Finding A Voice As A Christian Mystic
by Mary E. Wildner-Bassett
I am a Christian mystic.
While this may seem like a fairly obvious statement for someone who is writing for this particular ezine, this is, from my perspective in all other contexts of my life, a radical and even dangerous statement. Yet it is also most certainly true.
I would like to explore some of the complexities of making a statement like that from where I am in this world in other contexts of my life. By these explorations I want to both find my own way to embracing the mystery of living this path, and also to perhaps open a door to others who struggle with making this statement about themselves, or with even thinking this about themselves.
First, in order for us to explore why this should feel like a radical or dangerous statement in the first place, we need to have a look at my positionality-who I am and "where I stand" in the world, and how this standpoint affects both how I view myself and how I assume others are viewing me. I am a 47 year-old mother of three adolescent children, married, with a Ph.D. I work as a professor at a large research university in the Southwest, and I am an active member of an Episcopal church. Almost everyone in those circles of friends, acquaintances, or colleagues that I am implying by my description of myself would most likely be very surprised, if not even shocked or made uncomfortable or even disgusted by reading that I declare: I am a Christian mystic. For some, even the "Christian" descriptor would seem irrelevant or perhaps suspect to them, though I think most would not be too surprised by that aspect of the statement. I do, after all, attend church regularly and seem to find that important, and I don't hide that fact, though in many circles I also don't thematize the subject very often.
Then there's the "mystic" part. This is obviously much more difficult to understand from the outside, or even explain from the inside. The various definitions of a Christian mystic that have been collected in the ChristianMystics site have been excellent, and all in some way apply to my own direct experience of God in the context of a broadly and deeply understood progressive Christianity.
Transformation of consciousness, union with God, pursuit of spiritual freedom, a life of contemplation and service, embracing a daily discipline that supports my search in silence for the One who is searching for me-all of these descriptors resonate clearly with my own path and experience. Yet how do we find a voice to speak of these truths? Or do we need to speak them at all?
Finding a voice is particularly difficult from my own standpoint for several reasons, and I write this because I am convinced that many potential readers share these difficulties and are searching for a voice themselves, one with which they can celebrate, share, and teach about their own discoveries on the mystical path. In other words, I know it is important to speak these truths so that others can feel the presence of a supportive community as they pursue their own paths as contemplatives and mystics.
Carol Lee Flinders has written a wonderful book entitled At the Root of this Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst (NY: HarperCollins, 1998). In that book she outlines the difficulties that women through the ages struggle with when they are confronted with their own early steps on the mystical or spiritual path. She discusses the common precepts or constants that are often the teachings for those deeply involved in meditative spiritual practice: be silent; put yourself last; resist and rechannel your desires; turn inward.
She wisely contrasts these common teachings with the place or standpoint of women in most societies, including ours, and she makes the important point that women have not been in a position to renounce the world and its privileges as in the four steps described above because "...they have never had these [privileges] in the first place. Quite the opposite. If you knew nothing about mystical literature, you might think these precepts had been excerpted from a book of counsel for young brides....They sound remarkably like the mandates young girls have always received as they approach womanhood and that...they still receive" (pp. 84-84; emphasis in original).
I will leave the important discussion about where, why and how this state of affairs, these messages come into being and become internalized by women and men alike for another venue. Important for us is that many Christian mystics, but especially women who, I postulate, make up the majority of modern Christian mystics and contemplatives in other traditions, struggle with finding a path and especially with finding a voice to celebrate and share and teach their path. This struggle is often due to the dissonance among their own experience in society, their experiences of the Divine, and the implied messages from many sides that often leads them to silence and even into hiding.
I remember the following quote as being attributed to Lily Tomlin: "When we speak to God, we call it prayer; when God speaks back, we call it psychosis." This is but one of the fears and the truly world-rocking experiential crises that many, but most especially women, experience as they first begin to be blessed with a consciousness of the ultimate reality, with immediate, direct, intuitive knowledge of God. A common situation in my limited experience so far has been that those who are meeting God directly and experientially find themselves wondering if they are losing touch with "reality," and feeling that they have a secret they must keep for fear of being declared hysterical or psychotic.
If they search historical traditions and writings they find little consolation: burnings in the worst case (e.g. Joan of Arc, so popular again) to the message to "be silent, turn inward" in many well-intended examples as the best case. Yet finding a voice, and finding a community within which to voice and thus to celebrate the joys and insights of the path, become vital. The need and the responsibility of harmonizing inner and outward experiences make the woman on a mystical path anxious to declare, to celebrate, to proclaim the joys and discoveries of the mystical path, to be fearless in establishing the authenticity and selfhood that comes with directly experiencing the joy of God's love and the compassion that is the fruit of that love. These are all the fruits of the Spirit that seem so interwoven with embarking on a path of contemplation, and all of these fruits can only be born if the mystic has a voice.
It is indeed the case that the words point beyond the individual and beyond the experiences to God. Nevertheless, the celebrations and the teaching, the sharing and the avoiding of fearful silence, are only possible when the voice is strong and clear, when our songs are echoes of God's voice in us. Yet finding the voice and singing the song of praise and celebration, teaching the song and its content to others, is most difficult, and most challenging in its paradoxical message, to those who combine, as Flinders sings, a spiritual longing with a feminist thirst.
So what we learn is this: be who you are as an expression of God, speak to others who need to hear your voice and join in the song, and maintain your place in all of your life contexts as strong, vital people, as strong, loving women. To harmonize in the union with God, we need to find and use our voices. So, sing with me, as I declare: I am a Christian mystic.
