieval courtly romance, and Eckhart as philosopher-theologian, and consummate homilist of the Order of Preachers, master of the three-point sermon.

A version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of the Mystical Theology Network, University of Glasgow, December 2016

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References cited in this essay are from the following translations of Porete and Eckhart.

Marguerite Porete. The Mirror of Simple Souls. Translated with an introductory interpretive essay by Edmund Colledge, J.C. Marler, and Judith Grant. Notre Dame Texts in Medieval Culture 6. 1999, Reprint, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. [Mirror]

Also the translation of the Mirror by Ellen L. Babinsky. The Classics of Western Spirituality, New York: Paulist Press, 1993. [Babinsky]

Meister Eckhart. The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart. Translated by Maurice O’C. Walshe. New York: Crossroad Herder, 2009. [Walshe]

Being at Home in Two Worlds: Meister Eckhart on Mary and Martha and the Integration of the Active and Contemplative Life

What did the 14^th Century Dominican, Meister Eckhart teach about spiritual and contemplative practices? Not a lot. Better known, perhaps, for the challenging abstractions of his so-called mystical theology than for any substantive advice on practice it is hardly surprising that Eckhart’s methodology has often been called a ‘way without a way’. His typical response to requests for a contemplative method, such as those prescribed by other spiritual writers, was that the ‘way’ one uses is not particularly important, and can even be a hindrance. By identifying too strongly with a particular methodology one might end up ‘getting the way’ but miss God!

Eckhart’s teaching was more concerned with cultivating a fundamental outlook or orientation to life than with promoting a particular ‘way’ or practice. A person who is rightly oriented will realize her or his ‘union’ with the divine not through some special spiritual practice but within the whole of life. German scholar, Dietmar Mieth, has called this approach a ‘mysticism of everyday life,’ which I think is a better characterization of Eckhart’s teaching than the ‘way without a way.’ For Eckhart a life of contemplation is not only entirely compatible with the hustle and bustle of ordinary daily life; in fact, the two – the vita contemplativa and the vita activa – mutually nourish one another. The highest contemplation is expressed in active engagement with daily life and work, not in spite of it. In Eckhart, the inner and the outer are integrated.

Two texts within Eckhart’s quite extensive body of work that illustrate this aspect of his teaching are sermons on the same Biblical text, the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38–42. A favourite among contemplative writers from the time of Origen in the third century this story of the two sisters of Bethany is given a fresh twist in Eckhart’s German Sermons 2 and 86, where his creative way of reading scripture is given a particularly good workout. While the traditional interpretation, and that adopted by most spiritual writers, would see the story as favouring the contemplative Mary over the active Martha, Eckhart turns it around completely. For him it is Martha whom Jesus holds up as exemplar of the truly grounded soul.

To appreciate how and why Eckhart reaches this conclusion we need first to fill in a little background. We shall first take a moment to reacquaint ourselves with Luke 10 itself. Then we shall briefly survey the treatment given this same story by other writers in the contemplative tradition. This will give Eckhart’s approach some context. Finally, before examining Eckhart’s treatment of Luke 10 in some detail, we will give a few minutes to reacquainting ourselves with some key features of his mystical theology.

The story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38–42.

The Text

Let’s first look at the text, in the Latin from which Eckhart preached and then in a good recent English translation, the NRSV.

Latin Vulgate

(38) factum est autem dum irent et ipse intravit in quoddam castellum et mulier quaedam Martha nomine excepit illum in domum suam (39) et huic erat soror nomine Maria quae etiam sedens secus pedes Domini audiebat verbum illius (40) Martha autem satagebat circa frequens ministerium quae stetit et ait Domine non est tibi curae quod soror mea reliquit me solam ministrare dic ergo illi ut me adiuvet (41) et respondens dixit illi Dominus Martha Martha sollicita es et turbaris erga plurima (42) porro unum est necessarium Maria optimam partem elegit quae non auferetur ab ea

New Revised Standard Version

(38) Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. (39) She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. (40) But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ (41) But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; (42) there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’

The Context: The placement of the story within Luke’s narrative

If you have a Bible, look at the text in its context. You will notice that Luke has the Martha and Mary story grouped with the parable of the Good Samaritan, which precedes it (Lk 10:25–37), and the Lord’s Prayer, which immediately follows (Lk 11:1–4). Between Jesus’ story of loving service and his instruction on prayer is a story of two sisters, one distracted by housework and hospitality and the other in rapt attention at the feet of Jesus. I think this is quite significant.

The Narrative: An implied ‘example parable’

This is a simple story. Two sisters are presented as opposites. Jesus indicates a preference for the approach of one over the other. The reader is left to conclude that she or he should follow the example of the sister that Jesus favoured. The story actually has the shape and structure of an example parable, except that its message is implied rather than explained.

