Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God

© Author H. Talat Halman asserts moral rights to the work. If you quote, please identify author and attribute authorship.

Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God (Cowley, 2001) is an inviting, warmhearted, and reflective introduction to Christian mysticism by Cynthia Bourgeault. Reverend Bourgeault is an Episcopal Priest who leads contemplative prayer retreats across the U.S. and Canada. She is a genuine contemporary mystic and minister who is not only deeply immersed in and committed to her Christian tradition and its contemplative practices, but has sincerely and richly studied Sufism (Mystical Islam).

Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God is a short book running only 106 5" x 8" pages, including its beautiful opening epigraph, a poem by St. Symeon. But it is a deep text that holds the potential to intersect into one's contexts of faith and practice with long-lived potency. Her exploration of the meaning of mercy in the Hebrew Bible, English, Latin, Hebrew, and French fruitfully yields a vivid evocation of "mercy" as "a fierce, bonding love," and "the power that binds one person to another in the covenant of hearts" (p. 25)

Bourgeault outlines a vision of "mystical hope" that as "a life of its own" goes deeper than a response to positive outcomes, is found in a space of "presence...an immediate experience of...communion..." and characterized by "an 'unbearable lightness of being' from within." (pp. 9-10) And Bourgeault brings us to its shores in many ways, especially in two evocations of the Voyage of St. Brendan who in sailing to find the Land Promised to the Saints, finds it not by navigating in the physical world, but rather, at the moment his "inner eye opens." (p. 18)

She describes a hope that runs deeper than "external circumstances and conditions," (p.9) a hope that springs and sings. And Bourgeault skillfully extracts the subtle shifts of meaning that Scripture attests to of that mystical hope. Turning to Habakkuk, she takes us through his passage from an experience of barrenness to his shift into rejoicing and proclaiming that he has found a "spring to his step" (p.6), or as Habakkuk expresses this, "...He [God} makes my feet like that of a deer." (Habakkuk 3:19) Bourgeault then turns to Jesus sitting with the Samaritan woman at the well, promising her that his water will be a "spring...of eternal life." And then she reminds us that underneath the devastating sufferings of Job ran such a "singlehearted yearning to see God face to face" (p.8) that Job voiced the ultimate "triumphant statement of mystical hope." (p.9) As Bourgeault writes, Job "sings" (p.8) these words (that George Frederich Handel so beautifully set to music): "I know that my Redeemer lives, and...yet in my flesh I will see God." (Job 19:25-26)

This example provides an illustrative parallel. In the DVD extra features in a recent documentary, Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard (Robyn Symon, 2008, 77m.), Werner Erhard, speaking on joy, expands on a basic premise of his that "Nothing makes you happy." As he unpacks this statement, he first explains that it means, no thing will make you happy. Secondly, he says, happiness is not something you get our of life, but something that you bring to life. Erhard says that "to say 'I'm happy' is something sacred." It is in this sense that Bourgeault's "mystical hope" is not something you receive as it is the place from which you stand, the ground of being itself. Mystical hope, as Bourgeault's examples from Jesus, Job and Habakkuk model, is the context in which one can create what people ordinarily think of as "hope."

Bourgeault's book beautifully balances teaching with illuminatingly illustrative autobiographical anecdotes. One most memorable and helpful is that of her experiences navigating boats in the Maine fog as a metaphor matching and illuminating such mystical motifs as the "Cloud of Unknowing" and the "Dark Night of the Soul." Her refrain, and especially its setting in her fog-navigation anecdote, underscores that contemplative prayer as the practice of hope is to "sit in the presence of God," and maintain "inner availability to God" sounded deeply in my soul.

Bourgeault emphasizes themes and examples from Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, Father Bede Griffiths, Meister Eckhart, and Jacob Boehme. I found her occasional quotes from contemporary Sufi master Kabir Helminski and Thomas Merton's writing on Sufism also appealing. Her quote from Gerald May that the universe runs on the energy of agape (p. 30) deepens her meditation on "the Mercy." Her selection of this passage from Kabir Helminski is inspired: "Whoever makes all cares into one care, the care for simply being present, will be relieved of all care by that Presence, which is the creative power." (p. 12) And Bourgeault integrates ideas and images from the new physics with balance and justice. But the main thrust of her offering here is decidedly and devoutly Christian and when she makes her comparisons, she affirms the distinctive beauty and richness of the Christian revelation -- so much so that I only wish she had extended her descriptions of centering prayer and lectio divinia, sacred contemplative reading. (p. 60) Still, her accounts of meditation give enough detail to motivate many to follow the intimations of how simply (even if not often easily) one might establish this beautifully simple meditation practice of centering prayer.

