Book excerpt: "Passionate Spirituality explores the roots and meanings of passion in Western culture, and then examines how passion is expressed in the works of two medieval women mystics - Hildegard of Bingen and Hadewijch of Brabant - and in the lives of contemporary Christians seeking to deepen their own spiritual journeys. Too often, the term "passion' is associated only with steamy films, sexual, sin, and emotional excess - cutting off the breadth of its meaning and expression for positive good. But the great mystics succeed precisely because they hold together both the affective and the intellectual aspects of the spiritual life in creative and convincing ways. Their accounts of their mystical experience are important resources for information and understanding about how to talk about God more formally, and for what it means to be passionately in love with God and the world."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved