For me, mysticism and transformation are indissolubly interconnected. Without economic and ecological justice, without God’s preferential love for the poor and for this planet, the love for God and the longing for oneness seem to me to be an atomistic illusion. ~ Dorothee Soelle, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance, p. 89
I didn’t get very far. Last essay in this series I was stopped on page eighty-three. This time I made it as far as page eighty-nine. Only two hundred and nine more pages to go! But first I want to write about something seemingly unrelated. This is how my head and heart work together. To tell you about why some words on a page lit up inside of me, I must first tell you about a dream I had twenty years ago. Sometimes I just have to take the long road. The dream featured a dear, beloved friend (yes, you should click that link), an amazing artist and activist who has spent his entire career braiding advocacy and outreach into his artistry. Bill and I are heading deep into the woods. This forest is somewhere near the Brooklyn end of the Brooklyn Bridge, near the place where I first met him. The trees are thick and dense. It requires careful walking as there is no cleared trail. We walk carefully to minimize our tracks. He walks ahead of me and suddenly reaches down and seems to lift up the corner of the forest. I realize it is a sheet of mylar – almost entirely invisible as it reflects the trunks, leaves and sky that surround it. I see that the sheet of mylar is actually a large tent flap - perfect mirrored camouflage. I duck in behind him and see that this hidden shelter is guarding a lantern from the wind. It is Bill’s shift, and I will be taking shifts too, protecting the light, making sure it doesn’t go out – that it has fuel and sufficient wick. A small, but well-hidden duty - one of many such lamps all over the continent, guarded by a secret network of light keepers.
A dream I’ve never forgotten that I think of often during times of danger and challenge. And something else I need to weave in here, bear with me. I’ll get to where I’m going, I promise. I have always had a silent chant, a heart-song, a circular melody, a mantra that spirals in my minds’ ear, my minds’ voice. It modifies itself, and sometimes switches out for another tune, another lyric entirely depending on the tasks, the call, in front of me. In childhood it was an edited Jesus Prayer – Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, have mercy on us all. When I sat in the pews at the church where my father was deacon, and the priest would eventually become my step-father I silently changed all the pronouns in the Book of Common Prayer. We didn’t mean the congregation that would stare at me with pity while my parents created an enormous scandal. We, us, didn’t mean my family, or the nation, it didn’t mean a denomination or a religion or even a species. It meant me and everyone and every single living thing and all of us or I would have nothing to do with it. When my mother was sick and dying my spontaneous contemplative ear-worm transformed into a Broadway tune that played over and over inside me on an endless loop. When I was sick and very scared it shifted again just because it needed to, I suppose: We all come from God, and unto God we shall return… But when the terror and grief settled enough to allow gratitude back in, the Jesus Prayer would return, running on replay in the back of my brain, like hold-music from my soul. A new prayer has been beating my heart since the inauguration of this destructive and cruel political era. Julian of Norwich’s prayer. All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. At first it annoyed me, because here is how I have always heard that prayer: It’s all going to be okay, don’t worry, it is all going to be all right.
And frankly – that just didn’t cut it for me. I’ve lived through too many unfathomable and compounding traumas that kept getting worse and worse to put much stock in “It is all going to be just fine.” But here it has appeared, synchronized with my pulse, as I walk, or write, bike or when I wake up in the middle of the night to roll over: … all shall be well and all manner of things… I didn’t invite it, it just showed up. But on one long afternoon walk I began to hear it differently: “May all of us be well and may every living thing be well and love always wins even when it loses.” A love spell. A spell of protection. Singing it into being. And now finally we return to page eighty-nine, as Soelle sits alongside theologian Matthew Fox and struggles with her discomfort with traditional mystic schemas that seem to pursue a private road to union with the Divine. Via unitiva. An atomistic illusion. For Soelle, for Fox (and for me) all of that bliss and wonderment is pointless if it doesn’t open out to include and uplift the community of all living things. Just as the bodhisattvas vow to purse the light within for the sake of all sentient beings. We may only achieve union with the Creator when we behave in unity with creation and life itself. Mystic experience, prayerful refreshment, spiritual restoration must transform us, transform the world, allow us to become more world-related. To speak of this via transformative means to embed the mystical project in the context of our life, which is marked by the catastrophe of economic and ecological exploitation.
This is the light I hope to tend and follow as I am able. May all of us be well. Have mercy on us all. Heal us all. May everything be made well. May we keep the lamp burning even in the darkness, and may it never be extinguished. My soul sings and calls this into being. May we truly envision, summon and create a better world, where all manner of things shall be well.
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