A Radical Mystics Resource List

Quotations, books, and other media to nurture your soul and challenge your assumptions

Trinity College Library, Dublin, home of the Book of Kells.

The following list of resources represents a selection of books, music, movies and quotations that Debonee and/or Skye find spiritually interesting and worth sharing. Remember everyone’s taste is unique, so you may or may not love everything (or anything) on this list. But we hope you’ll give some of these works a try — we think you’ll find inspiration for your own radical mystical journey.

We are intentionally not linking this list to any online retailer; we encourage you to support your local independent bookstore and music store whenever possible.

Also, please note that we will be continually updating this list, so check back from time to time to see what’s new!

Books We Love

• Anonymous, The Cloud of Unknowing

• Lerita Coleman Brown, What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman

• Cynthia Bourgeault, Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Mystic

• Ruth Burrows, Guidelines for Mystical Prayer

• Joan Chittister, Radical Spirit: 12 Ways to Live a Free and Authentic Life

• Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

• Cassidy Hall, Queering Contemplation: Finding Queerness in the Roots and Future of Contemplative Spirituality

• The Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

• Ram Dass, Be Here Now

• Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

• Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk

• Julian of Norwich, The Showings

• Kenneth Leech, The Eye of the Storm: Living Spiritually in the Real World

• Victoria Loorz, Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred

• Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, The Shamanic Bones of Zen: Revealing the Ancestral Spirit and Mystical Heart of a Sacred Tradition

• Carl McColman, The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism

• Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

• Mary Oliver, Devotions

• Lama Rod Owens, Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger

• Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us

• Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See

• Mirabai Starr, Ordinary Mysticism: Your Life as Sacred Ground

• Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart

• Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

• Pamela Ayo Yetunde, Casting Indra’s Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community

Movies We Love

• The Anchoress, directed by Chris Newby

• C’Mon C’Mon, directed by Mike Mills

• The Darjeeling Limited, directed by Wes Anderson

• A Hidden Life, directed by Terence Malick

• In Pursuit of Silence, directed by Patrick Shen

• Into Great Silence, directed by Philip Gröning

• The Life of Chuck, directed by Mike Flanagan

• Music for Mushrooms, directed by East Forest

• Northfork, directed by the Polish Brothers

• Of Gods and Men, directed by Xavier Beauvois

• Perfect Days, directed by Wim Wenders

• The Secret of Kells, directed by Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey

• The Secret of Roan Inish, directed by John Sayles

• Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay

• Spirited Away, directed by Hayao Miyazaki

• Wings of Desire, directed by Wim Wenders

Music We Love

Albums

• Above & Beyond Presents Oceanlab, Sirens of the Sea

• Anonymous 4, An English Ladymass

• Vashti Bunyan, Just Another Diamond Day

• Kate Bush, Aerial

• The Clash, Sandinista!

• Alice Coltrane, Universal Consciousness

• John Coltrane, A Love Supreme

• D’Angelo, Voodoo

• Krishna Das, Pilgrim Heart

• East Forest, Music To Be Born To / Music To Die To

• East Forest and Ram Dass, Ram Dass

• Ludovico Einaudi, Divenire

• Ludovico Einaudi, The Summer Portraits

• Brian Eno, Ambient I: Music for Airports

• Marvin Gaye, What’s Going On

• Gothic Voices with Emma Kirkby, A Feather on the Breath of God: Sequences and Hymns by Abbess Hildegard of Bingen

• George Harrison, All Things Must Pass

• Lauryn Hill, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

• Howard Jones, Dream Into Action

• Liquid Mind, Liquid Mind X: Meditation

• Loreena McKennitt, The Visit

• Joni Mitchell, Ladies of the Canyon

• Moor Mother, Untold to Untold

• Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening

• Phoria, Caught a Black Rabbit

• Deva Premal, The Essence

• Layne Redmond, Being in Rhythm

• Renaissance, Ashes Are Burning

• Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Durch Die Wüste

• Ryuichi Sakamoto, async

• Pharoah Sanders, Karma

• Tony Scott, Music for Zen Meditation

• Nina Simone, Emergency Ward

• The Waterboys, Fisherman’s Blues

Songs

• “All Along the Watchtower,” Jimi Hendrix

• “Astral Weeks,” Van Morrison

• “The Christians and the Pagans,” Dar Williams

• “Everyday People,” Sly and the Family Stone

• “Grantchester Meadows,” Pink Floyd

• “Imagine,” John Lennon

• “The Inner Light,” The Beatles

• “Q.U.E.E.N.,” Janelle Monáe with Erykah Badu

• “Ripple,” Grateful Dead¹

• “Tonight and the Rest of My Life,” Nina Gordon

Quotations We Love

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.
— Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light and Other Essays, “Epilogue”

