I received this book from LibraryThing.com’s Early Reviewer Program, but by the time it arrived I no longer remembered what I had requested it. The back plate said that it was a love story about between an Episcopal Priest (the author) and a Trappist Monk (Raphael Robin) and how their relationship continued even after Raphael’s death. While the monastic elements intrigued me, I’m not much of a somebody-dies-love-story person. But, the forward promised that it was not a “typical boy-meets-girl” type of love story, so I ventured on.

The book is divided into three parts entitled: Meeting in the Body of Hope, How We Worked Together, and Walking the Walk. Meeting in the body of hope summarizes the entire book’s content. How We Worked Together is an in depth account of Cynthia and Rafe’s relationship. And finally, Walking the Walk tells offers the proofs of how a relationship can exist with a deceased partner.

Cynthia and Rafe’s love story begins when she travels from her home in Maine to a conference at a Colorado monastery. There she meets the monastery’s resident monk/handyman Rafe. She describes their first conversation the way many people romanticize the moment they met their love.

“[We stood there talking] the words flooding forth from some unknown depth in our souls.”

Things take a turn towards the bombastic after that, a trait that characterizes much of the rest of the story.

“What remains with me vividly to this day is my recollection of a circle of light that shone out from Rafe and enfolded us both, and the deep sense of comfort and familiarity between us, as if we’d had somehow always known each other.”

After returning to Maine, Cynthia senses Rafe “calling her” back to Colorado. After her husband divorces her for another woman, she heeds the call. Leaving her life in Maine, she settles in a house on the monastery’s property and becomes an unofficial acolyte to Rafe.

The book recalls what can only be labeled as a courtship in the context of this story. Yet, it lacks the romance we’re so often used to. Everything revolves around fixing up Cynthia’s cabin or working on Rafe’s junkyard snowmobiles. The stories also sharetwo strange themes. The first is Cynthia’s feelings of insecurity, clinginess, and frustration at Rafe’s ‘closed’ nature. The second is Rafe’s frustration and rebuffs of her advancements and ‘monk-ish’ platitudes.

Cynthia recounts that whenever she felt insecure she would attempt to elicit hugs from Rafe. Although he was celibate and always wary of his own sexuality, he sometimes obliged Cynthia’s affections. More often he drew away and she says those times always “threw [them] into a bad cycle.” Rafe would mock her clutching and clinging saying “Get thee a husband!” She would ridicule his “flight into holiness” and taunt, “If you’re such a great hermit, why don’t you just stay up [in your cabin] a while!”

She shares a specific occasion that captures this interplay:

“We were by the stove after a good piece of work on a clutch assembly, but internally things had been going downhill. All through that morning I could feel him gradually slipping away into that “high lonesome” in himself, moody and withdrawn, the place where I could never find him. And as my own sense of fearfulness and rejection grew, I watched it trigger that same dumb move I always made in these circumstances. A whiny little voice deep from childhood began to speak:

‘Rafe, can we have a hug?’

He started to draw back, as he always did at these times. Then, suddenly, something different happened. I caught it the instant it started. Those blue eyes, rather than turning angry and aloof, became intense and focused right on me as he said, ‘You’ll see; everything that can be had in a hug is right here.'”

Another time she recalls feeling frustrated that Rafe would not reciprocate in saying “I love you.”

Rafe had gone to his hermitage for a weekend of solitude. Alone, Cynthia began to wonder if she was being pathetic in her clinging. She needed to know if it was time to “bid [Rafe] farewell, break camp, and return to Maine.”

Trudging through the snow to his cabin she found him “sitting in his old overstuffed chair by a crackling evening fire, disgruntled to be interrupted.” She confronted him, “I need to know where we stand. If you still love me –if you still want me here–I need you to tell me. Otherwise I think it’s time to quit.”

“What does your heart tell?” Rafe asked.

Cynthia responded, “My heart tells me you love me. But your words tell me you don’t.”

Looking at her Rafe said “Your heart must be invincible. You must trust the invincibility of your own heart.”

The most important moment of this courtship is a episode of domestic violence. The author points to this event – which happened just three months before Rafe’s death – as the birth of their true love. The story begins like the previous one’s I’ve shared. This time Rafe orders Cynthia to stay away from him for at least the evening. Unable to deal with the slight she later returns to his cabin and forces herself inside. When Rafe attempts to leave she lunges after him and grabs onto this legs.

