There Be Dragons!

HERE THERE BE DRAGONS...

Mystics are the map-makers of the landscape of God's Mystery. Never popular when alive, nor acknowledged by the conclaves of the religious establishments, Mystics wander alone… toward the map-less boarders of Inner Reality.

It used to be when cartographers developed maps of the ancient world they would leave the edges of the known world as a mysterious place of vagueness and danger. “THERE BE DRAGONS HERE", was the phrase left at the edges these maps, the edges of the known world, warning ships brave enough to voyage beyond the boundaries of reality that there could be danger. Wayfarers would be crossing the POINT OF NO RETURN.

Whenever we venture out beyond the maps of conformity: whether they be religious maps, theological, social, educational, conventional, etc., we head full on into the unknown. This unknown, far from frightening off the mystic, is where we prefer to tread. Mystics find their comfort in the ineffable Mystery of Reality, because their goal is not to try and conform this Mystery to conventional parameters, but to let it be Free and untamed.

Mystics don't run from dragons; they learn to ride them.

Out beyond the boundaries of orthodoxy and religion, you find, on whatever religious or philosophical “map" you are using, a clear end to what is knowable by the words, rites and rituals of religions. It’s at the edge of these knowable boundaries, written on virtually every religious map, ”There be Mystics here".

Mystics are the outcasts of religion. They play with dragons, frolic in the Mystery of God and come and go in and out of sight from the safe shores of orthodoxy. No one plays with Mystics. They are used as live bait for casting into deep oceans of being. Religionists wait to see if they return from the lands of dragons and mist covered mountains.

Some Mystics return with amazing stories of other worlds and indescribable sights. Their language changes to match the ineffable they have seen. Their appearance altars: a far off look in their eyes, their hearts on fire with the oblation of distant worlds and the songs of the Tathagata. Other Mystics never return, having befallen the lure of the boundless ecstasy of Divine Bliss.

The thing is, either way, religion needs the Mystic. Mystics are the offerings churches throw to the dragons to appease their gods of orthodoxy, not knowing that these offerings actually merit the entrance into Mystery. Truth needs the unorthodox journeys of those who climb to dragons lairs, map the cloud covered landscape of God's hidden Face and brave the journey across the Tintagel sea.

Mystics change the maps of the religious world. They rewrite the boundaries of Mystery to tell us: “Here there be Boundlessness", “Here there be Vast and Infinite Love”, “Here there be Radiant Emptiness", “Here there be Endless Bliss", “Here there be the Face of God".

And whatever words can be grasped of their ineffable mutterings, the esoteric maps of reality begin to be rewritten by the fire of living, breathing dragons.

For 56 years I have looked for my place among the religious landscape and finally know where I was meant to play:

Out here…

At the edge of the known…

Within the Mystery...

Where the boundaries of knowledge end and scriptures grow silent..

Out here…

Where there be dragons….

By~rOn Wright

Seeing God in a Flamingo

I love my wife and my wife loves flamingoes.  She wears flamingo shirts, necklaces, and pendants. Every where I turn around in our house now I see flamingo pictures and magnets and flamingo decorations. So while staring at a Flamingo picture, I suddenly had an ecstatic experience of the holy. Somehow as my eyes were transfixed, my heart grew larger by God's unexpected grace and love. 

Like Job in the Bible, I contemplated a bird that is often viewed as ugly or insignificant and ran squarely into the significance and beauty and grandeur of God. I never fully understood why Job had to go through so much suffering, so much pain, so much loss? But the growing revelation is we often experience God's grace and power at work in our lives in these terrible times of darkness. In the darkness we see God's brilliance. In the darkness we discover the God who lights our path. In the darkness we come to an end of our way of doing things and seeing things and see everything in a new light and see God mysteriously moving in ways we never understood before.

So contemplating on a picture of a flamingo revealed not only my smallness but God's greatness. In the descent of contemplation one is lifted up (resurrected) to new heights of discovery and ascension. If Job came away at the end of the book a different man, I find myself going through my own mystical desolate moments only to find that I am the one changed in the process. I find in my own mystical moments that I am a different man changed by the grandeur of God's beauty in the face of Jesus Christ.

