For that Solitary Individual; An Octogenarians Counsel on Living and Dying

by John Yungblut

Overview

If I could have but one wish for you it is that you would become a contemplative. I do not mean that you should "hie" yourself to a monastery or convent and close the four walls about you. I mean that you should become a contemplative right where you are, in the midst of the circumstances that beset you, the responsibilities that burden you, the relationships that frustrate or encourage you. Here where you stand.

By being a contemplative . . . I mean learning the art of living mindfully .... being fully present to what one is engaged in doing or experiencing and, at the same time, conscious of how it relates to the self one would become under the aspect of the eternal. I also mean cultivating a 'gathered' quality, a one-pointedness that avoids dissipation of energy and dissociation. But I mean something infinitely more than all these things. I mean a practice of the presence of the Holy.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940150163508
Publisher:	Pendle Hill Publications
Publication date:	12/01/2014
Series:	Pendle Hill Pamphlets , #316
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	98 KB

About the Author

John Yungblut was born and raised in Dayton, Kentucky. A graduate of Harvard College, he did his graduate study in theology at Harvard Divinity School and the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He served in the Episcopal ministry for 20 years, and in 1960 became a member of the Religious Society of Friends. He has since served successively as Director of Quaker House, Atlanta; Director of International Student House, Washington, D.C.; Director of Studies at Pendle Hill, Wallingford, Pennsylvania; and Director of the Guild for Spiritual Guidance in Rye, New York. Encouraged by Rufus Jones to study the mystics, John has been a longtime student of the mystical approach to religious experience and of the writings of C.G. Jung and Teilhard de Chardin. He aspires to be an apologist for the mystical heritage in Christianity, updated by Jung’s myth of the psyche and Teilhard’s myth of cosmogenesis (a universe still being born).
He is currently Director of Touchstone, Inc., in Lincoln, Virginia. In addition to offering spiritual guidance and counseling in a Jungian context, he conducts seminars, retreats, and quiet days. He is the author of five other Pendle Hill pamphlets: Quakerism of the Future: Mystical, Prophetic, and Evangelical; Sex and the Human Psyche; Seeking Light in the Darkness of the Unconscious; Speaking as one Friend to Another: On the Mystical Way Forward; On Hallowing One’s Diminishments and five books: Rediscovering Prayer; Rediscovering the Christ; Discovering God Within; The Gentle Art of Spiritual Guidance; and Shaping a Personal Myth to Live By.