Like many of Luke’s characters the Bethany sisters function as archetypes or exemplars of different ways of responding to Jesus and his teaching about the reign of God. Martha, the elder, exemplifies the disciple who sees action as the most important thing, an orientation often referred to as the vita activa or active life. Mary exemplifies the more reflective or prayerful approach, the vita contemplativa. Luke’s author has Jesus indicate for the reader which of the two is to be preferred. Mary is praised for having chosen ‘the better part,’ the ‘one thing’ that is needed. Martha is gently chided for being distracted by ‘many things.’

Down through the millennia this story, interpreted in this way, has been a favourite among writers in the contemplative tradition.

Survey of the treatment of Mary and Martha within the tradition

Origen of Alexandria

Origen (184/5 – 253/4) was the first to see in Luke’s Bethany narrative an allegory of the classic Aristotelian dichotomy between the ‘practical’ and the ‘theoretical’. Martha epitomized the practical or active life, and Mary the theoretical or contemplative. For Origen the two lifestyles are not mutually exclusive but rather stages on the journey to Christian perfection. Spiritual maturity involves transcending the inclination toward temporal things and aligning oneself increasingly with the eternal reality that is our ultimate destination. Mary, exemplar of the contemplative life, is thus farther along on the path to perfection than her sister.

John Chrysostom

John Chrysostom (ca. 349 – 407) rejected Origen’s allegorical interpretation altogether. For him the critical point of the story is not the preference of the contemplative over the active but how attuned one is to what is most important in any given moment. Martha was reproved not for being practical but for being caught up with other things when Jesus was in the house declaring the good news of the arrival of the Kingdom. Mary got it right, not because she chose the contemplative option, but because she dropped everything and gave attention to Jesus’ teaching at the time (kairos).

Augustine of Hippo

Augustine’s (354 – 430) thinking bears the imprint of Greek philosophy, and in particular Neoplatonism. Accordingly, in his treatment of Mary and Martha we could expect action to be subordinated to contemplation. However, Augustine’s sermons reveal a rather more balanced view in which both sisters served the Lord admirably, although in different ways.

The sisters were ‘siblings in the flesh but also in religious observance; both cling to the Lord; both served the Lord present in the flesh harmoniously,’ (Sermon 103). Martha’s waiting on the Lord in hospitable service complemented Mary’s waiting on the Lord in contemplative silence. Martha’s contribution was necessary and enabled Mary’s enjoyment of the Lord’s teaching. ‘Martha has to set sail in order that Mary can remain quietly in port,’ (Sermon 104).

Unlike monastic theologians such as Origen, Augustine, the priest and busy administrator who would become bishop of Hippo, held a more ‘incarnational’, practical and ‘this-worldly’ view of Christian sanctification. He spoke of the Christian life as being ‘otherworldly in the world,’ an approach, as I have said, that we will see continued in Meister Eckhart’s ‘mysticism of everyday life.’

Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians

Although this is no longer the case, throughout much of the medieval period Luke 10:38–42 was the Gospel reading for the Feast of the Assumption (August 15). The linking of Martha and Mary with Mary the Mother of our Lord proved to be fertile ground for preachers seeking to bring out the spiritual sense of the text. When the renowned Cistercian, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153), preached on this feast day he developed a rich and complex allegory to convey his notion of the ideal of the ‘mixed life’, wherein action and contemplation are united in Mary, the virgin mother.

In Bernard’s allegory the home of Mary and Martha is likened to Mary’s womb. Each sister has a part to play: Martha, the pragmatic and active elder sister has the privilege of receiving the earthly Jesus, while the younger, Mary, prepares herself to receive the heavenly Christ. The busyness of Martha and the ‘not idle leisure’ of Mary are both united in Mary. While in the story Jesus credits the younger sister with have the ‘better part’, Bernard makes the point that the ‘best part’ belongs to the Virgin Mary, in whom the unity of the active and contemplative is perfected. The Virgin Mary’s ‘best’ includes both Martha’s and Mary’s parts.

Bernard’s fellow Cistercian, Aelred of Rievaulx (1110 – 1167), was convinced that the ‘mixed life’, represented by Martha and Mary sharing the same house, should be united in the one soul. ‘As surely as Christ is poor and walks by foot on the earth, and gets hungry and thirsty, it is necessary that both these women are in the same house and both these actions are in the same soul.’ Another Cistercian, Caesarius of Heisterbach (ca. 1180 – ca. 1240), wrote about St. Elizabeth of Thuringia, in whom he saw a perfect example of the ‘mixed life’. Elizabeth conceived her vocation as reflecting both sisters. ‘Like Martha, she busied herself in caring for the sick and poor (and) … like Mary she surrendered herself deeply in contemplation.’

Francis of Assisi and the Franciscans

Francis (1182 – 1226) took the story of Martha and Mary as a model when devising his ‘Rule for Hermitages’. Each hermitage would be limited to three or four brothers, half of whom should serve as ‘mothers’ and follow Martha’s example, while the two ‘sons’ should adopt the contemplative way of Mary. From time to time these complimentary and interdependent roles should be exchanged.

