Welcome to the Table
Imagine you're invited to a dinner table where you'll join the great Christian Mystics, traditional and contemporary. If you look around, you'd see such people as George Fox from the Quakers, Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Isaac of Syria, C.S. Lewis and Bede Griffiths. You even catch sight of Meister Eckhart and -- is that St. Paul chatting it up with Emerson? (We can assume Brother Lawrence is in the kitchen.)
You wonder if some are people seated at the table are a bit llike yourself -- more than a little shocked to be in such company, but feeling oddly at home. Now, imagine further -- What would the discussions be amongst these varied Christians? Would there be conversations back and forth deciding on doctrine? Would there be nothing but absolute harmony? That, I'm sure, is not likely. After all, there would be very large differences of opinion amongst these mystics -- polite, of course. Still, it would put the "Spirit" in the term "spirited discussion."
In spite of the differences, when it comes to the silences between the words, where would the differences be? Gone. Where'd they go? They would be lost in the shared sense of the Presence of God. As it has been said, silence is a Presence, and in the true heart of it is God. It is not an absence, but a Presence, the awareness of another.
That idea, in a nutshell, forums the basis of this website. As you journey through it -- and it is quite a ramshackle old mansion at times -- you'll find much to agree with and be inspired by. Then again, you'll encounter much to be surprised at and perhaps puzzled over, as well as a few things to be upset about or, shall we say, feel challenged by.
Christianity that stops at the image of Jesus ("Why do you call me good? There is none good but God.") is to disrepect and misappropriate Jesus' teachings and his life and death for perhaps psychological or political mischief. When we move through Jesus as our signpost to the Mystery, and realize that the Mystery is shared and experienced by people everywhere.
Welcome to the heart of Christianity.