"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."
- Groucho Marx
The Eastern Christian tradition never has made a sharp distinction between mysticism and theology, between personal experience of divine mysteries and the dogma affirmed by the Church. The term "mystical theology" denotes the realm of human experience in which inaccessible divinity becomes accessible through grace, and the inexplicable Godhead becomes understood with the spiritual eyes of the heart.
John has been a playwright and screenwriter for several years. El Sueño was commissioned by A Contemporary Theatre for the FirstAct Program 1995. The screenplay of El Sueño was a finalist in the 1995 PNW Writers Conference, Literary Contest. White Stone a short play about the Shoah was one of the "Best of the Fest" selections for the New City Theatre, Playwrights Festival. John has participated as writer and actor in several readings for Cinco de Mayo and Day of the Dead presented by Los Norteños, a Seattle based group of Latino writers, sponsored by The Stranger, and Elliot Bay Bookstore. He attended the 12th Annual Aston Magna Academy at Rutgers University: "Cultural Cross-Currents, Spain and Latin America, 1550-1750". He has a BSW in Social Work from the University of Washington and finished the Certificate Programs in Playwrigting and Screenwriting at UW Extension. Presently working as a Transit Operator in Santa Fe, NM. From the ART OF PRAYER: Faber & Faber 1966: St Theophan the ReclusePrayer is the test of everything; prayer is also the source of everything; prayer is the driving force of everything; prayer is the director of everything. If prayer is right, everything is right. For prayer will not allow anything to go wrong. Prayer is the raising of the mind and heart to God in praise and thanksgiving to Him and in supplication for the good things that we need, both spiritual and physical. The essence of prayer if therefore the spiritual lifting of the heart towards God. The mind in the heart stands consciously before the face of God, filled with due reverence, and begins to pour itself out before Him.
There are various degrees of prayer. The first degree is bodily prayer, consisting for the most part in reading, in standing, and in making prostrations. In all of this there must needs be patience, labor, and sweat; for the attention runs away, the heart feels nothing and has no desire to pray. Yet in spite of this, give yourself a moderate rule and keep to it. Such is active prayer
The second degree is prayer with attention: the mind becomes accustomed to collecting itself in the hour of prayer, and prays consciously throughout, without distraction. The mind is focused upon the written word to the point of speaking them as if they were its own.
The third degree is prayer of feeling: the heart is warmed by concentration so that what hitherto has only been thought now becomes feeling. Where first it was a contrite phrase now it is contrition itself; and what was once a petition in words is transformed into a sensation of entire necessity. Whoever has passed through action and thought to true feeling, will pray without words, for God is God of the heart. So that the end of apprenticeship in prayer can be said to come when in our prayer we move only from feeling to feeling. In this state reading may cease, as well as deliberate thought; let there be only a dwelling in feeling with specific marks of prayer.