Thomas Aquinas and the Dominicans

In the Summa Theologiae Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) interprets Luke’s Bethany narrative as extolling the superiority of the contemplative life: ‘Mary has chosen the better part.’ (Luke 10:42) The active life is the servant of the contemplative. However, for Thomas and the Order of Preachers, the ‘very best part’ is not contemplation alone, but the sharing of the fruits of the contemplative life through teaching and preaching.

‘It is a greater thing to give light than simply to have light, and in the same way it is a greater thing to pass on to others what you have contemplated than just to contemplate.’ (ST 2.2 q. 188, a. 6)

The Beguines

Perhaps most important, given their geographical, chronological and religious proximity to Eckhart’s own context, are the women known by their late medieval contemporaries as mulieres sanctae, or beguines. These semi-religious women, prevalent in France and the low-countries of Northern Europe throughout the 13^th and 14^th centuries, lived alone or in community houses and devoted themselves to a life of prayer, service and mutual exhortation. The relationship between action and contemplation is an important theme for the beguines with the biblical sisters Martha and Mary and Leah and Rachel providing useful archetypes.

Amy Hollywood has noted the contrast between the official hagiographies of these holy women and the writings of the beguine mystics themselves. The Beguine communities were quite diverse in practice and theology and in the degree to which they enjoyed the blessing of the Church. The mostly male-written hagiographies present a view of the beguine life that is reflective of the official preference for these women to favour the contemplative life of the cloisters, which was seen as more appropriate for women than mendicancy or manual labour. Needless to say, Mary of Bethany is mostly presented as the ideal. Beguine mystical writers themselves, however, such as Mechthild of Magdeburg and Marguerite Porete, tend to emphasize the Cistercian ideal of the ‘mixed life’ in which action and contemplation coalesce in the same soul.

It needs to be noted that there are actually striking resonances between the Beguine mystics and Meister Eckhart, particularly in the central mystical motif of the possibility of the individual realizing ‘indistinct union’ with God within a special ‘uncreated’ part of the soul. A direct textual relationship between Eckhart’s work and Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls has been established, and there is evidence that Eckhart also knew Mechthild’s Flowing Light of the Godhead.

Overview of Meister Eckhart’s mystical teaching

Eckhart’s thought comes to us primarily in two forms: treatises and biblical commentaries written in Latin for an audience of professional theologians and clergy, and sermons in the vernacular Middle High German (MHG), taken down verbatim by Eckhart’s hearers, many of them nuns and lay women.

The overarching emphasis of Eckhart’s work, especially his vernacular sermons, is what the contemplative tradition refers to as unio mystica or mystical union. This is a work of pure grace in which the individual human soul realizes union with the Divine. Eckhart portrays union via several rich metaphors, the best known, perhaps, being the birth of the Word or Son of God in the soul. The aim of Eckhart’s vernacular preaching, more so perhaps than his professional academic writing, was to help his hearers toward realizing this ‘birth’ or union.

I speak of the realization rather than the experience of union intentionally. Eckhart counsels his hearers to not seek an experience of God, but to seek God alone. Seekers in Eckhart’s day no less than today often expected union to be accompanied by something palpable. “I will know what it is to be in intimate union with God when I experience it – be it an inner warmth or sweetness, an ecstasy or even a vision!” But Eckhart suggests that, while some such experience might ensue, it is neither necessary nor ideal. In fact it can be a subtle trap. One can become sidetracked with experiencing the experience, mistakenly take it to be God, and in so doing miss God entirely. (PR. [German Sermon] 16b) This is why the idea of ‘realizing’ union with God better conveys the sense of Eckhart’s teaching than ‘experiencing’ union does, although he never used either term per se. The verb ‘to realize’ has two senses. To realize is both to become fully aware of something as a fact and to bring something into reality. And this is what union involves for Eckhart. Union with God is realized (brought into reality) when the individual realizes (becomes fully aware of) his or her oneness with God (as a fact).

Unio mystica is, thus, a kind of knowing. If it is an experience at all it is an intellectual experience. Importantly for Eckhart, as for many other mystical writers, however, this knowing is more correctly an unknowing. It is a cultivated ‘not-knowing’ or a learned ignorance, a forgetting of what we thought we knew so that what we cannot know (in the usual sense) might be realized in us. Eckhart employs a number of metaphors to convey this ‘not-knowing’ or forgetting. Most of them involve the idea of taking something away or cutting something off. Abegescheidenheit (MHG) is one such metaphor. It is an abstract noun from a verb meaning to depart from, to separate from, and is even used to denote divorce. The most common English translation is ‘detachment’. A related metaphor is Gelazenheit, which denotes a ‘letting-go’. Often translated as ‘releasement’, Gelazenheit is a liberating relinquishment.

