Visit the Cornaro Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, and you will see a 17th century masterpiece of Baroque sculpture: Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s The Ecstasy of St. Teresa. This life-sizes statue depicts a nun reclining with a look of bliss on her face, while a grinning cherub stands before her, an arrow pointed at her heart. It is a striking work of art — but the subject of this sculpture, a Spanish Carmelite mystic Saint Teresa of Ávila, is even more remarkable than this world-renowned statue of her.
Bernini’s “Ecstasy of St. Teresa.” Photo by Alvesgaspar; licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada (1515-1582), now known as St. Teresa of Jesus or St. Teresa of Ávila, was one of the three greatest mystics of 16th century Spain — alongside St. Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Jesuits) and Teresa’s own protegé, St. John of the Cross. Teresa was the founder of the reformed Carmelites (known now as the Discalced Carmelites), having established 14 Discalced Carmelite convents and monasteries in her lifetime. That alone probably would have merited her being canonized as a saint — an honor bestowed only forty years after her death. But even in her lifetime she had a reputation as a great mystic, thanks to several books of luminous mystical theology and autobiography she wrote, including The Book of My Life(her autobiography), The Way of Perfection(a manual of instruction on how to pray, written originally for her Carmelite sisters) and Interior Castle(her masterpiece). Teresa did not fancy herself a writer and indeed wrote each of these books in response to request from others; but from those humble beginnings these books have become crown jewels in the literature of western mysticism.
Teresa felt called to be a nun from an early age, and although her father was initially opposed to this, she entered a Carmelite convent when she was twenty years old. The following year she suffered a mysterious illness that included time spent in a coma and a period of paralysis; during her slow convalescence she began to read spiritual writings that introduced her to practices such as meditation or mental prayer. But by her own admission, she remained a fairly ordinary, not-so-pious nun for many years. It wasn’t until she was 39 that she experienced a new conversion toward a more meaningful, and committed, life of prayer. With this, she began to experience a succession of extraordinary phenomena, including visions, locutions (the sense of Christ speaking to her), rapture (a sense of being completely absorbed in God) and what eventually would prove to be an abiding sense of deep, interior communion with God (her king) and Christ (her beloved). About ten years before she died, she experienced a sense of being spiritually married to Christ, leading to an abiding sense of union with him.
Remember, Teresa lived during a tumultuous time: it was the age of the Protestant Reformation (which began while she was a child), and the expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Spain took place in 1492, the same year Christopher Columbus sailed to America. So those were events of recent memory, and the Catholic Church in Spain was marked by the notorious inquisition. It was not a very congenial time for women to be reporting supernatural visions and a sense of union with God!
François Gérard (1770–1837) Blue pencil.svg wikidata:Q163543 Title Teresa of Ávila (detail) Object type painting Date 1827
Teresa, of course, reported her extraordinary experiences to her confessors, and they carefully pondered whether such phenomena could truly be of divine origin, or perhaps had a less savory provenance. Indeed, it was one of her confessors who instructed her to write down her experience of prayer — which resulted in her autobiography, completed during the 1560s. The evident spiritual depth of her writing soon won her a following, with Jesuits, Dominicans, laypersons, and even the Bishop of Ávila among her “fans.” Around this same time, in response to the request of her nuns to teach them how to pray, she wrote The Way of Perfection, offering an almost stream-of-consciousness meditation on the importance of humility, charity, non-attachment, and ordinary forms of praying (like the Our Father) for even a mature person of prayer. Teresa’s writing proved to be colorful and vivid, if not always particularly logical or linear. But with her most mature and renowned work, The Interior Castle, Teresa provides almost a systematic overview not just of prayer, but of the entire process of spiritual growth for those persons committed to giving themselves completely to God.
The Interior Castle is based on a vision Teresa received, of the human soul as being like a glittering castle, carved from a single luminous diamond. Within the ramparts of this castle are a series of mansions (indeed, the book’s title in Spanish is simply “The Mansions“). Each mansions represents a stage or state of spiritual maturity; the first mansion is the most immature, representing someone who has committed to the life of prayer, but still retains much love and attachment to worldly pleasures; each subsequent mansion represents a new chapter in the developing life of faith, culminating in the seventh, most central mansion, occupied by Christ himself. As the spiritual pilgrim journeys through the mansions, he or she must learn to sweep away the “venomous reptiles” — Teresa’s colorful image for human attachments and sinfulness — and master essential virtues for the life of faith, such as humility, perseverance, surrender, and unreserved trust in God.
So the books provide a rare glimpse into Teresa’s own personal experience of prayer (her autobiography), her method and priorities as a spiritual teacher (The Way of Perfection), and the theology or philosophy that underlies her entire spirituality and world-view (The Interior Castle). Taken together, these three books provide an unusually holistic insight into the life, belief, and teaching of one of the greatest of Christian mystics.
Unlike some mystics, Teresa’s prominence as a mystic is embraced even by the Catholic hierarchy. In addition to being canonized in 1622, in the year 1970 Teresa became the first woman ever to be declared a “Doctor of the Church” — an honorary title that indicates the hierarchy considers her writings to be exemplary for all Catholics to study. As of 2019, Teresa remains one of only four women to have received this distinction. All four women doctors of the church are mystics, but Teresa is clearly the most articulate and nuanced mystical teacher of the lot.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) Blue pencil.svg wikidata:Q5599 s:it:Autore:Pieter Paul Rubens q:en:Peter Paul Rubens Title Deutsch: Hl. Therese von Avila Date Deutsch: um 1615
One edition of Interior Castlefeatures commentary by a Redemptorist priest, Fr. Dennis Billy, who writes that there are at least nine dimensions of prayer that Teresa describes throughout her writings, beginning with “vocal prayer” (the ordinary practice of praying using words, either written in a book or spontaneously out of one’s heart), leading through to meditation (mental prayer), affective or adoring prayer, and then on to forms of contemplation, silent prayer, and ultimately degrees of mystical union with God. Most of these “higher” mystical forms of prayer are described in the latter mansions of the Interior Castle.
But in The Way of Perfection, Teresa offers surprisingly humble and down-to-earth advice for the person who wants to pray seriously. Recognizing that the most humble type of prayer — vocal prayer — needs to remain the foundation of prayer even for an advanced mystic, Teresa describes a beautifully simple way of praying that anyone can embrace: of combining ordinary vocal prayers (like the Our Father) with a focus on silent adoration (love) for God in one’s heart, while praying. So, in effect, Teresa combines a simple form of affectionate contemplation with the ordinary, humble experience of reciting one’s daily prayers, to form a basic, accessible practice of heartfelt praying that anyone can embrace. Indeed, Teresa suggests that anyone who is capable of advanced forms of meditation or contemplation probably does not need her simple advice, which she suggests is for the ordinary person whose mind races like wild horses!
