Customer Reviews

Romancing God: Contemplating the Beloved (Christian Classics)

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The previous review reminds one of someone who was presented with a 5th grade science introduction and then commences to comment on quantam mechanics, celestial quarks, and pervading pulsars. Sorry, but that reviewer should not have read that book. Only those who have a heart for a relationship with the Creator/Beloved God and understand the language of Love are welcomed to come in. Please, don't read the Song of Songs, or Mechthilde of Magdeburg, or Julian of Norwich, or John of The Cross, or Mother Teresa, or Therese of Lisieux, or................enough said!

I am afraid that so far, I only find Ramon Lull to be useful as a historical reference and not for anything original which he contributed himself. This is somewhat ironic, since he was considered a heretic. In the Book of the Lover and the Beloved, what I find is a rather worrisome repetition of his desire to "suffer" for his beloved, which echoes the sentiments of Roman Catholic traditions of spiritual masochism. Personally, I find this kind of thing to be not only unnecessary to spirituality, but somewhat detrimental. The romantic mysticism of the book seems to be an echo of the same, which was prevalent in the Arabic Sufi mystical literature of the time, and I suspect this influenced Lull and other christian mystics. In fact, I think it is likely that these currents of thought, in their Sufi manifestations are probably more concise, pure, and free of superfluous elements. I do not say this because I have some bias, since I do not belong to either religion, and neither am I a Sufi. I only say it as a neutral outsider.