The Big Book of Christian Mysticism: The Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality

Mysticism is not just about experience, it is also about mystery, and the mystery of God cannot be controlled, predicted, engineered, or manipulated. While God in his gracious goodness may grant some sort of awareness of him to all who seek him, it may not be the kind of experience you hoped for or secretly think is necessary in order to be a “real

A God you cannot comprehend is a God you cannot manipulate. This, I believe, is a God of true grace, a God worthy of worship.

But,

Augustine once said that you can seek God only because God has already found you. The point is that, even your seeking—which seems and feels as if you are taking the initiative—is actually already, on a very deep level, a response to God. The seeking may, paradoxically, be evidence of the finding—or, should I say, the having been found. I once had

Paradox, physicist Neils Bohr tells us, explodes our everyday linear concept of truth and falsehood by positing two qualities that exist on a single continuum. “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement,” he claims. “But the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth.” Paradox thus points us to the mysterious place wh

French Orthodox theologian Jean-Yves Leloup, “God has no name and God has every name. God has none of the things that exist and God is everything. One knows God only through not knowing. Every affirmation, like every negation, remains on this side of God's transcendence.