Three Mystics Walk into a Tavern: A Once and Future Meeting of Rumi, Meister Eckhart, and Moses de León in Medieval Venice

In Three Mystics Walk into a Tavern, Jalal ad-Din Rumi, Moses de León, and Meister Eckhart—three of the greatest mystics of all time—meet in Venice for an imaginary night-long conversation that will inspire everyday individuals of the twenty-first century to find their own spirituality and realize that everyone can be a mystic. Although the mystics came from different backgrounds and religious traditions (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity), their spiritual paths led them to similar understandings of a union with the Divine. The three mystics have a timeless and timely message for people who walk the earth eight centuries after they did, no matter an individual’s religious background or even if they have none. It is a message of connecting with the “divine spark” deep within us and within the universe.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Introductory Comments—A Tavern? Chapter 1. What This Book Is—And Is Not—About Everyone Can Be a Mystic Restless Hearts Chapter 2. They Meet at Taverna degli Alighieri in Venice Chapter 3. Mysticism: For Everyone? Trying to Define the Indefinable Mysticism Back on Stage One River, Many Wells Historical Notes Characteristics Dangers of Mysticism Chapter 4. The 13th and Early 14th Centuries as Backdrop Christianity in Europe The Mongols Culture, Education, and Law Political Events 13th-Century Inventions Concluding Comments Chapter 5. Jalal ad-Din Rumi Teachings Major Works Order of Whirling Dervishes Legacy Chapter 6. Meister Eckhart Influence Works and Teachings Modern Spirituality Chapter 7. Moses de León The Zohar The Zohar and Kabbalah Concluding Comments Chapter 8. The Conversation Continues, About the Divine Chapter 9. More Tea, Wine, and Conversation: This Time, About Religion and Whether It Helps or Hinders Chapter 10. Still More Çay and Conversation: The

About the Author :
James C. Harrington, a human rights lawyer of forty-one years, is founder and director of the non-profit Texas Civil Rights Project. He was adjunct professor at the University of Texas Law School for twenty-seven years. He is author of Wrestling with Free Speech, Religious Freedom, and Democracy in Turkey. Harrington writes and speaks widely on human rights and civil society. Sidney G. Hall III, is an activist, ordained minister, and writer. He has served for twenty-seven years as the senior pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church, a progressive congregation in central Austin. Hall is author of Christian Anti-Semitism and Paul’s Theology. He is a frequent speaker and workshop leader in the areas of nature-based Christianity, Holocaust studies, and LGBTQ inclusion in the church.

Review :
The reader cannot help but join in the conversation, and not only because it is a conversation and not a treatise, a dialogue, and not a lecture. We join in because the conversation talks to the conditions and issues of today, in part through voices that speak today, in the present tense, and not only those that speak out of some misty distant past.The threads of this volume are woven together in a richly hued, tight, and very readable tapestry. The tapestry is also a doorway—into the warmest of intellectual and spiritual taverns, into which all of us are invited, out of the dark, windy night of the everyday world and its complications. The wise reader will read beginning to end, hardly stopping for breath, inspired.