The world is the cloister of the contemplative. There is no escape. Always the quest for justice draws one deeply into the heart of God. In this sacred interiority, contemplation becomes the language of prayer and the impetus for prophetic proclamation and action… Activism and contemplation are not functional opposites. Rather, contemplation is, at its heart, a reflective activity that is always seeking the spiritual balance between individual piety and communal justice seeking…Even in its most passive aspects, contemplation plugs the supplicants into the catalytic center of God’s Spirit, into the divine power that permeates every aspect of life. In this space, there are no false dichotomies, no divisions between the sacred and the secular… Through acts of contemplation, individuals and congregations enter the liminal space where the impossible becomes possible.
— Barbara Holmes, Joy Unspeakable, “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Contemplation, Activism and Praxis”

When we live outside ourselves, and by that I mean on external directives only rather than from our internal knowledge and needs, when we live away from those erotic guides from within ourselves, then our lives are limited by external and alien forms, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on human need, let alone an individual’s. But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense. For as we begin to recognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self-negation, and with the numbness which so often seems like their only alternative in our society. Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within.
— bell hooks, Sister Outsider, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”

There is in every person an inward sea, and in that sea there is an island and on that island there is an altar and standing guard before that altar is “the angel with the flaming sword.” Nothing can get by that angel to be placed upon that altar unless it has the mark of your inner authority. Nothing passes “the angel with the flaming sword” to be placed upon your altar unless it be a part of “the fluid area of your consent.” This is your crucial link with the Eternal… We are all of us deeply involved in the throes of our own weaknesses and strengths, expressed often in the profoundest conflicts within our own souls. The only hope for surcease, the only possibility of stability for the person, is to establish an Island of Peace within one’s own soul… Well within the island is the Temple where God dwells—not the God of the creed, the church, the family, but the God of one’s heart.
— Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart, “Part I: The Inward Sea”

Contemplation has a context: it does not occur in a vacuum. Today’s context is that of the multinational corporations, the arms race, the strong state, the economic crisis, urban decay, the growing racism, and human loneliness. It is within this highly deranged culture that contemplatives explore the waste of their own being. It is in the midst of chaos and crisis that they pursue the vision of God and experience the conflict which is at the core of the contemplative search. They become part of that conflict and begin to see into the heart of things. The contemplative shares in the passion of Christ which is both an identification with the pain of the world and also the despoiling of the principalities and powers of the fallen world-order.
— Kenneth Leech, The Social God, “Contemplation as a Subversive Activity”

Contemplation is very far from being just one kind of thing that Christians do: it is the key to prayer, liturgy, art and ethics, the key to the essence of a renewed humanity that is capable of seeing the world and other subjects in the world with freedom – freedom from self-oriented, acquisitive habits and the distorted understanding that comes from them. To put it boldly, contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit. To learn contemplative practice is to learn what we need so as to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly. It is a deeply revolutionary matter.
— Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Address to the Synod of Bishops in Rome, October 10, 2012

Let us serve our body out of love for God, remembering all the times the body has served the soul. A genuinely holy conversation can function as an authentic spiritual practice. Our guides might also recommend that we spend some time in nature. Experience is a great teacher because it helps us to see what is best for us and to realize that God can be served by everything we do.
— Teresa of Ávila, The Book of My Life, Mirabai Starr translation, Chapter 11

1. Any mention or (especially) endorsement of Grateful Dead music on this list or indeed anywhere in the Radical Mystic ecosystem is clearly from me (Skye), and its inclusion on this list is evidence of what a mature, tolerant and accepting person Debonee is.