The Mystic in You: Discovering a God-Filled World

By Bruce G. Epperly

What is a mystic?

Bruce Epperly defines mystics as people who see holiness in everyday life. You can be a mystic without denying the joys of your physical body, fleeing society, abandoning your family, or disengaging from politics.

Practical and accessible, The Mystic in You helps you become aware of the many ways you can experience God's presence in your daily life. Yes, you can be a mystic. The many faces of mysticism described in this book invite you to become the mystic that suits your personality, faith tradition, and life experience. Epperly introduces 12 individuals or groups of mystics through the ages, including some from Jewish and Muslim traditions:

Saint Francis of Assisi Brother Lawrence The desert mothers and fathers The Baal Shem Tov Benedict of Nursia Howard Thurman The Celtic mystics Etty Hillesum Hildegard of Bingen Rumi Mechthild of Magdeburg Julian of Norwich

Each mystic had particular spiritual experiences that shaped his or her view of God and the world. In each chapter, Epperly guides you through four spiritual practices that can help deepen your relationship with God and open you to God's movement in your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Upper Room Books
• Release date: Jan 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9780835817622

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Discovering the Mystic in You

Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the LORD stood beside him and said, I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, Surely the LORD is in this place—and I did not know it! And he was afraid, and said, How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called that place Bethel; but the name of the city was Luz at the first.

—Genesis 28:10-19

God was in this place and I did not know it, confesses the awestruck Jacob in the wake of his dream of a ladder teeming with angels. What had been ordinary now becomes charged with God’s grandeur. A simple stopping place on the road to rest his weary bones becomes for Jacob the gateway to heaven. Totally absorbed by his own anxieties, Jacob unexpectedly experiences eternity in the midst of time. Though Luz was familiar ground, Jacob now sees it for the first time as a thin place," to use the language of the Celts, where heaven and earth merge and every moment incarnates holiness. So he renames it Bethel, house of God.

This is the mystic vision, where we recognize God’s presence in the world around us. Sometimes it comes because of our intentional spiritual practices. Other times, it comes when we least expect it and do not feel as though we deserve it. It comes to the righteous and unrighteous alike and to the certain and the doubting as well. When it happens, when heaven and earth become one, everything changes. God comes alive in the Holy Here and Holy Now to Jacob, a shady entrepreneur (Gen. 28:10-19); to Saul, later Paul, a religious zealot hell-bent on eliminating the early Christian movement (Acts 9:1-9); to Esther the beauty queen, preening herself for the King’s visitation and doing her best to deny her ethnic heritage (Esth. 4:4-17); to Martha amid the pots and pans and preparation for a dinner party (Luke 10:38-42); and to us as we try to balance personal economics, parenting and grandparenting, and political involvement and social concern.

In the midst of going over our taxes—and as I write this morning, I rejoice in having just signed off on mine—we discover that we can experience God’s presence as fully in brick-and-mortar citizenship as in the Holy of Holies. When we watch our grandchildren play in the backyard and see their faces as if for the first time, we are stunned by the holiness of Lego toys, light sabers, and princess outfits. Driving to work, we see the sunrise and give thanks for the wonder of all being.

Nearly forty years ago, my ministerial training pastor, George Tolman of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), in Tucson, Arizona, described a typographical error that changed his life. He had been writing a sermon about Moses’ encounter with the burning bush and mistakenly typed the sermon title as "What Do You Do to Burning Busy? In that typo, he captured the essence of our day-to-day experience as modern people. Too busy on his way to work caring for his father-in-law’s sheep, Moses is oblivious to God’s presence until one day, the doors of perception are cleansed, causing him to pause, notice, and yield. He finds himself on holy ground. Immersed in the burning busy," the anxieties of business and family life, Moses comes upon the burning bush, the dynamic reality that gives meaning, unity, and zest to ordinary life and becomes the starting point of a holy adventure of liberating love.

In her song Holy as a Day is Spent, singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer describes the wonder of everyday life. Quotidian activities like washing dishes, making breakfast, and encounters at the market become charged with divinity for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. Geese flying overhead and a dog running in its sleep become windows into eternity when we pause, notice, and open to the wonder of all being. An empty page and open book give birth to songs of praise and creative endeavors.¹

In a time of national uncertainty, following the death of the great king Uzziah, Isaiah goes into the temple, hoping to experience some peace of mind, and unexpectedly experiences the living God. (See Isaiah 6:1-8.) I suspect that Isaiah didn’t expect a transcendental experience, but he encounters angels singing, Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory! Not anticipating anything dramatic, Isaiah discovers his vocation as God’s prophet to a wayward people. As Abraham Joshua Heschel asserts, radical amazement is at the heart of the spiritual journey. While we might never before have thought ourselves mystics, we can experience the living God in the midst of domestic life. Our omnipresent God can become present any moment of the day, for the whole earth is full of God’s glory, and ladders reach to heaven every step of the way. We can experience divine illumination even at church!

At the first session of our congregation’s seminar A Month with a Mystic, upon which this book is based, one of the attendees blurted out, Who me—a mystic? I’m so busy these days that it’s enough to pay the bills, take care of the grandkids, and volunteer at the church. I’m not even sure I have time to pray. Another chimed in, I thought mystics could only be monks and priests. I thought they were people who abandon the world for a life of prayer. I struggle to sit still for meditation for five minutes! A third participant averred, Some days my life is flat and I drift through the day, and then I stop a moment, and remember God is with me. Everything changes. One finally broke the ice with the comment, I thought mystics were all celibate, and that’s not my goal! After hearing these comments, a fifth member questioned, What is a mystic, anyway?