So what does Eckhart want his hearers to relinquish? His teaching on this is summarized succinctly in the opening paragraph of Sermon 53. Here Eckhart identifies four fundamental emphases in his teaching. The first two deal with what we could call the praxis of Detachment, the second with its theoretical or onto-theological basis.

“When I preach I am accustomed to speak about detachment, and that a man should be free of himself and of all things; second, that a man should be formed again into that simple good which is God; third, that he should reflect on the great nobility with which God has endowed his soul, so that in this way he may come to wonder at God; fourth, about the purity of the divine nature, for the brightness of the divine nature is beyond words. God is a word, a word unspoken.” (Pr. 53)

Detachment is being ‘free of oneself and of all things’ so that one may be ‘formed again’ into that simple good which is God. How does one detach from oneself? ‘Self’ for Eckhart, is not a ‘creature’ or existing thing in the sense that, for example, the soul is. It is rather a creation of the mind, a mental image, or what we might today call a construct. It is the self I imagine myself to be. Most importantly, it is my idea of myself as fundamentally distinct from everyone and everything else. The realization of ‘union’ with God requires a ‘dis-identification’ with this mental image of oneself as distinct. In fact, it means letting go the idea of anything as distinct. To be free of ‘all things’ is not simply to live the simple life and abandon materialism; it is to let go of ‘things’ as things, i.e., as distinct entities. Eckhart speaks elsewhere of ridding oneself of ‘this’ and ‘that’, by which he means the belief that ‘this’ has a distinct and separate existence from ‘that.’

Detachment is a radically new way of seeing the world and ones relationship to it. It is seeing everything as one. There is no ‘other’ from which I am or anything else is distinct. What we take to be ‘other’ is in reality not. What we take to be another ‘thing’ is really ‘no-thing.’ This applies to the ‘self,’ and to ‘all things,’ and crucially to God who, says Eckhart, is also ‘neither this nor that’ but is rather ‘pure nothing’. ‘If you think of anything he might be, He is not that.’ (Pr. 23)

This is what Eckhart refers to in the summary of his teaching we quoted a moment ago as ‘the purity of the divine nature’. God is pure nothing. To imagine God as anything is to have an ‘imagined’ God, and not God as he is in himself. To realize union is to realize the no-thingness of God as fact and to have God ‘naked and bare’, as he is in himself.

The other thing Eckhart tells us he is ‘accustomed to speaking about’ when he preaches is the ‘great nobility with which God has endowed the soul.’ And we will touch on this briefly before turning to our discussion of Mary and Martha. Eckhart’s understanding of the soul, like that of Thomas Aquinas, is based on Aristotle for whom the soul of any living thing is a unified system of abilities or ‘powers’ that enable the organism, be it plant, animal or human, to express its essence or nature. The essence of human being is intellect. The ‘powers’ of the human soul are thus a system of intellectual and cognitive capacities such as sense perception, rational thinking, memory, imagination, etc. These powers connect the human via the body to the external world or ‘creatures’.

For Eckhart the soul has another ‘power’. He calls it different things in different contexts – the spark, the summit, the apex, the citadel, and the ‘ground’. But these terms always denote the same thing, the inner sanctum or hidden depth of the soul. The soul’s ‘ground’ is that deep, silent and formless abyss where no sense perception, ‘image’ or thought form has ever penetrated. It is pure, untouched and virginal intellect or what we could call ‘pure formless awareness’. Through the process of ‘unknowing’ or ‘detachment’ one breaks through to this inner ‘ground.’ The truly detached person is one who has come to live habitually from this ‘ground’.

We often read in Eckhart the arresting phrase, ‘God’s ground is my ground and my ground is God’s ground’. This phrase intentionally, if provocatively, blurs the line between the human and divine. Eckhart, like Marguerite Porete before him, speaks of this part of the human soul as if it were itself divine when he suggests it is ‘uncreated’. (Incidentally, this is one of the ideas that saw Porete burned at the stake in 1310 and Eckhart tried for heresy almost three decades later). This uncreated divine-human ‘ground’ is the ‘inner world’ into which God eternally sends his Son so that the Son might be continually born in humanity in time. Here all distinction falls away and the soul realizes her union with God and is enabled to live, as does God, from the ground and ‘without Why’.

“As surely as the Father in His simple nature bears the Son naturally, just as surely He bears Him in the inmost recesses of the spirit, and this is the inner world. Here God’s ground is my ground and my ground is God’s ground. Here I live from my own as God lives from His own. For the man who has once for an instant looked into this ground, a thousand marks of red minted gold are the same as a brass farthing. Out of this inmost ground, all your works should be wrought without Why.” (Pr. 5b)

To live ‘without Why’ is to be as free of wanting or desiring anything as I was before I existed. I do what I do, not for any reason or objective, but simply because it is what I do. For when I live from the ground whatever I do is really God doing what God does. This is why I don’t need to do anything special to realize union. For the detached person everything is God. God is as much in my preparing a meal or scrubbing the pots as he is in my contemplative practice. The very highest contemplation is when I do what I do, whatever it may be, without Why. Then contemplation and action are unified.

