His Hiding Place Is Darkness: A Hindu-Catholic Theopoetics of Divine Absence (Encountering Traditions)

__His Hiding Place is Darkness__ explores the uncertainties of faith and love in a pluralistic age. In keeping with his conviction that studying multiple religious traditions intensifies rather than attenuates religious devotion, Francis Clooney's latest work of comparative theology seeks a way beyond today's religious and interreligious uncertainty by pairing a fresh reading of the absence of the beloved in the Biblical Song of Songs with a pioneering study of the same theme in the Holy Word of Mouth (9th century CE), a classic of Hindu mystical poetry rarely studied in the West. Remarkably, the pairing of these texts is grounded not in a general theory of religion, but in an engagement with two unexpected sources: the theopoetics, theodramatics, and theology of the 20th-century Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, and the intensely perceived and written poetry of Pulitzer Prize winner Jorie Graham. How we read and write on religious matters is transformed by this rare combination of voices in what is surely a unique and important contribution to comparative studies and religious hermeneutics. This book explores the uncertainties of faith and love in a pluralistic age. In keeping with his conviction that studying multiple religious traditions intensifies rather than attenuates religious devotion, the author's latest work of comparative theology seeks a way beyond today's religious and interreligious uncertainty by pairing a fresh reading of the absence of the beloved in the Biblical Song of Songs with a pioneering study of the same theme in the Holy Word of Mouth (9th century CE), a classic of Hindu mystical poetry rarely studied in the West This work of comparative theology brings together the Biblical Song of Songs and the Hindu Holy Word of Mouth to show how we can learn interreligiously and honor traditional commitments even while admitting the radical changes, losses, and gaps that pluralism is bringing to religious consciousness. Missing Him -- Love In-between -- Spiritual Exercises In Times Of Absence -- Writing Theology After The Hiding Of The Beloved -- In The End -- Jesus, The Beloved. Francis X. Clooney, S.j. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 143-184) And Index.