Turning to Meister Eckhart

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

How do you tell the story of your inner journey? Join James Finley for the Healing Stories Online Retreat, Saturday, August 26th, from 9 to 5 Pacific. Inspired by his memoir, The Healing Path, Jim offers guided reflections to help you become more conscious of the thread of your own sacred journey. The event will be recorded and all registered will have access to the replay.

Register today at cac.org/healing-retreat. That's cac.org/h-e-a-l-i-n-gdashr-e-t-r-e-a-t.

You're listening to a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation. To learn more, visit cac.org.

James Finley (0:50)

Greetings. I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:52)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:54)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (1:04)

Welcome, everyone, to Season 7 of Turning to the Mystics.

I'm here with Jim and Corey, and we're excited to learn about our mystic for Season 7 So, Jim, will you welcome, and will you introduce us to our Season 7 mystic?

James Finley (1:24)

Yes, I'm pleased to resume our explorations together in this series and the podcast. And so, what we're going to be doing now beginning Season 7 is turning to the mystic Meister Eckhart.

And we'll be exploring Eckhart the same way I did the other mystics. And I'll be reading passages and then reflect on the passages with practical examples to make the teachings as accessible as possible in the daily living of our life. And then as we're trying to go back and forth between a man mystic and a woman mystic, then in season eight, we'll do Mikthelda Magberg and as a woman mystic. And so that'll be our next pair of a man and a woman mystic in this season and the one that follows.

Kirsten Oates (2:16)

Wonderful. So in this session, we'll be able to learn a little bit more about Meister Eckhart before you get into his teaching.

And so just wondering who was this Meister, Meister Eckhart? Who was he historically?

James Finley (2:32)

So to begin first, like we always try to do is to begin with who he was historically because that helps us understand who he is spiritually. That's the autobiographical foundations of his awakening and what he taught.

Meister Eckhart was born in Germany in the year 1260, where he spent his life until his death at 68 years old in 1328, Germany.

As a young man, he entered the Dominican Order, religious order within the church, so he took the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

And the Dominican Order is known as the Order of Preachers, that their ministry is preaching and also learning, education and preaching. So he joins the Dominican Order. There's also a record that he studied at the University of Paris, which at this time was one of the great Christian learning centers in Europe. And then he taught theology at the University of Paris. And also, which gives a sense of the esteem that he was held in at the time. He held the chair in theology that was held by his predecessor, Dominican Saint Thomas Aquinas, who was the author of the Summa Theologica.

When he left the academy, the academic world, he continued on more of an emphasis. He's continued to do writings. And by the way, at the University of Paris, there are his Latin writings, which are scripture commentaries. And later when we talk about sources, it's important to keep them in mind when you read the German, the mystical writings. He focuses, he spends time in Strasbourg. He gets the sermons in German to the nuns, the Dominican nuns in Strasbourg. And that's where we get his German works, which are really his mystical works. And the nuns were so moved by the depth and beauty of his teachings, they had no tape recorders recording. So they took very careful notes. And then they got together and put together a single, what they all agreed was the closest possible to his actual sermon. So that's how we have his sermons. It was through the nuns, otherwise we wouldn't have them at all.

Kirsten Oates (5:00)

Like a work of love from the nuns.

James Finley (5:02)

It was a work of love, which then gave him to the contemplative church, carried it forward through the centuries, through time.

So what we see, then, are two meanings to the word Meister, meaning master. One master is an academic sense, like we would say today, maybe like Dr. Eckhart or Professor Eckhart. But also, and what this concerns us in the podcast is, he's a spiritual master. He's one of the mystic teachers that we turn to for guides like the Master of the Interior Life, Eckhart. So he's really a kind of, we might say then, a mystically awakened theologian who saw the mystical dimensions that was revealed to us in the scriptures and in the tradition and translates it for us into a spiritual path of mystical awakening, which was the heart of his teachings, I guess we could say.