Reading Teresa is not always easy: she often wanders into lengthy digressions that make it difficult to follow her train of thought, and her theology often emphasizes the royalty of God and Christ that Americans might find difficult to relate to. She also often puts herself down as simply an ignorant woman, a technique that feels annoying to postmodern eyes but in fact may have been a literary device she consciously used to preemptively defend herself against any possible accusations of heresy. How could Teresa be a heretic, if she were only a “stupid woman”?! But in fact, she proves again and again not only that she wasn’t stupid, but indeed that she was a genius of the soul.
To readers encountering Teresa for the first (or fiftieth) time, I would recommend approaching her words in a spirit of lectio divina — read her writings slowly, meditatively, looking for guidance from the Spirit to help you identify which of her words, phrases, ideas or principles seem to speak most directly to your situation. When something jumps out at you in this way, turn to prayer, and meditate over the words that speak to your heart. Let Teresa’s writing be a venue for the deepening of your own contemplative journey.
Here are a few quotations from Teresa, that help to illustrate just how feisty and passionate a person she was.
O God, help me! How a soul suffers when she loses the freedom to be who she truly is.
Without a doubt, I fear those who fear the devil more than I fear the devil himself.
Contemplative prayer in my opinion is nothing else than a close sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us.
We have heaven within ourselves since the Lord of heaven is there.
There are some souls and minds so scattered they are like wild horses no one can stop. Now they’re running here, now there, always restless… This restlessness is either caused by the soul’s nature or permitted by God.
If you speak, strive to remember that the One with whom you are speaking is present within. If you listen, remember that you are going to hear One who is very close to you when he speaks.
The important thing is not to think much but to love much; and so do that which best stirs you to love.
We cannot know whether we love God, although there may be strong reason for thinking so; but there can be no doubt about whether we love our neighbor or not.
Just as we cannot stop the movement of the heavens, revolving as they do with such speed, so we cannot restrain our thought. And then we send all the faculties of the soul after it, thinking we are lost, and have misused the time that we are spending in the presence of God. Yet the soul may perhaps be wholly united with Him in the Mansions very near His presence, while thought remains in the outskirts of the castle, suffering the assaults of a thousand wild and venomous creatures and from this suffering winning merit. So this must not upset us, and we must not abandon the struggle, as the devil tries to make us do. Most of these trials and times of unrest come from the fact that we do not understand ourselves.
It was forty years ago this summer — the summer of 1979 — that I first discovered Evelyn Underhill, the British spiritual author whose writings introduced me to the beauty and splendor of Christian mysticism. To celebrate this personal anniversary, I’m reprinting here a blog post I wrote back in 2007 about her and her writing. I hope you enjoy it.
Evelyn Underhill, Ordinary Mystic
It might be a bit controversial for me to include Evelyn Underhill in my list of western mystics. To the best of my knowledge, she never claimed to be a mystic herself, and her work was aimed more at introducing her readers to the history and theory of mysticism than in asserting any spiritual or mystical authority of her own. In other words, Underhill was a great popularizer of mysticism, similar to how Alan Watts was a popularizer of Zen or Michael Harner a popularizer of shamanism.
But her knowledge of the subject was so vast, her work so thorough and wide-ranging, and her interest in the spiritual welfare of those who corresponded with her or who participated in the retreats she led was both so genuine and so wise, that she deserves to be included in the roster of western mystics at least as much as theologians like Bernard of Clairvaux or Thomas Aquinas, whose claim to mystical fame lies as much in their intellectual achievement as in any personal spiritual experience.
A Twentieth Century Mysticism
Hers is truly a twentieth century mysticism, more democratic than aristocratic in its focus: in other words, she champions not so much extraordinary moments of divine union as experienced by an elite few, but rather a more down-to-earth but no less life-transforming encounter with divine grace that is available to, as she put it, “normal people” — in other words, the ordinary person who may or may not be an ordained minister, a consecrated monk or nun, or an erudite scholar. Underhill introduced the average person to extraordinary spirituality, and in doing so, celebrated the idea that anybody — regardless of pedigree, background, education, or religious vocation — just might be able to scale those visionary heights.
She lived from 1875 to 1941, which makes her a contemporary of Thérèse of Lisieux and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Born into a well-to-do British family, she married a barrister with whom she bore no children, leaving her free to write — and write she did.
Although not as prolific as Thomas Merton, she wrote three novels, as many volumes of poetry, a collection of medieval tales of the Virgin Mary, and over twenty specifically religious books, including collections of essays and transcripts of radio talks she did on the spiritual life.
She also edited and wrote introductions for a variety of mystical classics, including The Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, and an anthology of writings by John Ruysbroeck, her personal favorite of the great mystics. Her masterpiece, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness was released in 1911, when she was only in her mid-thirties; other key works include Practical Mysticism,Mystics of the Church, and Worship. Although her later works tend to be more oriented toward ordinary Christian spirituality than toward “mysticism” per se, all of her writing is imbued with a deep sense of the glory and possibility of a spiritual life wholly given to the love of God and the desire for Divine Union.
A Mystic for Everyone
Born into an Anglican family, her love of mysticism and her work with a Catholic spiritual director (Friedrich von Hügel) naturally led her to an interest in entering the Church of Rome, but she felt repelled by the anti-modernist views of Pope Pius X and, once she married her Anglican husband, decided that it was God’s will for her to remain within the Church of England. This she did for the duration of her life, where in addition to writing her numerous books and essays she also delivered lectures (she was the first woman to lecture on religion at Oxford University), led retreats, and engaged in works of mercy, devoting one day a week to charitable work among the London poor.
Underhill’s writing is literary and elegant; clearly the product of a 19th century British education. She does a splendid job at expressing the miraculous reality of the mystical life and how it can transform “ordinary reality” into a life shimmering with the Divine Presence. Her perspective is clearly Christian, but her own Anglican identity never impedes her vision, and consequently hers is a celebration of mysticism that can be appreciated by all branches of the Christian family tree. I think her work is essential for anyone seeking an authentic Christian mysticism that refuses to be confined by its historical boundary of the cloister.
As someone who struggles with fear and nihilism I often find myself craving an experience of god to help “cast out all doubt.” While in some ways it’s good to know I’m not the only one whose never had such an experience, it’s also nice to know there are alternatives. That said it is also scary for those like me who struggle with fears of death and meaninglessness to think that one might never find an experience to break those chains. How can a person of faith and contemplation overcome such feelings of nihilism when they don’t have any hope of a mystical experience to assist them?
Thank you for this question. I struggle with fear and nihilism too.
We live in a postmodern society where nihilism and skepticism are the default dogmas of our time. It is fashionable to reject any system of belief as merely a human construct, a “meta-narrative” by which people organize their lives but which has, it is said, no meaning outside its own reference points.
Of course, if we are going to be skeptical toward any other ideology or doctrine, we should be skeptical toward skepticism itself. But for some reason the postmodernists never seem to explore that line of thinking very far.
We are at danger of succumbing to what the integral philosopher Ken Wilber calls “aperspectival madness” — in other words, the feeling of radical rootlessness or meaninglessness that can arise from a sense that every perspective (every belief-system, every ideology) is “true” only from a limited perspective. We keep pulling back from every limited perspective, in search of a larger truth, a larger meaning-system, and we just keep falling deeper into the void: the nothingness. Nihilism.
