Comparative Theology & Dialogue

Daughters of the Desert: Stories of Remarkable Women from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Traditions by Mary Cronk Farrell, Meghan Nuttall Sayres, Claire Rudolf Murphy, Betsy Wharton, and Sara Conover (Skylight Pathways) In this day of hysteria about Islam, what we need is, to quote Cabaret, ein biβchen Verstndnis a little understanding. Now comes this easy-to-read set of 16 stories from Skylight Pathways, the publisher dedicated to creating a place where different spiritual traditions can come together.

The premise how would the most cherished stories of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam be different if women were the active, central figures? Taking as starting points passages from the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and the Quran, this diverse collection of short stories allows us to hear the voices of our common female ancestors loud and clear. Women though seldom educated played key roles in the development of these three great faiths. The men who recorded and copied the scriptures and other important texts included little about how women passed on their experiences of God through storytelling, song, and ritual.

With the help of imagination and careful research, Daughters of the Desert reconstructs the lives and loves, personalities and dreams of women who are only hinted at in the Scriptures, but whose faith and strength were vital to the growth of their beliefs.

Daughters of the Desert is ideal for anyone who has ever wondered what life was like for our spiritual foremothers; these stories bring life and breath to the past. For example, Esther stands against injustice and her king to save her people; Aisha leads hundreds of men into terrifying battle; and Mary and Elizabeth dream of the new lives growing inside them. How must Sarah have felt, turning Hagar out into the desert? And how must Hagar have felt, traveling from the safety and security of Abraham's land toward an uncertain future? These stories invite us to come to know and appreciate the struggles and triumphs of these women mothers, daughters, believers and seekers.
This ground-breaking collection of 18 short stories, 6 Jewish, 6 Christian, and 6 Muslim, brings to life the women daring, brave, thoughtful, and wise who played important and exciting roles in the early days of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Although no twritten especially for young people, Daughters of the Desert gives us a great way to start young people, especially girls, thinking about feminist issues as well as differences and similarities across the worlds great monotheistic religions.

THE DIVINE MATRIX

Creativity as the Link between East and West

by Joseph A. Bracken, S.J.

Faith Meets Faith Series

Orbis

$21.00, paper; 179 pages, notes, bibliography, index

1-57075-004-1

Bracken first locates the Infinite as transcendent source and goal of human activity as the notion common to virtually all the major world religions. He suggests that the Infinite is prototypically experienced not as an entity but as an ongoing activity--the principle activity for all beings, including God. Dialogue among religions has always been challenging. Today, the questions are becoming more fundamental: are the various traditions - Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Tao - even talking about the same thing when they speak of Nature, or God, Emptiness or Brahman?

Bracken manages a synthetic survey of the Aristotelian Thomistic philosophical theology with the later contributions of Meister Eckhart, Shelling and Heidegger to the "act of being," revamping it through a process mode of Whiteheadian "creativity." This confluence is then set out to find similar themes of creative expression, especially in the Hindu Upanishads, the codependent arising of classical Buddhism and the descriptions of Tao in Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. This Infinite as the creative seat of being is conceived as the meeting place of good talk in interreligious dialogue. Recommended for its cogent attempt to bring depth and agreement to a long standing discourse. Bracken first locates the Infinite as transcendent source and goal of human activity as the notion common to virtually all the major world religions. He suggests that the Infinite is prototypically experienced not as an entity but as an ongoing activity--the principle activity for all beings, including God. Dialogue among religions has always been challenging. Today, the questions are becoming more fundamental: are the various traditions - Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Tao - even talking about the same thing when they speak of Nature, or God, Emptiness or Brahman?

The Divine Matrix represents a bold scholarly attempt to provide a framework for discussing these and other - questions that will keep the interreligious dialogue project from grinding to a halt. In The Divine Matrix philosopher and theologian Joseph Bracken first locates the Infinite as transcendent source and goal of human activity as the notion common to virtually all the major world religions. He suggests that the Infinite is prototypically experienced not as an entity but as an ongoing activity - the principle of activity for all beings (God included). This idea is consistent with the notion of eternal and continuous motion in Aristotle, with the "act of being" (actus essendi) in the theology of Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckert, and with the ground of being of Shelling and Heidegger, as well as with Whitehead's definition of "creativity." Bracken goes on to show that this idea is implicit in descriptions of Brahman in the Hindu Upanishads, in the experience of pratitya-samutpada ("dependent co-arising") in classical Buddhism, and in descriptions of the Tao in Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu.

Table of Contents:
Note on Orthography
Foreword
By Robert Cummings Neville
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Common Structures of Intelligibility
1. Motion and Infinity in the Philosophy of Aristotle
2. Being and Relations in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas
3. The Ground of Subjectivity in Eckhart, Schelling, and Heidegger
4. Creativity and the Extensive Continuum in the Philosophy of Alfred North
Whitehead
5. The Dynamic Identity-in-Difference of Brahman and Atman
6. The Buddhist Doctrine of Dependent Co-Arising
7. The Secret of the Tao
Conclusion: The Divine Matrix
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

Last modified: November 27, 2016

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