Ebook
Spiritual seekers across faith traditions share a fierce yearning for mystical unity with their God. While beliefs and practices differ, what ignites the human heart to quest for the mystical, the unknowable, the holy just beyond understanding, is the same. The Call of the Mourning Dove: How Sacred Sound Awakens Mystical Unity offers a new paradigm, the Sonic Trilogy of Love, that details how sacred sound, embedded in the ancient canons across faith traditions, creates just such a portal into this unmitigated experience of God. Because the experience is ubiquitous across faith traditions, it does not matter whether a seeker has embarked on an eclectic quest for God or remains deeply committed to questing within one particular faith tradition. All seekers, known as Lovers within the Trilogy, discover that by intoning the sacred sounds, the Love embedded in the ancient languages, the conditions are set to experience unity with God, the Beloved. This unity occurs in unforeseen moments, as love, the core organizing principle of the Trilogy, circles in on itself, dissolving all distinctions, leaving the Lover filled with only the silent wonder of God. And, graciously, nothing is the same.
“A person could make the argument that a prayer in a language we
cannot understand is not one we can pray. But another could retort
just as easily, ‘What does it mean to understand a prayer?’ In her
book, Stephanie Rutt explores how prayers in an unfamiliar language
can transport us, through their sacred sound, to another time,
place, and posture toward God.”
—Sarah B. Drummond, Andover Newton Seminary
Stephanie Rutt is founder and presiding minister of the Tree of
Life Interfaith Temple in Milford, NH. She received her DMin from
Andover Newton Theological School, now Andover Newton Seminary at
Yale, where her thesis, the basis for this book, won the Frederick
Buechner Prize for Excellence in Writing. She is the creator of the
Tree of Life Interfaith Seminary, author of several additional
books, and has appeared on the TEDx stage.