Riding the Cosmic Whirlwind

Be aware of the world around you
Brokenness, weakness and hurting too
Delighting in God who resides in the now
Resting in the present moment is our sacred vow

Breathe deeply the breath of God
Rising moon and in cosmic awed
Beauty and wonder fills the skies
Oneness with God while self dies

Seeking God's kingdom first in everything
Undivided heart in following the King
True abandonment in humble wonder
Forgetting self as the world thunders

All creation is a reflection of God's unity
Every person drawn towards divine community
Flaws and failings is not what life is about
Self examination of one's heart is the hardest workout

Am I feeding on God or just my own ego?
Religious food is no substitute for soul food of God's divine trio
Mystical Christ, meet me here in this place to awake
Nothing less than the transformation of the cosmos is at stake

What is Christian Mysticism?

All children are born mystics, and if you were once a child, you were once a mystic. Christian mysticism is following the example of Christ as he followed the Father. And mysticism is not by any means restricted to Christianity: the Bible says, “everyone who loves is begotten of God, and knows God.” (1 Jn. 4.7)

God "strolled in the Garden" with man (Heb. 'adam). Jacob saw heaven opened. God spoke to Joseph through dreams. Moses communed with God on Sinai. David lost himself in dancing for the Lord.
But when Jesus declared "I and the Father are one," (Jn. 10.30) Jesus proclaimed in himself the union of God and humankind, and he offers it to all who follow him (he gave the power to become sons of God to all who believe. (Jn. 1.12).

From there, the mystic heart is seen in the letters of the apostles: Paul reached the divinized state of losing his "self": I no longer live, but Christ lives in me! (Gal. 2.20) James wrote that every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of Lights, in whom there is no variation nor shadow of turning. (Jas. 1.17) Peter proclaimed that Christ even descended to hell to liberate imprisoned souls, (1 Pet. 3.19) and John understood the most sublime truth of God's essence: God is Love! (1 Jn. 4.8,16).

This is only the beginning. Every century has been influenced by Christian mystics—from apostles and martyrs, Church Fathers and Desert Mothers, to monks and nuns of religious orders, to the lay mystics—men and women and boys and girls in every century, in every denomination, in every walk of life.

Universal Mystic

Mystical Wisdom
  Eternal Revelation
    Transforming Spirit
      Holy Encounter
        Incarnate Love
          Radiant Humility
        Broken creation
      Fragments of the Divine
    Empty Barrenness
  Resident Exile
Dark Chaos

Mystic Love

Can we go beyond division and strife
Beyond separateness to find the connections and stillness of life
Endless competitions and vain pursuits
Upheavals of life that effect the core for following life's routes

Driven by instinct but awakening to mystery
Coming to the end of myself to find a new pathway and history
Primal feelings and ancestral awakenings
Consumed by fire and love and my spirit quickening

We've gone to the moon and drilled the earth's crust
Flown into outer space to save the human race
But have we found the inner compass that reveals our true face
Perplexed we know something is missing
There's more to life than simply existing

The soul listens to the primal call
The heart's cry and the Spirit's chant
The body's silent chant stirs our thoughts
The mystery of love and the poet's dance

Is it a song or a dream or something else
Rhythms and vibrations of a secret place
Tangible love made manifest in the flesh
Love from heaven descending and giving us rest

The Strange Bedfellows of Science and Religion

The history of science and religion, particularly Christianity, has been a strange relationship of convergences and divergences.  The birth of science came from the seeds of Christianity's curiosity of the mind, free exploration of ideas, scientific study, and the pursuit of truth.  Many early famous scientists were both Christians and scientists.  Even Darwin started off as a Christian even if his faith wavered or was lost in the end.  Now the strong majority of scientists are atheists.  What happened?

