{"id":745,"date":"2025-04-01T21:16:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T20:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/?p=745"},"modified":"2025-04-01T21:16:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T20:16:11","slug":"meet-the-mystics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/?p=745","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Mystics"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mini-Reflection #92 (27th October 2024 at Essex Church \/ Kensington Unitarians)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I called today\u2019s service \u2018Meet the Mystics\u2019 thinking that it might be the first of several such reflections in the coming year \u2013 so think of today\u2019s service as a brief introduction to an endlessly fascinating line of people down the ages \u2013 we\u2019re starting with Zilpha Elaw<\/a> \u2013 but there are many other mystics with intriguing and peculiar life stories we can learn from. And \u2018peculiar\u2019 really is the word, isn\u2019t it? The lives of mystics so often turn on these strange experiences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Carl McColman (who\u2019s wrote the excellent \u2018Big Book of Christian Mysticism\u2019) says this: \u2018One thing I love about the mystics is just how weird they are. There are mystics who see visions, who hear voices, who smell beautiful aromas that no one else can smell, that sort of thing. There are also stories out there of mystics who levitate, who survived for who-knows-how-long eating nothing but the daily eucharistic Host, and whose bodies remained incorrupt after dying. I don\u2019t know how true any of these stories are\u2026 [but] even if we pull back from the supernatural or extraordinary stories associated with the mystics, there\u2019s still plenty of weirdness around the edges. Margery Kempe used to go to Mass, sit in the back of the church, and proceed to cry (as in sob and wail) so loudly that it would interfered with the liturgy (and annoy the priest). Thomas Merton stood on a street corner and fell in love with everyone he saw. Just like that. And don\u2019t get me started on St. Simon Stylites, who spent how many years living on the top of a pillar?!?… Mystics come in all shapes and sizes. Not all of them are oddballs or eccentrics. But some of them are. And I love that about them\u2026 Let\u2019s face it: anyone who gives their lives 100% to something gets viewed as \u201cweird\u201d by our culture… [and] I\u2019d rather be odd for God!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Words from Carl McColman on the weirdness of mystics (as a side note: this felt like a nice bit of synchronicity with last week\u2019s Heart and Soul theme of \u2018embracing weirdness\u2019 where I think the general vibe was that we Unitarians are generally pro-weirdness\u2026 so perhaps this is a hopeful sign in terms of us finding points of connection between our own tradition and the mystical tradition). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The piece Brian just read, from the UU minister Dan Harper<\/a>, points out that Unitarians \u2013 or at least a significant fraction of us \u2013 are typically very wedded to a rational outlook and, as such, we can find the extraordinary testimonies of the mystics rather hard to swallow. If we don\u2019t 100% share the mystic\u2019s particular religious context or convictions it can be hard to bridge the gap and accept the reality of such outlandish stories which often seem implausible within the framework of our everyday understanding. It is undeniably tricky to know what to make of them. And so, perhaps we treat them as fun stories \u2013 fairytales \u2013 rather than sincere accounts of experience. But I don\u2019t think this attitude does them justice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you look at the lives of mystics you often see that these mystical experiences come to people who are suffering or downtrodden; the mystical experience often transforms them and lifts them out of the circumstances they were stuck in. These are often people with very tough lives, people in need, who are literally crying out for God. And these apparent encounters with the divine often lead them to do indisputably extraordinary things with their real lives, which have an impact, or leave a legacy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider Mrs. Elaw: she has a tough start in life, losing both her parents young, and being taken in by a Quaker family to work for her bed and board. She is going about some very ordinary labour for her time and place \u2013 just milking the cow \u2013 when she has this dramatic and overwhelming mystical vision of Jesus that sets her soul free (that\u2019s what she says, \u2018my soul was set at glorious liberty\u2019). This experience galvanises her to join the church and grow in faith until years later she has another mystical visitation at a revival meeting where she is overpowered by the presence of God and hears a voice telling her that she is now sanctified and that God will show her what to do. And as a result of this she gives herself over to this tremendous ministry \u2013 caring for families, setting up a school, itinerant preaching (in defiance of her husband) at great personal risk, and finally coming to England, where she is heard by thousands. As I\u2019m sure you realise, this was out-of-the-ordinary in that time, for a Black woman to command such an audience, but her mystical experiences gave her such confidence \u2013 that she was doing God\u2019s work and speaking in the tradition of the prophets \u2013 that somehow she found the strength, courage, and persistence to overcome resistance and make it happen against the odds \u2013 or you could say to go where she was led to go, trusting that God would provide, and make a way for her. Joy Bostic, in her book on African American Female Mysticism, argues that the ecstatic experiences of divine intimacy enjoyed by Mrs. Elaw and other nineteenth-century Black women preachers helped them to develop embodied agency, resist oppressive cultural norms, and seek social transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Albert Nolan said in the words we pondered during our time of meditation: \u2018Mystics are\u2026 people who take God seriously. They do not merely believe in the existence of God or the divine, they claim to have experienced the presence of God in their lives and in the world. When the mysterious presence of God fills their consciousness in ways that are impossible to describe, their lives are transformed. They become happy, joyful, confident, humble, loving, free, and secure.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doesn\u2019t that sound like a way of being in the world that we might all wish for? So, as this first round of \u2018meeting the mystics\u2019 draws to a close, let\u2019s ask ourselves: what might we Unitarians learn from them and their stories? Perhaps the importance of \u2018taking God seriously\u2019, as Nolan says, and remaining radically open to encountering God in the everyday \u2013 whatever form such encounters might take \u2013 or perhaps being open to interpreting everyday experiences through a God-shaped lens. Maybe we\u2019re not all going to see visions \/ hear voices but not all mystical experiences are so dramatic. As Dan Harper noted, the Transcendentalists variously experienced God through conscience, via the natural world, as something that was not exactly personified, but beyond gender or other binaries. And as we sang in the last hymn, \u2018God Speaks Today\u2019, we might hear God\u2019s voice through experiences of joy and wonder, mutual care, sharing and learning, through peace-making and healing the world. One thing that seems clear is that mystical experiences aren\u2019t just about the thrill of some temporary spiritual high \u2013 they\u2019re transformative experiences \u2013 and they change people for a purpose \u2013 so that we can go out and be God\u2019s hands (or God\u2019s voice, or God\u2019s heart) and do our bit in transforming the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

May it be so, for the greater good of all. Amen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mini-Reflection by Jane Blackall<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n