We are in the season of Epiphany—the unveiling, the coming of the light. This motif of unveiling, revealing, enlightening is not merely theoretical, but is to be entered into in our experience.
Today I want to take a tangential look at mysticism: the experience of God.
While there is great similarity between the mystical traditions of east and west, mysticism is difficult to categorize. There has never been a church of mystics only, as if mysticism could be institutionalized, for institution and mysticism are contrary (though, perhaps, the Quakers come close). Most mystics have not claimed to be mystics and have been termed so by others. In Ernest Troeltsch’s sociological typology mysticism is the third religious type and least important historically. He spends most time explicating the church and the sect. The church is that kind of religion into which one is born and which provides the rituals and life passages, which gives a religious legitimation to society. The sect is that kind of religion one joins as an adult and is characterized by disdain for the world and a radical commitment to the sect’s aims. According to Troeltsch, mysticism is the religion of the radical individual who avoids the compromise of the church and the radicality of the sect. Yet, mystics have been found not only as isolated individuals but also in both church and sect types of religion. In the Lindisfarne Community, we look in the direction of the church type (with our apostolic succession and links to the great tradition through it), in the direction of the sect type (with our dissent and radicalism), but we most closely resemble that type of religion Troeltsch terms mysticism.
What characterizes the mystic? W.R. Inge, who remains a trustworthy authority on western mysticism, gave twenty-six classical definitions of mysticism in his Christian Mysticism (1899) and added several more in his Mysticism in Religion (1947). He found consensus amongst the scholars with one exception: the mystics divide over the value of ordinary consciousness and the visible world. Some mistrust the material world; others recognize the sensible as being symbolic of ultimate reality. Yet, even given this difference, spiritual experience (what Otto calls the numinous) the unity of all things and a profound sense of love are the stock-in-trade of the mystic.
Ursula King’s contemporary definition summarizes what many think and falls on the side of the sacramental (the sensible world as mediator of the ultimate).
A mystic is a person who is deeply aware of the powerful presence of the divine Spirit: someone who seeks, above all, the knowledge and love of God and who experiences to an extraordinary degree the profoundly personal encounter with the energy of the divine life. Mystics often perceive the presence of God throughout the world of nature and in all that is alive, leading to a transfiguration of the ordinary all around them.
Ursula King (3)
Yet, this definition suggests that the mystical experience is found in few people. It is the province of the rare human being who has some direct contact with God to an extraordinary degree. Here I tend to disagree. Dorothee Soelle (theolgian and mystic who taught at Union Seminary in the 1980s) used the term “democratizing the concept of mysticism.” She says we are all mystics, or are so potentially. Far from being an esoteric experince of the very few, the msytical experince can be the normal experince of all who seek after God.
What is the heart of the mystical experince?
It is the movement of the self toward the Other, where the self becomes self-forgetful (loses itself) and becomes focused on the Other in love.
Yesterday was the feats of St. Aelred of Hexham. One of his prayers reads:
"O Good Jesus, let your voice sound in my ears so that my heart and mind and inmost soul may learn of your love, and the very depths of my heart be joined to you who are my greatest delight and joy. What is the love I desire, O my God? What is this wonderful delight in my soul? May I call love the heart's own sense of taste since it enables us to feel your sweetness? May we call love the eye through which we can see that you are good? When we love, O God, we join ourselves to you because you are love. Love is your rich banquet which deeply satisfies us when we eat at your table and drink deeply from you. In your love we can forget ourselves and lose ourselves only to find ourselves in you. I beg you, Savior Jesus, let even a touch of this delight penetrate my soul. It is my heart's desire to seek you day by day by loving you."
In your love we can forget ourselves and lose ourselves only to find ourselves in you.
In love: forget ourselves, lose ourselves, find ourselves.
That is the heart of the msytical experince. That experince is close to all of us. It is there in the wonder and beauty of creation. It is there in the love and affection for children. It is there in the lovers’ embrace. It is there between close friends. The first book +Jane and I wrote was called “The Kiss of Intimacy.” It was a book about the mystical experience available to all of us. Our third book was “Prophetic Lifestyle and the Celtic Way” in which we felt after these things: finding God in the ordinary things of life.
What is needed? Awareness: Openness to the possibility that we may find God in all things; awareness that enlightenment is not some far off event, but the coming of the light of God today.
