The Darkness Within the Mystic

   The boys are off on an adventure. Rockets, lava, and very high vistas of the stars. I heard there is a dent! Adventuring often leads to dents and dings. I inhale and remind myself it also makes memories and future adventurers. It's all good. Right? 

   I didn't intend to stay home this weekend, but stay I did. Sister is keeping me company.  I've cleaned the garage, paid the bills, and am catching up on life. Soccer and quilt camp kept us busy this week and rarely home. A good kind of busy, but I'm glad for a quiet respite, so is the sis. As of late, I'm feeling pretty good if I can keep the house plants alive, while trying to nurture a soul or two and keep mine from going insane, but that is life some seasons. No?

   I don't feel I've much to say, but I've been scratching away on paper all week while in the rover watching soccer or hidden under the stairwell at the quilting shop. I'm learning that showing up and committing to this thing called writing means focusing on the writing - whether I feel it or not. And so I proffer my latest meditation on Barbara Brown Taylor's book, Learning to Walk in the Dark.

   In the days ahead, you will either be a mystic (one who has experienced God for real) or nothing at all. ~ Karl Rahner

   I told myself, I would work out and walk out these meditations. I proceed fitfully, and unfortunately there's no weight loss working out one's thoughts from pen to paper. The pondering usually adds poundage, but work it out, I must. That there's a mystic within each of us has been my place of pondering, and I find myself asking what is mysticism vs. a mystic and why is mysticism so negatively viewed in the evangelical church and yet revered in so many other places, cultures, and climates of the world?

   Merriam Webster links the mystic with words like miraculous, extraordinary, fabulous, and sublime, but also links the word mystic to soothe saying, metaphysical, paranormal, presaging, predicting, bewitched, augury, and unearthly. No wonder we are afraid of mystics in the evangelical church today. Mysticism is defined in Webster's as a religious practice based on the belief that knowledge or spiritual truth can be gained by praying or thinking deeply. I believe there is some truth to that, maybe a tiny portion, but I also snort/laugh at this. If thinking could make us spiritual, I'd be there! Here's to wishing. 

I offer this simple definition of a mystic:

  One who is inordinately concerned with knowing the will of God and knowing God. One who is willing to be alone and misunderstood in this world in order to access the divinity of God and see Him in the next. One who not only seeks to know His words, but also knows his Name. One who is willing to go against the grain of the one's culture to access the will of God and seeks to live that will out. One who wishes to see beyond the realm of the limited first dimension of this world into a deeper world which they sense exists where God is central and primary. (Sounds like a biblical prophet. Yes?)

   I believe within each one of us, there lives a mystic, but we either grow it or kill it, with our daily actions. We either listen to God's presence within us, or we occupy ourselves with the world until the world occupies us. The mystic within each one of us experiences God to the extent of our worship of God. The laws men make for God, and of God, the legalism, can no longer be the crutch upon which we lean. We must know Him intimately as  friend in order to follow his voice.

   Doctrines and creeds are no longer enough to keep faith alive. Instead the faithful seek practical guidance and direct experience of the sacred. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

   What of the saints? Augustine, St. Gregory l, Hildegarde of Bingen, Saint Francis of Assisi, and Terese of Avila come to mind. There are many others. What of the Desert Fathers and Mothers? I am not Catholic nor Benedictine nor Greek Orthodox, though there have been seasons of my life when these beliefs have called to me deeply and still do. We have much to learn from them. Yet, I've held onto my evangelical seat tightly, not because evangelicalism is the way, but because ultimately I remind myself that no matter where in the world I worship God, the act of worshipping and relating to God is not through method but through discipleship and relationship with Jesus Christ and worship of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Indeed, I have felt the Spirit of God in many different houses of worship, but I have most sensed the Spirit in places where God worship is neither too loud, nor too controlled, but solely and soully focused on Him. For me, this has tended to be in Spirit filled evangelical churches. Nature or nurture? I'm not sure I'll ever know. I'm often wandering and wondering in my mind, seeking stillness to find Him.

   Some days, I seek to wander, and other days, I seek not to wander. What is the Way to God vs. the ways of men to God? I am often tempted to believe that my wandering mind, my unwillingness to adhere to, and die at the feet of a certain church creed, is unholy and unhealthy, for both myself and my family. Where is my loyalty to the creed????? Oops, I mean Christ. Often, I am tempted to believe that those who stand fast until the end (Christ's return) will have stood on firm principles and a steadfast steely attachment to the way. Unmovable men and women of steel. But rigidity has never helped me respond to Christ. I jerk myself upright, reminding myself that the only thing I want to attach my steely will to is the foot of the Cross; the Way, not the ways of men. 

   Certainly, I am never more unsure of someone, or their beliefs, or my own, than when confronted by the rigid certainty of another. Rigid creeds in another, cause me to ask if they have every really lived any kind of hardship. (Mercy and questioning required.) Shielded by a set of creeds, have they ever met Christ at His cross?  The Christ who suffered. The Christ who wanted another Way.

   But, I do not proffer knowing who will make it into paradise. Who is a mystic? Who is not? Who is growing and who is dying in their relationship to Christ? That's what it comes down to. Right? Yet, it seems to me, one season we are growing and the next season Jesus himself is calling us to the dying. Growing and dying are both critical to discipleship. So, as far as who's in vs. who's out, I have no clue. The Bible does give us a few hints about the ones who will fellowship with God: there will be few chosen, they will love God and his son Jesus, and they will come from all nations, peoples and cultures, as God said to Isaiah, "my house will be a house of prayer for all nations."