In a beautiful passage on Gethsemani (Matt 26:52-53), she writes: "When Jesus, the living truth, yielded himself faithfully into the Mercy; when he who was the Mercy dissolved into the Mercy, in that exact moment the Mercy became one with the body of Christ. From then on and ever hereafter the Mercy wears a human face -- and that is the face of Christ." (p. 74)

Her excellent chapter on death, "Dying Before You Die," presents an accessible understanding of apocatastasis ("the final restoration of all things 'at the end of time' "). Bourgeault writes of an experience of her daughter riding a ferry that became for her a vivid personal moment of apocatastasis . Experiencing the scene as a moment in which "it was all present already, all contained in a huge, stately now" led her to see how "all our times are contained in...the Mercy itself." (pp. 63-64). It was her discovery that one can taste of apocatastsis in everyday moments in which "all is fulfilled" when one stands in the Mercy. A train riding image she culls from Tolstoy's novella The Death of Ivan Ilych on the shift Ivan Ilych experiences of accepting his own death is also illuminating.(pp. 68-69)

Another motif that traces through these pages is one Bourgeault calls "the body of hope," (p. 14, 32 et al.) a lesson she learned from a special teacher she had -- and continues to learn from even after death -- a Benedictine monk named Raphael Robin ("Rafe"). Bourgeault's earlier autobiographical account of her journey with Rafe (Love is Stronger than Death) (Lindisfarne Books, 1997) is truly a book that echoes in one's consciousness, a book on a Platonic love and mentoring relationship that continues after the death of one of the two people! Adapting poetic images inspired from physics, she describes what her mentor Rafe meant by the "body of hope" as a coherent field" and "a luminous web." Taking a terms the Greek patristic fathers used, she calls it "the intelligible universe." (p. 32)

In Mystical Hope Bourgeault is probing -- and maybe even provoking -- us to look in our faith for a hope deeper than one by which one "can fix anything," and instead to find the "ground of hope" (p. 59). This ground of hope rests as she points out in a realm literally "beyond the mind" -- metanoia (p. 53). I appreciate her evocation and improvisations on Jacob Boehme's term for mercy as "warmheartedness," (Barmherzigkeit), which she elaborates as "that 'river of God' running like the sap through the tree of life. Another important motif Bourgeault sustains in these meditations is Merton's term for entering mystical unitive experience, which he described as le point vierge (the virgin point.) In one sense, as a point vierge, Bourgeault's book can be a sweet, warm and fast read; at a deeper level, the "ground of hope" (p. 70) and its evocation of the "protecting nearness" (p. 59), it calls one repeatedly back to reflect on its meditations more deeply and contemplatively.

"Ideograph of Transforming Vulnerability: Sushako Endo's Jesus"

Preface: This is a review of a Japanese Catholic novelist's stunning portrayal of Jesus. Sushakau Endo wrote his _Life of Jesus_ (1972) to help non-Christian Japanese readers understand and appreciate the meaning, reality and call of Jesus. I think Endo successfully transformed the challenge of that hermeneutic circle into a heavenward spiral of fresh insights and interpretations in which he shed new light not only on Jesus life, but also developed an innovative and moving explanation of why the disciples became such powerful and courageous witnesses after the resurrection. Since I first wrote this in Indonesia in 2004, I have added comparisons to Marcus Borg and John Domic Crossan's _The Last Week_ and Ernest Becker's _The Denial of Death_. Here I also had referred to Bruce Chilton's Rabbi Jesus.


"Ideograph of Transforming Vulnerability: Shusako Endo's Jesus"

H. Talat Halman
Central Michigan University

Shusako Endo (1923-1996) A Life of Jesus. Boston: Tuttle, 1978. ISBN
4-8053-0668-8

(Prologue: The morning I was leaving Bali, I made the wise
decision to pick up this unusual book. Once I started reading it on
the plane, I was captivated. Endo made Jesus seem so real and natural.
Once I finished reading it, I started from the beginning again.)

Endo shows how the paradoxical power of Jesus' vulnerability as a
Messiah of love was the key to the disciples' amazing transformation.

This vision of Jesus in a Japanese Catholic writer's voice written to explain Jesus to non-Christian Japanese brought my appreciation of the meaning of Jesus to life.

In Endo's vision, Jesus' vulnerability as Messiah of love so radically transformed the disciples that from wavering, uncertain and bewildered disciples, they emerged as courageous witnesses to the resurrected Jesus who would be -- and proved they were willing to be --sacrificed as their Master had been.


Endo expresses Jesus' vision of God as divine mother: Jesus not as king, but as patient, suffering, eternal companion.

Shusako Endo's A Life of Jesus reminds me both in style and substance
of Bruce Chilton's Rabbi Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 2000), but it
carried me more fully and deeply into Jesus' life and heart. I
couldn't put it down. In its power to evoke a living sense of Jesus,

Endo's novel is what I think of as a narrative icon.

Endo's vision is not as Japanese as one might infer from the book jacket blurb,
as it is universal, historical, and confessional. Because Endo is a Japanese
Catholic writing this biographical portrait to explain Jesus to other
(non-Christian) Japanese his novel gains the dual advantage of being
accurate while also creating a fresh perspective.

