Living with the Mind of Christ
by Stefan Gillow Reynolds, DLT, £12.99
Contemplative Christianity is an obvious precursor of modern “mindfulness,” suggests Stephen Reynolds, but it has been somewhat occluded of late thanks, in part, to creeping secularism. He presents us with the intriguing proposition that now may be precisely the right time for secular mindfulness to be brought into close contact with Christianity at its most profound.
Reynolds pays due homage to the long genealogy of mysticism, demonstrating how it covertly seeds what we have come to recognise as secular mindfulness today – an essentially therapeutic practice addressing issues of mental health and wellbeing in a world which often seems to work against these attributes.
Suppose, for example, I’m a busy professional drawn to contemporary mindfulness as a cure for my scepticism, stress and disappointment. Suppose I get a sense that such healing is actually self-limited, and therefore incomplete. Then this calm, well-informed book may be the perfect vehicle for my introduction to Christianity. It goes further than the proposition in its title and can be read as a persuasive testament to the transformative power of belief itself.
Reynolds is clear about the ultimate goal of the religiously mindful person.
In fact, the gift of Christianity, he implies, is that it prompts us to seek beyond the immediate needs of our selves towards “who we are in relation to others and the great Other who is God”. This takes secular mindfulness well beyond its brief. It is all laid down in the Bible, from which he quotes deftly, leading to a startling realisation about the comprehensive healing power of faith: “The mind of Christ that arises as we let limited consciousness fall is true mindfulness.”
Revealing the unconscious motivation of our thoughts is, as any Christian knows, the work of prayer as much as psychoanalysis. Reynolds’s well-argued hope is that true mindfulness could be but a breath away for the unenlightened towards “the reality of self-giving love”, exemplified by Jesus. This is most compelling stuff, expressed with simplicity, scholarship and conviction.
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