Naturalism and Darwinism have ruled science for some time now and this has made an uneasy alliance or strange bedfellows between science and Christianity.  What we have today is an assortment of strange looking creatures and monsters which have been produced by this uneasy alliance between science and religion.

1.  The first strange looking creature is the ostrich.  The ostrich is not an attractive bird and many would say its quite ugly with its big eyes, long neck, and disproportional body.  The ostrich hides its head in the sand when faced with fear or danger.  This ostrich approach has become possibly the majority one among Christians and people of religious faith.  Science is either ignored or denied as an ungodly discipline and too worldly for the more spiritual church.  Rather than all truth is God's truth and we can learn from both the revelation of the world and the revelation of scripture, the only acceptable interpretation of the world comes from a particular reading of scripture while all other readings are compromised or wrong.

2.  The second strange creature or monster is the Minotaur.  The minotaur is a very aggressive creature that is fighting a culture war against science and is losing.  This is the YEC view (Young Earth Creationists) that interpret the Bible literally and view evolution as the great enemy or great evil that needs to be vanquished.

3.  The third strange looking creature is the chameleon.  The Chameleon simply fits into its environment or society by looking and resembling it.  Here science rules biblical interpretation and no matter what science is being employed, it is simply read back into scripture as if the pre-scientific writers of the Bible actually intended to speak authoritatively on matters of science and even modern ideas today.

There are many more hybrids, crossbreds, and hideous looking transformations to numerous to count.  What I want to do is present a new model of understanding science by mysticism.  Christian mysticism has a Trinitarian structure of both unity and diversity as well as an incarnational core that can look like a monster to those operating in one of these other strange creature worlds of existence.  To them mysticism is not rational or logical enough.  Mysticism is too subjective and too interior focused for those who want a more factual and objective approach.  It seems neither the scientific community nor the Christian academy opts for this alternative approach.

Science and the church have both forgotten or abandoned their historical mystical roots.  Both originated from mystical encounters with the Creator interacting with His creation.  Both were raised up from the dust to shine like stars in the heavens.  Both were to ascend to heaven and the angelic realm.  But science and church theologians too often have reduced man to either simply being an intelligent animal or an animal with a spiritual soul living in a world to conquer and divide, kill or be killed, and bite when provoked.

If science and Christianity are to advance and evolve then both must surrender themselves to the mystical intuitions and cosmic Christ of the universe who interconnects all reality as all reality is joined to its Creator.  Can we see with new eyes the wonder, beauty, mystery, symmetry, and grandeur of the created universe?  Can scientist and mystic hold hands in appreciating that the universe is greater and beyond what we can ever think and imagine.  The future is waiting for a holistic model that joins science and religion together where neither one loses its individuality or uniqueness while they both converge into greater unity and oneness with the one who made them both.

Treasures Old and New

I have been dealing with some mystical ideas which are both complex and mystifying.  I spent some time with the Eastern Orthodox yesterday and we talked about Saints, Christian imagination, and the life of St. Patrick.  In the midst of thoughts that kept coming at me like a splinter in my mind I could not let go were some of these issues.

1.  How does our traditions and beliefs limit or aid us in our faith walk with God?  One person's boundaries are different from another.  Spiritual discernment and developing a scriptural imagination are essential to helping us on the one hand not to jump off the track but on the other hand, what if we miss what God is trying to show us because we are simply not ready to receive it at the moment?  "Lord, help make me ready and willing."

So here is another idea about the number 1111 that is way outside my comfort zone.  Many Jews say there is spiritual power and powerful numbers associated with the Hebrew alphabet.  One way of assigning numbers to the Hebrew letters is with gematria.  When one arranges the letters to form four ones, one gets this message.  "God wants us fully human.  There is only one God and God wants us to be One.  God desires to bring heaven to earth so that this world would be transfigured.  As heaven unites with earth, all people will be blessed."  As one who strongly believes in the unity of God's Spirit and the unity for all of God's people, this powerfully resonates with me today.

