Dialogue 1: The Mystery of the “I Don’t Know”

James Finley (0:01)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:03)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:05)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:15)

Welcome, everyone, to our first dialogue in season seven of Turning to the Mystics, where we're turning to the German mystic, Meister Eckhart, who lived in the 13th and 14th centuries.

And Jim, I'm here with Jim and Corey, and we're excited to discuss Meister Eckhart today. And Jim, I really like the way you're, you seem to be gently exposing us to Eckhart in this first teaching that you offer.

James Finley (0:47)

Yes. I wanted to be careful.

You know, I think the podcast, the intention is to have them be very invitational and heartfelt, something we can walk around with during the day. And I wanted to be very careful not to get into the details of kind of the academic background, philosophy, metaphysics, philosophical theology and so on, and just stay purely with his intention of these teachings as sermons, as dialogue. So that's been important for me, as I said, the tone here.

Kirsten Oates (1:26)

Wonderful. And I thought in this session, we'd spend some time just getting to know and getting a deeper understanding of some of his words and some of his metaphors.

You say that these mystics, they share a common worldview, but their language, their metaphors can be quite different.

James Finley (1:46)

Yes, I would say that what they all share in the Christian tradition is this importance of living a life that honors the gift of daily life, then honors the gift of daily life illumined by faith, discipleship, and the call of discipleship to be ever more Christlike, ever more merciful, ever more present, ever more forgiving, and so on. And then hoping, knowing on our hearts that when death comes, as Christ promised, when we pass through the veil of death, we're not annihilated but consummated.

So in death, we move from a veiled experience of God's oneness with us, that is veiled in insights, veiled in hopes, veiled in consolations, veiled in aspirations, efficacious unto holiness. We move into unveiled glory, to be one with God as God is one with God, in our eternal nothingness without God. And so what they're talking about is this grace for God decides to wait until we're dead, to begin to reveal to us this unveiled communion and to live in fidelity to it. And they all share that in common, but each one of them is talking out of his or her own experience of that. And so each one, you see the uniqueness of each one coming through.

Kirsten Oates (3:06)

Who was the audience for these sermons that you're going to be taking us through?

James Finley (3:11)

Some of them were, there was a priest, there were sermons, they're giving it the liturgy. So sometimes they'd be in a church and he would give them as a sermon.

But some of the main say them also were the Dominican nuns in Strasburg.

And as a matter of fact, when he gave the sermons, because there were no tape recorders or ways to record it, they were so moved by the depth and beauty of it. They took very, very careful notes as he spoke. Then they got together and came up with the best draft. They came the closest. And that's how we get a lot of the sermons. Many of them is through the nuns, yeah.

Kirsten Oates (3:47)

But the sermons would have been offered often to the general public.

James Finley (3:52)

Yes, he'd spoken, he was speaking to churches, but he was also then speaking the common to the sisters, yes.

Kirsten Oates (3:58)

Yes, because they seem quite complex, but he obviously felt called to share.

James Finley (4:03)

Yes. I think a feeling I get from him is that, I think he was probably so present when he spoke. And some of his metaphors are so striking.

People could just tell, not that they would begin to grasp what he was saying, but they could feel the beauty of it or be touched by it. And that's the sense that I have. But with his nuns, I think of the deep life of prayer, I think they were more capable collectively of being in residence with him and his teachings.

Kirsten Oates (4:36)

And what's interesting about Eckhart is that he was a deep theologian. So if you wanted to break down the sermons, there's deep theological underpinnings to them, as well as this, what you describe as the imperative delivery.

James Finley (4:52)

Well, actually, there's two things that we, one, in the collected works and the sources that we have, there's his teachings at the University of Paris. And a lot of them are scripture commentaries, very deep scripture commentaries, but more biblically based, more philosophical theology of an understanding of scripture. And you see that theological framework.