King, U. (2003). Christian mystics: their lives and legacies throughout the ages. London: Routledge.
Today I want to take a tangential look at mysticism: the experience of God.
While there is great similarity between the mystical traditions of east and west, mysticism is difficult to categorize. There has never been a church of mystics only, as if mysticism could be institutionalized, for institution and mysticism are contrary (though, perhaps, the Quakers come close). Most mystics have not claimed to be mystics and have been termed so by others. In Ernest Troeltsch’s sociological typology mysticism is the third religious type and least important historically. He spends most time explicating the church and the sect. The church is that kind of religion into which one is born and which provides the rituals and life passages, which gives a religious legitimation to society. The sect is that kind of religion one joins as an adult and is characterized by disdain for the world and a radical commitment to the sect’s aims. According to Troeltsch, mysticism is the religion of the radical individual who avoids the compromise of the church and the radicality of the sect. Yet, mystics have been found not only as isolated individuals but also in both church and sect types of religion. In the Lindisfarne Community, we look in the direction of the church type (with our apostolic succession and links to the great tradition through it), in the direction of the sect type (with our dissent and radicalism), but we most closely resemble that type of religion Troeltsch terms mysticism.
What characterizes the mystic? W.R. Inge, who remains a trustworthy authority on western mysticism, gave twenty-six classical definitions of mysticism in his Christian Mysticism (1899) and added several more in his Mysticism in Religion (1947). He found consensus amongst the scholars with one exception: the mystics divide over the value of ordinary consciousness and the visible world. Some mistrust the material world; others recognize the sensible as being symbolic of ultimate reality. Yet, even given this difference, spiritual experience (what Otto calls the numinous) the unity of all things and a profound sense of love are the stock-in-trade of the mystic.
Ursula King’s contemporary definition summarizes what many think and falls on the side of the sacramental (the sensible world as mediator of the ultimate).
A mystic is a person who is deeply aware of the powerful presence of the divine Spirit: someone who seeks, above all, the knowledge and love of God and who experiences to an extraordinary degree the profoundly personal encounter with the energy of the divine life. Mystics often perceive the presence of God throughout the world of nature and in all that is alive, leading to a transfiguration of the ordinary all around them.
Ursula King (3)
Yet, this definition suggests that the mystical experience is found in few people. It is the province of the rare human being who has some direct contact with God to an extraordinary degree. Here I tend to disagree. Dorothee Soelle (theolgian and mystic who taught at Union Seminary in the 1980s) used the term “democratizing the concept of mysticism.” She says we are all mystics, or are so potentially. Far from being an esoteric experince of the very few, the msytical experince can be the normal experince of all who seek after God.
What is the heart of the mystical experince?
It is the movement of the self toward the Other, where the self becomes self-forgetful (loses itself) and becomes focused on the Other in love.
Yesterday was the feats of St. Aelred of Hexham. One of his prayers reads:
"O Good Jesus, let your voice sound in my ears so that my heart and mind and inmost soul may learn of your love, and the very depths of my heart be joined to you who are my greatest delight and joy. What is the love I desire, O my God? What is this wonderful delight in my soul? May I call love the heart's own sense of taste since it enables us to feel your sweetness? May we call love the eye through which we can see that you are good? When we love, O God, we join ourselves to you because you are love. Love is your rich banquet which deeply satisfies us when we eat at your table and drink deeply from you. In your love we can forget ourselves and lose ourselves only to find ourselves in you. I beg you, Savior Jesus, let even a touch of this delight penetrate my soul. It is my heart's desire to seek you day by day by loving you."
In your love we can forget ourselves and lose ourselves only to find ourselves in you.
In love: forget ourselves, lose ourselves, find ourselves.
That is the heart of the msytical experince. That experince is close to all of us. It is there in the wonder and beauty of creation. It is there in the love and affection for children. It is there in the lovers’ embrace. It is there between close friends. The first book +Jane and I wrote was called “The Kiss of Intimacy.” It was a book about the mystical experience available to all of us. Our third book was “Prophetic Lifestyle and the Celtic Way” in which we felt after these things: finding God in the ordinary things of life.
What is needed? Awareness: Openness to the possibility that we may find God in all things; awareness that enlightenment is not some far off event, but the coming of the light of God today.
King, U. (2003). Christian mystics: their lives and legacies throughout the ages. London: Routledge.