Evelyn Underhill - Mysticism 23

Magi, magic p. 107

"In magic, whether regarded as a superstition or a science, we have at any rate the survival of a great and ancient tradition, the true meaning of whose title should hardly have been lost in a Christian country; for it claims to be the science of those Magi whose quest of the symbolic Blazing Star brought them once, at least, to the cradle of the Incarnate God."

Thanks be to God, with much nagging the Holy Spirit has succeeded in causing me to open this book again. I'm never sorry I have done so, but I do so kicking and screaming seemingly every time.

And again, I am struck by a quotation concerning Incarnation. If I learn nothing else--unlikely, but if I did--from this book, I have learned that my most cherished touchstone of faith is Incarnation. God is God, and I'm not, but I claim faith in a God Who knows firsthand what it is like to be what I am. The Magi hardly knew what they sought except that what they found was so much more than what they had sought, but exactly what they would have sought, had they known what they knew once they found it. My Lord and my God, thank You for knowing what it's like, but also thank You for being God. You have smitten me wholesale, and I have lived. Somehow.

Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism - 22

After a longish hiatus, and the nudging of the Spirit and the encouragement of a cousin, 1-2-3, re-plunge into this densely wonderful book...

pp. 102-106

Green Lion - My centering prayer mentor once said she woke up each morning a beginner. The Green Lion image so aptly embodies that principle.

Red Dragon - A dragon helped Harry, Ron and Hermione escape from Gringott's but I otherwise have had a negative image of dragons, e.g., the one devouring the child in Revelation 12:4: "His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born."

Sulphur - Salt - Mercury - Love this metaphor. The interdependent human chemistry of heart, mind, body and soul make fascinating, if uncomfortable bath salts in which to mystically soak.

*NOT* magic - So much of the wrong sort of evangelical Christianity is ill-disguised hocus pocus invoking the name of Jesus.

Purgation - Illumination - Union - See "wake up a beginner every morning," above.

Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism - 21

pp. 96-102 “…down the nights and down the days” of Francis Thompson’s “The Hound of Heaven.”

“the idea of a love-chase”

The several pages read tonight relate how many mystic writers have described the mystic experience—the pursuit of Reality—with images of the pursuit of alchemy, i.e., that we are spiritual beings, souls, in search of the gold standard, The Goldenness within us, that was put in us by The Hound of Heaven, the One who urges us forward to the fullness of our being in the Eternal One, if we will purge ourselves of the baser metals in our spirits. Much of this book before now has described how the mystic pursues the Ultimate Reality. This section reveals how, in fact, it is Reality that has been pursuing us all along.

With the 2012 Olympics in full swing now, I can’t help thinking about the pursuit of gold, how the athletes work constantly to discover their most golden selves, the ones who allow themselves to be shaped by discipline, constancy, direction, and responsiveness to the best that is within them. They are always the chasers, though. They are not pursued by The One, in order to hand them the gold medal.

QUI AMORE LANGUEO

[Richard of St. Victor] “The Soul, is utterly concentrated on the One.” She is “caught up to the divine light.”

Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism - 20 (I think of it every month)

I am learning what "fear of the Lord" means in reading this book, in that approaching the book reminds me of Moses' approach to the burning bush. What is this strange sight that I see? There are so many riches within its pages, I am hesitant to read it in any other milieu than complete silence and long stretches of that. If I read it too fast, with too many distractions, I will miss so much. If I read it and savor it slowly, in blessed long silence, I will miss so much, but less, I suppose. There's nothing for it but to slog on and resign myself to reading it more than once, to catch the missed morsels on the second or fourteenth round.

Thank you to the giver of this book for a way to cherish that which is eligible to be cherished.

Chugging along, then, the three principle images by which mystics describe their experiences:

• PILGRIMAGE (Mystic Quest; Grail): "That kingdom which is both near and far..."
  
• SEARCH FOR LOVER/SOUL MATE (Marriage of the Soul): "No lover seeks union with his beloved, But his beloved is also seeking union with him."
  