“That was only the start of it. For the next half hour or so we wrestled. I am not talking metaphor here. We spilled down the landing and rolled and writhed around the yard, locked in a desperate contest of wills. I clenched his leg, his arm, holding on for dear life. He brought his boot heel down on my jaw and twisted my wrist so hard I thought it would snap. I screamed, but he didn’t let go. ‘You’re crazy!’ he hollered. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I hollered back.”

The fight ends in an irrigation ditch where Cynthia finally lets go. Standing over the weeping Cynthia, Rafe asks “Is it okay to go now?” She nods, but before he could leave she asks for his blessing. “You already have it,” he grunts before driving off on a snowmobile.

Rafe was seventy years old when he and Cynthia met. Cynthia alludes many times to the fact that she understood their relationship would be short. In the fall of 1995 Rafe passed away while Cynthia was in Maine. When she returned for the wake, she spent the night alone with Rafe’s body in the monastery. That night she says something special – something she describes as nuptial — happened during those quiet hours.

“All was forgiven, understood, poured out; that which in life had been hidden in the changeability of bodies and emotions became steady and consistent.”

After reaching this point in her story, Cynthia change from that of a lover to that of a guru. She spends a great deal of time laying out the esoteric proofs for how her relationship with Rafe continued after his death. She cites Armenian mystic George Gurdjieff and his disciples (P.D. Ouspensky, J.G. Bennett, etc..)

It’s hard to distill exactly what these men wrote because it’s so orphic. One point is clear though, through practice and an explicit commitment, it is possible to continue a relationship after one partner dies. Cynthia claims that Rafe had been preparing for this possiblity during their time together. However, as she explains Gurdjieff’s metaphysics she admits that she wasn’t aware that she was also being prepared.

Along with not being aware of Rafe’s plan to continue their relationship after his death, she admits that they never made an explicit commitment either. But as she explains, she believes that at Rafe’s wake they “just barely” squeaked by.

“Sometime during the wee hours of the [night Cynthia spent with Rafe’s body], kneeling by his side, I slipped my right hand into his. When I released it, I noticed that the silver ring he’d given me for my birthday the year before was shining a soft, luminous gold. I slipped the ring on my left finger, where is has stayed to this day. And so the earnest promise was sealed between us…”

Looking back, Cynthia now understood that Rafe had been grooming her for this experience all along. Events and platitudes that seemed nonsensical at the time hold clear meaning in the light of that “nuptial” moment. For example, when Rafe told Cynthia that her “heart must be invincible,” she realizes, now, that he was teaching her something important.

“Rafe knew that if I was to survive in the next phase up ahead, I would have to learn to recognize, trust, and navigate by faculties much more subtle than attraction and reassuring words….Unless I could learn to trust this, I would be cut off from the outset.”

Cynthia also shares how Rafe has grown and changed in this new phase of their relationship.

“[Those who knew Rafe best] knew him as a cowboy, a private, rough-hewn man, passionate about his solitude and about nature. To say that death has brought to light a difference side of him — more urbane, more confident, artistic, and deeply nurturing–is to describe a Rafe that no one would recognize, and for which there is virtually no external confirmation…most would be hard put to believe. And death has only intensified [his] movement in this direction.”

And in death Cynthia no longer has to try to extract affection from Rafe.

“That ‘I love you’ I so longed to hear in life has been heard many times since death, fashioned by forming the words distinctly and powerfully in my jaw.”

The book’s open-ended ending contains some spiritualized sentimentality about life, love, and death. Cynthia and Rafe’s romantic love affair is still ongoing and serves as a testament to love’s power over death. Unfortunately for me the intended power of the ending was lost. I knew that after a few pages of this book I would have to battle my skepticism. I had tried to respectfully suspend my cynical nature, but by this point I couldn’t do it any longer.

It feels wrong to be harshly critical of such a personal story; but this story, told by Cynthia herself, is rife with signs of an unhealthy obsession. To me it had the marks of an insecure woman, weaving a romanticized narrative about a relationship that never really met her expectations. Looking back nostalgically – and perhaps with an excited imagination – she creates a relationship that was exactly as she wanted. Even going so far as to turn Rafe “spirit” into the person she wanted him to be in life.