2.  I started reading the visions of Joa Bolendas.  She is a Protestant Pastor wife who had these fascinating conversations with angels, saints, and Mary.  She was so changed by these encounters that she becomes more Eastern Orthodox and Catholic in her thinking and spiritual practices.  I especially look forward to seeing her long discussions on the meaning of various scriptures within the Bible. I suddenly had this thought concerning her spiritual DNA or her background.  I knew she lived in Switzerland but is that her background or is it German?  The reason I ask is my background is German and all the sudden I am wondering what I may learn from German mysticism since that is my roots and history?  Two German mystics I plan on visiting in the future are Hildegard von Bingen and St. Mechtild.

3.  Somehow I have been thinking that when we partake of holy communion, we are not only connecting oneself to the Risen Christ but also to the primal light of creation.  Somehow I am starting to realize there is a creational pattern of not only the first seven days but all through the Bible in ways we have yet to discover or contemplate.  Somehow when we enter into the Eucharist, we are entering mystically into a deeper revelation of Creation even if we consciously don't realize or understand it.  This is another place where heaven and earth intersect and we enter into becoming a new creation as God is making all things new.

4.  There has been these words of a Christian song that have been stuck in my head.  The chorus goes "Love came down and rescued me."  I am starting to meditate on the idea of the many ways heaven itself is coming to earth to rescue us.  When we have dreams and visions from heaven, heaven is rescuing us.  When Muslims see visions of Jesus and turn to Christ by the thousands, heaven is rescuing us.  When we enter another world, a heavenly dimension whether in worship or study of God's Word, or by prayer, heaven is rescuing us.

5.  Somehow the old and new are colliding together.  The Older Testament is colliding with the Newer Testament.  The ancient Eastern or Catholic Church is colliding with contemporary Christians.  My German heritage and roots are colliding with Christian mystics from the past and present.  As I read old books and new books, God is bringing forth treasures old and new and I am full of praise and perplexed all at the same time.  The old creation and the new creation are coming together.  Maybe this is what it means to be witnesses of the resurrection of Christ today?

Books Outside the Borders

Almost everything I have been reading lately is between four hundred to six hundred years old.  I am a mystical lover of God and these great works were written by Christian mystics centuries ago.  I have been reading a few recent books that are typically outside the borders of what many Christians usually read.  Here is a short reading list I have been reading for this year.

1.  Evelyn Underhill Mysticism is a classic work on the study and deep theological reflections on mystical writers throughout the centuries.  She is known as a Christian mystic herself and writes with a depth and scholarship and one of the leading authorities on Christian mysticism even though she wrote this at the beginning of the twentieth century.

2.  Carter J. Gregory wrote a book on the mystical view of scripture called The Fourth Watch of the Night.  Carter deals with the mystical numbers in the Bible from Daniel through the Gospels and Paul's writings.  He shows patterns and an intentional form of biblical numerology that is often overlooked or dismissed by the Christian academy today.

3.  The Rev. Dr. Donna Fletcher is a contemporary Christian theologian and mystical writer.  In her book Reflection of the Heart, she writes devotional thoughts about a Christ centered love for God in understanding oneself as well as understanding God.  She interweaves beautiful prose, poetry, and reflections throughout her book.

4.  Deana Deering is a charismatic mystic writer who writes inspirational and spirit-filled thoughts in her The Masterpiece of the Wilderness: Journeys of a Warrior Poet.  Her book connects scripture, prophetic insights, and spiritual words that comfort and challenge the reader. 

5.  Abraham Heschel is an orthodox Jewish writer and one of the most prolific writers of our day.  He writes with such beautiful prose that one is lifted into the heavenly places just reading some of his poetic theology.  A wonderful anthology of his best thoughts is called I Asked for Wonder.

6.  Travis Scholl is a creative and engaging writer and speaks of the mystical journey through a book he wrote on a forty day Lenten journey.  The book is called Walking the Labyrinth which deals with see God in creation, life, family, work, and play.  Scholl powerfully brings the mystical image of labyrinth to life by literally walking through one on a forty day spiritual journey through the gospel of Mark.