And it doesn’t feel good.
Perhaps this is why fundamentalism (in all its many stripes) has become so popular: whether it’s religious fundamentalism, political fundamentalism, or even scientific fundamentalism (we’re looking at you, Richard Dawkins!). Fundamentalists rigidly hold on to their dogmatic belief, rejecting any contrary views as “fake news.” It seems this has become the way that many seem to cope in our radically post-creedal world.
A Way Out of the Hall of Mirrors?
My reader’s question, in essence, asks, “wouldn’t an experience of God be a way out of the hall of mirrors that has been erected by postmodern skepticism?” My response: don’t turn experience into just another fundamentalism, which is what I think a lot of experience-based spirituality (whether charismatic Christianity, or various new age mysticisms, or even the current mindfulness fad) does.
Consider this: fundamentalism may be a (toxic) antidote to radical skepticism, but it has been said that mysticism is the antidote to fundamentalism.
In other words: mysticism does not erase the void that fundamentalism tries to escape. On the contrary, mysticism accepts that very void!
Authentic mystical spirituality will not give you an “experience” to cast out all doubt. If anything, it will plunge you far deeper into nothingness than anything else has done.
Read the Christian contemplatives and mystics, from the time of the desert mothers and fathers to today. Read Evagrius, Pseudo-Dionysius, Gregory of Nyssa, The Cloud of Unknowing, Meister Eckhart, John Ruusbroec, John of the Cross. Again and again, they will tell you the same thing.
God cannot be “known” — at least not fully. The human mind is simply incapable of comprehending God. All that we “know” is partial and filtered down into human-sized concepts.
Therefore, God ultimately is unknowable which means that the most authentic “experience” of God radically takes us beyond experience: into darkness, into mystery, into unknowing, into wondering, into doubt, into nothingness.
That’s why you see great classics of mystical literature with titles like The Dark Night of the Soul and The Cloud of Unknowing — and remember, even the word “mystical” essential means “hidden,” as in God-the-Mystery is God-who-is-hidden-from-human-reason-and-awareness.
Here’s the scary bit. Radical Christian mysticism does not shield us from doubt and nihilism. Rather, it encourages us to embrace the silence, befriend the unknowing, enter into the doubt and the mystery, trusting that only in the radical darkness of that place beyond language, beyond concept, beyond thought and feeling — and, therefore, beyond experience — can we ever hope to encounter the living God.
Consider these little nuggets of mystical thinking, from two recent contemplative thinkers:
“In order to deny every kind of idolatry possible, a Christian must be every kind of atheist possible.” — Denys Turner1Source: https://religiondispatches.org/way-beyond-atheism-god-does-not-not-exist/
and
“To believe in God is not a decision we can make. All we can do is to decide not to give our love to false Gods.” — Simone Weil
An Alternative to Overcoming
Now, back to my reader’s question. “How can a person of faith and contemplation overcome feelings of nihilism when they don’t have any hope of a mystical experience to assist them?” The answer is simple: don’t place your hope in experience. Place your hope in God.
In other words, place your hope in love. Or perhaps I should say, in Love. That’s Love-with-a-capital-L.
Yes, it’s true that people have mystical experiences. Many others never do. You don’t need a mystical experience to have faith, and having a mystical experience is in itself no guarantee of happiness, or faith, or “casting out doubt.” Experiences are fleeting, and we still have to face the emptiness in us, after the experience is gone.
This is why most mystics (John of the Cross being a fine example) simply encourage us to ignore or be non-attached to such experiences. You have an experience of God? Okay, no big deal. You’ve never had such an experience? Sure, that’s okay too. No big deal.
The trap is when we start placing our hope in such experiences. We become attached to them. Pretty soon, the “experience of God” matters more to us than God.
That’s like saying I’m more interested in sex than in love.
Don’t get me wrong: sex is a splendid gift. But it doesn’t sustain a lifelong marriage. That requires love.
And I think we all are increasingly aware of how sex without love causes suffering. That’s an epidemic in our society these days.
God is a mystery. And love is a mystery. But at least we can encounter, and befriend, and live into love in purely human terms. Even if I feel totally unloved, I can choose to love: to be loving to others. I can choose to be a blessing to others. And when we start loving others: whether that means loving a spouse or significant other, loving family members, friends, neighbors, colleagues… we can begin to extend that to loving those who are so desperately in need of love, those who are forgotten (residents of nursing homes) or impoverished (those who have no home). And Jesus keeps raising the bar. He wants us to keep loving until we even can love our enemies.
I’m not there yet. Most Christians aren’t. But that’s the invitation. That’s the call.
And so that’s why I think love is the only true antidote to fear and to nihilism. And the only true antidote to doubt and skepticism. Love does not erase all our questions, or aperspectival madness, or the trendy skepticisms of our postmodern age. Rather, love reminds us that all that mental chatter is just that: a lot of interior static. When we surrender the chattering mind, we release fear and can enter into the cloud of unknowing from a place of profound faith and love.
Once more speaking again directly to my reader: I am sorry you struggle with fear, and doubt, and the angst that comes from staring into the void. But the only way “out” is “through.” Befriend your ability to love and let it guide you, step by unknowing step, directly into the cloud of unknowing. If it’s too overwhelming, don’t do it alone. Find a friend, a companion, a spiritual director, or a therapist. But make the journey. If you don’t have faith, at least have love (hint: love is the mother of faith).
I promise you this. Your life will be transfigured beyond all imagining.
Note: the following quotations are excerpted from The Little Book of Christian Mysticism which features over three hundred quotations of the mystics, from Biblical times to the present day.
Seek by reading and you will find by meditating; cry in prayer and the door will be opened in contemplation.
— Saint John of the Cross
The important thing is not to think much, but to love much; do, then, whatever most arouses you to love.
— Saint Teresa of Ávila
As a drop of water poured into wine loses itself, and takes the color and savor of wine; or as a bar of iron, heated red-hot, becomes like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sun-beams, seems not so much to be illuminated as to be light itself; so in the saints all human affections melt away by some unspeakable transmutation into the will of God. For how could God be all in all, if anything merely human remained in man? The substance will endure, but in another beauty, a higher power, a greater glory.
— Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
The poorest, simplest soul living in the world, and following the common life of good Christians there, if she will faithfully correspond to the internal light and tracts afforded her by God’s Spirit, may as securely, yea, and sometimes more speedily, arrive to the top of the mountain of vision than the most learned doctors, the most profoundly wise men, yea, the most abstracted confined hermits.
— Augustine Baker, OSB
For the soul’s sense is love; by love it perceives whatever it perceives; alike when it is pleased and when it is offended. When the soul reaches out in love to anything, a certain change takes place in it by which it is transmuted into the object loved; it does not become of the same nature as that object, but by its affection it is conformed to what it loves.