“I say truly, as long as you do your works for the sake of heaven or God or eternal bliss, from without, you are at fault. It may pass muster, but it is not the best. Indeed, if a man thinks he will get more of God by meditation, by devotion, by ecstasies, or by special infusion of grace than by the fireside or in the stable – that is nothing but taking God, wrapping a cloak round His head and shoving him under a bench. For whoever seeks God in a special way gets the way and misses God, who lies hidden in it.” (Pr. 5b)

And this is why, for Eckhart, Martha rather than Mary is the exemplar of a person living ‘from the ground’, living ‘from her own’ and ‘without Why’.

Eckhart’s treatment of Luke 10:38–42 in two German Sermons

The great majority of Eckhart’s vernacular sermons take a scripture text as their starting point. Most often the text is drawn from the lectionary of the day, as with any Eucharistic homily. Sermons 2 and 86 both take Luke 10:38 as their text. On the surface these sermons, no doubt preached at different times, treat the text quite differently. In Sermon 86 we get Eckhart’s allegorical reading of Martha and Mary. Although his interpretation is creative it does at least deal with the narrative. Sermon 2 appears to not be about the story of Martha and Mary at all. The sisters are never mentioned. Nevertheless the two sermons share much theologically and inform each other significantly, as we shall see.

Sermon 2: The virgin who is a wife

‘I have first quoted this saying in Latin; it is written in the Gospel, and in German it means, “Our Lord Jesus Christ went up into a citadel and was received by a virgin who was a wife.”’ Thus begins German Sermon 2. As it turns out the ‘virgin who is a wife’ is the primary interest of the sermon. The ‘citadel’ also comes up again, but does not return until near the end of the sermon. And while ‘citadel’ is probably an allowable translation of the Latin castellum – the semantic relationship is evident even to those not skilled in Latin – there is no ‘virgin’ in the Latin (or Greek) text at all. But that technicality does not hinder Eckhart. He immediately warns his hearers to ‘mark this word carefully’ – for it is going to be the starting point of the homily – and begins with a clarifying definition.

A ‘virgin’, by which Eckhart means ‘the person by whom Jesus is received,’ is ‘a person who is void of alien images, as empty as he was when he did not exist.’ Let us briefly unpack this idea. We spoke earlier of Eckhart’s notion of mystical union resulting in the ‘birth’ of the Word or Son of God in the soul. For this birth to occur one must first ‘receive Jesus’ – the Son, the eternal Word – in the soul. Being virginal or ‘void of alien images’ and ‘as empty as he was when he did not exist’ describes the person who has happily relinquished ‘self and all things’ – all mental images and the distinctions they entail – and is united with God in the ‘ground’ of the soul. ‘Virgin’ describes the intellectual purity or emptiness required for the Son of God to be received in the soul. Virginity is pure receptivity. In simple terms, this is the mental stillness and silence that Eckhart elsewhere calls ‘inwardness’ and which we would call ‘contemplation’.

Having identified the importance of being virginal, however, Eckhart informs us that it is only half the picture. ‘Now attend and follow me closely,’ he says, indicating both the gravity and difficulty of what he is to say next, for he is about to engage in one of his favourite devices – paradox:

“If a man were to be ever virginal, he would bear no fruit. If he is to be fruitful, he must be a wife. ‘Wife’ is the noblest title one can bestow on the soul – far nobler than ‘virgin’. For a man to receive God within him is good, and in receiving he is a virgin. But for God to be fruitful in him is better, for only the fruitfulness of the gift is the thanks rendered for that gift, and herein the spirit is a wife, whose gratitude is fecundity, bearing Jesus again in God’s paternal heart.” (Pr. 2)

To the ‘virginity’ of pure contemplation, which is ‘good’, one must add the ‘perfect fruitfulness of a wife’, which is ‘better’. Without this one’s virginity is ‘useless’: the gift of the Father perishes and ‘all comes to naught’. The ‘fruitfulness of a wife’ is a metaphor for giving birth, wherein that which is ‘received’ from the Father as pure gift is given back to the Father in gratitude. By ‘wife’, then, Eckhart really means ‘mother’. And herein lies the mind-melting paradox: the impossible both-and of the virgin who both gives birth and remains a virgin.

Although the allusion is obvious, and intentional, this is not a literal reference to the historic Mary, Jesus’ virgin mother, any more than Eckhart’s notion of the birth of the Son of God in the soul is a literal reference to the birth of the historical Jesus. Mary, the virgin-mother, is now an archetype for the realized human being in whom two apparent opposites – virginal receptivity and motherly fruitfulness – are unified.

