Kenneth J. Dale is an ordained Lutheran minister who was professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling at the Japan Lutheran College and Seminary for 35 years. While teaching, he founded and directed a pastoral counseling center in Tokyo. He has written seven books.
This book was published on the occasion of Dale's 90th birthday. It includes 90 mini-essays in 9 chapters. He sees writing as a way of deepening and enriching his experience of faith and life. Central to the author's perspective is reverence for the many mysteries that surround us. First and foremost for Dale is God as "the inscrutable One." As seekers, we need an "integrating center" and a retooling of any traditional images of God that segregate the Divine from the exigencies of daily existence.
Jesus is where "mystery and history meet." Process theology and its salute to "panentheism" enables us to see the Cosmic Christ in everything. Even more mysteries abound as Dale explores the complex interior geography of the inner life by probing the centripetal and centrifugal forces of life and the idea that good can be born of evil.
In a lively section of the book, Dale shares some of his own mystical encounters with God before moving on to a rounded discussion of the meaning of the mysteries attendant to growing older. Here he takes a look at the symptoms of aging, the burdens of health maintenance, the challenges of retirement, and the rhythms of life through the decades of the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
We came away from this wonderful and soul-stirring book by a long-lived Christian minister with a fresh respect for the great mysteries of faith and life.
