"the Mixed Life" - Walter Hilton

[BarbTherese]

Has anyone read this book?  I have just ordered it on Amazon.  Apparently he wrote it for lay people according to a little book I borrowed from my local library containing a short excerpt from it, but have lost the page and therefore the excerpt.

This is what Google Books had to say:

 

http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Mixed_Life.html?id=mSoFAQAACAAJ&redir_esc=y

Walter Hilton (c.1343-96) offers clear and practical advice for Christians trying to balance their duty towards others with a drawing towards prayer and contemplation. He says that there is no fixed order of priority in these things, and Christ himself gives us the supreme example of the ‘mixed life’. A fresh translation into modern English.

 

 

I know I read something or other by Walter Hilton in my teens and it impressed me, so I thought the above would be worth a read.  It probably wont arrive until around late November or early December as it is coming from the UK. I will return to this thread after I have read it and share my own thoughts.  To my research the copy I have ordered is in modern English.

[LouisvilleFan]

Never heard of him, but it does sound interesting. I would imagine there's a surprising amount that is just as relevant to daily life today as it was 600 years ago. It sounds like a layperson's version of Brother Lawrence's "The Practice of the Presence of God." I noticed Eighth Day Books has a copy for sale shipping from Kansas. Awesome bookstore.

[BarbTherese]

I have received my copy of "Mixed Life" (Walter Hilton).  It is quite a small booklet of 30 pages to the text proper.  It is certainly of value for striving for that balance between action and prayer or contemplation and how to identify certain factors pertaining to both - but to my mind, it is nothing I haven't read before and saying the same things differently.  It has value and certainly because it is indeed saying the same things differently.  One author saying the same thing can appeal to a person and have something of real value to state more than another author saying the same thing - only differently.  The Holy Spirit moves as He May.

 

It does have something of an early focus on those who may have an active life such as a bishop or others in some sort of responsible type of position.  But not all that hard to glean out what it has to say to the ordinary lay person without such responsibilities and duties - and without too much reading between the lines of 30 pages in a 5half x 8-1/4 inch booklet of fairly large type.

 

Walter Hilton wrote a couple of well regarded spiritual works of which "Mixed Life" is one. He died as a Canon of the Augustinian Priory of Thurgarton in Nottinghamshire on 24.3.1396.  He had a couple of attempts before he found his vocation and is regarded as a mystic.

New Advent "Walter Hilton" http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07355a.htm

[BarbTherese]

My copy was translated into "modern English by Rosemary Dorward, with Introduction and Notes by John Clark" and makes for very easy reading in quite modern English.

 

Copyright: The Sisters of the Love of God 2001

ISBN 0 7283 0156 3

ISSN 0307-1405

Printed by Will Print, Oxford, England