I believe that ordinary people can become mystics! At any moment every day, anyone can experience holiness. Everyday life, chores and all, can transform into the gateway to heaven. We may not be able to sit and meditate, but we can breathe our prayers or sing praise to the beauty of the earth, invoke God’s name throughout day, and ask for divine guidance in every encounter. While God may come to us when we least expect it, the stories of those whom we call mystics remind us that we may need to open the door to God’s presence through spiritual practices. The practices described in this book will aid us in experiencing the holiness of everyday life.

The apostle Paul affirms that God is the reality in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). Inspired by his own mystical experiences, Paul believed that we live and breathe divinity. We spend our days in a God-filled world where each moment has the potential to be a portal into eternity. Despite our protests to the contrary, we can find holy ground in our anxiety about the future, our concerns about political polarization and global climate change, and our attempts to eke out a few moments of prayer in the busyness of everyday life. Few of us will retreat to a monastery for more than two or three days, if at all, but we can experience our car as a sanctuary as we drive to work, a special chair as an ashram, and our backyard as a temple of the Spirit. We can bless a bruised knee, feel God in touching our beloved companion, and taste and see the goodness of God as we enjoy a meal with friends. This is the sacrament of the present moment,² described by Jean Pierre de Caussade, luring us to the practice of the presence of God³ counseled by Brother Lawrence, amid the demands of a full life. Buddhist wisdom proclaims, Before enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water. After enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water. The heart of the mystical adventure lies not necessarily in doing anything differently but in experiencing the everyday with a heightened awareness of the holiness of each rising moment.

According to Jewish wisdom, Rabbi Zusya once noted, In the next world I will not be asked ‘Why were you not Moses?’ but ‘Why were you not Zusya?’⁴ God comes to us personally in the moment-by-moment adventures of daily living. There are as many ways to be a mystic as there are people. We do not have to go anywhere to discover God’s presence. God is already in our body, our thoughts, our work and hobbies, and our loves and hates. We do not have to quit our job to experience God; we find God in the pots and pans and daily agendas. We do not have to leave our spouse to become a mystic; God looked out at the created world, sexuality and all, and saw that it was good (Gen. 1:1-2:4). We live our daily lives on holy ground that invites us to awaken our spirits to the Holy One.

Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead describes worship as an adventure of the spirit.⁵ Those who wake to God’s presence live adventurous lives even if they never leave their home town. Writing checks, driving the kids to school, going to work, and caring for an infirm loved one are the materials of mysticism. God gives us more than we could ask or imagine.

Life-affirming spirituality, the mysticism of which I am speaking, sees God in all things and all things in God. The mystic way joins unity with diversity and experiences one Spirit animating and inspiring all things. It invites us to love God in the world of the flesh rather than a distant heavenly realm. The mystic adventure follows the counsel of Jesus’ prayer to experience and follow God’s vision on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:10). Mysticism experiences God in this present place and moment as it drives us from the familiar and the intimate, the individual encounter with God, to the discovery of God in life’s diversity. A mystical life then leads us to companion God in healing a world traumatized by greed, hatred, self-interest, and violence.

We can be mystics, people who see holiness in daily life, without denying the joys of our physical bodies, fleeing society, abandoning our families, or disengaging from politics. We can, as spiritual guide Gerald May counsels in The Awakened Heart, experience God by taking time to pause, notice, open, yield, and respond to the holiness of every moment.⁶ Some self-denial may be necessary in the mystical path. But this denial involves letting go of the separate, isolated, individualistic self to experience our connection with all creation. It involves breathing in God’s Spirit that inspires all creation and binds together all things. It involves moving from individualism and nationalism to world loyalty, from materialism to simplicity of lifestyle, even if we’re paying a mortgage or going on vacation. In the midst of a busy schedule, we discover that we can live lives of simplicity and grace. For the mystic, that one needful thing is to experience the divinity of each moment and the holiness of each creature. This may lead us to a countercultural lifestyle. We may choose, in the words attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, to live simply so that others may simply live.

The mystical way involves the pathways of purification and transcendence as Evelyn Underhill asserts in her classic text Mysticism.⁷ But mystical purification involves cleansing the doors of perception to discover that while God is beyond our world, God is also deeply embedded in every cell and soul. The mysticism I counsel is not world denial but world affirmation, grounded in God’s love for our messy but beautiful flesh-and-blood planet. (See John 3:16.)

What we do matters to God. Our actions shape God’s experience and enhance or limit God’s work in the world. Ethically speaking, our day-to-day mysticism leads us to follow Mother Teresa’s maxim, Do something beautiful for God.⁸ It may challenge us to a more intimate ethical vision, guiding us to do something beautiful with God, partnering with our Creator and Savior to heal the world.

Yes, you can be a mystic. In fact, you already are one. You are inspired by God but, like Jacob, may be unaware of it. The mystic journey, in its many nuances and practices, is simply to move from God was in this place and I did not know it to God is in this place and now I know it. Recognizing God’s presence manifest in the messiness of everyday life, mysticism claims that this space—including your whole self in its grandeur and imperfection,