What if we are all Mystics?
Changes in perspective about specialness (and Rocks).
Today is one of those days that my skin feels too thin for this world. Where I soak myself in nature and am dazzled by light and sound and colour. Where the beauty and complete unlikelihood of it all can’t be tucked neatly back in my pocket like a treasure hoarded to be viewed later, when it’s more convenient. It’s also the kind of day where order cannot be dispensed and things I know make complete sense to undertake remain undone. My time at The Gardeners Cottage was the first phase of my life since childhood really where it felt mostly safe for me to have these kinds of days. People appreciate the beauty I collect for them where I bring back the glow of a tree or the sound of the leaves colliding as they fall into a day for them that order won.
Days like this make me think of the role of the mystic a little differently. Thousands of years have been spent dispensing order to put an intermediary between people and their experience of the gods. I don’t know what my gods are exactly these days. I have wonder and a strong understanding of more than this failing skin-suit time. I have prayed on the roll of dice at a craps table and beside someone I loved who was suffering or unsafe. But maybe mystics and saints were something we had to explain backwards because before there was an intermediary we were all mystics. Maybe there was only us somedays and moments feeling the wonder and sometimes just taking care of the orderly needs of staying alive and in community.
Would we look differently on the version of events that distanced the mystics from us by calling them “recognisable” instead of special?
Susie
What I’ve been reading:
Continuing on a theme of change in perspective, I wanted to share this powerful essay “Wrinkled Time” from Emergence Magazine orienting us in the deep time-fulness of earth through the archive of rock. It’s brilliant and I couldn’t help grab a few samples for you:
“…as geologists hammered at rocks, they began to understand that each gold vein and coal seam was part of a grand illuminated manuscript recording the history of the world. In an ironic twist, geology’s richest discovery is arguably an intellectual and philosophical one—an understanding of Deep Time.”
“At some point in the last few hundred years, Western culture ceased to find, in Shakespeare’s words, “books in the running brooks, sermons in stone,” and instead began to view rocks, soils, and, by extension, the planet itself as dumb matter.
The spiritual solace we crave may lie in the records of deep time that are our common heritage as Earthlings. The rocky archives have been patiently awaiting our notice. In them, we may find reassurance in the persistence of earlier worlds all around us; a sense of wonder at how extraordinary their preservation is; gratitude for the way they permeate the present with mystery, gravitas, and the promise of continuity.”
It’s a long read but you can also listen to it narrated by its author Marcia Bjornerud. https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/wrinkled-time/
Carved Stone Monuments used to have colours! I came across this talk happening at Perth Art Gallery (in person only) but it lead me down a beautiful rabbit hole by scholar Jordyn Patrick and I am thrilled with that.