Flying under the radar (The mystic path)

Wonderful and Dark Is This Road: Discovering the Mystic Path

by Emilie Griffin; 191 pp. paper $15.95

Because of the hiddenness of mystical knowledge, mysticism has sometimes been described as the experience of “God as a ray of divine darkness.” For Emilie Griffin, it is “a deep and sustained intimacy with a loving God.” While there have been instances in which a mystic gains unusual abilities or receives stigmata, which lead us to imagine that mystics are not present in our lives today, Griffin suggests that many mystics are quiet and anonymous, and their unique spirituality is invisible to the casual observer. This book explores mysticism thematically, drawing on an assortment of mystical experiences recorded both in Scripture and Christian history. Griffin lays out the mystic path for those who wish to travel it—noting, however, that one can never ask, “Lord, please make me a mystic,” but rather, “Lord, I want to know you better.”

From the book:

I believe that we are meeting mystics every day, but we do not recognize them. Their humility and modesty is such that they pass into the crowd ("So they picked up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple" John 8:59). Perhaps we could spot them by their spiritual disciplines: prayer, meditation, fasting, study, simplicity, solitude, submission, service, confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. It is possible, but not likely. For real mystics practice their deep love and service to God in ways that may fly below the radar, unobtrusively, transforming the lives of others in ways that seem sublimely plain spoken and level-headed. Except when they receive extraordinary mystical gifts (not everyone does) it is hard to pick them out in a crowd. We have noted earlier that Padre Pio looked much like the next monk in the procession. More to the point, the Roman soldiers needed Judas to point Jesus out to them. To them, he looked more or less like any other Galilean.

Both Thomas Merton and Karl Rahner, a major modern theologian, insist on a mysticism of ordinary living. For Merton, the incarnation has sanctified all of human living. Far from taking the contemplative above and beyond the ordinary, contemplation, if authentic, roots the human being in the ordinary. The ordinary routine of daily life becomes the texture of contemplation for the devoted Christian. Merton insists that there is a "latent, or implicit, infused dimension to all prayer."