Greetings in the Name of the Lord,  We have been exploring the way that the phrase “great is the mystery of faith” reveals ways the earlier church almost unraveled and then solidified itself. Check out those week’s articles here( 1, 2, 3, 4). In the process we encountered the importance of Christian Mysticism in overcoming the divides that faced the church. In my last newsletter article we spent some time exploring what Mysticism is and what mysticism isn’t. The link to that article is here. As we face our own polarization today, I truly believe that the traditions of Christian Mysticism offer us ways to move through the perceived divisions we face and find new ground to explore how to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world, just as Gregory of Nazianzus reliance on Mysticism was able to pull the Church through the challenges surrounding the nature of Christ’s divinity. So, my hope is to help get us more familiar with Christian Mysticism and some of what it has to offer the Church today. But before we get much farther, I think it is important to devote some time to why Mysticism can be so hard to talk about. In my last article I gave you a little bit of homework, to think about a time where you had a true sense of God and then asked about how you might describe that experience to a friend. If you are like me, you can identify a time like that, but trying to explain it to someone else, that part always falls flat, right? If you have tried to explain the experience to someone else, I would imagine words like overwhelming and awe and beauty worked their way in, but those are all words that are not particularly specific. And therein lies the challenge, the lack of precision, I mean there would be no way to develop it as a blue print, or a code or an excel spreadsheet, I mean it would be impossible to get down explicitly and unambiguously. It is important to remember this as we travel into the world of Christian Mysticism, it directly engages in theological topics that lend themselves more to poetry and art than they do to confessional standards or doctrinal statements. Often as we move through this rich tradition it might be frustrating to discover writers and thinkers that tend to talk around some of the key elements of the tradition instead of really digging directly into them. All of the writing of the Mystics point towards God more than they define God. Christian Mysticism scholar Bernard McGinn attempts to define Christian Mysticism as a process of developing a consciousness of God’s transformative presence. In formulating this definition, he does a lot of hedging and acknowledges a massive diversity of what counts as Mysticism, but I still think he manages to focus in on two important aspects of the tradition: encounter and transformation. As a result, the Mystics were themselves considered to be transformed by their encounter with God. They sometimes try to write about the transformation, and the new way of seeing that comes with it, but like our efforts to describe our own encounters with God, they rarely get very far, although some of their poetry is certainly transcendent. Instead, what many of the mystics figured out was that it was better to offer instruction on how to encounter God and then let the transformation happen on its own. So instead of trying to define God, or describe their experiences in concrete ways, they offer maps on how to get to God and have the transformation yourself. This is often a very different way of engaging in one’s faith, and it requires a certain amount of trust in others’ experiences. It requires trusting that the transformation can happen. But, in reality, we have all experienced little cases of transformation following encounter. If you were able to evoke in your memory that moment of divine encounter, it had an effect on you, you already know what transformation can be, even if in only small ways. Christian Mysticism is not an easy path to embark upon, but it is one that I truly believe to be fruitful, and one where we deepen our relationship with God. Moreover, for accountability purposes, we are encouraged to do it in community, with trusted guides and with scripture as the trail map. It may not be easy, but it is ultimately the process of transformation that heals our souls and the world around us, and we do not encounter it if we do not venture out into unfamiliar zones. In Peace, Mike