About Meister Eckhart

1260-1328

The exact birth and death dates of Meister Eckhart are not known; we believe that he was born around 1260 in a village in Germany. He was a gifted student and joined the Dominican order as a young man. He was sent to study at the University of Paris and was ordained a priest. He rose up through the ranks of the Dominican religious order and was given a great deal of leadership responsibility. Along the way he became very popular as a preacher and teacher. He was also accused of heresy. What his accusers did not understand is that Meister Eckhart was and is a mystic.

A simple way of putting it is this - they thought he was speaking theologically and his intent was to speak poetically out of his intimate experience of and with God. In his sermons and other teaching he wasn’t trying to rework the church’s established theological understandings, rather he was giving witness to his lived experience of the union of God and human beings and the fruit born from radical detachment. 

Meister Eckhart is a difficult read. That’s just the plain truth. However, the reward for encountering him can be great. The trick is not to try to understand everything that he is saying. Don’t try to figure him out. Don’t worry about everything he says making sense. It likely won’t. Instead go slowly. Let his words and images make little incisions in the hard shell of your own understanding. Let him slowly crack you open and loosen your grip on what you think you know about God and the way of Jesus. Then put him down and just carry a few words or a phrase of his around with you for a while. Then pick him back up. Do this with friends in a reading group and Meister Eckhart just might become your teacher.