Mirabai Starr writes about mysticism we can experience in the “monasteries” of our everyday lives:
I think you get it: You don’t have to enter a monastery to be a mystic. You don’t have to renounce chocolate or forsake pop culture. It is not necessary to take formal vows and beat yourself up when you inevitably fail to uphold them. These are static notions of what it means to be committed to the life of the soul, and they probably have almost nothing to do with the warm and spicy sprawl of your days. To be a mystic in our times is not about renunciation; it is about intention.
Living as a mystic means orienting the whole of yourself toward the sacred. It’s a matter of purposely looking through the lens of love. Contemporary wise woman Anne Lamott says (quoting Father Ed, the priest who helped Bill Wilson start up Alcoholics Anonymous) that “sometimes Heaven is just a new pair of glasses.” [1] You know what it looks like when you wipe a lens clean of smears and dust. And you also know how it feels to bump into the furniture when your vision is fuzzy. When you say yes to cultivating a mystical gaze, the ordinary world becomes more luminous, imbued with flashes of beauty and moments of meaning. The universe responds to your willingness to behold the holy by revealing almost everything as holy. A plate of rice and beans, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, your new baby, the latest political scoundrel, the scary diagnosis, the restless nights.
Starr encourages us to commit to discovering the hidden depths of love in mundane situations:
You can start right here, in the middle of your messy life. Your beautiful, imperfect, perfect life. There is no other time, and the exact place you find yourself is the best place to enter. Despite what they might have taught you at Bible Camp or in yoga class, you are probably not on your way to some immaculate state in which you will eventually be calm and kindly enough to be worthy of a direct encounter with the divine. Set your intention to uncover the jewels buried in the heart of what already is. Choose to see the face of God in the face of the bus driver and the moody teenager, in peeling a tangerine or feeding the cat. Decide. Mean it. Open your heart, and then do everything you can to keep it open. Light every candle in the room….
When we make a pact with ourselves to show up for reality just as it is, reality rewards us by revealing its hidden holiness, its ordinary wonder, its fruitful shadows and radiant wounds. Not always, not everywhere, but more and more often and in the places we least expect.… This is what it means to be a mystic. To show up for what is, to be present to all that is, to take refuge in the boundless intimacy of exactly what is.
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| Psalm 127: The Paradox of God’s Work & Ours |
 Click Here for AudioTogether with Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, the Psalms are often referred to as the Bible’s “wisdom literature.” All of these books were written to teach us discernment—to differentiate between the way of wisdom and the way of foolishness, and to recognize the path toward life and the path leading to death. One facet of this discernment is the concern that our labor not be fruitless. For example, in Psalm 90 after expressing the brevity of life, Moses ends by twice repeating his prayer to God: “Establish the work of our hands for us—yes, establish the work of our hands” (Psalm 90:17). Psalm 127 echoes this prayer by reminding us that our labor in this life is meaningless without God’s participation: “Unless YHWH builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless YHWH watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain” (Psalm 127:1). In this verse, the writer establishes a paradox that permeates the Bible. Is it the workers building the house or YHWH? And are the guards protecting the city or is God? Psalm 127 says it is both! Mysteriously and somewhat inexplicably, our work and God’s work can become intermingled; taken up together, and united so that human effort and divine action become indistinguishable. Of course, Psalm 127 also implies that it is very possible to do our work without God’s involvement. Our labor can be a solely human effort that is ultimately “in vain.” How do we avoid this fruitless outcome? Psalm 127 doesn’t address that question directly, but the broader context of the Bible’s wisdom literature certainly does. It speaks often of fearing YHWH, seeking first his kingdom, delighting in his commands, and abandoning the way of the wicked. That is how the Old Testament speaks about the paradox of human-divine collaboration. The New Testament offers its own vocabulary for this same mystery. For example, the Apostle Paul contrasts walking “in the Spirit” with walking “in the flesh.” Flesh is often misidentified in modern Christian communities as referring to immoral physical or sexual appetites. But Paul used the word more broadly to mean human strength, knowledge, or power. Those who walk in the flesh (Galatians 5:16) or “put confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:4), are living in a manner that will not last. They are building their lives in vain because they are doing it without God. In contrast, Paul says we should “live by the Spirit” and “keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25). This is his language for living in deep, abiding communion with God—the way of wisdom the Old Testament writers celebrated. As we do this, our work and God’s become alloyed. Our seemingly finite labor is transformed by his eternal life, and we will increasingly display the fruit of God’s Spirit through our renewed humanness. Again, exactly how this occurs is a deep mystery, but it is the life we are all invited to discover. DAILY SCRIPTURE PSALM 127:1-5 PHILIPPIANS 3:1-8 WEEKLY PRAYERMother Janet Stuart (1857 – 1914) Dear Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, I hold up all my weakness to your strength, my failure to your faithfulness, my sinfulness to your perfection, my loneliness to your compassion, my little pains to your great agony on the Cross. I pray that you will cleanse me, strengthen me, and hide me, so that, in all ways, my life may be lived as you would have it lived, without cowardice and for you alone. Amen. |
