Customer Reviews

Mystic Street

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In his latest book, "Mystic Street", Steve Georgiou has a turn of phrase that often strikes me as being true to the experience of so many of us: "we are travelers of the heart" (p.32). Consequently, I read Georgiou's book as an invitation to travel the uncharted territory of my own heart and life experiences. It's something of a travel book, one that describes a fabulous journey through inner and outer landscapes. One slowly and attentively responds to the beckoning of mystery; mystery woven like a fine, rich thread through the everyday and the ordinary. In this case the "everyday and the ordinary" is Steve working toward his doctoral degree in Religion and Art at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. "Mystic Street" carries on from where Georgiou's earlier book "The Way of the Dreamcatcher", left off.

And, I must say, the views from this continuing journey are of a type that make you stop, dead in your tracks. You stand still. You "wakeup" as if from a dream. You rub the sleep from you eyes and you look and you see the wonder of the holy and the sacred in all that you know you've seen, but somehow, not really noticed. It's enough to take your breath away!

To have read this book is to have unwrapped a gift of great value.

Mystic Street is a great book to take into a quiet place and meditate
on the
deeper things of life. As you read it you feel your spiritual quest
deepening,
chapter by chapter. It is a book that leaves you with a kind of
tranquil awe
and reverence for both creation and for the Creator who made it all
happen
in the first place.

While this is one man's book about grace in his everyday experiences, it could well be every man's or woman's. The invitation is to be awake to it.
His mentor Robert Lax had always told him to "go with the flow." Grace is the flow of our everyday life.
Grace is also the thread that Georgiou finds in his daily experiences and weaves into the tapestry of his life. There are 65 main chapters that teach by, for want of a better term, the "gentle awakening" method: Grace is there; you just need to open your senses to perceive it.
The book is not only a good, gentle read with short chapters making it easy to pause for reflection, but the chapters themselves help you develop the habit of wakefulness to grace. It does not set out to be a how-to book, but the desire to be aware of grace alive in the moment (aka, to take a sensuous stroll on Mystic Street) becomes rather overwhelming.
The chapters have plenty I-wish-I-could-have-been-there moments. For example, one for me was when three teenage girls boarded the midnight subway laughing and shouting, disturbing the tired, dozing, zombie passengers who just wanted to be left unbothered. After a while, the girls quieted and began singing a stirring Gospel tune in harmony, praising the Lord. The tired were restored, the dozing were awakened, the zombies were enlivened and the wanting-to-be-left-alone were connected! When two rough looking thugs boarded the car there was a momentary lapse into tension and fear, but the girls not only kept on singing, they sang louder. Soon other passengers joined in the refrain. The chapter meditation was on music's impact on our body and spirit, but what a marvelous sparking moment in time!
This is a book to read and read again, but is also a wonderful book to give.

I really enjoyed Georgiou's "The Way of the Dreamcatcher". The qualities of his luminous perspectives on the poet Robert Lax have carried over into his new effort, a personal memoir of an enlightened ordinary life. There's a deep "innocence" in the way the author turns over the every day happening to discover treasure where it's least expected. An easy read that's like taking a walk with a good friend.

Steve Georgiou's new book invites his readers to discover that they live not only at a certain postal address known to the postman but also, and more significantly, on Mystic Street -- a street that begins at one's front door and stretches to wherever you happen to be going on a given day, whether to the supermarket or a mountain top. Mystic Street is not a line on the map but a way of life in which the main project is to be fully present wherever you happen to be, and thus to be continually rescued from boredom and be snapped awake in a state of surprise. Steve presents his invitation autobiographically, recalling particular experiences he has had while traveling his own Mystic Street. Yet this is less a book about his own life than an invitation to the reader to be more attentive, to live a more contemplative life, to discover beauty in unexpected places. The book's many photos add another level to the text. The cover photo -- light shining on wet cobblestones -- might have been taken on one of the Greek islands, most likely Patmos, where parts of the book are located. Altogether a refreshing read!