It appears that an island floats in the water, but actually every island is the tip of a mountain rooted deep in the ocean. Even more rooted in the fathomless are our names for God: they are merely the island we see sticking out of the sea. This work explores ways of understanding the Persons of the Trinity inspired by the thought of Raimon Panikkar and Bruno Barnhart. Cyprian Consiglio presents some of what lies beneath the names as we know them––Father, Son, and Spirit––to the universal energies that each of the Persons represent, as these energies are found in us, and in other spiritual traditions of the world. This includes an opening up of the feminine dimension of each of the Persons. With an emphasis on our participation in divinity, Consiglio explores what it might mean to evolve in our understanding of God and realize untapped potentials of our Christian spirituality. “This is the best book on contemplative spirituality I’ve read in years. Fr. Cyprian represents the future of Christian contemplation. Following in the footsteps of spiritual masters like Bede Griffiths, Bruno Barnhart, and Abhishiktananda, he helps us touch what a deep practice feels like.”― Adam Bucko, director, Center for Spiritual Imagination (NYC); author, Let Your Heartbreak Be Your Guide "Cyprian grounds his theology in the earth, the body, and the feminine, presenting God as a quaternity of Silence, Word, Music, and Dance. In a “divine alchemy,” which should be our normative experience, “the water of our humanity is changed into the wine of divinity.” This complex and profound work challenges us to move beyond our limited Eurocentrism and understand God as Great Mother, Tao-Made-Flesh, and the energy of Shekinah."- Tessa Bielecki, author of Holy Daring and co-director of the Desert Foundation RELIGION / Christian Living / Spiritual Growth RELIGION / Christian Theology / General RELIGION / Comparative Religion US$26.00 Cyprian Consiglio, OSB Cam. REDISCOVERING THE DIVINE New Ways to Understand, Experience, and Express God Cover design by: Mia Stanford [Orbis Logo] ISBN: 978-1-62698-507-0 Cyprian Consiglio is a Camaldolese Benedictine monk, musician, composer, author, and teacher. He has shared his time between a hermitage in Big Sur, CA, and traveling in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, studying, teaching, and performing. Currently prior of his community, his other books include Prayer in the Cave of the Heart and Spirit, Soul, Body: Toward an Integral Christian Spirituality . Introduction An Island Is the Tip of a Mountain I spent the first twenty years of my monastic life deeply immersed in and influenced by the life and work of Bede Griffiths, OSB Cam., specifically two themes of his. One was his insistence on a tripartite anthropology, that the human person is not made up of just body and soul but is also spirit. The other was what he called the universal call to contemplation, that all people are called to share in the graces of the contemplative life, and that at the core and end of all authentic spiritual traditions there is a mystical experience. Based on those two themes I gave countless retreats and conferences, immersed myself in the study of the meditation traditions and Asian spirituality, wrote articles and my first two books, and was deeply involved in interreligious dialogue. As a musician, I was influenced by these two themes in much of the music that I wrote and performed. After a ten-year hiatus from living in my monastic community, during which time I did much of that work, I was asked to return and take on the role of prior. I instinctively knew that I would need to turn then to more classical Western Christian sources in my teaching within the community, and I did so with new eyes and new fervor without, however, losing that other influence. It was then that I really fell under the influence of my esteemed and erudite confrere and intellectual mentor, Fr. Bruno Barnhart, OSB Cam. Bruno was a former prior of our community, having had to lead the brothers, oftentimes grudgingly, into the era of the Second Vatican Council. While taking on that role, he remained an autodidact of a wide range of topics stretching from literary criticism to modern poetry, and as would be expected, monastic sources and mystical theology East and West. He also edited The One Light, the definitive anthology of the writings of Bede Griffiths, whom he knew well.1 Though he published only three books of his own, Bruno left behind a mountain of notes, homilies, and outlines of conferences as well as an extensive personal library. As one of our former monks said about him, “Every word he says has a thousand mirrors on it.” Though not well known outside of a small (but influential) circle, I was impressed by the long list of people who made their way down the serpentine Pacific Coast Highway on the Big Sur coast to search Bruno out and spend time in his company and conversation, influential writers and great minds