Welcome to the Reading the Mystics blog

Welcome to the Reading the Mystics blog set up for the Reading the Mystics class just starting at Fintry. The class meets every 2-3 weeks, so the blog is to help us keep in touch between sessions.
The Reading the Mystics course has been running in Broadstairs since 2007, and so anyone who has attended the course in the past is welcome to join in. You'll recognise most of the material, and I can post anything you missed.
We started the second session last night listening again to Francis Thompson's 'The Kingdom of God' (by the light of the waxing moon). You can hear the poem on our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmHau_CYNR0. The governing idea of the poem is that we don't need to go searching elsewhere for the invisible, noumenal world. The 'otherness' whose presence we intuit from time to time is forever with us, if we would only open our own "clay-shuttered doors".

"Angels keep their ancient places, / Turn but a stone and start a wing." 

We looked at some 'mystical' experiences, including Hildegard von Bingen's account of her lifelong visions, which she called 'the cloud of the living light' and 'the Living Light itself'.

But the main thrust of the session was to look at the roots of what we call 'mysticism' - starting with Taoism.

Over to you for your thoughtful and kind contributions....