Missing the Mystical: Hidden in Plane Sight
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
I love paradoxes. Anything that defies conventional understanding or explanation has always been where my mind and heart veer toward, even since I was a young boy. It isn’t so much that I dislike dwelling on what is rational or logical, but rather that I do not believe human beings can live happy, fulfilling, and purposeful lives only through rational or logical means.
The conventional understanding of folks like myself is that we are deconstructing existentialists (from the religious right) at best and blindly religious (from the secular left) at worst.
I’ve always had issue with this. From the more traditional Christian vein, one who has a looser grasp on theological inessentials and a much tighter grip on a “smaller” orthodoxy is therefore more “inclined” to heresy (according to their metrics of heresy). And although I likely do hold views that many within traditional Christianity would view as heretical, this does not deter my passionate attempts to follow the mandates found in the New Testament. Further, the presupposition that any of life’s problems can be intellectually and exegetically explained via Bible verses and simple paragraph summaries is troubling. Throughout the wisdom literature in the Bible faithful and zealous followers of God openly wrestled with and questioned God directly. What they did was orthodox. Besides, how can God be understood only in the mind? And only in the mind via scripture? And in scriptural interpretation via very specific and often culturally unaware interpreters? This rabbit hole could keep going, but I think you understand what I am getting at.
Meanwhile, the underlying assumption from the secular left is that one who trusts and commits solely to what they can test through their five senses, through the scientific method, specifically, are the true “enlightened” people of modern society as humanity progresses ever onward. The traditionalists, specifically Christian traditionalists, gotta go. As we learn more and more about how things work, however, it is as if we are less and less human. We have begun to concede the question of why we are here as ultimately unknowable and therefore not worth pursuing. We are less and less apt to explore the unknown, less and less awe-struck about wonders of the world, less and less amazed at the creativity manifested by other human beings around us.
As I have written of before in other posts, we are so quick to live life to the full, whatever our definition of what to the full might mean, that we have not pondered whether our own definitions of the full life might be faulty. Or what a full life could be, dependent on whose version of the full life we choose to follow. Even if we admit that the “self” is limited, whether it be a religious fundamentalist “self” or a secular progressive “self,” we still treat the self as the ultimate deity, with a few moral caveats (don’t hurt other people, try to be nice, etc.) so we have some direction and so we don’t become axe murderers.
Yet what if the self is illusory? Deceptive? Not worth ultimate worship?
I am beginning to love the contemplative tradition within Christianity. Finally, I can bring my weird, overly thinking and overly feeling self without fear of judgment or, worse, misunderstanding.
From the Desert Fathers and Mothers (who I will read eventually), to St. John of the Cross and his mentor St. Teresa of Avila (who I will read after Thomas Merton) to New Seed of Contemplation which I am reading now, contemplation is a true dive into the depths of what it means to be human. It fills me up in a way most things don’t.
St. John describes a “mystic” this way:
a person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect.
When I first read this, I sent a text to my sister with a pic of the Google search and with the words “my entire life.” I even added a colorful, spicy seven letter word before ‘life.’
And yet, in my entire spiritual journey, I only now have been taught this way to follow Christ. Because when I first learned about Jesus, He came with a lot of strange, cultural baggage.
I have been deeply puzzled, dismayed, and openly combative of cultural Christianity and the way it is has diluted what I have found to be such a richly compelling way of life. What they told me was Christian felt (key word) specifically not like Christ. What they told me to believe was not what I trusted with my heart about the heart of God. How they taught me to think felt distinctly uncritical and distinctly petty. I started this entire blog and website because I still sense so many people have turned away from Christ because they have been taught a faulty way to follow Him.
Yet, on the other side, the rootlessness from the progressive, specifically not Christian side of things has been equally confusing. The same ‘us vs. them,’ we have the moral high ground mentality I heard growing up from the religious right I now hear regularly from the other side. And too, the presupposition that believing the right things, specifically about sexuality, politics, and the state of the world, gives one a specific upper hand over those “uneducated bigots.”
Disclaimers are needed: I am more liberal than I am conservative. I believe capitalism plunges the heart into greed more than other government systems, and I believe patriarchy and white supremacy are specifically evil and sinful. All three of these things I find deeply unbiblical and are things I will always disavow BECAUSE of my deep faith in Christ.
Yet, I don’t think I am comfortable with blind subservience to liberal elitism. I don’t think I am better than a 45 supporter even though I highly disagree with everything our president says, and I don’t think I am better than a liberal voter because I have different moral standards for sexuality or reproductive rights.
If anything, I love the contemplative strain of Christianity because I can sidestep all of the dichotomies I have always found issue with and been told I have to land in one way or the other to find acceptance and belonging. Frankly, I am sick of people arguing at each other rather than discussing with each other.
Further, I have not found fundamental changes of the “self” via angry soapbox sermons from conservative fundamentalists or angry soapbox sermons from social justice warriors (I cringe about using this term, but it fits the bill of the comparison). Not from intellectual arguments of the political left or right. Not from ad hominem arguments from the ideological left or right.
I have changed the most fundamentally via the tender and quiet voice of the Father. From felt experiences of the wild, lavish agape love of the Spirit of God. From the stories, parables, healings, and miracles of Jesus, both in the scriptures of the past and which I have seen and touched with my hands in the present.
I don’t use the word believe anymore when I talk about my connection to God. Belief is too weak a way to describe what has upended the path of my life.
I trust in the Father’s heart for my life. I know Jesus in a similar way that I know my closest friends and family. I listen for the guidance of the Spirit of God in the same manner I listen to the little ones I have chosen to serve as a vocation.
I don’t know intellectual truths about God. I know God because God is within me.
It is no longer I who live. It is no longer the False Self who lives but the True Self, hidden in Christ, who thrives within me.
Therefore, I no longer subscribe to learn facts about God cherry picked from fallible and ultimately not spiritually led teachers of the Bible. I also no longer listen to those who tell me that what I feel in my heart is just “heightened” emotions or that the presence I sense in my spirit is just my own unenlightened imaginings.
Rather, I will walk with those who understand their own limitations and who surrender to the ultimate unknown known-ness, the Mysterious Lover whose peace transcends all understanding. The One who is also Three, the Lion who is also Lamb, the man who claimed He did only what He saw His Father doing when nobody else could see His Father.
So too, will I do what I see my Savior, Jesus, doing.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.