• ASCETICISM/PURITY ("Great Work")
  

Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism - 18

pp. 83 – 85

“It was this re-discovery of Nature’s Christliness which Blake desired so passionately when he sang—

‘I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England’s green and pleasant land.’”

“Quia per incarnate Verbi mysterium nova mentis nostrae oculis lux tuae claritatis infulsit: ut dum visibiliter Deum cognoscimus, per hunc in invisibilium amorem rapiamur.” …for through the Mystery of the Word made flesh, the new light of Thy glory hath shone upon the eyes of our mind so that while we acknowledge God in visible form, we may through Him be drawn to things invisible.

Says Underhill, “The essence of mystical Christianity seems to be summed up in these lovely words.”

They embrace both immanence and transcendence and begin to express their mutuality. This Incarnation is no commercial transaction, but is the Reveal of Reveals, the only Reality worth revealing.

Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism - 15

Text, p. 75	Comment	Notes
Departing from the usual convention, they are hard—sometimes impossible—to understand.	Right now, is it enough to trust and hold my figurative hands in front of me and feel my way, with or without a map? After all, running has progressed that way. For the longest time, I was sure I would never get past running only a few minutes, and walking the rest. This morning I ran up a full block of 10% grade hill and, while winded at the top, I kept going to the end of the block. WE HUMANS HATE UNCERTAINTY. WE WANT CLARITY. WE WANT TO KNOW THAT WHAT WE HOLD DEAR WILL NOT CHANGE AND WILL ALWAYS BE THERE. WE GO A BIT CRAZY WHEN THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN. We yell “Heretic!” We yell “Queer!” We yell, “Ick!” We say no. Anything to get out of being in relationship with The Eternal I Am that I Am. Mystics try to express that, despite the scariness, we must be in relationship with this Dicey Deus. Genesis 32.30-32 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ It’s the only way my life is preserved.
As a result, the orthodox have been forced to regard their makers as madmen or heretics: when they were really only practical men struggling to disclose great matters by imperfect means.
***
Without prejudice to individual beliefs, and without offering an opinion as to the exclusive truth of any one religious system or revelation—for here we are concerned neither with controversy nor with apologetics—we are bound to allow as a historical fact that mysticism, so far, has found its best map in Christianity.
Christian philosophy, especially that Neoplatonic theology which, taking up and harmonizing all that was best in the spiritual intuitions of Greece, India, and Egypt, was developed by the great doctors of the early and mediaeval Church, supports and elucidates the revelations of the individual mystic as no other system of thought has been able to do.	And now I will await her persuasive argument as to this. I’ve always intuited this, or taken it on faith, but did not feel equal to offering an argument that would persuade others to this conclusion.	How in Heaven’s name does one absorb the treasures of this book without having to tediously work through sentence by sentence? Yet, if I don’t, I will miss important gems. I think I do work through it sentence by sentence, and resign myself to being at this for a long time.
***
We owe to the great fathers of the first five centuries—to Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine; above all to Dionysius the Areopagite, the great Christian contemporary of Proclus—the preservation of that mighty system of scaffolding which enabled the Catholic mystics to build up the towers and bulwarks of the City of God.	These names are famililar to me, as is some of the substance of their work, but what does it mean in any given moment of Christian response to life’s details? Not everyone is able to or desirous of studying these doctors of the Church. Even those who are interested, do they say to themselves, “Should I do this? What would Irenaeus say?” To me, mysticism is a way to cut through the slog of studying the doctors of the Church, and have that in-Person encounter of the Jacob kind.

Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism - 13

Sat yesterday in The Varsity, post-GALAS steering committee meeting, munching on a slaw dog and an orange freeze, pondering Immanence vs. Emanation in the theology of mysticism. Various big names in the theology of mysticism world--Dionysius, Dante(!), Leuba, Teresa of Avila, Boehme, Tauler, Philo, even Plotinus--come down on one side or the other, but even in mysticism, there are trolls who must have it that their conclusion is right and the other is wrong. Probably not original to me, but couldn't it be like the particle and wave theories of light, in that both are helpful, depending on which behaviors of light one is attempting to understand or describe? For me, immanence is preferable, keeping in mind the danger of slippage into pantheism. Immanence is preferable because it is how our ineffable Eternal One chose to reveal to us in the very immanence of Jesus. In this construct,

"earth is literally 'crammed with heaven.'" p. 72 [see also, Gerard Manley Hopkins: "THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;. It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil."]

"'God,' says Plotinus, 'is not external to anyone, but is present with all things, though they are ignorant that he is so.'" p. 72

"...if God be truly immanent in the material world it is either sin or folly to refuse that world in order that we may find Him..." p. 73

1 John 4.20:

Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters,^* are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister^* whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen

Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism - 11 (Are you willing to be a wick?)

p. 64 (quoting a Persian mystic):

"The lovers who dwell within the sanctuary
Are moths burnt with the torch of the Beloved's face."

From Holy the Firm, by Annie Dillard:

"One night a moth flew into the candle, was caught, burnt dry, and held. I must have been staring at the candle, or maybe I looked up when a shadow crossed my page; at any rate, I saw it all. A golden female moth, a biggish one with a two-inch wingspan, flapped into the fire, dropped her abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, frazzled and fried in a second. Her moving wings ignited like tissue paper, enlarging the circle of light in the clearing and creating out of the darkness the sudden blue sleeves of my sweater, the green leaves of jewelweed by my side, the ragged red trunk of a pine. At once the light contracted again and the moth's wings vanished in a fine, foul smoke. At the same time her six legs clawed, curled, blackened, and ceased, disappearing utterly. And her head jerked in spasms, making a spattering noise; her antennae crisped and burned away and her heaving mouth parts crackled like pistol fire. When it was all over, her head was, so far as I could determine, gone, gone the long way of her wings and legs. Had she been new, or old? Had she mated and laid her eggs, had she done her work? All that was left was the glowing horn shell of her abdomen and thorax--a fraying, partially collapsed gold tube jammed upright in the candle's pool.

And then this moth-essence, this spectacular skeleton, began to act as a wick. She kept burning. The wax rose in the moth's body from her soaking abdomen to her thorax to the jagged hole where her head should be, and widened into flame, a saffron-yellow flame that robed her to the ground like any immolating monk. That candle had two wicks, two flames of identical height, side by side. The moth's head was fire. She burned for two hours, until I blew her out."

Anybody think this is easy to do? Ha. Really? Think it's about following rules and conventions?

Matthew 19.17-27

¹⁷And he said to him, ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.’ ¹⁸He said to him, ‘Which ones?’ And Jesus said, ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; ¹⁹Honour your father and mother; also, You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ ²⁰The young man said to him, ‘I have kept all these;^* what do I still lack?’ ²¹Jesus said to him, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money^* to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ ²²When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Trust me, the grieving goes on for some time before you are able to turn around and say, "OK, I'm ready to be a wick." If you ever get there. But, it's the only thing worth doing.

Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism - 10

p. 62: "'I wish not,' said St. Catherine of Genoa, 'for anything that comes forth from Thee, but only for Thee, oh sweetest Love!'"

What does this mean? We are beings with bodies. Our God saved us in Incarnation.

p. 63: "Mystic Love is a total dedication of the will; the deep-seated desire and tendency of the soul towards its Source."

Again, the soul's Source expressed ultimate Love for us by becoming human, embodied, by experiencing all that we are. How to reconcile body and Spirit? Look to Christ. Contemplative gaze upon the Way, the Truth and the Life is the avenue to understanding of wishing "only for Thee," O Lord. Help Thou my cluelessness.

Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism - 5

p. 33: "We must," says Plato in the 'Timaeus,' make a distinction of the two great forms of being, and ask, 'What is that which Is and has no Becoming, and what is that which is always becoming and never Is?"

Sounds like God (Is), and us (always becoming). I believe it is John Macquarrie whose name for this, and for God, is Letting-Be. It is the practice of mysticism that prepares us for our becoming, by the subtle (okay, sometimes not so subtle) I Am.