The Other Side of Nothingness: Toward a Theology of Radical Openness [Hardcover]

Beverly Lanzetta (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2001

Provides an innovative theology based in mysticism, one that acknowledges the pain of spiritual repression and values religious pluralism.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

From the mystic's experience of nothingness and the desert, The Other Side of Nothingness offers a theology of humility sensitive to religious pluralism and to the pain of spiritual oppression. With a passionate concern for contemporary interreligious issues, Beverly J. Lanzetta provides insight into how mystical consciousness overturns claims of dogmatic truth and prepares the self to experience the radical openness of divinity. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Beverly J. Lanzetta is Professor and Spiritual Director of Interfaith Theological Seminary, Research Associate at Southwest Institute for Research on Women, and the author of Path of the Heart. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 182 pages
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr (May 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791449491
• ISBN-13: 978-0791449493
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,015,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars World Peace through Mystics of All Faiths, May 7, 2007

By 

George Swanson (An Island in Maine) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Other Side of Nothingness: Toward a Theology of Radical Openness (Paperback)

Lanzetta is GOOD. Only drawback -- she never met a long Greek word she didn't like. HOWEVER after one looks them up a few times, her deep knowledge of the world's mystics gives the reader a sense of how beautiful the world could be if we all moved to the other side of nothingness. I give copies away to friends. Maggie Ross recommended this book. As a Christian lover of silence Ross also sees the bond we can find there with everyone in the whole world without exception. Lanzetta reminds me of a lecture on COMPASSION which Karen Armstrong gave last year. The thoughtless, threadbare, and facile statements that "we are all going to the same place" may actually have a truth that is beyond our imagination.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Be still and know that I am God, May 9, 2003

By 

Melanie Supan Sethney (Tucson, AZ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Other Side of Nothingness: Toward a Theology of Radical Openness (Paperback)

In THE OTHER SIDE OF NOTHINGNESS, Beverly Lanzetta tells a story, a love story. This is a love story between God and humankind, told for the new millenium. In it, she reflects on the divine encounter from the apophatic tradition of particular Christian mystics. She develops her story, in part, through a lucid witnessing of the writings of pseudo-Dionysius, the anonymous author of THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING, and Meister Eckhart. Although these mystics are of western origin, she recognizes the experience to be a universal one. She knows, as do I, that the love story that occurs between man and God happens in the deepest parts of ourselves and is a treasure that can be found in any of us.

Key to her tale is the contemplative life. Dr. Lanzetta shows us, in her exploration of these writings, the ultimate ways we might embrace God and that God might embrace us. At the core are vulnerability, mercy and non-violence. At the core is a fluidity that cannot be named, trapped, or reached. But deeper and deeper we go, and our Beloved goes with us, the unnameable, the unreachable, the unknowable, into a Self-emptying nothingness and embrace. It is a love story that has no beginning or end because it is all Mystery. Spirit and matter embrace as One in the eternal present. It is always happening.

This story is retold for us today, that we as a global community, might know the plurality and the Oneness that is forever and eternally our heritage. Dr. Lanzetta reminds us of the twentieth-century prophets and social mystics, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Abraham Heschel, and Howard Thurman, whose desire to be transformed takes place in social climates with the marginalized and those who are materially and spiritually poor among us.

Dr. Lanzetta speaks about the unknowable in a manner that is masterful and eloquent. She is a visionary who writes on mystical openness "motivated by a desire to recover what has remained unheard in the history of theology, and to put it to use in overcoming religious exclusiveness and the violence associated with absolute truth claims." She speaks from her heart for our hearts. Over and over, I am reminded: Be still and know that I am loved. Be still and know that I am God.