Light from Light: Seven Christian Mystics

By John R. Mabry

When you hear “mystic” or “mysticism,” you might think of something secret, arcane, maybe even dangerous. But that’s not really accurate. Every religious tradition has mystics—you might be one yourself and not even know it! In this little book are the stories of seven favorite mystics. They have brought a lot of joy and, even more, inspiration. Perhaps they will inspire you too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John R. Mabry
• Release date: Aug 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781944769888

Book preview

Light from Light

Seven Christian Mystics

By John R. Mabry

Apocryphile Press

1700 Shattuck Ave #81

Berkeley, CA 94709

www.apocryphile.org

© Copyright 2017 by John R. Mabry

eISBN 978-1-944769-87-1 (Kindle)

eISBN 978-1-944769-88-8 (ePub)

Ebook version 1

Printed in the United States of America

The following essays were previously published in Heretics, Mystics, and Misfits by John R. Mabry (Apocryphile 2004): Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, Jacob Boehme, George Fox, Emanuel Swedenborg.

The following essays were previously published in God Has One Eye: The Mystics of the World’s Religions by John R. Mabry (Apocryphile 2006): Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Merton.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without written permission of the author and publisher, except for brief quotations in printed reviews.

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Contents

Introduction

Meister Eckhart

Julian of Norwich

Jacob Boehme

George Fox

Emanuel Swedenborg

Hildegard of Bingen

Thomas Merton

Introduction

When you hear mystic or mysticism, what do you think of? If you’re like most of us, you think of something secret, arcane, maybe even dangerous. But that’s not really accurate. Every religious tradition has mystics—you might be one yourself and not even know it!

Mysticism simply means union with God. Whether you’re seeking it or basking in it is all a matter of how far down the road you are, not which road you’re on in the first place. So if you’re interested in union with God, mysticism is definitely the place to start.

The Christian tradition has many fine mystics—in fact, there are mystics in every age of the church. Some are more beloved than others—some are downright cranky. And some are easier to read than others—or more fun.

In this little book I have selected seven of my favorite mystics—the reasons will become clear as you read about them. They have brought me a lot of joy, and even more inspiration. I hope they will inspire you, too.

If you want to know more about the mystics or mysticism, I invite you to read further. My book Growing Into God: A Beginner’s Guide to Christian Mysticism (Quest Books, 2013) is a great place to start—it’s user-friendly and a good way to orient yourself. If you want more of the kind of essays you are reading here, please check out my collections Heretics, Mystics, and Misfits (Apocryphile Press, 2004) and God Has One Eye (Apocryphile Press, 2006).

May light from their light shine on your path…

John Mabry

Oakland, CA

August 2017

Meister Eckhart

Today, when I visit my parents and attend church with them, they are as likely to criticize the pastor as to praise his sermon on the ride home. But this would never have occurred when I was a child. I never heard my parents disparage the preacher, so if they ever did, they did it out of earshot of me. Maybe we just had better preachers back then, but my guess is that my parents were just starstruck and gullible when they were young adults, and have grown more cynical and jaded about the church since then. Good for them, I say, because in retrospect, everyone I knew held the preacher in way too much esteem in those days, certainly more than any mortal man deserves. For in my young, impressionable eyes back then, the preacher was the top of the pyramid. Out of anyone else in the church, he was sprinting ahead towards the kingdom of light, while the rest of us hobbled along behind. If anyone had made it in the spiritual world, he had. If anyone was pure, he was; and if anyone was omniscient, well, he was the closest. The idolization of clergy by evangelicals is kind of a mystery, since they are just as likely as anyone else to suffer moral breakdowns. But I got the message, loud and clear: the preacher had made it. God approved of him, and tolerated the rest of us due to his superior holiness. Like Moses lifting high the bronze serpent in the wilderness, the preacher was all that stood between us and God’s most deserved wrath.

One irony in all of this is that, as much as evangelicals eschew anything even remotely Catholic, the evangelical and puritanical model of holiness is startlingly similar to the hierarchical model of holiness found in the Catholic Church.

This hierarchy is reflected upon with greater consciousness in Catholic thought, of course. Catholics have long applied Aristotelian categorization and intense intellectual reflection to this subject, while evangelicals tend to content themselves with a vague doctrine of sanctification. In the well-defined medieval schema, however, we find little that any modern evangelical would disagree with.

In the medieval model of holiness, we see a ladder with three rungs. The first rung to be achieved by the person striving for holiness was purgation, or the emptying of oneself of all sin,