Three Mystics Walk into a Tavern: A Once and Future Meeting of Rumi, Meister Eckhart, and Moses de León in Medieval Venice

by James C. Harrington, Sidney G. Hall III

Overview

In Three Mystics Walk into a Tavern, Jalal ad-Din Rumi, Moses de León, and Meister Eckhart—three of the greatest mystics of all time—meet in Venice for an imaginary night-long conversation that will inspire everyday individuals of the twenty-first century to find their own spirituality and realize that everyone can be a mystic. Although the mystics came from different backgrounds and religious traditions (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity), their spiritual paths led them to similar understandings of a union with the Divine. The three mystics have a timeless and timely message for people who walk the earth eight centuries after they did, no matter an individual’s religious background or even if they have none. It is a message of connecting with the “divine spark” deep within us and within the universe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761865421
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/11/2015
Pages:	166
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

James C. Harrington, a human rights lawyer of forty-one years, is founder and director of the non-profit Texas Civil Rights Project. He was adjunct professor at the University of Texas Law School for twenty-seven years. He is author of Wrestling with Free Speech, Religious Freedom, and Democracy in Turkey. Harrington writes and speaks widely on human rights and civil society.

Sidney G. Hall III, is an activist, ordained minister, and writer. He has served for twenty-seven years as the senior pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church, a progressive congregation in central Austin. Hall is author of Christian Anti-Semitism and Paul’s Theology. He is a frequent speaker and workshop leader in the areas of nature-based Christianity, Holocaust studies, and LGBTQ inclusion in the church.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Introductory Comments—A Tavern?
Chapter 1. What This Book Is—And Is Not—About
Everyone Can Be a Mystic
Restless Hearts
Chapter 2. They Meet at Taverna degli Alighieri in Venice
Chapter 3. Mysticism: For Everyone?
Trying to Define the Indefinable
Mysticism Back on Stage
One River, Many Wells
Historical Notes
Characteristics
Dangers of Mysticism
Chapter 4. The 13th and Early 14th Centuries as Backdrop
Christianity in Europe
The Mongols
Culture, Education, and Law
Political Events
13th-Century Inventions
Concluding Comments
Chapter 5. Jalal ad-Din Rumi
Teachings
Major Works
Order of Whirling Dervishes
Legacy
Chapter 6. Meister Eckhart
Influence
Works and Teachings
Modern Spirituality
Chapter 7. Moses de León
The Zohar
The Zohar and Kabbalah
Concluding Comments
Chapter 8. The Conversation Continues, About the Divine
Chapter 9. More Tea, Wine, and Conversation: This Time, About Religion and Whether It Helps or Hinders
Chapter 10. Still More Çay and Conversation: The Mystic, Society, and Justice—And How They Fit Together
Chapter 11. Women and the Feminine
Chapter 12. As Dawn Approaches: Mysticism and the 21st Century
Chapter 13. They Conclude—The Underground River and Expanding the Circle
Select Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

The reader cannot help but join in the conversation, and not only because it is a conversation and not a treatise, a dialogue, and not a lecture. We join in because the conversation talks to the conditions and issues of today, in part through voices that speak today, in the present tense, and not only those that speak out of some misty distant past.The threads of this volume are woven together in a richly hued, tight, and very readable tapestry. The tapestry is also a doorway—into the warmest of intellectual and spiritual taverns, into which all of us are invited, out of the dark, windy night of the everyday world and its complications. The wise reader will read beginning to end, hardly stopping for breath, inspired.

Ori Z. Soltes

The reader cannot help but join in the conversation, and not only because it is a conversation and not a treatise, a dialogue, and not a lecture. We join in because the conversation talks to the conditions and issues of today, in part through voices that speak today, in the present tense, and not only those that speak out of some misty distant past. The threads of this volume are woven together in a richly hued, tight, and very readable tapestry. The tapestry is also a doorway--into the warmest of intellectual and spiritual taverns, into which all of us are invited, out of the dark, windy night of the everyday world and its complications. The wise reader will read beginning to end, hardly stopping for breath, inspired.

From the Publisher