Glory 09 - Mystic Wonder
If it weren’t for copyright issues, I think I’d just have to copy the whole text of today’s devotion into this post. It so spoke to me and where I am at in my faith journey. Curtice talks today about what it means in her life to find herself feeling like a mystic. In sharing of this, she quotes one of my book-guides on my journey, Richard Rohr when he defined a mystic as “one who has moved from mere belief systems or belonging systems to actual inner experience.” She speaks of her capacity to love as having been “multiplied, and Jesus holds me more than I ever thought, loves better than I’ve ever even wanted to love. He sees more than I’ll ever see, and he asks me to marvel while he sits right next to me, reminding me that he is present and good.”
This so mirrors the place I find myself moving in faith. It is the place where I keep finding others guiding me along this path and where I keep seeing God revealed in ever-widening ways. I feel like there is more and more light beginning to shine and opening up places that I never realized were dark before. Curtice began this section in the book by referring to Jesus’ words in John that he is the light of the world and that if anyone follows they will not walk in darkness but in the light of life. I feel that the light of Christ just keeps growing wider and brighter in my life. And in doing so, I so resonate with Curtice’s experience of feeling like she is growing in mysticism and in mystery. It’s a paradox but it feels that the more light is revealed, the more questions emerge but the more secure I feel in faith. Explain that one.
A year ago, I wrote just a single sentence in my journal where I shared about how I spent part of the day reading Rilke’s poetry with my dear friends Rick and Phil. I shared it was likely the last time we would do that together as Phil was well into hospice care at that time. Both of these dear brothers helped me to see the ever widening light of the divine and even though we came at the divine from very different places we could still embrace the commonality that had been revealed to us all.
I write this as I am 30,000 feet over somewhere between Ohio and Colorado. I had a spark of this wonder emerge as we crossed through the thick clouds over Cincinnati this morning and into the blue skies above the clouds. There was light just beyond what we were seeking as we were on the ground and there is wonder that I am somehow soaring above those clouds. Ever-expanding light.
Curtice began the chapter with an amazing quote from Albert Einstein...
The fairest things we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.