I’ve gone down a particularly delightful rabbit hole.
Julian of Norwich lead me there. She’s always leading me to interesting new people and places.
I was googling her and came upon an episode about her in this podcast.
I’ve now listened to every single one.
It’s the perfect style and tone for me. It’s hosted by two academics - Alberto De La Cruz who interviews and queries domain expert Dr. Carlos Eire, T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University.
They discuss the people who are most notably and articulately involved in the practices of mysticism.
What the hell is mysticism?
“Broadly speaking, I understand [mysticism] to be the expression of the innate tendency of the human spirit towards complete harmony with the transcendental order, whatever the the theological formula under which that order is understood.”
Evelyn Underhill from her book Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness (1911)
Mysticism seems to be an internal practice, which primarily revolves around contemplative prayer and meditation - but for some people, in fairly consistent ways, with great regularity over the course of human history (there are pre-Christian, Islamic and Buddhist accounts of it too) - this interior practice seems to manifest startlingly external phenomena.
Like flying.
Which reminds me that the first time I heard of human beings flying is my friend J- whose father is Cambodian and says he has seen a (Buddhist?) monk flying across a valley.
The same way someone else might ride a bicycle.
That would have been in the 1960s or 1970s.
I have no trouble believing his father when he tells me about fleeing the Khmer Rouge in the hull of a shallow river boat that was straffed with machine gun fire, mercifully sparing him but killing dead the unfortunate person beside him.
Nor have I reason to dispute his account of a flying monk.
Both stories told so matter-of-factly. Offhand.
But it’s all nonsense of course!
My beloved father-in-law hears these stories, hears of the hundreds of witnesses to Joseph of Cupertino levitating, and getting stuck in a tree holding a lamb, and having to be fished down from a belltower, and he seeks the trick; seeks the artistic license that is describing something that did not happen, as happening.
Fair enough.
Personally, I feel that one of the most compelling arguments for the reality of St Joseph’s levitations is how unimpressed and frustrated many of his contemporaries were of them. His feats were the opposite of celebrated by the powers that be - his abbots and superiors - who were trying to live a contemplative life themselves and were constantly being distracted by Joseph’s (unintentional) antics, and mobs of people - from villagers to kings of Europe - who strained their capacity for hospitality by turning up at Joseph’s various monasteries.
They kept moving him about because these physical phenomena of mysticism were such a pain in their ass. Remember, these folks didn’t have our contemporary issue of demanding acceptable signs of the presence of the transcendent in their world. They knew how to read what we might now call the less obvious.
Another interesting point…
The Christians who invoke him today don’t ask him to help them fly.
They’re seek his intercession with God to help them pass an examination that they’re un(or under)prepared for.
This is based on a much more relatable and much more practical miracle from the life of the intellectually disabled St. J: when he miraculously passed an examination he was totally incompetent to pass.
Here’s the prayer.
O Great St. Joseph of Cupertino who while on earth did obtain from God the grace to be asked at your examination only the questions you knew, obtain for me a like favour in the examinations for which I am now preparing. In return I promise to make you known and cause you to be invoked.
Through Christ our Lord.
St. Joseph of Cupertino, Pray for us.Amen.
And then there are the bilocations…
Sister Maria of Ágreda never left her tiny town in Spain… except for the times she went into a trance and was also mystically present in New Mexico and other places in the present day American southwest and Mexico - where she did some remarkable work converting Native Americans to Christianity.
Apparently they wandered into a Franciscan monastery in New Mexico seeking baptism.
The monks had never heard of them, let alone had any prior contact, but the visitors assured them they had been sent by the ‘blue lady’.
This was in the 1600s - so it all took some time to piece the story together.
The stigmatics, I think, are the most easily ‘explainable’ in modern terms
An intense psychosomatic response to contemplation of the Passion of Christ?
To me the most convincing case of the reality of these things is that in almost all cases - levitation, bilocation, stigmatism etc (there are more)…
They hurt and are neither asked for, nor particularly wanted by the recipient.
They’re endured.
The mystics constantly attest to the pain of these physical phenomena.
Then accept them as a grace, though often pray to have this grace taken away from them.
Which it sometimes is. Sometimes not. I read about a levitator who managed to make the levitations stop after much imploring.
Not one of these people sought out fame or recognition for these phenomena.
Though hucksters throughout the ages have turned them into business operations.
And ultimately they’re a sideline - a byproduct of the true work of the mystic.
Purgation, illumination and union with the transcendental order of the universe.
But boy, do they make a great story.
My own relationship to these phenomena is complicated.
I’m one of the likes on this review of Carlos Eire’s new book They Flew by a fellow I know from New York - Stephen G. Adubato
Eire welcomes the space that postmodernism has afforded to post-secular narratives, while–as a historian–being critical of the relativist reading of miraculous events. At the end of the day, either “they flew,” or they did not.
I rather think they did.
I observe these phenomena a little like watching a great Olympic feat.
Part of me is delighted at the seemingly limitless bounds of human possibility.
Part of me is bummed that I don’t feel capable of actually doing such a thing myself.
Part of me dismisses it, really, as just a matter of persistence and training.
Part of me is envious at the idea that there’s talent involved too.
And I don’t have the persistence, training or talent - or it may be too late.
Part of me is reminded that it hurts - so I probably don’t want it anyway.
Then - to continue the Olympic metaphor, which has clearly bled into the mystic phenomena comparison…
I think, well, I might not be able to run a marathon in 2 hours. But it wouldn’t hurt me to go for a 20 minute jog.
And I do.
Ultimately it fills me with wonder and curiosity.
It spurs new action in me. New habits. New horizons.
What, of the mental and spiritual and physical phenomena of mysticism can I experience in my own small way?
Personally, so far in my life, the closest I get to physical experience of the transcendent is through music.
So I’ll leave you with this.
