‘When genuine friends of God – such as was Eckhart to my way of thinking – repeat words they have heard in secret amidst the silence of the union of love, and these words are in disagreement with the teaching of the church, it is simply that the language of the market place is not that of the nuptial chamber.’
So wrote Simone Weil as she reflected on the spirituality offered by Meister Eckhart, who at once stood inside the church and on its very margins. A Dominican abbot, a professor of theology, and a spiritual director, he wrote ultimately from personal encounter, as ‘the man from whom God nothing hid’.
On this retreat, we gather round a 14th century monk who is experienced by many as a mystic for our age. In his Rhineland cloisters, amid the mess and glory of community life, he saw horizons of being like few before or since.
