Photo: Festival of Faiths from Louisville, United States, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Author

Cynthia Bourgeault Audiobooks

The Wisdom Jesus: contemplative Christian listening from the wisdom tradition

1 audiobook reviewed

Main genres

Who is Cynthia Bourgeault?

There is a strand of Christian writing far more interested in transformation than in argument, and The Wisdom Jesus belongs to it. Cynthia Bourgeault approaches the subject as a teacher of wisdom rather than as a proposition to be defended, which changes the entire texture of the reading.

Our shelves place the title across religion and spirituality and classics and heritage, and both labels earn their keep. This is contemplative material, concerned with practice, attention and inner change, drawing on a long tradition rather than on contemporary devotional fashion. Anyone who has found their way here through meditation, or through the mystics of earlier centuries, will recognise the terrain within minutes.

Cynthia Bourgeault in audiobooks

The recording runs just under seven hours, read by Jo Howarth. Contemplative writing is unusually dependent on pace. Hurried, it collapses into a list of assertions; given room, it does what it was designed to do, which is to let one idea settle before the next arrives.

Take it slowly, in short sittings, and be willing to go back over a passage rather than pressing on. This title is on its way to the site rather than available this minute, so consider it one to look forward to. The entry sits below.