Editor's Note: I am currently enrolled in seminary class called “Moments in Ancient, Medieval, and Postmodern Mysticism.” The course is designed to explore writings about mysticism found throughout the ancient, medieval and postmodern worlds, with a focus on the underpinnings of mysticism in the contemporary church. Through a theological survey spanning centuries, the course explores rich, sophisticated and compelling literature which has helped to shape Christian life and theology in every century to the present. And it attempts to answer the following question: Can today’s modern Christian understand the religious mysticism that was prevalent in ancient and Medieval times, or has the Western church obliterated any chance of resurrecting this theological gift? ... Here is essay No. 1 from that course.
Relevant Readings:
In her book “Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God,” writer Kaitlin B. Curtice begins with this poem:
“Before there was everything, there was nothing. But before there was nothing, there was Something. Something Other, Unbound, Beyond, Above -- Mystery. No one could grasp it then, and no one can grasp it now, not even with these realities coming among us and creating something new day in and day out, despite our dry and weary bones. Because before us, there was everything, and before everything, Nothing was Something, and Something was The Beginning, and we are just dust from Its long, flowing robe.” (Apologies to the author who had the poem beautifully designed in reverse hourglass shapes on the page!)
Curtice, a writer who is a citizen of the Potawatomi Nation and a Christian, in her work seeks to bridge the gap between her Christian faith she inherited as a child and the faith of her indigenous ancestors she is diligently working to reclaim.
I happened to be reading the book “Native” as part of our synod’s Epiphany book study simultaneously to John Caputo’s “Hoping Against Hope” for this class, and I was struck by the similar themes of Curtice’s “Native” and Caputo’s “insistence of God.” I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were discussing a point that was one in the same. And then in a break from Caputo, it was Grace Jantzen’s “Eros and the Abyss: Reading Medieval Mystics in Postmodernity” that pulled all of these themes together for me.
Jantzen’s essay gives a brief explanation of how the Enlightenment writers of the 18th century hijacked the language of the 13th century Christian mystics and appropriated the theme of the great unknown -- or the great “Mystery” as Curtice describes it … or the “Abyss” as Caputo describes it before her. Five hundred years earlier, the Christian mystics wrote about the wonder of the “abyss,” the deepness and vastness of the Creator in loving terms, in terms of wonder. Just for instance, this poetry written by the 13th century writer Hadewijch of Antwerp:
“My soul melts away
In the madness of Love,
The abyss into which she hurls me
Is deeper than the sea;
For Love’s new deep abyss
Renews my wound.”
And then along came the Enlightenment writers who were compelled to reduce everything down to the rational, and no longer were they so enchanted by the unknown God, but rather they in fact turned sour on the idea of an unknowable, untouchable, indescribable power such as the Creator. And they started to box him up with science and philosophy and mathematics and theology. And in their “modern” minds the vast depths of an unknowable Creator turn the “abyss” into a terrifying thought. And thus charted the course of Western Christian thought for the next several hundred years. … God was unknowable, too vast and deep, and as such should be feared.
I believe that the Christian mystics of the 13th century -- as well as Caputo and Curtice here in the 21st century -- couldn’t disagree more with the direction in which the Enlightenment thinkers moved Christianity. Their attempts to quantify and measure and identify God led to a negative self-fulfilling prophecy, because as their attempts to produce a tangible God proved fruitless, their understanding of the “abyss” turned negative and produced fear in our unknowable Creator. But Curtice through her new-found work to learn about her ancestor’s beliefs of the “Mystery,” and Caputo’s work to describe God’s “insistence,” rather than his “existence” are trying once again to move Christianity back to a mystic understanding of our Creator.
The common denominator between the two writers is that they are trying to deconstruct the construction of a tangible, knowable God that has existed for some 250 years, and which is heartily accepted by a postmodern society that believes everything can be explained by science, engineering and technology. However the writers are doing it through their own paradigms -- Caputo through a deconstructionist theology and Curtice through her indigenous theology.
Caputo writes in “Hoping Against Hope”: “I am seeking to know what religion would look like, what form it could take, if it were wrested free from people who consider themselves authorities in matters in which we are all unlearned novices and perpetual beginners.” (Pg. 17)
And Curtice agrees writing in “Native”: “My faith is not a faith to be held over others or a faith that forces others into submission but an inclusive, universal faith constantly asking what the gift of Mystery truly is and how we can better care for the earth we live on, who constantly teaches us to be humble.
It is writers such as Curtice and Caputo who fill up my theological cup. Having served in the pulpit three years now, and at the doorstep of completing my divinity degree here at Luther, it is writers such as Curtice and Caputo who help me find room to talk about an unknowable God, a God who is inherently infinite and thus intangible and mysterious and awe inspiring. I am continuously frustrated by the feeling here in the seminary and across our church that there isn’t room for a preacher such as me, one that has more questions than answers; one who gets Caputo’s description that God doesn’t “exist,” but rather “insists”; one that believes in the beauty of Hadewijch’s “new deep abyss.”
I believe in a mystical description of the abyss, one that allows us to see the wonder of that vast unknownness, and I think it allows me to feel kinship with Curtice as she tries to reconnect with her indigenous roots to find room alongside her Christian upbringing. I love the Potawatomi people’s description of God as simply: Mystery. … With a capital “M”! … The greatest Mystery we will ever know … and not know. But unfortunately, over the last 700 years as men have tried ever harder to define God, to quantify God, to box up God so that their frail egos could begin to wrap their minds around something so infinite that it scared them, we’ve made believers afraid of the Creator’s limitless possibilities and we’ve squeezed out any room for believers of any other kind to help us understand the abyss.
While the Westernized, white Christian church is so busy limiting God and making God in their image to justify their colonization of the poorer peoples of the world, it is Curtice’s infinite “Mystery” of the indigenous people, and Caputo’s “insistence” of God that give me hope. If we are going to find our way through to the ideal creation that God intended for this earthly kingdom, it is through the mystics -- both current and ancient -- that we will find the divine light to help us on this journey.
Near the end of her book, Curtice borrows a quote from Franciscan Friar Richar Roher, another 21st century mystic whom I admire. He writes: “We’ll never solve the way to a new life in our heads; we have to live our way into a new kind of thinking.” Our church needs a new story. Whether mainline Christians will admit it, we are losing believers because, this postmodern people are hungry for an unknowable God again. They are looking for the “Mystery” that can fill them with wonder and begin to answer the multitude of questions that have been left unanswered by modern science, engineering and technology.
Caputo ends his book this way: “Off in a distant corner of the universe, unknown to the stars around it, a little spark is ignited and a light is born. The light grows steadily larger and strong until finally, in a great burst of energy, it flares up and flares out, extinguished without a trace, its little life and gentle smile unknown to all its neighbors. The light burns because it burns, in all its brilliance, and then the little star has to die and the universe moves on.”
My own understanding of the abyss -- of the great “Mystery” -- inspires me to look for those little sparks, and I do see them. I see indigenous writers who are speaking up and speaking out. I see other modern mystics reclaiming the vital, ancient Christian mystic traditions. I see other faithful who long for a different understanding of our Creator than the racist, misogynistic, jingoist white God who rules our country’s faithful elite. … I see little sparks; I see them flare up and then flare; but one day I am convinced that we will all again be able to stare into that “abyss” and see the infinite love of “Mystery” and not be frightened of its vastness. … Amen.
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