The Reasons of the Heart

“John Dunne writes with intelligence, style, grace, and sure and discerning spiritual insight. Like all writers of really good spiritual theology, Dunne never betrays his subject matter with the kind of pious posturing or psycho-babble gimmickry that too often passes for ‘spiritual writing.’ His prose is crisp without being dense or rattling. His theological sensitivity is alert to nuance without becoming trapped into mere jargon. His care for the heart of authentic spirituality, like Henri Nouwen’s, is steady and believable.

Dunne chooses the classical religious metaphor of the ‘journey’ and invites his readers to join him in a journey into solitude and back again into the human circle. He insists that we accept as guides in this journey the great spiritual masters of the Eastern and Western traditions. Thus in reading Reasons of the Heart, we find ourselves in the presence of some of the best insights of John’s Gospel, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Buber, the Buddha, and Jesus. Dunne skillfully invites the reader to ‘pass over’ to a religious and theological vision of God and of our common humanity in our journey to authentic spirituality. Like Whitehead, Dunne believes that religion, above all, has to do with what an individual does with his/her solitariness. More than Whitehead, Dunne is concerned not only to have the individual enter solitariness, but also finally to leave it behind and rejoin the human community.” —David Tracy, The Critic