ORONO – A chance meeting by young sociologist Kyriacos Markides in the late 1970s with a Christian shaman in Cyprus halted research for a book on international terrorism but ignited a personal passion that has made the University of Maine professor of sociology an internationally recognized authority on healers and mystics of Eastern Christianity.

After witnessing several “healings” by what Markides calls a Christian lay shaman or “medicine man,” including an accurate diagnosis of an illness accomplished merely by rubbing a photograph of an afflicted woman 7,000 miles away in New York, Markides abandoned the book on terrorism and began a study that has changed his life and academic orientation in the years that followed.

Markides, author of five previous books on the culture of healers, mystics and spiritual elders of Eastern Orthodoxy, has just published his sixth book, “Gifts of the Desert,” the third in a trilogy that explores both the divisions and bridges between Eastern and Western Christianity.

Critics say Markides’ newest work offers readers an intriguing and accessible examination of the mystical side of Christianity little known to the West, a path to a Christian life that is a balance of the worldly and the spiritual.

“Gifts of the Desert” was published this fall by Doubleday/Random House.

“Gifts of the Desert: The Forgotten Path of Christian Spirituality,” is a combination of travelogue, dialogue, social commentary, personal reflection and religious history glued together by Markides’ personal 25-year exploration of knowledge and understanding of the mystical traditions and practices of Eastern Christians often overlooked by Western academics and theologians.

Using methods of participant observation, Markides has studied Christian mystics and healers since the 1970s, including prolonged stays in monasteries in Greece, Cyprus and the Southwest.

Markides’ newest book comes at a time when catastrophic events of recent years, from 9/11 to the tsunami in Indonesia, Hurricane Katrina and the looming threats of new disasters force people from all walks of life to face difficult questions about religion.

Additionally, Markides says, political turmoil in the Mid-East raises new questions about the role of religion in a world in which fundamentalists pushed it to dogmatic extremes.

Markides would have us step back and appreciate the foundation of religion and its mystical and spiritual roots. He believes many people in the West, dissatisfied with exoteric forms of religion, are in search of a deeper spirituality.

“I think modern Americans who now are interested in religion and spirituality are really searching for a direct religious experience more so than just learn about ethics. They are craving for direct contact with the divine,” he said. “The excessive dominance of rationalism and scientific materialism is no longer satisfying to them, so they yearn for a more experiential path to reality, to God.

“Thanks to the triumph of rationalism the mystical pathways in the western world have been repressed and gone underground and they need to be resuscitated and brought to the surface for a more balanced approach to life,” he says.

Markides, who studies and teaches sociology of religion, sociological theory, sociology of mental illness and sociology of violence and international terrorism, began his trilogy with “Riding with the Lion: In Search of Mystical Christianity.”

That book marked the beginning of his research into Mount Athos in northern Greece, the legendary and inaccessible peninsula of 20 monasteries and a score of hermitages. It is the home of 2,000 monks and hermits, a place Markides likens to a “Christian Tibet.”

“Riding with the Lion” was followed by “The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality” in which he introduces the charismatic Father Maximos, an elder at the young age of 32 and former abbot from Mount Athos.

Taking a sabbatical in 1997 to live with and study the ways of the monks of the Panagia monastery in Cyprus, Markides developed a close friendship with Maximos, who agreed to become Markides’ mentor, spiritual guide and informant. The book is a chronicle of conversations between himself, Father Maximos and others, including skeptical American scholars who wanted to see for themselves what attracted Markides to this line of exploration and research.

“Gifts of the Desert” picks up where “The Mountain of Silence” leaves off. Markides’ pursuit of an even deeper understanding of Orthodoxy takes him to the desert of Arizona, where he stays at a new monastery not far from Phoenix.

He also goes back to Cyprus for a reunion with Father Maximos, on a pilgrimage with Father Maximos and other pilgrims to holy shrines aboard a cruise ship on the Aegean Sea, to Oxford University to meet with a revered bishop and academic, and finally to Mount Athos.