Meetings With the Archangel - Tapa blanda

A dazzling first work of fiction from a leading US spiritual writer.

Hailed by Elaine Pagels as “absolutely terrific”, Meetings with the Archangel centres on the narrator’s spiritual growth. Ambitious, searching and often hilarious, it tells of his quest for enlightenment and his search for the eternal questions – what God is, what love is, how we should live and how we can respond to evil.

Meetings with the Archangel gives a profound and humourous insight into a wide variety of spiritual practices ranging from a broccoli smoking Jewish community through to a formidable tradition of Zen teachers. Tracing its lineage to the reverent irreverence of the Zen masters and athe dialogues of Plato, it meets the reader at the crossroads of humour and profound wisdom.

When the archangel Gabriel appears to a narrator who has written a bestselling book called 'Against angels', our whole world view is turned on its head. What is the nature of bliss? What games do angels play? What is angelic sex like? Gabriel gives an intensely erotic and moving demonstration of this. Later he takes us on a guided tour of the heavens and introduces us to, among other spirits, William Blake, Thomas Aquinas and Spinoza.

But 'Meetings with the Archangel' is primarily about humans, not angels. Its central section is the story of the narrator's spiritual training, which culminates in his experience of enlightenment. It is an ambitious, searching and sometimes hilarious story of his efforts to get to the heart of our lives and the questions of how we should live, what truth is, what love is, how we can respond to evil.

"Stephen Mitchell's work has often given me the strength to go on writing from the heart; he is one of the American voices I most admire today. His new book 'Meetings with the Archangel', is an absolutely incredible piece of writing: extremely witty, profound, erotic, and deeply satisfying in many ways."
Erica Jong

"Its accounts of Zen training surpass any I've seen..."
Harold Bloom