This is a conceptual structure we often see in Eckhart’s mysticism, which modern commentators like to describe as ‘dialectical’. Dialectic is the dynamic interplay between logical opposites. The 18^th century German Idealist G. W. F. Hegel constructed a whole theory of progress in history around the notion of the dialectic in which there is a threefold movement beginning with an established fact or Thesis that in time is challenged by its Antithesis. Finally this standoff or diastasis is resolved in a Synthesis, which then becomes the new Thesis.

If we speak of the interplay of opposites in Eckhart’s thought as dialectical we need to be clear that it is altogether different from the Hegelian model. Eckhart’s dialectic does not serve purposive progress at all. In the purposive linear logic of history and biology virginity and motherhood are mutually exclusive. Motherhood supersedes maidenhood on the timeline. But Eckhart’s dialectic is non-linear. The interplay between virginal receptivity and motherly fruitfulness is circular, continuous and repetitive rather than linear and sequential. The opposites are engaged in a both-and rather than an either-or movement.

By way of illustration Eckhart expands on the ‘virgin who is a wife’ metaphor by comparing the perpetually fruitful virgin-wife to ‘married folk’, those who, by virtue of the limitations of gestation are able only to ‘bring forth little more than one fruit in a year’. ‘Married folk’ who take a ‘year’ to bear fruit represent people whose addiction to a purposive linear-sequential logic means that in order to attain that (spiritual goal) they feel they must first do this (ascetic practice). By being wedded or ‘bound with attachment’ to particular disciplines or practices as means to ends they are restricted to bringing forth ‘little fruit, and paltry at that’. In such people there is always an ‘until’ separating conception from birth: ‘Your soul will bear no fruit until it has done this work to which you are possessively attached.’

The ‘virgin who is a wife’, on the other hand, is a soul ‘free and unfettered by attachment’ and knows none of the limits of the gestational ‘year’. Her work requires no ‘in order that’ and has no ‘until’. She enjoys the ‘freedom to wait on God in the here and now.’

“She is always as near to God as to herself. She brings forth many and big fruits, for they are neither more nor less than God himself. This fruit and this birth that virgin bears who is a wife, bring forth daily a hundred and a thousandfold! Numberless indeed are her labours begotten of the most noble ground or, to speak more truly, of the very ground where the Father ever begets His eternal Word: – it is thence she becomes fruitful and shares in the procreation.” (Pr. 2)

The person who lives thus from ‘the most noble ground’ is free from the purposive linear logic that sequentializes, divides and compartmentalizes, that distinguishes ‘this’ from ‘that’ and ‘now’ from ‘then’. Such a person ‘dwells in one light with God, having no suffering and no sequence of time, but one equal eternity… he dwells in the Now, ever new and without intermission.’ Wherever, with whom ever, and whatever they find themselves doing they are waiting on God ‘in the here and now’.

Sermon 86: Martha and Mary

As I suggested earlier, Sermons 2 and 86 not only share the same biblical text in Luke 10:38, they focus on the same theology. What is portrayed abstractly in Sermon 2 becomes the subtext for the reworking of a familiar narrative in Sermon 86 wherein ‘the virgin who is a wife’ and waits on God in the eternal Now is personified in the character of Martha. Although, as I showed in the survey of the story’s treatment in the tradition, Eckhart’s elevation of Martha over Mary as the ideal of spiritual maturity is perhaps not as original as some commentators have suggested it is nonetheless given its most subversive rendering in this sermon.

Sermon 86 is not an easy read, mainly because Eckhart seems to go off on tangents from time to time, and this can be a little distracting. The sermon begins with a précis of the narrative. The Lord visits a little town and is received by a woman named Martha who moves about and waits on him while her sister, Mary, sits at his feet and listens to his words.

Eckhart then proceeds to list three qualities in each sister that motivate their quite different responses. (1) Mary’s soul was possessed by the goodness of God, (2) she was gripped by ‘unspeakable longing’ for something she did not yet understand, and (3) she found ‘sweet solace and joy’ in Christ’s presence. Martha’s actions were due largely to her mature age and that she had learned from life, which ‘gives the finest understanding’. (1) ‘The ground of her being was so fully trained that she thought none could do the work as well as she’, (2) she had the wisdom to know how to perform outward works ‘perfectly as love ordains’, and (3) she recognized the ‘great dignity’ of her guest.

Eckhart’s first ‘digression’ contrasts two ways in which God satisfies human beings: sense satisfaction and intellectual satisfaction. Clearly, both are divinely given but they are not of equal value. Overindulgence in sensual pleasures such as ‘comfort, joy and contentment’ is not found among God’s ‘true friends’. They have the capacity to ‘rise resolutely above’ emotional responses to the ups and downs of life.

