Touching God: A Journey, a Guide to Mysticism in Christianity and Islam

By Brad Tyndall

The author takes you on a journey to far-reaching corners of the world, where he drinks tea with loving Sudanese Muslims, prays in ancient Coptic churches, and whirls with Sufi dervishes in the desert. In seeking the mystical in extraordinary places, he discovers that an intimate relationship with God can be found in known religious practices. The key is not the practice itself, but the role of the mind and the heart. With the right intention and contemplative approach, the religious practice unveils an attentive and loving God.
The author draws upon Rumi and Hafez, in Islam, and Saint Teresa of Avila and Thomas Merton, in Christianity, and many others to discuss the fundamental principles for embracing the Divine. By distilling the basic tenets and practices of Islam and Christianity, he finds they both hold similar mystical treasures.
Learn new and ancient methods for meditation, prayer, chanting, prayer beads and pilgrimages. Closely examine the Korans incredible poetry and beauty and gain insight into how it has brought millions to God. Learn about lectio divina, the ancient technique of listening to Gods personal communication with you through the Bible. The author provides step-by-step instructions for you to begin to use these mystical tools. By the end of the book, youll have taken your own journey into the heart of both Islam and Christianity and found Love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491872550

Brad Tyndall

Brad Tyndall has been a God seeker most of his life. He served as an acolyte growing up Episcopalian and became charismatic for a year or two at the end of high school. After some minor explorations beyond Christianity, and six years with Muslims, Christians, and Hindus in Europe, the Middle East, and East Africa, he returned to the United States and attended Unity and Methodist churches, and became an elder in the First Christian Church in Neosho, Missouri. He has recently embraced Catholicism and revels in its wealth of mystical practices, and he occasionally attends mass at St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado. Brad teaches sustainable economics at Colorado Mountain College, where he is also the vice president of academic affairs. He has a PhD in environmental economics and international trade and a master’s degree in agricultural and natural resource economics. He has studied Arabic and French at the Université de Strasbourg, France, and learned Arabic and much about Islam as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Sudan and as an economist in Yemen. He was a Fulbright Fellow in Kenya. Brad has presented on the “Living Side of Islam” since the tragedy of September 11, 2001. He lives with his family in the mountains of Colorado.

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2012, 2014 Brad Tyndall. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Old Testament scripture quotations are taken from the Twenty-First-Century King James Version, copyright © 1994. Used by permission of Deuel Enterprises, Inc., Gary, SD 57237. All rights reserved.

New Testament scripture quotations are taken from the Free Bible Version, published and distributed by the Free Bible Ministry, PO Box 594, Fulton, MD 20959, USA. Printed by Brilliant Printers, Bangalore, India, http://www.freebibleversion.org/.

Qur’an quotations are taken from the Free Version, http://www.holybooks.com/download-the-quran-in-english/.

The poems Zikr and Spring Is Christ are presented by permission of the author, Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi, San Francisco, California, 1995. Print.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/20/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4918-7256-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-7254-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-7255-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014904561

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1   Why This Book?

Chapter 2   The Search for God: Eastern Mysticism and Enlightenment

Chapter 3   My Personal Journey

Chapter 4   My Experience with the Sufi Mystics

Chapter 5   When I Was Touched by God

Chapter 6   Our Common Journey toward Union with God

Chapter 7   Mankind’s Evolving Understanding of Our Relationship with God

Chapter 8   Meditation as a Direct Pathway to the Love and Union of God

Chapter 9   What is Mysticism? Its Roots in Christianity, in Islam—in Everything

Chapter 10   Muslim Practices of Surrender and Journeying to God

Chapter 11   Christianity’s Practices of Surrender and Journeying to God

Chapter 12   Christianity’s Parallels to the Muslim Pillars of Faith

Chapter 13   Other Faith Practices in Islam and Christianity

Chapter 14   Back to Meditation (and Other Types of Prayer)

Chapter 15   Meaning of Life: Love and the Path toward God

Bibliography

Appendix A: Lectio Divina

Appendix B: The Rosary

About the Author

Endnotes

To those who have traveled with me on this Love journey, especially my wife, beloved friend, and dove, Audrey. To my kids, Sophia Lovella, Tedla Selassie, and Jalon Richard Rumi. To my spiritual heroes, Mrs. Marcus, Pastor Al Gritten, Pastor Bill Masters, Father William Meninger, Father Thomas Keating, and Episcopal Priest Cynthia Bourgeault. To all the Sudanese who have demonstrated such love in Islam. To God, our Emmanuel—God with us.

