From the Preface to ‘Mystic Approaches’:
“I wouldn’t call myself a mystic though some say I am. I’m not sure what it means besides “Not this – not that’. Neither (in a conventional sense) am I very religious. “Mystic” conveys to me a wise unknowing of morning mist with only the promise of a day to come. It’s not an intellectual approach defined by man but trusting, waiting, quietly still before each blade of grass, each little bird (Mat.6,26-28) reminding us of higher, nobler government than ours.
Childhood accustomed me to nature, solitude – a sense of God which needed no explaining. Stillness, beauty, depths of love called my heart back home where it belonged. But life grew out into the world, became possessed and lost the way. By 26 I needed help, so studied meditation.
This required attending to the moment “Now’, reminding me how much we live not present, here, but absent, lost in past or future – thought, desires and fear. But isn’t that reality? We need to look and see.
These pages tell a bit of what I saw.”
Mystic Approaches, John Butler, 2012