So what does this have to do with the story, to which Eckhart returns in the next paragraph? Eckhart intends his hearers to connect each type of satisfaction with one of the sisters. He has already told us of Mary’s inexpressible longing and the ‘sweet solace and joy’ she found at Jesus’ feet. Is Mary tending toward the overindulgence of which the third paragraph speaks? Martha seems to be bothered by the same question. When she says, ‘Lord, tell her to help me,’ it is not out of spite but out of concern that Mary might have continued to sit there ‘a little more for her own happiness than for spiritual profit.’ (Pr. 86) Martha was worried that ‘by dallying in this joy’ her sister ‘might progress no further.’ Jesus reassures Martha that, despite appearances, Mary’s heart is in the right place: she has ‘chosen the best part’ and will eventually grow into the fully grounded maturity that Martha desires for her. She has only just ‘entered school’ and begun ‘to learn how to live’. (Pr. 86)

So what of Martha? According to Eckhart, the fact that Christ names Martha twice in his response to her is significant. ‘Martha, Martha’ expresses the elder sister’s spiritual completeness. The first ‘Martha’ reflects her ‘perfection in temporal works’ by which Eckhart means embodied activity in time. The second ‘Martha’ refers to her relationship to eternity, which, as we saw in Sermon 2, is about the ‘equal eternal Now’ rather than everlasting sequential time. Martha lives comfortably in two worlds. Happy to do whatever the moment calls for in time she is equally at home on what Eckhart calls ‘the circle of eternity’.

The ‘circle of eternity’ comes up six times in this sermon and to my knowledge nowhere else in Eckhart’s oeuvre. After inviting his hearers to ‘mark what the circle of eternity means’ Eckhart proceeds to describe the soul’s ‘three ways into God.’

The first way is ‘to seek God in all creatures with manifold activity and ardent longing.’ The second way is ‘a wayless way, free and yet bound, raised, rapt away well nigh past self and all things, without will and without images, even though not yet in essential being.’ The third way ‘is called a way, but is really being at home, that is: seeing God without means in His own being.’ These three ways have the feeling of ‘good’, ‘better’ and ‘best’ about them. They are all ways into God exemplified by worthy biblical characters – David, Peter and Paul, and Christ himself, respectively – but it is clearly the third way that Eckhart is putting forward as the ultimate and, presumably, as Martha’s way.

There are two important things to note about the third way. Firstly, this way is characterized by an absence of ‘means’. ‘Creatures’, which are all ‘means’, circle ‘outside of this way’. If there are no ‘means’ here then everything must be equally an end in itself without any ‘in order that’, purpose, or meaning outside itself. Actions, works, activities are also ‘without Why’. Secondly, although Eckhart has called it a ‘way’, this is not entirely accurate, for a ‘way’ presupposes a destination, that there is some place to get. That is why he corrects himself by saying ‘really it is being at home.’ There is an already-arrived-ness about this ‘way’ which is why it involves no means.

Friends of God like Martha have nowhere to get and need no means of getting there because they are already there. Although living in time, embodied and active they are also standing on the circle of eternity and ‘seeing God without means in His own being’. Where, then, is this circle of eternity and where is the God they see in his own being?

“Now listen to a marvel! How marvelous, to be without and within, to embrace and be embraced, to see and be the seen, to hold and to be held – that is the goal, where the spirit is ever at rest, united in joyous eternity!” (Pr. 86)

Seeing God without means is ‘To see and be the seen’. The answer to the where question, of course, is here now. The Unio mystica, the soul’s union with God, is a fact to be realized and not a destination to be reached. The circle of eternity is right here in the ‘ground’ or ‘summit’ of the soul ‘up yonder where it is at one with God’s sweet will.’ There, says Eckhart, ‘temporal work is as noble as any communing with God, for it joins us to him as closely as the highest that can happen to us except the vision of God in his naked nature.’

__________

All Eckhart quotes are from Maurice O’C Walshe’s translation in The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart (New York: Crossroad Herder, 2009).

I have followed the accepted convention of referring to Eckhart’s German Sermons by the numbering used in the critical German edition of his works. This consists of the abbreviation Pr. (From the German word for ‘sermon’, Predigt), and the sermon number.

The invitation

To one side of the altar in my parish church is a quiet little chapel where my meditation group meets for an hour every Saturday morning. On the chapel wall is a magnificent bronze figure of the crucified Christ suspended, as it were, in space, for there is no cross. To the right of the cross-less crucifix is a small carved icon of a very young Madonna and Child. There is something profound about the juxtaposition of these figures that, while possibly never intended by the devout person who installed them, opens the door to a magnificent truth. Continue reading “The invitation” →

Meister Eckhart on seeing God in everything

“He who has God thus essentially, takes him divinely, and for him God shines forth in all things, for all things taste divinely to him, and God’s image appears to him from out of all things. God flashes forth in him always, in him there is detachment and turning away, and he bears the imprint of his beloved, present God.”

