Reading the Mystics

Each Monday evening at 5:30 p.m. Good Shepherd parishioners and other friends gather in the worship space with Fr. Hendree to read and reflect on the works of select Christian Mystics. There are no prerequisites to joining our group. All are welcome!

Come when you can; don’t come when you can’t.

We will NOT meet on June 9 and June 16. We will return on June 23 and begin reading Brother Lawrence’s work. Keep scrolling for more information.

Current Study│Brother Lawrence

We will begin reading Brother Lawrence’s work: Practicing the Presence of God on Monday, June 23rd.

June 9: No Mystics

June 16: No Mystics

 June 23: Brother Lawrence: Practicing the Presence of God

Keep scrolling to find the schedule through July, or click the button below for the printable schedule.

We will make use of a new translation by Carmen Acevedo Butcher. You are also welcome to use the popular translation by John Delaney. Both are faithful, helpful renderings of the profound and simple wisdom of Brother Lawrence (1611-1691). Alternatively, there is some evidence that Br. Lawrence’s year of birth may have been 1606.

Weekly Schedule

5:00 pm│Gather for brief Centering Prayer Instruction

5:10 pm│Centering Prayer Sit

5:30 pm│Introduction, Reading, and Discussion

7:00 pm│Conclude

Note:

  • If you would like to just come for Centering Prayer or just come for Mystics, you are more than welcome to come and go as you please

  • Whether its your first time or fifty-first, All are Welcome! 

  • You do not need to have read up to a certain point in the book... you can just jump on in!

Reading Schedule

Brother Lawrence: The Practice of the Presence of God

June 9: No Mystics

June 16: No Mystics

June 23: First Conversation, Spiritual Maxims

June 30: Profile and Last Words

July 7: Letters 1-8

July 14: Letters 9-16

July 21: NOT Meeting

July 28: NOT Meeting

August 4: Brother Lawrence continued: Spiritual Maxims and Conversations 2-4

What is a Mystic?

This is the way Frederick Buechner describes the mystics, “There must be a God because every age and culture has produced mystics  who have experienced a Reality beyond reality and have  come back using different words and images but obviously  and without collusion describing with awed adoration the  same Indescribability.” 

James Finley writes, “The mystic is not somebody who says, “Look what I’ve experienced. Look what I’ve achieved.” The mystic is the one who says, “Look what love has done to me.” . . .  There’s nothing left, but the being of love itself giving itself away as . . . the concreteness of who you simply are.”

Meet our Mystics

Mystics Outtakes