He is risen! We rejoice, for our Redeemer lives!

So . . . mysticism. Is that a fraught word for you? If so, it’s understandable. Perhaps it brings to mind images of “woo-woo” people who appear to be primarily driven by emotion and/or tend to speak in ethereal ways that don’t seem grounded in reality. Or maybe it feels like things related to mysticism are too subjective and not sufficiently based in the Word—not sola scriptura enough—to be valid. Certainly, abuses and error have occurred when subjective mystical experience has been over-emphasized, so wariness is warranted. But as we’ve discussed before, neglecting the experiential, emotional side of our beings in constant deference to our intellectual side hinders our development as full human persons created in the imago Dei. So, let’s try to define mysticism a bit.

Of course, one of the difficulties about the word “mysticism” is that there isn’t a single accepted definition. I’ll offer part of my take on it here. If you’ve come to an Adult Seminar I’ve led, you’ve likely heard me tell a story from the TV show Mystic Britain. In one episode, the host describes how ancient Britons believed there was a god of this creek, a god of this grove of trees, a god of this meadow. This meant they believed that “every step they took was in sacred space.” Knowing that we believe in the one true God, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen—that phrase, to me, shines light on Christian mysticism: it is in large part a cultivated and practiced awareness that every step we take is in sacred space and allowing that awareness to shape our lives. It is keeping the eyes of our hearts and minds open to noticing God’s presence everywhere at all times, to know that we live in a God-soaked world and are invited to experience God in and with it, every moment, here and now.

How does this idea affect your view on mysticism? Does it make it feel more impractical than ever, or maybe more accessible, somehow? As always, there is no right or wrong response. Please just pay attention to what it stirs up in you and then talk to God about it. Everything is invitation to move deeper into relationship with God! Come back next time as we talk a little more about mysticism, and also science and sunsets.

Christ is risen! Hallelujah! Rejoice, because the Living One walks on the road with us!

After introducing the idea last time of letting God love us for us, I think we’ve reached a point on our Emmaus journey where we need to look more closely at the word experience and what it means when talking about our spiritual life and relationship with God. After all, letting God love us for us implies we will somehow experience that love. So, let’s dive in. We’ll start by looking at a couple of quotes from Martin Luther.

You might have heard these words of Luther’s, words that aren’t exactly a resounding endorsement of religious experience: “Grace is the experience of being delivered from experience.” As someone who came from a church world where having an emotional experience of God at every service was held up as the norm, I have a deep appreciation for this perspective. But I think that’s the key: it’s the skewed emphasis on a need for religious experience to validate one’s standing with God that causes bondage, not experience itself.

Now, please consider these words also said by Luther: “This grace of God is a very great, strong, mighty and active thing. It does not lie asleep in the soul. Grace hears, leads, drives, draws, changes, works all in [people], and lets itself be distinctly felt and experienced” [emphasis added]. That sounds like Luther believes that some kind of felt experience of grace is a normal part of Christian life.

I now live in what I understand is a Lutheran place of “and”: ultimately, our faith is neither determined by our experience of God nor dependent upon it, AND experiencing God can profoundly help our faith. Next week, we’ll start to dig deeper into what experiencing God means while looking at a potentially alarming word: mysticism (don’t panic!).

Happy Easter! He is Risen! We continue rejoicing as we remember that because Jesus lives, we also shall live!

As we’ve explored more about our relationship with God over the last couple of weeks, I’m aware that we might have dipped our toes into unfamiliar spiritual waters with how we’ve framed the idea of God-in-self and self-in-God. I know I’ve asked before, but I hope you don’t mind me asking again: How do you think about God and your relationship with God in ways like this? I keep asking because I’ve spoken with many people through the years who have felt that spending time thinking about God’s attention to and affection for them personally is selfish or indulgent. The message they “caught” at church, even if it wasn’t explicitly “taught,” was that we’re simply to be conduits for God’s love, letting it flow completely through us to others. Does that feel familiar to you at all? If so, I’d like to ask you to think about this:

God loves you for you. God delights in you for you. God longs to spend time with you because God enjoys you. You! You are the apple of God’s eye. God doesn’t look past you to your neighbor—you are just as valuable to God. God wants to love you simply because you’re you. In other words, you’re not just a conduit for God to use so that God’s love can be poured into someone else. God wants you to be filled with God’s love for your own sake.

So, I invite you to do that—to spend some time in the posture of a fountain, allowing God’s delight in you and for you to bubble up in your inner being, filling the fountain bowl of your heart for your own sake. It is actually incredibly healthy to spend time letting God just love you. Why? Because if you allow yourself to be filled with God’s love for you, the natural result will be God’s love consistently spilling over and flowing from you. We are indeed to let God’s love flow to others, but not at the cost of being filled ourselves. This week, practice letting God love you for you, and if you wouldn’t mind, please email me at lori@flccs.net and let me know what happens.

Happy Easter! He is Risen! We still have a few more weeks in the Eastertide celebration of the Living One who once was dead but is now alive forever and ever, so let us keep rejoicing!

Continuing with the idea of God-in-self, please sit for a moment with a few more words from Henri Nouwen: “You are the place where God chose to dwell.” Perhaps you can turn Henri’s words into a prayer, saying to God, “I am the place where You chose to dwell; I am the place where You choose to dwell.” Don’t rush. Say it a few times, breathing the words in and out, allowing your heart to open up more and more space for the Triune God to inhabit.

Now, as you keep breathing, rest with these words from Theophilus of Antioch: “It is the breath of God that you breathe—and you are unaware of it.” So, I invite you to become aware, even just for these few moments, that God’s surrounding breath is the air you are breathing, that the fullness of your being—including the truth of who you really are—exists, is sustained, and held within God. And what does Scripture tell us about God? “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”

Thomas Merton says this: “The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God.” In other words, who we truly are is held within God. It seems as though Thomas Keating is right: our being exists as self-in-God and God-in-self. He is also right in saying that knowing this has profound implications for our spiritual lives—for our relationship with God—stating that it “supposes that we are to become a living sacrament by being always in the presence of God and in relation to God….”

How is it for you to pray this way and think about your life with God this way? I would love to hear your thoughts about God’s invitation to become a living sacrament. Let’s walk together.