By Cynthia Bourgeault Published by Fortress Press, 2022. (USD 12.75) Reviewed by Katrina Brill

When I finished this small book of 80 pages I recognised that Cynthia Bourgeault had captured me from the hello. It was not the title, The Corner of Fourth and Nondual, (I didn’t get the connection with Thomas Merton), but her conversational approach in which she shares simply, interestingly and informatively about the development of her theology.

I was familiar with Bourgeault’s writings on Centering Prayer and I was totally intrigued by her title of “cosmogonic mystic”. Cosmogonic mysticism, she says, is a “cosmological seeing or knowing” with the eye of the heart that seeks to break our reliance on rational thought patterns. It’s a “luminous seeing; a peering straight into the heart of things; a gentle inner knowingness” that she recognised as the fundamental divining rod for her
life’s journey. It’s not what but how to see differently.

Ultimately it is about the consciousness and awareness of the Mystery of love and relationship.

The four short chapters, titled with understated humour — “The iCloud of Unknowing”, “Theodyssey”, “Two’s Company, Three’s a World” and “The Corner of Fourth and Nondual” — invite the reader to slow down in this world of “iClouds”, instant information and bombarding thoughts to walk our own “theodyssey”, to rediscover the relational nature of loving and to embrace the whole of the universe.

Cynthia thinks Christianity has become “pot-bound” and needs “repotting” where it might have room to grow.

I believe many others will find this book a refreshing approach with practical suggestions for living life consciously and contemplatively.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 286 October 2023: 27