Thus says Meister Eckhart in Chapter Six of his Talks of Instruction delivered to Dominican novices early in his career when Prior of Erfurt. For Eckhart, even at this early stage, God is not to be found in special places or practices but in the divine splendour of the everyday. One does not need to retreat to the desert or even to the church to find God, one needs rather to discover the ‘inner desert’ and see the divine in whatever the present moment brings. I present the text here in full and without commentary. Enjoy. Continue reading “Meister Eckhart on seeing God in everything” →

The breakthrough moment

I wonder if, in the cold dark of the night before,

these Coprinellus disseminatus

had any idea of what life would look like

after their breakthrough moment.

I’m guessing not.

Life’s like that.

Does the caterpillar aspire to flight,

or the tadpole envisage legs?

Words: Christopher Malcolm Knauf. 2015.

Photo: Peter Bradley July 2014

Meister Eckhart’s Poverty Sermon

‘Let us pray to God that he might rid us of God,’ said Meister Eckhart famously in his sermon on poverty of spirit. In the following article I discuss the main theological and mystical ideas in this sermon, usually referred to as Sermon 52, and also comment on aspects of Eckhart’s hermeneutical method. I quote extensively from Walshe’s translation from the original Middle High German and have included references for those who are interested.

The ‘sermon on poverty’ epitomizes Meister Eckhart’s thought at its theological and literary zenith. Among the most studied of Eckhart’s vernacular homilies its claims, both ethical and doctrinal, are as radical as anything he wrote, yet, surprisingly, never rated a mention in In Agro Dominico, the papal bull of 1329 that denounced many of his teachings. The conclusion some scholars have drawn is that the text of this sermon had not reached its final formulation until as late as 1326/27 and was presumably not available to Eckhart’s accusers at the time of the trials. The evidence for this, however, is not conclusive, with recent research suggesting a much wider early reception of the text.[1] Either way, the absence of any statement from Sermon 52 among the twenty-eight articles of the bull of condemnation is intriguing, especially given the sermon’s provocative thesis, which is the focus of this present discussion. Continue reading “Meister Eckhart’s Poverty Sermon” →

The Mystic Realisation

Muriwai - P. Bradley — Muriwai by Peter Bradley

Commenting on Joyce’s Ulysses, Joseph Campbell identifies what he calls ‘the mystic realisation’. It is the mystery of non-duality that runs so counter to our everyday perception but rings so true in the depths of the silent heart. Continue reading “The Mystic Realisation” →

Blessed Silence

I saw this icon recently at an exhibition at the Ballarat Art Gallery and was utterly transfixed. This particular piece is probably 15th to 17th century and is held in a private collection in Sydney. Known in Russia as Spas Blagoe Molchanie or ‘The Saviour of the Blessed Silence’ or alternatively ‘The Angel of Great Counsel’, it is an example of a complex iconographic type that is also represented in Greek iconography and associated with Hesychia, the personification of silence. Continue reading “Blessed Silence” →

Christopher Malcolm Knauf, 7 February 2015

Why I practice meditation in the Christian tradition

The value and relevance of the Christian meditation tradition derive both from what it shares with the other great meditation traditions and what distinguishes it among them. Continue reading “Why I practice meditation in the Christian tradition” →

Me and my shadow

When I catch a glimpse of my shadow I see my own opacity; I’m reminded that the light doesn’t pass right through me.

I’d like it to. I’d love to be so transparent that I don’t get in the way of the light, of love, of truth, of peace.

I’ve had moments, glorious nanoseconds, when I’m sure the light had so saturated and infused me that there was nothing but light. Nanoseconds. But mostly it’s just me, and my shadow.

And if the fleeting years between boy and man have taught me anything it’s that making friends with my shadow yields a happier life than pretending it’s not there.

Christopher Malcolm Knauf

Image – Izaiah chasing his shadow, by Kirsty Soo, 2014, used with permission.

Embracing paradox and living to tell the tale

BOOK REVIEW: Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes In God: How To Give Love, Create Beauty and Find Peace. Frank Schaeffer, 2014

Frank Schaeffer Cover

I completely understand the puzzlement that comes over people when I declare myself a believer and an atheist. It’s not something that comes up all the time of course but occasionally there’s no avoiding it and you just have to come clean. Once it went like this: “I was a Christian, then I became an atheist.” It was sad for some people to hear. But at least it was neat and they knew where I stood. Now it’s: “I still don’t believe in the God the atheists don’t believe in, but I pray every day.” And that’s just messy. Explain it and it gets messier.

People aren’t good with messy. While I’m obscenely comfortable in this paradoxical pigeon-hole I’ve carved out for myself, I’ve had to resign myself to the fact that on questions like this people prefer ‘either-or’ to ‘both-and’, and so it’s felt like something of a solitary little niche. That said, you can imagine my delight when I stumbled on the totally messy title of Frank Schaeffer’s latest book, Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God. Continue reading “Embracing paradox and living to tell the tale” →

life is this moment

on being here now

Category: Christopher writes

Meister Eckhart, Marguerite Porete and the soul who wants nothing

Being at Home in Two Worlds: Meister Eckhart on Mary and Martha and the Integration of the Active and Contemplative Life