The Impermanence of Transcendence

Mystic Ecstasy and the Holy Mundane

I’ve been thinking a lot these past few weeks about what kind of capacity humans have for transcendence, for those moments when we are utterly transported, caught in something like mystic rapture. And because my favorite mystics are the female ones, I’ve been thinking about their lives and experiences. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mind feeling like this all the time:

Or this.

We have these moments, most of us, marked by clarity and vision and joy, but they are fleeting, impermanent. Still, we are nourished by the memory of them, even as our days are mostly made up of what we might call the holy mundane.

I think that’s a good thing. After all, the mystics I admire so much were busy running convents and writing letters and caring for others, too. No one levitated all the time. Neither should we expect to.

I envision our earthly lives as a frame. There are flashes of the eternal in it, like bright dashes of iridescent color, but the eternal, in its entirety, simply will not fit within the confines of the frame.

And this makes us scouts, I think, for glimpses of that transcendence. It doesn’t take much. I’ll catch myself in awe of the way the light falls on my child’s eyelashes. A shiver of delight will rush through me when I hear the sound of gravel crunching under my feet. I’ll gasp at the sight of a deep purple sunset out the kitchen window.

And I’ll think my feet are firmly planted, but for just a second, it seems, I’m hovering ever so slightly above the ground.

(Sending you a short one this week because the child with the beautiful eyelashes is home sick, and I’ve got to run get the grocery list together. The holy mundane. I actually just mistyped this as the holy mundance, and that seems like a lovely idea: dancing through the holy mundane. Maybe my fingers know more than I do.)

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A Few Hopeful Things:

-You all are very cool, so I’m sure you already know that Cole Arthur Riley of Black Liturgies has a new book out, and it’s magnificent. What a gift she is.

-My lovely and brilliant friend Marina Gross-Hoy, writer and art historian, is offering a free workshop on new beginnings on January 27th! You will love it.

-Speaking of the female mystics, my other lovely and brilliant friend Shannon Evans has a new book coming out on them later this year! I can’t wait to read it and add it to the bestie section of my bookshelf.

Levitating ever so slightly with you,
Cameron