Chapter 1

Why This Book?

At the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, I was working at Front Range Community College in Fort Collins, Colorado. After the shock of the first few hours, we realized that our Muslim and Middle Eastern students could possibly suffer retaliation. We were facing the reality that some American students ignorantly figured that we were attacked by Muslims and thus all Muslims were the enemy, so some patriotic response was justified. As for our Middle Eastern students, or anyone who looked remotely Middle Eastern, we rightly figured that they’d feel targeted. In fact, most, if not all, refrained from going to class.

We deployed campus counselors and made efforts to calm people down. In the following days we considered various ideas to start a process of de-escalating the fears, and as a college we knew we had the responsibility to provide a more educated and well-rounded picture of Islam and the Middle East. I had been a Peace Corps volunteer in the Muslim north of Sudan and had had many life-changing experiences with kind and caring Muslims, and I also had become a big reader of Sufi (Muslim mystic) poetry. Because of this background, I decided to do a presentation on The Loving Side of Islam in the Student Center and in various appropriate classes—sociology, comparative religions, etc. Since that time I have continued to do these presentations, and they’ve evolved and expanded as I’ve studied more about Islam. Since I found that American audiences related to Islam more readily when I compared it to Christianity, I delved into this comparison and found that at their core—their mystical core—they were very similar. At the heart of both was a human desire to connect with a loving God, and both had many of the very same methods for this reunion.

My own openness to Islam resulted from many mostly very positive experiences from my Peace Corps days in the Sudan. I went there in 1984 as part of a small cohort of five volunteers, the first and the last to ever go to the Sudan. As much as most Americans don’t want to hear it, I found that the Muslims in northern Sudan were far nicer, kinder, and more generous—more Christian, so to speak—than Americans. I realize this is a generalization, but the overall picture was just plain true.

After my two or so months of training in Arabic at the Acropole Hotel in downtown Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, I was sent to live in Sahafa, a neighborhood in the southern part of the city. No other Westerners lived in Sahafa, so I was the sole Westerner there. To eat, I’d go to a nearby restaurant. This establishment was a small kitchen in front of about twenty banged-up, pastel-blue aluminum tables set out in an open field, with goats that scrambled about to eat your food the second you glanced away from your plastic bowl.

The first day I ate at the restaurant, a very poor (the people were all very poor) stranger came up to the register and insisted on paying for my meal. He wouldn’t back down. He pleaded with me by invoking a long array of religious petitions. At the next meal, and each time afterward, I tried to pay for my meal and some poor soul would jump up, invoke God (Alaik Allah!), and insist that I allow him to pay for me. When I resisted, he’d raise his voice and do more invocations, so I let him pay. This went on and on for weeks, until finally no one was left to pay my way. Then, finally, thinking I would pay for my own meal, I was surprised when the owner at the cash box said that it was his turn!

Beyond this hospitality, called karaam addeyafa in Arabic, many Sudanese came to my rescue on many occasions. In Egypt, where I stayed for about a month, I got stranded in a village in the middle of the western desert. I was huddled next to an adobe wall in the evening, and a poor stranger came up to me and pleaded with me to come and stay in his home with his family and two wives. I spent several days with this kind, loving, and joyful family. I’ve been changed by seeing that humans can be so godly and good.

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Egyptian village where I was stranded

I have many hopes for this book. First, I’d like to gently remind Christians and Muslims of their many beautiful commonalities and show them how we can all strengthen our faith by learning from the practices of one other. I also would like us all to remember that many of us, regardless of our faith, have the same longing for God.

In this age when some fanatical Muslim terrorists kill Americans as a great Satan and some zealot fundamentalist Christians burn Qur’ans, I think there is a desperate need to understand our deep, common human roots. Not only do we share the same religious history from Adam, Noah, and Abraham—as do our Jewish companions—but at our religious core we are nearly the same. We differ in some of our religious practices, but close examination at what is at the heart of these practices illuminates the same single purpose: experiencing loving closeness with God.

