These are legitimate questions that I often hear. Not only who the Christian mystics are, but also why I would want to get to know them. Truth is, you might not want to. I didn’t know I wanted to know them until I was introduced. We can’t know someone is going to be a friend until we spend time with them; hearing their story, learning their quirks and passions, seeing them fail, sharing a good laugh together, and finding they are the ones who stick with you when times get tough. First impressions are rarely quality identifiers of a good friend. I have lifelong friends whom I never expected would be by my side as long as they have been, and first impressions had nothing to do with it.

On first impression: the mystics seemed weird, suspicious even. To be fair, protestant, Reformed Christian history has not been kind to the mystic, even though Jesus is pretty mystical in my estimation. But when I got to know them, I quickly discovered they were my kind of people; people I didn’t often meet in the church, but had been desperately needing to infuse life into my faith and understanding of Jesus. As I’ve gotten to know their stories, writings, and thoughts, my first impression quickly faded into the distant past. In the Christian mystics, I’d finally found my people.

A Rebellious Bunch

One of my favorite descriptions of the mystics comes from Mirabai Starr in her book Ordinary Mysticism. She calls them subversive sages, renegades, poets, rebels, rule breakers; they color outside the lines and are holy troublemakers. I loved this about them straightaway.

I met the mystics in a season of working through disappointment with the church, Christian doctrines and institutions, and spiritual hurt. I will often tell people that the mystics kept me grounded in the faith when I felt the faith abandoned me. The mystics break through cultural norms and still choose Christ no matter the mess found in the context of the church of their times. Because of their resistance to what I like to call “bad protocol,” I found them to be perfect guides through all the rubbish and pain I’d amassed within the Christian pond I was swimming in.

A Communal Bunch

What I learned from the mystics is that mysticism is ultimately about communion—relationship. They knew how to cut through the red tape of Christian bureaucracy and pursue an intimately passionate relationship with the Divine Creator of the Universe. And isn’t that exactly why God has been pursuing humanity all these years—to commune with his beloved creation?

For the first time in my Christian journey, I found people who got it, lived it, and didn’t let structures, hierarchies, institutions, or boundaries keep them from their heart’s desire— union with Jesus.

It is not that the mystics bucked the institution of the church, desiring to see its demise—no. They very much existed and lived within the cultural norms of the church structure of their eras, but they did not tolerate sinfulness or corrupt methods within the systems of the church that kept people from the Good News. Rather, they fought to uphold the Church and maintain its health and vibrancy in the Holy Spirit through prayer and service.

Many of them were reformers, improving the life and ministry of the church’s service, deepening a greater vision for a life of prayer and discipleship. Some even spoke up against the Pope when he wasn’t fulfilling his duties in an honorable way. They advocated for service, evangelism, prayer, charity, and love when the church wasn’t fulfilling its duty, even if it risked their lives. These are often areas of the gospel neglected and underserved by the larger body, and the mystics meet us in the forgotten spaces where need and longing are alive and well. They are contemplatives in action, desiring all to be in communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

A Prayerful Bunch

For those of us who go through seasons of doubt in our faith or the church, and are struggling through the hard hits of life—we know the first place to go dry is our prayer life. Who wants to pray to a God that doesn’t seem to care?

For years I’d struggled with understanding the point of prayer. I’d been disappointed enough by unanswered or mis-met prayers that I’d altogether given up. It was hard to justify this when I met the mystics. Their whole thing is prayer. Without it, they would have no stories to tell, no encounters with the Divine, no visions, no prophetic words to pass along, and no purpose or calling in the world. They showed me that prayer is pretty important in the grand scheme of things.

I’d never met a group of people so devoted to various forms of prayerful devotion to God. I’m not talking about petitions or intercessions. That was the only form of prayer I ever learned about, and to be honest, it was failing me because it was all about what I wanted and needed, but didn’t make space for listening, waiting, tending the soul, or relationship with the Trinity.

You see, the Christian mystics are open to the possibility of God’s self-communication, mystery, and the receipt of grace through daily living that is immersed in prayerfulness—a posture of prayer without ceasing. They knew what it meant to notice God’s grace in all things, even the not-so-nice things. I didn’t know that was possible. Their spirit of interconnectedness and intentionality grew forth from their prayer life.

Christian mystics desire union, oneness with their Creator, and they teach us that prayer is the means to this way of being. And before you think they aren’t grounded in God’s word, let me put your worry to rest. Not only were they devoted to the church, but they were also saturated in the word of God. Please recall in my last post that for many of them, they lived before the written word was in their hands. For many of them, Scripture was in Latin, only available to clergy, and often learned through oral sermons and teachings. Some mystics were clergy and had access to some Scripture, but most had memorized what they could, and noted what they learned during Sunday Mass. A large part of contemplative prayer was meditation on God’s word.

John Dominic Crossan, who names Paul a mystic, with which I agree, emphasizes that in Christ we find our mystical identity. Let’s not forget that Paul was a big proponent of prayer, God’s word, and the mystery of Christ gathering us all into himself to form one mystical body. The Christian mystics not only believe our Baptism in Christ welcomes us into the family, but that we also need an ongoing deepening into the body through a living prayer life in pursuit of unity with the Holy.

A Creatively Brave Bunch

Many of the mystics were poets, authors, entrepreneurs, artists, and musicians. They articulated the magnitude of God using metaphor, images, story, and imagination because the intellect can only take us so far. The realm of mystery means we can’t box God into nice, neat doctrines, ideologies, or theologies, and we can’t package the Good News into a five-step plan. When we do, we make God too small.

God is magnanimous. Glory does not fit into our neatly programmed services or concepts. I love theology more than most, but it has its limits because it is ultimately bound by our human imagination, which pales in comparison to God’s. God, on the other hand, is big and mysterious; his fantastical, unbound creativity means the plausibility of him being near and present in our earthly mess is possible—as we learn through the incarnation. The Christians mystics are just enough crazy to dream of diving into Divine absurdities such as incarnation, suffering, the crucifixion, the now, not yet, spiritual union, and the liminal space between Heaven and Earth to know and be known by the object of their affection—they are generally an adventurous bunch.

The mystics blew the lid off my very minuscule understanding of God and showed me the spaciousness of the Trinity, which I have yet to explore.

St. Teresa of Avila, author of The Interior Castle and a mystic, helped me understand that mysticism moves us into the world without fear. When we believe and trust that God is big enough for whatever we face, we have courage enough to step into any future that seems uncertain because God widens our capacity through his magnanimity. There is no end to loving and being loved by God.

Most churches are afraid of God being mysterious. We can’t preach mystery because it doesn’t have definitive answers or three-point sermon capabilities. However, when we embrace mysticism as a means of letting go of control because we can trust not only the love of God but the abundance of God’s provision and power for good, then we don’t have to fear what we face in our daily life. Life becomes full of abundant possibilities often found in the least likely of places. Like that of a manger.

Mystery involves darkness, an unsureness that looks like irrationality, liminality, miracles, incarnation, indwelling, silence, suffering, improbabilities, black holes, and trips through death to life. All the places we like to avoid. But the mystics plunge headfirst into the unknowing, awaiting the emphatic probability of God’s Creative Love being a means of abundant possibility and life. They don’t shy away from the hard, unthinkable, unimaginable, or complexities of life. Rather, they invite them in, live within them, and surprisingly, find God’s goodness waiting with open arms.