Guinness and Julian
The ever-perceptive Wheezinggirl writes, in response to my alliteratively-named Phosphorescent Effigy:
Nature Mysticism and Christian Mysticism shouldn’t be judged against each other – they should be judged by their own merits. Pop Culture shouldn’t be judged against Mysticism at all, but judged by its own merits. If any of these end up winning best in show, then everyone will have a Guinness to celebrate.
Well, sure. I agree. And I love your dog show analogy. By the same token, I’m not the first person who’s ever talked about the comparative value between nature and transcendental mysticism (which I think is what I’m really talking about, since I would put the mysticism of Plotinus or most forms of Buddhism in the same camp as Christian mysticism), or for that matter who’s looked at the idea that pop culture transcends itself into a form of postmodern mysticism. So what I’m exploring is more by way of response than assertion.
Hey — I love pop culture and I’m rather fond of nature mysticism. A true transcendental mysticism sees itself as emerging from, not alien to, sacred story and devotion to the wonders of creation (granted, it’s been a tremendous weakness of transcendental mysticism, at least in the west, that it has expressed itself dualistically: "to be a mystic one must reject the world." But that hasn’t always been the case, and some truly visionary voices in the last 100 years, including Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Evelyn Underhill, Thomas Merton, Kenneth Leech, and Ken Wilber, have made great strides toward re-visioning mysticism in terms that celebrate, rather than denigrate, the physical world). I think an analogy could be drawn from Celtic tradition here: the bards are custodians of the sacred story; the druids custodians of nature mysticism, and the seers custodians of the mysteries beyond nature. The whole point is: they work together, they join together, they need and celebrate each other. I think problems begin if/when the bards decide they don’t need the seers and druids ("I get all the spirituality I need from the Grateful Dead!" as more than one stoner has assured me), or the same problem erupts among the seers and druids — the dualism in Christian mysticism would be, by this analogy, a case where the "seers" have rejected the "bards" and "druids;" while the postmodern hostility toward transcendentalism that Ken Wilber calls "flatland" and that is characteristic of some (not all) corners of neopaganism, would be an example of the "seers" rejecting their colleagues.
Early this morning I was rummaging through the refrigerator and noticed a quote that I had put on the door a while back: "The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything." — Julian of Norwich. Reading that, I thought about how it applies to my rather masculine way of trying to understand the distinctions between stories (sacred or pop), nature, and the mystery beyond mystery that monotheism calls God. Wise woman that she is, Julian reminds me that the mystery beyond mystery is not some untouched purity that exists only in the abstractions of our minds, but rather cascades down from its transcendent origin, suffusing all matter, all energy, all consciousness with its (his? her?) joyful presence. There comes a point where the mystic, having taken the Plotinian flight from the universe — the "alone to the alone" — turns back and realizes that everything s/he left behind shimmers and hums with the very presence being sought "out there." That is a lovely moment of profound nondual insight. But I don’t think it renders the journey unnecessary. Sometimes we have to go away to be able to truly see.
Wheezinggirl, if I remember correctly, you prefer Jamison’s to Guinness anyway. No reason why there can’t be more than one "best in show."
