Life has so much to be grateful for, while at times, it is filled with challenges and what appear to be insurmountable obstacles.
The latest Supreme Court Justices decisions were like a punch in the stomach for many of us.
It seems we are going backwards instead of forwards on many fronts, most recently the reproductive rights of women and care for the one planet that sustains us, our great Mother Earth.
With this, I turn to Evelyn Underhill, author of several brilliant books, including one I will be quoting from below titled Mysticism.
Written in 1914, Evelyn starts the book by saying, “This little book, written during the last months of peace, goes to press in the first weeks of the Great War” (World War 1).
She goes on to say that it may seem out of place to put out a book that is written on contemplation and the spiritual life while there is now a “sudden explosion of brute force.”
Evelyn says that at first sight, mysticism seems to be a “passive attitude of self surrender,” but goes on to say that “mysticism means nothing if the attitude and the discipline which it recommends be adapted to fair weather alone.”
She says that “to accept this position is to reduce mysticism to the status of a spiritual plaything,” or a ‘spiritual jacuzzi’ as I recently read by another auther.
“On the contrary,” she continues, describing that mysticism, defined as union with God/reality/source/divine, “reveals to us a world of higher truth and greater reality” than the world that we seem to be immersed in.
She writes that this spiritual energy actually increases significantly during times of “overwhelming disharmonies and sufferings” in the world.
Evelyn says, “it is significant that many of these mystical experiences are reported to us from periods of war and distress: that the stronger the forces of destruction appeared the more intense grew the spiritual vision which opposed them.”
In other words, when there’s more suffering and unrest in the world, there’s more people reporting divine experiences happening to oppose them.
When I read this, it gave me so much hope.
I had questioned last year why, on the morning of the January 6, 2021 capital hill attack, I had a deep experience of God just hours before, that lasted the next two nights as well. Was the timing coincidental or…?
When I talked to a mentor about this, she shared with me that many other people who she counsels also had more intense divine experiences during December and January 2020/2021.
Evelyn Underhill supported and confirmed this, in 1914.
She says these divine experiences give us renewed vitality, better able to address the current situations.
She highlights that Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale “both acted under mystical compulsion, leaving the deepest mark upon the military history of France and England.”
To be spiritual does not mean to be complacent, stay in our spiritual bubble, or to go into a place of despair and hopelessness, and stay there.
It’s a call to action; a call to love in action.
It’s a responsibility to keep our spiritual life active and ongoing, our hearts wide open, and imagining our minds as vast as the sky to be able to hold all of life as it is unfolding, while having compassion and “unconquerable hope,“ as Evelyn writes.
With this awareness, Evelyn decided to have the book published. Thank goodness!
Love in action has 7 billion ways of manifesting. Yours is unique to you, it is in your heart to ask, listen, and hear in which way you are being called.
I recently discovered this nontraditional prayer that I love and want to pass on to you. It’s so speaks to what Evelyn wrote about over 100 years ago. This prayer was written by a Benedictine nun in 1985 named Sister Ruth Marlene Fox.
A Non-traditional Blessing
May God bless you with a
restless discomfort
about easy answers, half-truths,
and superficial relationships
so that you may seek truth boldly and
love deep within your heart.
May God bless you with holy anger
at injustice, oppression,
and exploitation of people,
so that you may tirelessly work for
justice, freedom and peace among all people.
May God bless you with the gift of tears,
to shed for those who suffer from pain,
rejection, hunger and war,
so that you may reach out your hand
to comfort them and
to turn their pain to Joy.
And may God bless you
with enough foolishness
to believe that you can
make a difference in the world,
so that you can do
what others claim cannot be done
to bring justice and kindness
to all our children and the poor.
Sister Ruth gives us permission to embrace both our humanness and our divine light when she uses the words: restless discomfort, holy anger, gift of tears, andfoolishness to believe.
Our humanness is our gift as much as the light that shines within.
Thank you so much for your wonderful words of healing for my wrists – they are getting better every day. I’m now voice writing, which gives me so much appreciated freedom to begin to write again while healing. Gratitude for modern technology!
I will write again in a couple of weeks. Thinking of you until then, on your spiritual journey of heart and soul in a world that needs you.
I leave you with a parting shot from a beautiful hike I took this week with three of my favorite furry hiking buddies: Addie, Vida and Roy (my friend calls me their fairy dogmother).
May it bring you joy…there is so much love in this world :-).
Categories: Heart Centered Living, Inner Wisdom & Intuition