— William of St. Thierry
As your meditation becomes deeper it will defend you from the perpetual assaults of the outer world. You will hear the busy hum of that world as a distant exterior melody, and know yourself to be in some sort withdrawn from it. You have set a ring of silence between you and it; and behold! within that silence you are free.
— Evelyn Underhill
Be at peace with your own soul, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you. Eagerly enter into the treasure house that is within you, and so you will see the things that are in heaven; for there is but one single entry to them both. The ladder that leads to the Kingdom is hidden within your soul.
— Saint Isaac the Syrian
The grace of salvation, the grace of Christian wholeness that flowers in silence, dispels this illusion of separation. For when the mind is brought to stillness, and all our strategies of acquisition have dropped, a deeper truth presents itself: we are and have always been one with God and we are all one in God (Jn 17:21).
— Martin Laird
I pray you: seek more to embody God than to merely have knowledge of God. For knowledge can deceive us with pride, but a meek, loving awareness will not deceive. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up (I Corinthians 8:1). Knowledge leads to travail, whereas awareness leads to rest.
— The Book of Privy Counselling
Just as a covered object left out in the sun cannot be penetrated by the sun’s rays, in the same way, once the covering of the soul is removed, the soul opens itself fully to the rays of the sun. The more rust of sin is consumed by fire, the more the soul responds to that love, and its joy increases.
— Saint Catherine of Genoa
Truly it is a trustworthy word and deserving of every welcome, your almighty Word, Lord, which in such deep silence made its way down from the Father’s royal throne and speaks to us better by its silence. Hear what this loving and mysterious silence of the eternal Word speaks to us. He speaks peace for the holy people upon whom reverence for him and his example impose a religious silence.
— Guerric of Igny
It seems to me that I have found my Heaven on earth, since Heaven is God, and God is in my soul. The day I understood that, everything became clear to me. I would like to whisper this secret to those I love so they too might always cling to God through everything.
A Book for All Time: Why Evelyn Underhill’sMysticismStill Matters
For pretty much my entire adult life, if anyone would ask me who my favorite authors are, without hesitation I would say Evelyn Underhill and Thomas Merton. To me, the work of Evelyn Underhill represents the call for the revival of mysticism in our time, while Merton anchored the call to mysticism in the urgent political and social concerns that shape life in America over the last fifty years or so.
Evelyn Underhill (Image: Public Domain)
As a woman and a man, a layperson and a monk, an Anglican and a Catholic, Underhill and Merton together offer a rich, almost stereophonic invitation to the contemplative life for our generation. Of the two, Merton is by far the more well-known author, at least here in America. But for now, let’s set Merton aside. I’d like to tell you a little bit about my relationship with the writings of Evelyn Underhill and with the spirituality that they point to. I’m doing this not because my story is particularly interesting — it’s not — but in the hopes that you might be inspired to fall in love with Evelyn Underhill, and with Christian mysticism, yourself.
When I was eighteen years old, I had a dream about the end of the world. It was filled with plenty of dramatic imagery: the sky grew dark at midday; a silence descended over the world, and one by one the stars fell from the sky. The imagery probably came into my mind from the last volume of the Chronicles of Narnia, as I was reading those books that summer; the emotional content of the dream was no doubt driven by the fact that I had just graduated from high school and were about to leave home for college, so in a very real sense my world really was coming to an end.
While I can easily explain away the psychology of this dream from the safe remove of thirty years’ time; when the dream occurred it was raw, visceral, and frankly, frightening. The next morning, rattled by how vivid and real —or, should I say, unreal — the dream felt to me, I turned to a trusted older friend, a former organist from my church. David was what my parents rather dismissively referred to as a hippie — despite being a church organist, he had shoulder length hair, still rather scandalous in small-town Virginia in the 1970s. He played Bach and Wesley for a living, but his own taste in music ran rather toward John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix. As for his faith convictions, he was a Unitarian, and so he was just as likely to talk about the Buddha or Krishna as Jesus Christ or Saint Paul.
I went to David’s house and told him about my unsettling dream. He listened intently like any good friend would, and then said he had a book he thought I would like to read. He rummaged through on overstuffed bookcase until he pulled out a thick little paperback book with an hideously unattractive cover. He told me I could have the book, and I still have it today, one of my prized possessions. It is, of course, Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism.
I know to say “a book changed my life” is almost a cliché, but in my case, yes, Underhill’s Mysticism changed my life. It did so in two ways. First, it gave me a language for spiritual experience that was not anchored in either Pentecostalism or secular psychology, which were the only two models for the inner life available to me at the time. That was helpful enough. But even more to the point, Underhill introduced me to the great mystics of the past, and in doing so performed a valuable function: she helped me to discover the chain of spirituality that extended from Biblical times to the present day. Growing up a Protestant in the American south, my religious education suffered from a significant defect: the 1500 year period that extended from the close of the New Testament to Luther nailing his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg was never discussed.
It’s as if Christianity were frozen in time for a millennium and a half, except that by Luther’s time those pesky Catholics were up to all sorts of mischief, like selling indulgences and making everybody believe in purgatory. Along came Luther and swept all that trouble away — but it was up to Evelyn Underhill to help me see that those fifteen centuries were not just an extended Dark Ages, but rather teemed with a vibrant tradition of spirituality and the quest for communion with God — and those who were at the forefront of this quest are whom we now celebrate as mystics.
My first copy of Underhill’s Mysticism looked like this. Don’t judge a book by its cover.
The words “mystic” and “mysticism” are troublesome words, contested by Christians on either side of the Reformation divide. The Reformation, at its heart, is an argument about authority, with Catholics defending the absolute authority of the church against the Protestant argument for the supreme authority of scripture. In the midst of that dogfight, mysticism — with its emphasis on the authority of personal experience, an authority that is by its nature decentralized and not conducive to ecclesiastical obedience — soon fell under suspicion on all sides. The rise of modernity and the scientific way of thinking about the cosmos and anthropology marginalized mysticism even further.
Evelyn Underhill realized this, and if one looks at all her books chronologically, we can see that the more deeply she became immersed in the life of the Church of England, the more she replaced language of “mysticism” with the far less threatening alternative of “spirituality.” Indeed two of her most accessible books clearly reflect this: Practical Mysticism was published in 1914, and offers an approach to mystical prayer for “normal people,” which is to say those of us who are not clergy or monastic; whereas in 1937 a similar short and accessible book, drawn from several radio talks Underhill gave, was called The Spiritual Life.
How shall we understand the difference between mysticism and spirituality? Aside from the obvious etymological distinctions — one word reminds us that God is the ultimate mystery, while the other points to the Third Person of the Trinity — I think the case can be made that mysticism is a subset of spirituality. All mysticism, at least all Christian mysticism, is spiritual, but not all spirituality is mystical. Underhill defines the spiritual life as “soaked through and through by a sense of His reality and claim, and self-given to the great movement of His will.”
