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Greetings. I'm Jim Finley.

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Greetings, everyone.

And welcome to our time here together.

I'm turning for guidance offered to us by the Christian Mystic We Go II,

in his classic work, The Ladder of Monks.

In the first session with Christian, kind of laid out the background information

about We Go and creating kind of a context for this text.

And so we can move directly here into focusing on why I think this text can be

particularly helpful to us, because he gives such a succinct, practical guidelines

for the actual experience of seeking God in prayer.

And because I think when we listen to these mystics, there's the flow of all these beautiful

insights, you know, but where does it land?

It is where how can I experientially get in touch with that place where I'm committing

myself to the actual experience of exploring these beautiful transformative realizations

of God's presence in my life, in my prayer, like concretely, what's that look like?

And I think that's so practical about this and so helpful.

And so I'll begin right in, just as he starts right in, this is at the very beginning

this is chapter two of each of these chapters, by the way, the whole thing is only 17 pages

long.

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