Quaker Thought and Today - Friends Journal

30
Oakwood Friends School
located in the historical Hudson Valley, 75 miles north of New York City
Coed boarding and day school for grades 7-ll and postgraduate
Rigorous college preparatory curriculum
Visual and perfomting arts
Strong, nurturing community
International Program
Small class size
Unique Senior Program
Athletic Program
Community Service
Sixth grade to open FaD 1999
* *
Please contact the Admissions Office, 515 South Road, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601
(914) 462-4200 I www.o-f-s.org
1951 Delta Avenue West Branch, Iowa 52358-8507
Education research informs us that in order to be effective,
learning must be comprehensive. Learning must take place within many
settings - the classroom; the home, the community, the workplace and at
one's place of worship. Scattergood Friends School encompasses all of these
elements. Our challenging college preparatory curriculum is enhanced
by dormitory living, a· learning community comprised of students and those
who teach, a work-crew and farm program, and Friends Worship.
Value based education has been the foundation for
academic excellence at Scattergood since its founding in 1890.
For more information, call319-643-7628, or, 319-643-7600.
World Wide Web: http:// www.scattergood.org
E-mail address: SFS/njo@Scattergood.org
Fax number: 319-643-7485
Books
The Ecstatic Journey:
The Transforming Power
of Mystical Experience
By Sophy Burnham. BaUantine Books, New
York, 1997. 323 pages. $25/hardcover.
In The Ecstatic journey Sophy Burnham,
the bestselling author of The Book of Angels,
tells how her life was radically, and in some
ways wrenchingly, transformed by a spiritual
journey that included a powerfUl mystical experience.
She parallels the stages of her own
journey with similar stories from the lives of
noted holy people from religions around the
world and from the lives of ordinary people.
She makes it clear that many who have such
experiences, including herself, are far from
being saints or enlightened beings. She cites
surveys done in the United States and England,
in which 40 to 50 percent of respondents
reported having had a mystical experience.
In one survey, most said they had never
revealed their experiences even to their closest
friends, and none had shared them with their
clergy. People who recount such experiences
in our culture ofi:en meet suspicion, ridicule,
or a psychiatric diagnosis. Sometimes they are
even told their experiences have a demonic
origin. Those who have been deeply affected
by a mystical experience are usually hungry to
learn about others who have experienced something
similar, hungry to understand more
about the meaning and purpose of their experience.
This book was written to meet that
need.
Burnham focuses not just on mystical experiences,
which may last only fleeting moments,
but on the ways people are transformed
by them. She tells the story, for instance,
of Bill Walton, who had been drinking
two and three bottles of gin daily for years
at the time he first surrendered to a Power
greater than himself and prayed for help. The
mystical experience that followed overwhelmed
him with "a conviction of the Presence of
God." From that point forward, he nevertook
another drink of alcohol. Subsequently, with
a friend, he founded Alcoholics Anonymous.
Burnham explains in detail that while the
experiences themselves may be ecstatic, the
transformations associated with them can be
painful. For example, she became painfully
sensitive to the destructive, deluded aspects of
our culture and of hersel£ Many people suddenly
or gradually leave behind one way oflife
for another after having a mystical experience.
Burnham eventually lefi: her marriage. Sometimes
those who've had mystical experiences
behave in ways that are judged crazy. To give
examples of such behavior, Burnham cites not
only James Naylor (whom she calls James
Fletcher) but also George Fox. She warns of
September 1998 FRIENDS jOURNAL