In other words, spirituality can be anchored in faith rather than in the necessity of experience, and it is oriented toward conformity with God’s will rather than communion with God’s nature. This may seem to be splitting hairs, but I think it is important for a number of reasons. Some people find mysticism intimidating, while others are uncomfortable with its emphasis on such things as darkness as unknowing. Karl Rahner may have been right when he insisted that the Christian of the future must be a mystic in order to exist, but I think in the economy of God’s love, many Christians will choose to walk a lowly path of spirituality before being called to the higher mountains of mysticism.
By orienting herself toward spirituality in her maturity, Underhill did not repudiate the important work she did in making mysticism accessible and attractive to a modern audience; rather, she continued to support mysticism by inviting her readers to take the all-important first steps of embracing spirituality in a broad and general sense.
Evelyn Underhill died 30 years after the publication of Mysticism, which means this June will make the 70th anniversary of her passing. In those 70 years the church has seen a veritable explosion of interest in the spiritual life. Underhill’s work bore fruit in the continued growth of interest in key mystics like Julian of Norwich, The Cloud of Unknowing, Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross. The very same year that Underhill died a young man from New York entered Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, and when his autobiography was published seven years later, Thomas Merton became what in our time we might call a “rock star mystic” — a spiritual writer whose vision and authority was met with worldwide celebrity.
Meanwhile, other visionaries were beginning to connect the dots between spirituality and other areas of inquiry: Teilhard de Chardin looked at the relationship between mysticism and science; Dorothy Day articulated a political vision informed by the Catholic faith; the Second Vatican Council encouraged an entire generation of both Catholic and Protestant seekers to study the ancient writings of key Christian thinkers, including the mystics; and Merton himself was among the first of several important writers who began to explore the possibility of fruitful engagement between Christian spirituality and the wisdom of other faiths. Within a few short decades of her passing, Evelyn Underhill’s legacy had blossomed into an extraordinary rebirth of spiritual hunger, not only among “professional” Christians but even, and especially, among the laity.
To what extent did Underhill contribute to the spiritual renaissance of our time? Did she influence it, or merely anticipate it? Perhaps there is no real way of answering this question. We know that Merton was familiar with her work, C. S. Lewis was a fan of hers, and that even the hippie mystic Alan Watts acknowledges her place as an authority on the mystical life. But Underhill was a laywoman, affiliated with no religious order; she never held a faculty chair, and left behind no movement, institution or organization. Her influence, while amplified by the ongoing success of her writing, is really not so different from how most of us live out our calling to “Divine fecundity” — she quietly influenced those who knew her, who corresponded with her, who encountered her through her words. In other words, her legacy is a humble and quiet one. And given how knowledgeable and, I believe, advanced she was in her own mystical practice, I suspect that is just how she would have wanted it.
A newer edition, with a much more pleasant cover design.
Seven Ways to Think About Evelyn Underhill
What I’d like to do now is to suggest seven ways that we can think about Evelyn Underhill and her legacy for our time. I hope that if you are not familiar with Underhill’s writing, that you will purchase a book or two of hers and use them as part of your personal devotion. These seven dimensions of Underhill’s legacy might help you to approach her, in a way that might particularly speak to you. For me, all seven of these ways of thinking about Underhill matter. I suspect that the more you read Underhill, the more you will find value in each of these approaches as well.
Evelyn Underhill as initiator — she ushers us into the mysteries.
If we trace the concept of mysticism back to its origins among the pagan Mystery Religions of ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt, we see that an essential concept related to the mysteries is initiation, or being ushered into a new dimension of spiritual reality. Christianity has its own rite of initiation — baptism, and to a lesser extent, confirmation. Initiation means to be brought into something new, and in terms of Christian mysticism, this means a new depth and reality to our relationship with God. Throughout her long and prolific career as a writer, spiritual director, and retreat conductor, Evelyn Underhill devoted her entire ministry to helping others undergo this kind of spiritual initiation. For me, reading Mysticism when I was 18 years old meant being ushered into an entirely new way of understanding the love of God and how God can make a difference in our lives, and it is not overstating the case to say that this “initiation” changed my life.
Evelyn Underhill as inspiration — her writing is elegant and lovely.
Evelyn Underhill is a writer’s writer. Her books are a delight to read, for her style, while at times showing the limitations of the formalism of her generation, is for the most part limpid yet poetic, erudite yet accessible, intelligent yet never burdened by an excessive cerebralism or academic stuffiness. Although part of the delight of Mysticism lies in how generously she quotes from an astonishing number of the classic mystics, the quotations she selects are always both relevant to the point she is making and interesting in their own right, marking her as a brilliant editor as well as writer. It is rare to find an author whose work simultaneously appeals to the scholarly community as well as the general public, and the fact that Underhill found respect both as an invited lecturer at Oxford as well as a popular retreat director speaks not only to the importance of her message but her skill in delivering it.
Evelyn Underhill as spiritual director — she teaches the path of discipleship.
One of the most important dimensions of authentic Christian spirituality is that it is relational and communitarian in nature. As Christians, it is knit into our DNA to care for one another, nurture each other, and bear one another’s burdens. Underhill exemplifies this in both her public and private writings. While she is an advocate for mysticism and spirituality, she never diminishes her message by resorting to mere boosterism. She is always careful to point out the potential dangers, snares, and blind alleys that can derail the spiritual life at any stage along the journey. She brings an astute, perceptive understanding of topics that we often are not very comfortable considering: such as sin and the human tendency to reject or resist what is best for us. For Underhill, the spiritual life is never just a cozy cuddle-party with God; it is always a demanding challenge to let the Spirit completely remake us according to the stern yet beautiful demands of love.
Evelyn Underhill as soul friend — her warmth and optimism are encouraging.
Perhaps I am repeating myself, for what is a good soul friend but a spiritual director? But there is a subtle difference here, and my point is that Underhill embodies both the most challenging demands of a classically stern spiritual director, but also the warmth, familiarity and gracious encouragement of a dear spiritual friend. Her letters are particularly instructive here, for it is in those personal and often informal missives that we catch a glimpse of the affection and kindness that she brought to bear on the many people who turned to her for spiritual guidance. Because of her keen awareness that, for Christians, the Holy Spirit is the only true director of souls, she brought a sanity, a sense of proportion, and even a sense of joy and humor to her work helping others to grow in grace.
Evelyn Underhill as mystical historian — she reveals the tradition to us.
Part of what makes Mysticism such a delight to read, and continually relevant today, is the wealth of direct quotations from mystics throughout the history of Christianity. Underhill quotes over 100 different mystics — a stunning achievement in its own right. Clearly, she worked hard to grasp the rich history of mysticism as part of her research to write about this topic. Thankfully, this means that reading Underhill — especially Mysticism, but also her 1925 work The Mystics of the Church — is to be ushered in to a literary museum in which the history of experiential Christian spirituality comes vividly to life. Underhill understood not only how mysticism evolved over time, but also what made each of the many Christian mystics special and unique. She honestly assesses which mystics are truly great, and which ones made lesser contributions, and she understands that every individual mystic is a unique personality, which means that she often would point out the unique, charming, or even oddball characteristics that sets each individual mystic apart. History can be a dry and dull topic in the hands of a mediocre writer, but with Evelyn Underhill, the treasures of the past come vividly to life.
