pensamientos

so i've been mused on by dasganze's recent post. i've just gotten home from the sunday night service i've started going to... basically a bunch of college kids hanging out, recruiting a preacher (this service thing was his idea to start with, we run it, but need his guidance and encouragement) to teach us, and in their words, "doing church differently". it's cool. and after my first week, i was recruited to be the "worship-leader-person". which i have found that i enjoy doing. It's not just playing guitar and singing on sunday nights, it's the whole process i go through to have the music ready. It forces me to play on one instrument or another or sing or at least think about songs everyday. It makes me be creative... and i wasn't so sure i could be that. Now i find myself writing more, thinking more, chilling more. I'm sitting here listening to soft music. I've recently found joy hearing Phil Wickham and Edison Glass. I've usually listened to rockier stuff, and still love it. but it was often just to get the aggression out from all the stress i was going through. Now i'm still busy, but maybe not quite as angry. Why? simply because i now make the effort to create... and in this effort, i feel the need to be at peace in all things i do. This has led me to cut out some activities and add others.
I went to a museum last sunday, saw some abstract expressionist works from the eastside of NYC. I've always appreciated such things (or tried to). But this time i actually understood. i stood there for much longer than i usually do, definitely a lot longer than the other people who ventured to the arts centre that day. The need to express one's emotion and impressions in a more tangible way than simply speaking...in fact, sometimes to truly express requires more than just speech. I wish i had my sister's talent for painting, i'd love to express in colour. Maybe that's why i put such thought into the background for my powerpoint for the words on sunday nights... i think in colours and places. But in the lack of such, i shall express myself through note and tone, and feel with rhythm, song, piano keys, my raspy alto voice, and guitar strings.

a poem of reflection

What is joy?
So often now i feel
Rent, torn in two
By the world
But more- by my own heart.

What is life?
Could one even
Claim it, for it comes
And goes-
As it pleases, not as i.

How could i say anything
Unless You
Show me?

How could i feel
Unless You
Move me?

How can i live
Unless you
Raise me?

Mysticism

a recent conversation:

Me:
here's something cool i found today:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Underhill
a british mystical writer... a very intellectual type of christian it seems. quite interesting. i was thinking on mysticism a little bit, and as the article mentions it was shunned by protestants of the day. i'd posit that it often is today, too....we're caught up in a lot of rules and regulations. sure there are some people that do things because they "feel" god leading them to do so, and the church may commend them as having a "good heart" and even letting them do a lot of the dirty work, but it seems a lot of the time even they are stuck with the "rules" of "x" denomination and don't tend to move outside of them. so i dont count them as mystics. nor are they intellectual, which underhill seems to see as an important characteristic of a mystic.
(My point is, christianity as i see it quite often is full of laws, morals, and "new ways to do something correctly" I'll avoid commentary, i'm just noting an observation.)
I wonder if such "experiential" christianity as you and i seem to think that we need is kind of a modern mysticism. I mean "mysticism", what does that mean, anyway? it seems so far removed from us. is it just intellectual+experience+faith? or intellectual+experience=faith? or intellectual+faith=experience? and yes, i do think i'm simplifying it, mysticism is complex. but it amuses me to think we could be more "mystic" than we realize :).

Response:
A few lines in the article help explain:

her early mystical insights were described by her as "abrupt experiences of the peaceful, undifferentiated plane of reality—like the "still desert" of the mystic—in which there was no multiplicity nor need of explanation

Mysticism, purely, is about experience outside of explanation(causation). This can lead to "just is" kinds of things, as well as neoplatonic "beatific vision"(later falsely adopted by catholicism) all of which Schaeffer categorizes as a 'final' experience; one beyond all words, and any attempt to communicate it is reducing the experience. This creates a 'gnostikoi' (those who know). An explicit 'in/out' grouping based on happenstance of the Great Causation which Experiences upon you. (Not unlike the hope of the son returning in "Blast from the Past" ;) )

"yet concerned with her focus on mysticism and encouraged her to adopt a much more Christocentric view as opposed to the theistic/intellectual one she had previously held."

This is precisely the different between philosophy (neoplatonism/buddhism/deism) and christianity. And it's easy to do so! Philosophy has no category for Christianity beyond deism/theism!

Her focus on the Spirit is warranted; He has been downplayed waaay too much in history, and now overblown by the charismatics (who fall squarely into Schaeffer's description!)

It was a fundamental axiom of Evelyn Underhill, that all of life was sacred - as that was what "incarnation" was about.

Hmm.. yes and no. From wiki's "Christian Mysticism":

Two major themes of Christian mysticism are (1) a complete identification with, or imitation of Christ, to achieve a unity of the human spirit with the spirit of God; and (2) the perfect vision of God, in which the mystic seeks to experience God "as he is," and no more "through a glass, darkly." (1 Corinthians 13:12)

Yeah, that says it well. The first from Jn 15/17 I'm sure.

So I'd say that Mysticism can at best only semi-define a reality outside of this world, and then seek transcendent unity with it, despite (instead of through) this world.

While mysticism isn't fully rational, it's not necessarily fully fideist either (as some would like to put them all in). So the 'brand' of mysticism is dependent on how much definition you put of the noumenal. Faith, then is regarding (1) the reality of the noumenal and (2) method of transcendental unity with it.