7.  Lastly, I have been reading Archimandrite Zacharias book called The Enlargement of the Heart.  This work is about the Eastern Orthodox saint Silouan whose famous saying is "Keep the mind in hell but despair not."  There are always two opposite poles or polar opposite edges we sometimes forget to explore.  We read a scripture about love and say nothing about hate or fear that is its opposite.  We read a verse about double mindedness but don't pay attention to single mindedness as its opposite.  We are told to look up in the Bible but what if God tells us to look down and see how desperate and lost we without God in hell?  St. Silouan powerfully reveals how this spiritual exercise can help us not be attached to this world while at the same time drawing closer to God with Christ-like humility.

The World, God's Playhouse

"We must get the self out of the way in order to make ourselves available to God"

In reading the Christian mystics and even emulating them, some of their highest aims are reoccurring themes like how does the human soul which hungers for perfection from God draw closer to God in prayer?  For these Christian mystics, the inner life is the life of the soul and the outer life that of the body. 

It is somewhat disconcerting when Christians today find that "normal" Bible study and prayer time has not transformed them into the kind of followers of Jesus that they see from the Bible.  We keep praying the same prayers, doing the same spiritual exercises and find very minimal change in the process.  What the Christian mystics are doing, and more properly should say, in being what God has intended them to be in developing the interior life through a whole deeper different kind of praying than many of us are used to today.

We stop fighting with others and begin the real battle from within.  We stop trying to do more and sit still and begin to listen to what God may be saying in all this.  We find ceaseless activity is not a gift of the Spirit but is a trap of the Devil.  We discover that prayer is not about how we are going to change our lives for God but how God is going reveal what our true needs are and what real changes will truly transform us.

It's not that everything we have been taught or shown is wrong but so much of it unfortunately is backwards.  Holy inactivity leads to activity and not the other way around.  We want to begin as young men or strong warriors for God and God is calling us all back to being a simple child again.  In our helpless and utter weaknesses we find that only God can bring out of us, deep in our soul, what we can not do for ourselves.  It is only the fire of God's love that can melt our cold hard hearts.

I have a beautiful picture of a little boy flying a kite in my office.  I visualize often that this little boy is me as I play out in these open pastures carefree and filled with joy unspeakable.  This picture in my office represents what God wants from all of us, to be like little children and enjoy Daddy God's presence.  Sometimes I think the winds of the Spirit of God are simply whispering to each of us in the middle of the day, God speaking, "Will you play with me?" "Will you play with me? Will you?"

To Pilgrims, Monks, and Mystics

"I have found heaven on earth, since heaven is God, and God is in my soul"  -  Elizabeth of the Trinity

The more I study the Bible, the bigger it gets and the smaller I become.  The longer I meditate on God's Word, the more it penetrates the depths of my heart.  The more I learn, the less I know.  Instead of me mastering the Bible, the Bible is mastering me.  To be a mystic is to encounter God in the ordinary and the everyday.  The movie "Heaven is for Real" comes out tomorrow and I find Christian pilgrims, monks, and mystics stumble, run, and fall into the unseen realm of heaven all the time.  Many times we are neither looking for God or heaven but God and heaven have a habit of finding and running headlong into us.

My prayer life is changing.  My prayers are simply echoes of listening to God and His Word and praying them back to heaven where they come from.  I am learning how to come into God's presence every day.  I find myself at times simply praying my concerns to God and then God prays His concerns for the world back through me.

2014 is like a new season preparing us for another spiritual season of 2015.  I see the wheat and the tares growing together, God doing more than I have ever seen before and Satan trying more to stop God's heavenly advancement on earth.  I am not one for apocalyptic fevers but I pray for all my brothers and sisters in Christ for the coming days because I sense something huge on the horizon spiritually.  The spiritual always changes the natural and manifests in the physical world around us.
Things are not always what they seem.  People who are comfortable will find their world shaken apart and those who find themselves in the miry clay will be lifted out of it to a place they could have never come on their own but only by God's help and direction.

Be still, and know God!