Evelyn Underhill as artist — she clearly understood beauty as a central category of the spiritual life.
Underhill recognized that the Platonic categories of goodness, truth, and beauty are essential elements of authentic Christian spirituality. But where theology is the discipline concerned with truth, and ethics explores the question of goodness, the heart of spirituality as lived experience is very much a quest for the beauty of God. That she understood this is clear when we consider how important art itself is to Underhill’s explanation of mysticism. She repeatedly stresses that artists are those who come the closest to understanding and living the contemplative life, and so it is not surprising that she repeatedly uses illustrations from the world of art to explain and illuminate the mystic way. To be a mystic is to be an artist, working not with paint or words or music as one’s medium, but with the soul itself. The beatific vision is the vision of ultimate and eternal beauty, and in her writing and her thinking, Underhill repeatedly commends such beauty to those who would follow her on the mystical journey.
Evelyn Underhill as peacemaker — the culmination of her life’s work was to take a stand for nonviolence as a central mandate of the Christian life.
“My peace I leave with you,” Christ promised his followers. At the summit of her life’s journey, Evelyn Underhill took the courageous and risky path of affirming this aspect of the Christian faith, even in the midst of the beginning of World War II. After a lifetime of studying not only the gospel but the witness of saints like Francis of Assisi and Julian of Norwich, Underhill came to the recognition that Christianity is a path of reconciliation, not aggression. She stood for peace quietly but firmly, and as such can be an inspiration for anyone who wishes to follow the Prince of Peace, even in an environment that seems wholly ordered toward war.
Reflecting On Underhill’s Legacy
I’d like to conclude by sharing with you just a few thoughts on Evelyn Underhill’s legacy, by pondering this question: why does mysticism, and specifically Christian mysticism, matter today? After one hundred years, does it still make sense for us to read Underhill’s book on this topic, not just as an academic exercise, but as a means of nurturing our soul?
Another edition.
I can only answer this question with as enthusiastic a “Yes” as possible. Mysticism matters, because here in the twenty-first century, mystery matters. Over the last century we have seen the emergence of the postmodern world, thrown into being by its birthpangs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and given a framework of meaning through the internet and the triumph of media. When Mysticism was published, the great threat to society was war, as exemplified by the horrors of the Great War, or what we now call World War I. Fifty years later, “threat” was understood in ideological terms: in the west, we felt most threatened by communism. Today, our primary threat is terrorism, which brings to mind those words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: the main thing we have to fear is fear itself.
But as our world has grown smaller and our sense of what threatens us has become more abstract, we who identify as Christians have discovered that our world view is only one among many, and that other ways of seeing and understanding the cosmos deserve our consideration, if not our respect. A mere fifty years ago, when Thomas Merton began studying zen, this was thought of as idiosyncratic, if not heretical. But today, interreligious dialogue is becoming increasingly widespread not only among theologians and church leadership but indeed among ordinary clergy and laypersons like you and me. Here in Atlanta, for example, we have a vibrant interfaith community in which events regularly occur drawing not only Christians but Muslims, Jews, Vedantists, Buddhists, and adherents of other faiths. Christianity in the twenty-first century is now a faith that, for the first time really, has to learn how to be a good neighbor.
Meanwhile, the world of science continues to impact the way we understand theology. Sometimes this is a hostile encounter, as exemplified by the critique of religion by “celebrity atheists” like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. But others, from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to Raimon Panikkar to John Polkinghorne, offer a more friendly conversation in which the empirical truth of science and the revelation and theological tradition of Christianity come together, but leaving neither unchanged. At its worst, science insists that Christianity be limited to a system of moral and ethical inquiry. But at its best, the dialogue between science and religion brings us to the frontier of human knowledge and understanding, where the propositional declarations of our faith shade off into the mystery of unknowing, where God is no longer a philosophical problem to be solved, but an ineffable presence to be encountered — and loved.
So in a time when Christianity must be a good neighbor to the great faiths of the world, on the one hand, and to the splendors of natural science on the other, the old catechisms suddenly seem shrill and inadequate. I don’t know many Buddhists or educated atheists who are going to be swayed by Campus Crusade’s Four Spiritual Laws. But in the challenges of our time, we Christians have essentially three choices: we can abandon our faith, which as we know many of our brothers and sisters are doing. We can retreat into a reactionary fundamentalism, but I suspect I do not need to detail the many reasons why this is a fundamentally unsound option. But if we neither abandon our faith nor armor ourselves with a naïve anachronistic theology, we are left with the invitation that Karl Rahner issued some thirty years ago: we are invited to become mystics.
Embracing Mysticism Today
We are invited to join in the work of people like Ken Wilber and Father Thomas Keating, a Buddhist-influenced philosopher and Trappist monk who explore the relationship between contemplative practice, interfaith dialogue and the science of human consciousness. We are invited to join in the work of Benedictine and Cistercian leaders like Mary Margaret Funk and David Steindl-Rast, who under the auspices of the Monastic Interreligious Dialog have engaged in meaningful dialogue with contemplatives from other faith traditions. Even here in Atlanta, there is Ben Campbell Johnson, who after a distinguished career as the professor of Christian Evangelism at Columbia Theological Seminary discovered the riches of the contemplative tradition, which immediately impelled into a new career as a leader in the interfaith community here in our own town, engaging in numerous programs designed to bring Christians and the members of other faith communities together.
I’m not suggesting that contemplation is necessarily linked to interreligious dialogue; that is a personal passion of mine, so naturally it is something I would highlight. But my point is that contemplative practice, with its roots deep in the history of Christian spirituality and yet with a thoroughly contemporary emphasis on mystery, unknowing, the love of God, the practice of silence and listening, and a faith grounded in optimism, community and reconciliation, is a dimension of Christian spirituality uniquely appropriate for the needs and demands of our time. Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism matters because we need a spirituality grounded in mystery and contemplation now more than ever.
So I hope that you will consider Evelyn Underhill’s invitation to explore the rich history and contemporary practice of experiential spirituality, not merely as an interesting footnote in the history of twentieth century Anglicanism, but as a meaningful invitation for all of us today. Underhill understood that there is a great diversity in the world of Christian spirituality and mysticism. For some, the life of prayer means a rich, almost sensual experience of falling in love with the Source of Love. But for others, it is a profound and mysterious journey into the farthest reaches of consciousness, into a realm of darkness, unknowing, uncertainty, and doubt that can only be navigated by the most vulnerable type of faith. Is mysticism the sacred marriage as described in the Song of Songs? Or a silent, dark, almost agnostic experience of meditation, like what is documented in The Cloud of Unknowing? Underhill understood that mysticism is both these things, and much more. That here is diversity in the heart of God and in the practice of Christian spirituality.
