Sometimes I feel like that child who walks through the back of the wardrobe and discovers Narnia. (CS Lewis : The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe ). Other times I feel like Alice burrowing down the rabbit hole and becoming “curiouser and curioser” (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland).
I recommend Practical Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill for us this morning. (It’s a public domain book available for download.) She referred to it as “a little book for normal people” (that’s us). Underhill once described prayer as “standing beside the Artist Lover.” She suggests that “To be human is to have a capacity for God.” The book was written more than a hundred years ago in the context of war, violence and urban blight.
The other piece is a case study of Bonhoeffer as a “practical mystic” to remind us that what we are talking about here is not a mysticism that is elitist or pietistic. Authentic mystical union leads to the practice of love-justice in society. We become “doers of the word” (James 1:22).
Silence in the face of evil is itself evil; God will not hold us guiltless.
Not to speak is to speak.
Not to act is to act.
—Deitrich Bonhoeffer