   And whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered and saved, for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the remnant [of survivors] shall be those whom the Lord calls. ~ Joel 2:32 (AMP)

   More and more these days, I cast my lot with the mystic who seeks God's face at all costs, not with the knowing follower of a certain creed, who's beliefs are based on ideas that have not yet had their bars rattled and shook. I do not dismiss the importance of creed in the formation of our faith, but again, creed, can become law. Creed can become legalism. Laws and legalism will not save us. Relationship will. Save us in the dark.

  To decipher the dark is a mystery that reveals itself in time. That time is frequently in the beyond, where the shining light of God dispels the dark, and we are present, with the One. For one day, we shall know fully, just as we are fully known.

    For now, it is often not to know, but to choose to walk into the darkness. Trusting. He is there. To wade into deep pools, opaque and cold, this is my veritable quandary. This is my call. And it runs counter to my human nature which desires to know, name, and make known. Will I shed my cloak of human understanding and reasoning in order to know God? He left the Light and willingly walked into the darkness. He enters my darkness willingly. He chose the shroud, that we may know the Light. 

  

   And then there is Flannery O'Connor, God bless her soul. Bringing us right back to down to earth. Because she, like the saints, knew not take herself too seriously, but simply talk with her Lord.

   "What I am asking for is really very ridiculous. Oh Lord, I am saying at present, I am a cheeze, make me a mystic immediately. But then God can do that - make mystics out of cheezes." ~ Flannery O'Connor Prayer Journal

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The Darkness Within Plastic Faith

BOOK LINK

  

   I am beginning a series of responsive essays based on Barbara Brown Taylor's newest book. As I work out the words for what Learning to Walk in the Dark speaks to me, I fumble. In the dark, I may offend. But, I hold fast to this: “There is a light that shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John1:5) 

   As I began these essays, I was unsure of the path forward and then it came: I would write my shift from religion to faith. I would write my loss of faith in the institution of Christianity, but my gain of faith in Christ. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36 KJV)

The Darkness Within Plastic Faith

If you have understood, then what you have understood is not God. ~ Augustine

    From the front seat of the land rover, I grab the colorful catalog full of trinkets from a child: faith, hope, and love on strings grace the pages. How charming. I swing for the catalog and then jam it between my car seat and the main console with all the other junk mail. I holler at them, “You can't have that right now, not when we aren't living it!” That settled it, or did it? 

    My kids love the popular catalog of trinkets selling Christianity in bulk for pint sized believers. I ask myself: is this value-added Christianity similar to a McDonald's Happy Meal, but simply with a religious flavor? Do these trinkets of faith represent anything of true happiness, or true substance? Plastic faith leads to plastic people. And plastic faith eventually breaks, like the McDonald's toy or catalog junk. Worse, it could be thrown out by an adult. At church no less. 

    Yes, it's hard to build and live an authentic life filled with true faith. Harder yet in our first world, consumeristic, holier-than-thou, post modern, reasoning culture. If we can consume Jesus with our junk, we've arrived. Yet when plastic faith breaks, we get our hearts broken. If I find myself throwing my faith out, maybe I need to ask if it was ever faith in the first place? Maybe it was just religiousness. Tried and found wanting. Plastic faith and plastic people be damned.

    When our plastic faith has been broken, thrown out, or both, we are now in a place of consummation*: God's altar, but it feels like a consuming fire. His mountain. His presence. His fire. Yet, on His mountain these three remain: faith, hope, and love. In Oregon, the Three Sisters peaks of the Cascade mountain range are named Faith, Hope, and Charity (Love). These peaks remind me that the failure of a plastic faith can propel you and me up the mountain, into the shroud of God. A world containing both dark and light.

    The God of Moses is holy, offering no seat belts or other safety features to those who wish to climb the mountain to enter the dark cloud of the divine presence. Those who go assume all risk and give up all claim to reward. Those who return say the dazzling dark inside the cloud is reward enough.

~ Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark

    And so I climb out of religious darkness and its soul wearying ways and onto peaks of truth: Faith, Hope, and Love. But these peaks of truth are often summited in darkness. Seasons of dark unknowing. Faith. This unknowing faith clings to mountain rocks and draws me closer to God. When I can't see in the shroud, I cling to the Rock and rise. 

    To some, this unknowing faith appears as abandonment of God, fellow believers, and finally faith. It's not abandonment. My faith in Christ is intact, but the rules and creeds men have made to define Christ and Christianity have gone by the wayside. Ironically, in Oregon, I'm not alone. We are known as one of the “least churched” states in the nation. On many a Sunday, Oregonians are found in the cathedral of the woods. I used to judge those in their wooded sanctuaries on Sundays. Now, I often want to join them. 

   God may be found in Spirit filled sanctuaries made by men, but He's also found in sanctuaries carpeted with grass, rocks, and water. Christ increased his faith in the woods. He held fast to the mountainous journey he undertook. Filled with God, fully God, He became the sacrament. We too are called to be filled. We too are called to hold the Sacred. Within us. And so I journey up the mountain, into the darkness, and seek to behold the Sacred.

My Soul

Son Sacrament

God Sacred

*Latin for: “to complete” or “to fulfill"