Meister Eckhart
Thirty days with Meister Eckhart
Free by email
30 Days with Meister Eckhart
One short passage from his sermons each day for thirty days, with a plain paragraph on what he means. It is free, and leaving takes one click.
This is a free email course called 30 Days with Meister Eckhart. Each day for thirty days you get one short passage from his sermons, in the old Evans translation, followed by a plain paragraph on what he seems to be getting at. That's the whole course. No sign-up fee, no homework, no quizzes at the end.
Eckhart preached in German, to ordinary people and to nuns, about things that are hard to say in any language: the birth of God in the soul, letting go of the self, a kind of knowing that looks like unknowing. The sermons can feel dense on a first pass. Taking one piece at a time, with a little context, tends to help.
What arrives, and when
Once you sign up, one email lands in your inbox each day for thirty days. Each one has a single passage, usually just a few lines, and a short note underneath explaining the setting and the idea. Most people read it in two or three minutes.
There's no set order you have to keep. If a day goes by and you miss it, the email is still there whenever you get to it. The course doesn't track your progress or chase you to catch up.
A sample day
Here is roughly what a day looks like. This one comes from early in the course, on the idea Eckhart calls the birth of God in the soul.
St Augustine says this birth is always happening. But if it doesn't happen in me, what good does it do me? What matters is that it happens in me.
Sermon 1: The eternal birth of the Word in the soul
Eckhart is pointing at something Augustine said long before him: that this birth, God coming to life in a person, is not a one-time event in history. It happens now, or it doesn't happen at all. The email for that day says a little about what Eckhart means by "birth" here and points to the full sermon if you want more.
Later in the course there's a day built around this line, from a sermon on rest:
If I were asked to say what end the creator has created creatures for, I would answer: rest. And if I were asked a second time, what are all creatures seeking so eagerly by nature? I would answer: rest. And if a third time I were asked what the soul seeks in all her restlessness, again I would say: rest.
Sermon 45: Rest: what the soul is really looking for
The note for that day talks about why Eckhart keeps circling back to rest, not as laziness but as a kind of stillness under all the striving. You can read the whole piece at Sermon 45.
Who this is for
People come to Eckhart from different directions. Some are in the middle of a contemplative prayer practice and want an older, stranger voice to sit alongside it. Some have read Zen teachers and notice a family resemblance. Some are studying philosophy or theology and want a daily way into the primary texts rather than a summary of them.
The course treats Eckhart as what he was: a Dominican friar and theologian, working inside the Christian tradition, even when his language gets close to paradox. If you want more background on his key terms, the ideas pages cover things like detachment, the ground of the soul, and living without a why.
Where the passages come from
The texts used in the course are from C. de B. Evans's English translation of Franz Pfeiffer's edition of Eckhart, published in 1924 and now in the public domain. The sermon numbers follow that old Evans and Pfeiffer order, which is different from the numbering used in newer translations by Quint or Walshe, so don't be surprised if a number doesn't match what you've seen elsewhere.
The course is edited by Gregory Lahn, who also writes the rest of this site. The explanations are his attempt at plain English for each passage, not a scholarly commentary, so take them as a way in rather than the last word.
The practical part
The course is free. There is no trial period that turns into a payment later and no card details are asked for. You give an email address, and thirty emails arrive, one a day.
Every email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom. Leaving takes one click and nothing else is asked of you, no reason, no survey, no "are you sure". If the course isn't for you, or you finish it and want to stop there, that's entirely fine.
If you'd rather get a feel for Eckhart before committing to thirty days of email, Start here gives a short introduction, and the quotes page has a wider spread of passages to browse on your own time.