In Endo's novel, as in Chilton's reconstruction, Endo presents a clear interpretation of Jesus' discipleship of John the Baptist and the challenges Jesus' own disciples found in following Jesus.

Endo builds his book toward an innovative interpretation of Jesus'
resurrection to explain the transformation of the once-wavering
disciples into compelling witnesses of extraordinary courage.
He evokes the disciples' shock and disappointment as they realize Jesus
seems to be betraying their expectation of a victorious Messiah, as he
embodies instead a Gospel of love. Echoing throughout the book is the
phrase, "the love of God and the God of love." And in Endo's eyes, this love that Jesus extends makes him, and is in itself, particularly vulnerable and powerless.

Endo's interpretation of Judas is also significant. Endo succinctly unveils Judas' role as the "dolorous," the first to sadly realize – as he expresses it when he watches a woman anoint Jesus with perfume – that Jesus' "messiahood" will disappoint the disciples' expectations. Endo even tries his hand at analogies between Jesus and Judas as two men share a destiny -- though with great differences of significance -- to be rejected and disappointed.


One of Endo's most important themes is the vulnerability at the heart
of Jesus' love. His disciples and companions wanted miracles of
healing and signs and wonders, but refused what he most wanted to
offer – love. Slowly, Endo warms up to his theme of Jesus' vision of
God as divine mother, a vision of a maternally caring God. As this
vision matures Jesus shows that he desires not to be a king, but
rather, an eternal companion. Endo sees Jesus as wanting to patiently
suffer with and offer love to the sick and the poor so he can address
the root of their suffering and the heart of their maladies. This is
why, as Endo portrays it, Jesus' finally chooses powerlessness and
vulnerability, rather than power. Only with this vulnerability and
powerlessness – total acceptance -- can Jesus demonstrate love as
dramatically as he does on the cross.

So Jesus would be the Messiah of love who builds the temple of love.
And in this light Endo's explanation of Jesus' silence before Caiaphas
offers a new clarity: Jesus remained silent because he knew Caiaphas
and he understood two different conceptions of "Christ," one
political, one spiritual. Thus Jesus cannot answer, though in his
silence he affirms that the trial is inauthentic.

[See John Domic Crossan and Marcus Borg, The Last Week where Borg and Crossan interpret Jesus' motives and actions before Caiaphas much more cogently and insightfully.]


Endo's writing evokes Gospel symbols as parallels to Jesus' shift from
Messiah of miracles to Messiah of love. For example, he traces the
progressive deepening of the symbol of the Bread of Heaven. From the
matza and manna of Passover as the bread that "feeds" liberation, to
the Messianic miracles of fishes and loaves at the meals of 4,000 and
5,000, until at the Last Supper the bread is Jesus himself being
consumed. As Endo describes it, Jesus' giving of bread and wine is
more than liturgical: it is the seal of intimate union which his death
and resurrection will bring into realization.

In The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker offers an insight about the power of that matches part of Endo’s momentum. Becker writes that in Christianity:


"…man’s cosmic heroism was assured, even if he was as nothing. This is the most remarkable achievement of the Christian world picture: that it could take slaves, cripples, imbeciles, the simple and the mighty, and make them all secure heroes, simply by taking a step back from the world into another dimension of things, the dimension of heaven." (Becker 1973: 160)


Becker’s description of Christianity’s power is poignant, but in invoking the abstraction, “the dimension of heaven,” I feel Becker misses something more tangible and evocative about this transforming power that Endo succeeds in vividly explaining. Having contemplated Jesus' vulnerability, hopelessness, and powerlessness,
Endo presents a precise and potent vision of the power of the
Resurrection. Endo asserts that the disciples must have been stunned
that, even after deserting their master, they heard that his final
words were words of love. And as Endo sees it, their transformation
required Jesus' total vulnerability and powerlessness: even though
they had deserted him, he had still in such agonizing death, loved
them and expressed that love.

Endo progressively raises this question throughout the book. How had
such cowardly deserters become transformed into such courageous
exponents and examples of Jesus' message, life, and love? Endo
underscores that Jesus' resurrection had a unique and unprecedented
component. No previous resurrection – Elijah, Elisha, (or the allusion
to Elijah and John) offers an explanation of the unique power of Jesus
resurrection as measured by the disciple's transformation. But what
does explain this transformation, Endo argues, is Jesus' gift of
absolute forgiveness in the face of such vulnerability and
powerlessness.

And it is this total, radical, unconditional forgiveness which Endo
means by his enigmatic comment (p. 173) that Jesus' life "…stands out
so clean and simple, like a single Chinese ideograph on a blank sheet
of paper. It was so clean and simple that no one could ever make sense
of it, and no one could produce its like."


Endo's biographical portrait also "stands out so clean and simple." But as I read it I felt Endo had truly made sense of it.