Wishful Thinking

DOUBTS ARE THE ANTS IN THE PANTS OF FAITH.  THEY KEEP IT AWAKE AND MOVING  -  Frederick Buechner

Frederick Buechner is a poet, a scholar, and a theologian.  He writes and says things in ways that rings true in our hearts and our uttermost being.  Here are some excerpts from his "Wishful Thinking" that should stir our imaginations for God and challenge us to a higher way of seeing and doing:


1.  When it comes to prayer, "Even if God does not bring you the answer you want, he will bring you himself.  And maybe at the secret heart of all our prayers that is what we are really praying for?"

2.  "We condemn in others the wrong we don't want to face in ourselves."

3.  "We think of eternal life, if we think of it at all, as what happens when life ends.  We would do better to think of it as what happens when life begins."

4.  And here are words of Buechner that are so mysterious, so sweet, so powerful, I lose my breath at the reality of what he says as God's spirit is like a fire in my bosom or belly.  Buechner writes,

"When our faith is the strongest, we believe with our hearts as well as with our heads, but only at a few rare moments, I think, do we feel in our stomachs what it must be like to be engulfed by light."

Unless one has been engulfed by light and has experienced 'the Holy,' one will have no idea on earth what Buechner is talking about since only those who have been touched by heaven like this can truly know what it means to be embraced by the fire of God.

Waiting for the God Who Waits For You

TO PRAY MEANS TO WAIT FOR THE GOD WHO COMES - Carlo Caretto

God is looking for spiritual mystics who will abandon everything to find God alone. One such modern day crazy in love with God Catholic spiritual writer I have stumbled onto is Carlo Caretto. May the fire of God's Spirit burning through his words sting your heart:

"Every prayer-filled day sees a meeting with the God who comes; every night which we faithfully put as his disposal is full of his presence . . . His coming is bound to his promise, not to our works or virtue. We have not earned the meeting with God because we have served him faithfully . . . God is thrust onward by his love, not attracted by our beauty. He comes even in moments when we have done everything wrong, when we have done nothing . . . . when we have sinned."

"To have found God, to have experienced him in the intimacy of our being, to have lived even for one hour in the fire of the Trinity and the bliss of his Unity clearly makes us say, "Now I understand. You alone are enough for me."

(excerpts from his THE GOD WHO COMES)

On Pain of Heart

I joined a forum site on Christian Mysticism.  On the site is a page of interesting videos.  One of the videos is with an Orthodox Priest who I think is from Indianapolis, IN (We are in Southern Indiana!).  Anyway, the interviewer mentions St. Mark the Ascetic and Pain in the Heart (something like that).  When I searched Google under On Pain of Heart, I found this site.  Today I was looking for it and found some other sites that mention it.

Anyway, why this calls to me is the idea that when following God, there is an interior suffering (suffering defined as something done to you against your will).  An example is suffering against yourself such as when your will is crossed by another.

Anam Chara

I have been looking at Mysticism for some time and while viewing some books on Amazon about Mysticism, I came across this author and went and looked at his website.

Mystical Tradition

A MAN WITH AN EXPERIENCE IS NEVER AT THE MERCY
OF A MAN WITH AN ARGUMENT - Leonard Ravenhill

I love Eastern Orthodoxy for several reasons but I especially love their emphasis on the church being 'a way of life' and all theology is to be 'incarnational' in which the church embodies the presence of God on earth. What would happen if more Christians lived out the Divine Liturgy and prayed 'the divine hours' throughout each day? What would happen if 'Lectio Divina" (an ancient way of praying the Scriptures) formed our thoughts and habits?

Is it possible that a sacramental realism permeated God's people like those who tried to reform the church through monasticism centuries ago whereas we can't help but see and sense God's presence no matter where we are at or what we are doing?

At the end of the day, it seems like more and more people want to meet 'divinized' people who have been in the presence of Jesus rather than simply hearing intellectual and rationalistic arguments.

What about you? Would you rather hear good arguments for the Christian worldview or talk to someone whose life story is shaped by an encounter with God?