A mystic is someone who, plain and simple, seeks to remove the ‘and’ from life. This makes life a both/and experience rather than an either/or one. To the mystic it is not either I work or I pray; it is I pray and work. When I pray, I am working. When I work, I am praying.
I got it last night after doing the dishes for the umpteenth time yesterday; I knew God was present in the dishpan hands, in the suds, in the warm water flowing over the ever cleaned dishes. A mystic knows and experiences God doing the dishes – yes, I meant God is the one doing the dishes. 😉
Prayer is work, work is prayer. Ora et labora as the Benedictines say.
As a mystic, I merely try to allow God to remove the ‘and’ from the spaces between and within my heart and life, from between the flurry of activities during the day and the moments when I sit in Silence seeking to know this loving God who dwells within.
I am a mystic.
I say that not in arrogance but in assurance for I know that God is faithful to me even when I am not faithful. It is not an emotional declaration, but a truthful one: we are all made in the image and likeness of God and therefore bear the eternal tattoo of imago Dei.
As a mystic I simply spend the days removing the ‘and’ from life thus allowing the God who dwells within to dwell within everything I do or say, for God’s very presence flows from my very being; and all of this from the Spirit, and not from me. Me, I am just an open, cracked jar of clay, a vessel waiting to be filled with divine love, waiting expectantly for the truth to emerge from within me.
And in this truth, all becomes one in the absolute awareness of the cohesion of God’s loving, created order.
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