Love's Mind: An Essay on Contemplative Life

by John S. Dunne

Book Overview

Do we love with a love we know, or with a love we do not know? This question, posed to Dunne in a dream, prompts him to describe the journey one takes in contemplating and coming to know love. His insights lead him to a vision of the city of God, in which contemplation replaces violence.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0268013039
• ISBN13: 9780268013035
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Where are you wanting to go? (10)

"Do we love with a love we know or with a love we do not know?" That is the central issue of this extended essay on Dunne's journey to learn more about love. A priest and college teacher by profession, headquartered at the University of Notre Dame, Dunne describes the mind of love in the way of words, the way of music, and the way of friendship, after contemplations of each. Along these ways, he finds, among other things, "...the story of how unknowing love becomes knowing love when one comes to the realization that our being in love may be God loving in us, and that our blind love may be God's unconditional love in us." Thus he discovers one of the great missing dimensions in our modern workaday world and love life: the everyday joy of contemplating love. Basing this set of contemplations on the proddings of a dream, Dunne ends his essay with vision of the city of the heart "where contemplation takes the place of violence." Quite promising for lovers, not fighters. Highly recommended.