SPIRITUALITY & RELIGION

Meister Eckhart’s Book of Secrets: Meditations on Letting Go and Finding True Freedom

by Jon M. Sweeney & Mark S. Burrows
Hampton Roads. Oct. 2019. 240p. ISBN 9781571748478. pap. $16.95; ebk. ISBN 9781612834290. REL
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Positioned as a follow-up to Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart: Meditations for the Restless Soul, this book by collaborators Sweeney and Burrows collects meditations from the 14th-century priest and mystic Eckhart von Hochheim, better known as Meister Eckhart. Though presented as a combination of prose and poems, the work notes that Eckhart himself did not write poetry. Rather, these are curated theological reflections presented in poetic form with many lines taken verbatim from Eckhart’s more formal theological discourses and sermons. In this, Sweeney and Burrows have crafted something akin to a road map to centering prayer. Eckhart’s mystical musings lead toward an “undoing, letting go of our need to manage our lives, freeing ourselves to seek this treasure.”
VERDICT With an economy of language, these words read like Buddhist koans, encouraging a path toward the richness of an interior life.
Reviewed by Sandra Collins, ­Byzantine Catholic Seminary Lib., Pittsburgh , Oct 01, 2019
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