I’d also like Christians and Muslims to better understand their rich mystical heritage—that there are clear pathways to developing a closer relationship to God, peace, and love. I believe that Christianity, in particular, has been worn on Western shoulders for so long that most people no longer remember its mystical start and underpinnings.

Beyond this book being an appeal to and a communion with my Muslim and Christian kin, I’d like to show other seekers that there are non-Eastern mystical pathways to union with the Divine. In fact, with the heart set firmly in love and the mind’s intention set toward experiencing the presence of and surrender to God, the many, many religious practices of Islam and Christianity transform into their original intention: presence with the divine. Together, these practices nurture the soul and transform our walk with God to be in constant contemplation; for example, the quiet walk of a monk at sunset. It is thus my hope to show the spiritual and mystical graces underlying many religious practices—to breathe life into them again. With the right mind-set and heart orientation, most, if not all, religious practices serve to connect us with the Divine. Thus I plan to go over most of the basic religious practices in both faiths instead of just delving into the mystical practices found too often at the fringes of both Christianity and Islam.

I would not be completely honest if I didn’t say that I ultimately want people to have a close relationship with God and with each other. Ultimately, it would be wonderful to bring some wholeness and peace to a fragmented world.

I’d also like to remind Christians and Muslims of the connections with the Divine, the spiritual underpinnings of all their faith practices. Within this light, there are so many ways to bask in the presence of God if we rightly set our loving intention and faithful mind-set for these religious practices. In fact, with the correct state of subservient heart, the religious acts that are disdained by so many in this modern age take on their spiritual significance once again, as was originally intended. We’ll look at the mystical seeds that still fall from these two noble trees.

I would like to apologize for not including Judaism in this book; I simply know far too little to do it justice, but I do know enough to say that both Christianity and Islam owe their sacred heritage and birth to their mother. Shalom.

I would like to thank God for the love that lives in Islam, and is clearly articulated in Sufism, for it has helped me find more ways to practice love and to help me truly see that God is love. It is likely important for readers to know that, although I am not a Muslim in the regular sense of the word—I am a Christian—I have learned from and received much love from many, many Muslims during my time in the Middle East and afterward. Several Muslim friends have told me that, technically, they see me as a good Muslim, which by definition is someone who has submitted himself or herself to God. I don’t see myself as a good Christian or as a good Muslim, but I certainly find it to be something to aspire to.

Sometimes visible, sometimes not, sometimes devout Christians, sometimes staunchly Jewish. Until our inner love fits into everyone, all we can do is take daily these different shapes.

—Rumi, thirteenth-century Sufi ¹

Love is the answer. You know that for sure.

—John Lennon

Those who don’t love don’t know God, for God is love.

1 John 4:8

Say [O Muhammad, to mankind] If ye love Allah, follow me; Allah will love you and forgive you your sins. Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

—Qur’an 3:31

Chapter 2

The Search for God: Eastern Mysticism and Enlightenment

People have been searching for a religious experience. In a world filled with commercialism, disconnected from the reality of the heart and the physical realities that tie our species to nature, we find ourselves seeking… something. Some turn to alcohol, drugs, sex, food, or material things to fill that void. Others, sensing that our culture is not capable of providing for that essential need, seek answers elsewhere. Unfortunately, organized religion has been slow to respond to the rapid changes within the culture.

For the last fifty years or so, in particular, it seems Westerners have developed the idea that the only true spiritual experience can come from Eastern religions. It seems that ever since the 1944 book Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham, Americans have felt that Eastern religions provide the only mystical path to God. In the 1946 movie based on the book, Larry Darrell, played by Tyrone Power, stands atop the Himalayas and has a great revelation as the sun bursts through the clouds. In the 1984 version, Bill Murray meditates for days and has an eighties-type revelation with the clouds, sun, and majesty of nature playing their parts. Before

Reviews for Touching God

[al9g · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Disclaimer: the book is dedicated, in part, to me, and I am mentioned several times in the book. Nevertheless, it is a good primer for both entry into Christian mystical practices as well as engaging a deeper understanding of Islam. Combined with anecdotes describing his own journey, Tyndall adds insights into a deeper relationship with God through mystical practices, as well as some basic instruction in these practices and a bibliography that will adequately direct the seeker to more information.