That’s not to say that I think that Cynthia is a charlatan or malicious. It never felt intentionally dishonest or deceptive. A generous person might call it a grief triggered, irrational reconstruction of nostalgia. I don’t think I will be alone is suggesting what the relationship described by Cynthia wasn’t healthy. Nor are is the way she recasts the deceased Rafe as her dream partner. That’s not to say that there weren’t positive elements of their relationship. They shared many silent comfortable moments over coffee and a love for particular poets and authors. But, Overall there lacked a positive substance to their relationship and, for me, there lacks a positive way to interpret the contents of this book.

This isn't your typical romance novel; in fact, I'm not sure how to categorize it. Love is Stronger than Death explores the relationship between a Episcopal Priest and buddhist monk, including the nature of relationship after death. Intriguing, but not for someone looking for a casual read.

This is a spiritual love story about an unlikely couple meeting on the last leg of this earthly journey. It's about two people seeking to create a truly selfless love that will outlast this world.

But the actual story only takes up a very small part of this book. Most of it is a practically nonsensical mishmash of mysticism, philosophy, theology, and the author's own guide to imitate what she believes she achieved.

I do not denigrate her experiences. I cannot speak to what happened to her. I object to her extrapolation from her own experiences to some kind of "secret" Christian truth. She quotes from a number of religious thinkers, but very rarely indeed from the Bible. Also, her obsession with this man borders on idolatry.

I found her story fascinating but I found her theology questionable. I wish she simply told her story without trying to preach, teach and pontificate. ( )

The practice of mysticism, in which a soul seeks communion and interior union with God, has a long, well-established tradition within the Christian faith. In the mid 20th century, George Gurdjieff and his disciple, P. D. Ouspensky, espoused a “Fourth Way,” in which one could focus their inner attention and energy so as to reach a higher level of harmonious development than possible through Christian, Sufi or Buddhist mysticism.

In Love is Stronger than Death, Cynthia Bourgeault describes her experience in establishing a union of souls with her beloved Trappist monk, Brother Raphael Robin, after his death in 1995. The book was first published in 1999 and reissued in 2014 as a 15th Anniversary Edition with a new preface by the author. An Episcopal priest, mystic, retreat leader and author of seven other books, Bourgeault wished to document her story since it did not seem to fit well with “either traditional Christian contemplative mysticism or by-the-books Fourth Way teaching.”

Bourgeault speaks of her mystical relationship with Rafe (as she calls Brother Raphael) as one in which they both willingly sacrifice their individual selves for the sake of becoming a single living, palpable “abler soul.” Going beyond the Fourth Way, she draws on the works of Maurice Nicoll, John G. Bennett, Boris Mouravieff, Jacob Boehme, Ladislaus Boros, and Vladimir Solovyov for theological support and on T. S. Eliot, John Donne, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Shakespeare for poetic inspiration.

Bourgeault’s book is recommended for all those with a mystical bent who seek to grow into a deeper relationship with their beloveds. Readers will find her chapter on “The Mystery of Christ,” which places her union with Rafe within the mystical body of Christ, particularly beautiful. ( )

I will start this review with a quote:
Love bears all things,believes all things,hopes all things, endures all things( from 1 Corinthians).
This was an exploration of the love felt between two searching souls who happened to be and Episcopal Priest and a Trappist Monk in Snowmass, Colorado, as they attempted to reach a higher spiritual state through isolation, work, and prayer. It has been three years now since the Monk's death, and the author still continues to grow through his teachings and their spiritual exploration together when he was alive. Unfortunately she was not present at the time of his death, so there were initially some unresolved issues about their continuing relationship after his death. She believes his influence still drives her in her work today.The quote at the beginning of this review was the message she gave to her daughter and son-in law as she officiated their wedding ceremony, as they began their journey together in marriage, to hopefully learn and grow together becoming a stronger unit, but not losing their respective identities.
A great book for people exploring afterlife, or the purpose of life, and life after death. I lost my husband two months ago after caring for him the last seven years of our married life of forty-five years. ( )