There is no one right way to be a mystic or a contemplative. But the important thing is to step out, in the mystery, and begin the journey. A Carmelite friar named William McNamara, writing in the 1980s, said “The mystic is not a special kind of person; each person is a special kind of mystic.” Evelyn Underhill would have understood this, and agreed with him. So for you and me, here in the opening years of the third millennium, mysticism represents an invitation to find our unique and true identity — in God. Like Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Thomas Merton, Meister Eckhart, John Ruysbroeck, and many others, Evelyn Underhill speaks to us from the past, but offers timeless wisdom that can illuminate and even transform our spiritual lives today.
Underhill’s English Heritage Plaque, at her London home where she lived for most of her adult life. Photographed by Gwynhafyr. Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC 4.0)
This paper, in a slightly different form, was first presented at the Evelyn Underhill Conference sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta’s Institute for Ministry and Theological Education, February 19, 2011, to mark the 100th anniversary of the publication of Underhill’s Mysticism. To purchase a copy of the book, click here. Or, click here to purchase it for your Kindle.
When I was a sophomore in High School, my English teacher, Mrs. Romano, taught a section on William Blake. She gave us a handout with some information on the poet, and in it Blake was described as “a mystic.” I had never come across the word before. I don’t recall if I or anyone else asked Mrs. Romano to define the term. But I do remember that it caught my imagination — and if the teacher or some other source did provide me with a definition, it would have been something like what you’ll find in the Oxford English Dictionary:
So William Blake is one of many people, found within Christianity but also in other faith traditions, who practice a spirituality grounded in contemplation and the surrender of the self. This spirituality, at least in Christian terms, can help us (at minimum) to recognize and perhaps even comprehend spiritual truth that is normally inaccessible to ordinary human understanding. But the way of the mystics promises something even greater: the hope for nothing less that (to put it in Christian language) union with God.
It was about the same time as my English class where I met William Blake that I also had my own life-changing encounter with a sense of God’s intimate presence in my life. I have written about this at length in my books The Aspiring Mystic and Unteachable Lessons. You can read an excerpt from The Aspiring Mysticon my blog. Because of this, the concept of the mystics was more than just an abstract or theoretical idea to me. I didn’t know much about the mystics, but based on what I did know, I wanted to learn more.
Eventually, I began reading authors like Evelyn Underhill, Thomas Merton, Martin Thornton, and Kenneth Leech — all twentieth century Christian spiritual teachers, who introduced me to the great mystics of the past, figures like Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Ávila, Meister Eckhart, John of the Cross, Bernard of Clairvaux, and many others. Evelyn Underhill in particular helped me to see that there is an entire lineage of men and women who, in every century of the Christian era, have embodied this deeply ineffable, profoundly unitive, and ultimately joyful and transformational spirituality of Divine Union. I also learned that numerous living (or recently deceased) Christian teachers, including the authors I just mentioned but also Thomas Keating, Cynthia Bourgeault, Martin Laird, Mary Margaret Funk, Bruno Barnhart, and many others, were making the wisdom and guidance of the great mystics accessible for Christians today.
But in a nutshell: what makes a mystic? I’d like to suggest that the great mystics are some combination of three essential qualities: they are contemplatives, spiritual guides, and storytellers. Let’s consider each of these.
Contemplative Silence.All Christians are called to a life of contemplation: of finding joy, meaning, insight and purpose through the silent presence of God in our lives. Contemplation is a gesture of prayer that emphasizes resting and receiving God’s grace in our lives. Most (but not all) forms of contemplative prayer involve intentional silence, and practices designed to soothe our over-anxious minds and hearts so that we may “be still and know” God’s presence in our hearts and in our lives.
Friends of the Soul.The Gaelic language has a wonderful term: anamchara (also spelled anam chara or anam ċara, as popularized by the Irish poet/mystic John O’Donohue), which means “soul friend.” A soul friend is someone who guides you or co-listens with you for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in your life. This is a person who is available to support you when you pray, answer your questions or counsel you with problems arise, or otherwise offer you a sense of direction and companionship as you explore an ever-deepening journey into the mysteries of God. Even though many of the mystics lived centuries ago, by their writings and their teachings they are still excellent companions for the life of prayer. Reading the writings of a mystic is never a dry exercise in some sort of abstract theory. They share the wisdom of their relationship with God in order to invite us deeper into our own.
Remember the Stories. All human beings are storytellers: each of us has a story to tell. So the mystics are not special for being storytellers, but they are important because of the kinds of stories they tell. Mystics tell stories that remind us who we truly are: men and women created in the image and likeness of a God who loves us so very much. As people who themselves have responded to the love of God, the stories (including poetry, autobiography, and teaching writings) of the mystics can be a profound source of inspiration for us today.
So let us take time to learn about, imitate, and honor the mystics and contemplatives and sages and saints who have journeyed before us, people like Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Avila, John Ruusbroec, Evelyn Underhill, John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, and many many more. When we join them in silence, accept their guidance, and remember their stories, we are nurtured in our own unfolding stories of intimacy with God.
Over the centuries of the Christian era, many people have embodied the way of the mystics — lay and ordained, clergy and monastic, men and women, educated and simple. They have contributed to a large body of literature devoted to prayer, contemplation, and the direct encounter with God. This body of writings comprises the wisdom teachings known as mysticism, a word derived from the language of mysteryused by the earliest Christians to describe the inability of the mind to comprehend the spiritual truths of God; spiritual truths such as the lavish abundance of Divine grace and the incarnation of God into human form.
The greatest of mystical writings are timeless, capable of providing rich spiritual inspiration even centuries after they were written. Through autobiographical and instructional prose, the mystics of the middle ages prove to be surprisingly relevant to the post-modern world. They offer psychologically astute instructions on contemplation and meditation, insightful explorations of the dynamics of both the acceptance of and resistance to grace in the human soul, and fascinating theological insights on issues such as the spirituality of sensuality, the motherhood of God, and deification: the process by which human beings are transformed into the very image and likeness of God.
Here is a list of some of the great mystics — major voices within the western contemplative tradition:
The first five centuries of the Christian era:
St. John
St. Paul
Ephrem the Syrian
Gregory of Nyssa
Evagrius Ponticus
John Cassian
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
Sixth through the eleventh centuries:
Benedict of Nursia
Gregory the Great
John Climacus
Maximus Confessor
Isaac the Syrian
John Scotus Eriugena
Symeon the New Theologian
Twelfth century:
William of St. Thierry
Bernard of Clairvaux
Aelred of Rievaulx
Richard of St. Victor
Hildegard of Bingen
Elizabeth of Schönau
Hadewijch
Thirteenth century:
Francis of Assisi
Beatrice of Nazareth
Bonaventure
Mechthild of Magdeburg
Gertrude the Great
Jacopone da Todi
Marguerite Porete
Fourteenth century:
Meister Eckhart
Gregory Palamas
Catherine of Siena
Jan Ruusbroec
Author ofThe Cloud of Unknowing
Walter Hilton
Julian of Norwich
Fifteenth century:
Margery Kempe
Nicholas of Cusa
Thomas à Kempis
Denis the Carthusian
Nil Sorsky
Catherine of Genoa
Sixteenth century:
Francesco de Osuna
Ignatius of Loyola
Teresa of Ávila
John of the Cross
Philip Neri
Maria Maddelina de’Pazzi
Francis de Sales
Seventeenth century:
Jacob Boehme
George Herbert
Marie of the Incarnation
Brother Lawrence
Thomas Traherne
George Fox
Eighteenth century:
Jeanne Guyon
Jean-Pierre de Caussade
Jonathan Edwards
William Law
John Woolman
John Wesley
Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain
Nineteenth century:
Phoebe Palmer
Author of The Way of a Pilgrim
Coventry Patmore
George MacDonald
Thérèse of Lisieux
Gemma Galgani
Theophan the Recluse
Twentieth century:
Evelyn Underhill
Simone Weil
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Thomas Merton
Howard Thurman
Thomas Keating
Matthew the Poor
The best way to learn about the mystics is to read their own words. Visit my bibliography pageto review an in-depth list of writings by (and about) Christian and world mystics.
