Description
Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Women's Studies. INTO THE MYSTIC is a spiritual memoir that focuses on the author's mentor, Olga Park, who self-published books of her thoughts on spirituality grounded in and moving out from the Christian tradition with which she was most familiar. Her books attracted a number of seekers who came to her to learn her practice and her teachings. Although the author privileges her mentor's teachings she does so by relating them to her own spiritual development and to non-Christian spiritual teachings and traditions. Thus she manages to provide the reader with much of her mentor's life story as well as some of her own. The book consists of a series of vignettes and poems written by the author and by Park as well as some illustrations of Park's own spiritually inspired artistic creations. It explores the relation of the female spiritual seeker to her wisdom teacher, guru, and spiritual mentor, and addresses timeless questions about the relation of time to eternity, the nature and emergence of consciousness, direct mystical experience etc., in a contemporary Canadian context.
Author Bio
Susan McCaslin has published fourteen volumes of poetry and nine chapbooks. She completed her PhD at UBC in 1984 and taught at Douglas College in BC in the English and Creative Writing Departments from 1984-2007. Recently, she has published a memoir about the contemplative life, INTO THE MYSTIC: MY YEARS WITH OLGA (Inanna Publications, 2014). Her most recent volume of poetry, Painter, Poet, Mountain: After Cézanne (2016), engages with the life and works of the Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne. Her early work was heralded by the poet P.K. Page, and a previous volume, Demeter Goes Skydiving (2012), was short-listed for the BC Book Prize for Poetry (Dorothy Livesay Award) and first-place winner of the Alberta Book Publishing Award (Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award) in 2012. Susan lives in Fort Langley, BC, where she can be found walking by the rivers, forests, and shores of the Fraser River.
Author City: FORT LANGLEY, BC CAN