Arise, My Love: Mysticism for a New Era [Paperback]

William Johnston (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 261 pages
• Publisher: Orbis Books (April 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570753121
• ISBN-13: 978-1570753121
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #914,795 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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53 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Springtime for the Human Spirit, August 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Arise, My Love: Mysticism for a New Era (Paperback)

Each new book by the Belfast-born Jesuit, William Johnston, manages somehow to be different from his others. The latest, his eleventh, looks into the future and proclaims the glories that will be...as soon as the West opens itself to Eastern spirituality. But this time no instruction on techniques is offered, no mention made of his earlier ubiquitous exhortations about sitting and breathing and the grass growing green. He simply, and urgently, summons the whole human race to enter The Void...and aim for divinization!

If other works drew heavily on Carl Jung or Bernard Lonergan, this one's stock-in-trade is the documents of the Second Vatican Council. Yet, far from mellowing with time, the author is scathing, outlandish even, in his criticism of the church establishment: he cites suggestions elsewhere that the Pope move out of the Vatican and live at the gates of Rome; he echoes calls for an end to the system of papal nunciatures, and he argues for complete Church decentralisation.

"Arise, My Love..." is served in neat slices: the 17 chapters sub-divide under headings and the entire work comes in three parts:The New Consciousness:The New Mysticism and the Great Conversion. The style is amiable, lucid, companionable. Its meat amounts to food for intriguing thought.

Johnston announces the collapse of the old European church and the birth of a new global Christianity. Intensely mystical, ushering in a new springtime of the human spirit, this will look to Asia for guidance - borrowing breathing, posture, and mind control techniques as well as the chakras in its quest for enlightenment. It will learn from the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Tao Te Ching, the I Ching, the Buddhist Sutras and the Islamic teachings. Christianity is about to unwrap the paradigm created 2000 years ago, when three wise men crossed the desert bearing gifts from the east.

Involving married people in factories, businesses, classrooms or kitchens, concerned with peace, justice, ecology, violence and racism, this dialogue between Asian thought and the Christian tradition will have "incalculable repercussions" for the world. For, guided by spiritual giants of the east, people will learn how to transform themselves, how to go beyond rational consciousness and enter "the cloud of unknowing".

This silent place in the human psyche has no truck with reasoning, thinking, words and signs. It cannot be reached by scholarship. It exacts a price, viz. the dark night of the soul. This ends eventually, when a very powerful energy surges into consciousness from the void, turning sorrow into a joy nothing can take away. "The true self that lay sleeping at the centre of one's being is born with great joy. A new life begins. Now one sees God in all things and all things in God. Whereas previously one saw God through creatures, now one sees creatures through God".

For all that, the consciousness of the West remains valid and not to be traded away. The author firmly inveighs against "conversion". Each faith must stick with its own scriptures, commitment and path. However much all religions, have in common, they are yet "the same but different". Enlightenments too are "the same but different". Authentic Buddhist experience needs the dharma, authentic Jewish experience the Torah, authentic Islamic experience the Qur'an and authentic Christian experience the gospels. "Teilhard de Chardin found in the Christian tradition the wisdom he sought....We human beings cannot reject our past...Dialogue, yes; imitation, no".

Accepting this - that there are many religions and religious experiences but only one goal - is a major challenge for the third millennium. "Now we realise that no one religion has all the answers. Each religion has its unique message. The same spirit is at work in the heart of all men and women and in the scriptures and traditions of all authentic religions. We learn from one another. Indeed we at last realise that we need one another".

The other huge challenge will be church unity - between Christians east and west. The author forthrightly warns that a highly centralised, institutionalised, legalistic, political church that tries to control Asia from outside will surely fail. Likewise, an approach to the scriptures that "tells about the rind without helping them savor the sweet and delicious fruit" will not wash with religious Asians. Nor will they be impressed by "a wordy philosophy and theology" that indulges in extensive reasoning.

Instead, as Asian Christians get in touch with their traditional religions, they will create their own theology, liturgy, monasticism, and spirituality. "It is a question of seeing more deeply into the New Testament and the Christian tradition, finding therein aspects of the Jesus that the West has failed to see". In the process, Johnston asserts, the universal church will be enormously enriched. The book ends on a note of huge optimism, a confident prediction: "The marriage between East and West may well be stormy. But the marriage will be consummated, and it will bear much fruit".

A stimulating read!

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars East and West spirituality, July 28, 2007

By 

Hope Florence (Wilmington De) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Arise, My Love: Mysticism for a New Era (Paperback)

Though I found the contrast between east and west interesting, this book just didn't "get" me. It seemed heavy handed at times in what I saw as insistence that Eastern spirituality would be the "saving" of Western religious practices. Having read the book within a discussion group, I find it telling that there is not one phrase from it that stays with me.
Normally after discussion, I would have something tucked away as a thought provoker or a spirtual vitamin. Not in this case.

27 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Broad in Scope; Limited in Vision, August 29, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Arise, My Love: Mysticism for a New Era (Paperback)

This is my first encounter with William Johnston, and I am not a Catholic--those readers more familiar with Johnston's views and more Catholic in persuasion will want to keep that in mind when reading my review. This book does an excellent job in tracing the decline of the Western church and envisioning its rebirth through dialogue with Eastern religions. I agree with much that Johnston has to say. He is obviously a loving and courageous spiritual leader with a prophetic message for the future of Christianity. In spite of his bold criticisms of the Catholic church, however, I was somewhat put off by his constant need to qualify his statements, apparently to avoid sounding too "unorthodox." Johnston seems oblivious to the condescension of the Pope's statement that "members of other religions...receive salvation through Jesus Christ, even while they do not recognize or acknowledge him as their Savior." While this point of view is certainly more inclusive than that of the past, it still arrogantly insists on the superiority of Christianity. A more objective observer would be quick to point out that members of other religions do not receive "salvation" through Jesus Christ at all--they receive "salvation" through their own religious systems. As long as Christianity insists on the "uniqueness" of the "Christ event," it will never achieve the harmony with world religions that Johnston longs for and the survival of the planet depends on. It is time for Christians to recognize that, like all religions, Christianity is just one path among many paths of equal value. In spite of Johnston's bias, this is a valuable book; and I recommend it highly to all those interested in Christian mysticism and the survival of Christianity in the third millennium.