What do mystics do? The following list can be a way to begin answering this question. I’m not suggesting that every mystic does everything on this list (for starters, this list is particularly aimed at Christian mystics), or that a person has to do all of these things to be considered a mystic. I’m trying to make the list general, so that it’s not just about persons who live in a cloister (monks and nuns) or who have ordained ministries of some sort. Think of this list as a glimpse into the variety of activities that persons we have come to know as mystics often engage in. Of course, the invitation is clear: even if you do not think of yourself as a mystic, and even if you have no desire to wear that label, perhaps if you are drawn to a deeper spiritual life you will find this list of activities inspiring.
Mystics pray. Christian spirituality is all about fostering a connection with God, and the single most effective way to do this is to pray. This includes many forms of prayer: communal or liturgical prayer, repetitive prayer like the Rosary of the Jesus Prayer, written prayers like the Psalms or the Daily Office, spontaneous prayer and charismatic prayer. Mystics take seriously Paul’s instruction to “pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:17). Indeed, all the other items on this list, in the hands of a mystic, are simply other forms of prayer.
Mystics write. No, not every mystic does this. But many do. We wouldn’t have the mystical wisdom of John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, John Ruusbroec, Meister Eckhart — or, for that matter, Thomas Merton, Cynthia Bourgeault, and Richard Rohr — is these great visionaries and contemplatives did not commit their thoughts and teachings to the page. This doesn’t mean that every aspiring contemplative needs to get published! Rather, for most spiritual seekers, the take-away is humble, but powerful: keep a journal. Journaling is a meaningful and rich spiritual discipline all its own — and yes, it can be a form of prayer.
Mystics meditate. Imagination is a wonderful thing — and using it to reflect on the great mysteries of the faith, the stories of the Bible, or the many ways in which we seek and find God’s presence, is a rich and nurturing from of what old-timers called “mental prayer,” and what remains a rich form of seeking communion with God for us today.
Mystics contemplate. Deeper than meditation, contemplation brings the seeker to a place where words fall away — and (paradoxically) in the words of Meister Eckhart, “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” This is not something we decide to do, like deciding to go to the grocery store. Rather, contemplation is a gift — a grace from God. What we can do is to dispose ourselves to receive this gift, by cultivating inner serenity and silence, as a part of our overall discipline of prayer and seeking after God’s will in our lives.
Mystics read. This one takes two forms. First and most important is lectio divina — the process of reading sacred scripture meditatively, which in turn leads to meditation, prayer, and contemplation. Also important is study: not only the Bible, but the writings of all the great saints and mystics who have gone before us. One way to grow in intimacy with the Word of God is to avail ourselves of the rich tradition of writings from throughout the ages.
Mystics relate. Love is the heart of Christianity: love of God, and love of neighbor. It may not seem very “mystical” to devote one’s energy to feeding those who hunger, or spending time enjoying one’s family, or contributing to the life of a church or faith community. But one of the meanings of “mystical” is “hidden.” Hidden in the most ordinary activities of life is the unseen but real presence of God. There’s an old joke that says “Christians pray, but Christian mystics mean it.” We could adapt that as “Christians love their neighbors as themselves, but Christian mystics mean it.” To be a mystic is to see Christ in all people, and most especially those who hunger, or who have been oppressed or marginalized.
Mystics sacrifice. It’s not a popular word in our society, but mysticism is timeless, not swayed by the fashions of the moment. Mystics give many things up: the quest for ego gratification, the hunger for material wealth, the jockeying for status in their social circle. Mysticism is all about simplicity and surrender: letting go of what is not necessary. The point behind calling all this “sacrifice” is that a true mystic practices self-denial not because he dislikes himself, but for a far richer reason: because his love and thirst for God is so great, that he wants to let go of anything that distracts him along the way.
Mystics give. If sacrifice (as I used it above) implies a surrendering for the purpose of simplification and focus on Divine Love, then giving represents a corollary function: sacrifice for the benefit of others. This can be small or large, an act of kindness or a major gift to a church or a non-profit. We give of our resources, but also of our time and our talents. Obviously there is a question of healthy boundaries — it is possible to give to one’s own detriment — but a healthy contemplative will make the effort to find the right balance between appropriate self-care and heart-felt giving to others.
Mystics sanctify. Holiness is another word that has fallen out of fashion; it basically means “set aside” for God. Relationship-building and giving reveal a social, communal side to mysticism, and at least in Christian terms, this is important. But there is also an essential solitary, hidden aspect to mysticism as well. “Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Mystics withdraw to nourish both inner and outer silence. Mystics go on retreat. Mystics cultivate inner peace and serenity. Mystics seek to live a holy life. Not a withered, prudish, pleasure-hating life: that’s Puritanism, not holiness. True holiness knows how to laugh, to love, to enjoy, to delight and take delight. But all is in appropriate and due measure. True holiness also knows how to be quiet, to avoid (or resolve) conflict, to listen, to ponder, to reflect, to watch, to act simply. It’s a balance we can all benefit from.
Mystics see. Finally, let’s expand on this idea that a holy person, or a mystic, knows how to listen and to watch. The New Testament has a very simple message: “Wake up!” Watch the signs of the times. Be alert for the coming of the Christ. This message is as important today as ever. Great mystics have often been visionaries, capable of seeing extraordinary or supernatural things, either through dreams, or meditation, or mystical visions. Not all of us are called to such lofty heights, but I do believe we are all called to wake up, to pay attention, to be mindful, to learn to discern the subtle and nuanced stirrings of the Spirit in our lives. Richard Rohr’s latest book, The Naked Now, is subtitled “learning to see as the mystics see.” He writes at length about mystical consciousness as unifying, non-oppositional, non-dual. Mysticism is about cultivating this higher, more unitive way of being. It’s a way of seeing, it’s a mode of awareness, it’s learning to live in the felt presence of the God who is always present, always loving, whether we know it or not. Mystics choose to know it. And that’s what makes all the difference.
