Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,
As someone with chronic illness, I became entranced when I discovered that many of the medieval women mystics also dealt with their own experiences of serious illness. Hildegard of Bingen is thought to have suffered from migraines, Clare of Assisi possibly from multiple sclerosis, Julian of Norwich was brought to the brink of death from illness, among many others.
While there are many portals to the liminal realm, including dreams and creative expression, illness remains one of the most powerful.
I want to make clear from the start that there is a significant difference between saying that my own lifelong struggle with rheumatoid arthritis was intended by God to teach me something and a more humble and truthful perspective that my wrestling with illness, pain, and fatigue have revealed to me depths of meaning, compassion, and wisdom. I do not believe that we are ever “given” our illnesses to teach us lessons. That is not a God I want to be in loving relationship with. But I do want to be in intimate connection with the Beloved who stays with me through the pain and helps me to bear it, to cultivate endurance and patience, and who ultimately helps transform the wounds into gift and grace.
There are many for whom the pain obliterates their sense of self and will never find meaning in it or grace. Whatever stories we tell about the divine presence need to make room for these stories as well.
I think more than theodicy (exploring why there is evil or pain in the world), what we need are examples of spiritual practices that can help us sustain our faith in the midst of pain and suffering. We need examples of others who have been able to cultivate patience and endurance.
Disability theologian Sharon Betcher explains in her powerful book Spirit and the Politics of Disablement, “we are, as a culture, experiencing massive levels of chronic pain. And we no longer have the religious or cultural know-how to tap into or open out such pain for social analysis, we no longer know how to use it as a motivational force of either personal or sociocultural change.”
In our modern medical model, eradicating pain is the goal, but we lose sight of the value that can come from approaching pain from a spiritual perspective as well. How can we live meaningful lives that encompass the pain we experience? How can our bodies reveal wisdom about living with deeper compassion for ourselves and others?
Betcher believes we might find rich models among the women mystics: “One does not overcome illness,” she writes: “one lives with it like an ascetic, assuming it as a practice through which one might learn to cull out reactive forces and numbing habits, while staying present to being alive.”
Illness and other kinds of suffering can become initiatory when we approach it not just as something we want to eliminate, but as another portal into the liminal realm. The central symbol of our Christian faith is someone who went willingly to the place of profound physical pain, suffering, and ultimately death. For many of these visionaries, Christ becomes a partner to them in their pain and a teacher of compassion.
We are often afraid of our pain and suffering because they point to our “infinite fragility” as modern philosopher Simone Weil described it. Our bodily vulnerability and mortality are sometimes terrifying aspects of being human and alive, yet they also open the door to more intense living. So many of the ancient monks believed that daily contemplation of death was necessary for a deeper relationship with life.
In a world that worships youth and health, to bear our illness with patient endurance is to stand in resistance to a culture that demands our perpetual productivity to be valued. It means we resist glib explanations for why pain exists. Pain will inevitably visit us all in some form. In her book Gravity and Grace, Simone Weil writes, “I should not love my suffering because it is useful. I should love it because it is . . . We have to accept these things, not so far as they bring compensations with them, but in themselves; we have to accept the fact that they exist simply because they do exist.”
We are called into loving presence with one another in the midst of each of our sufferings. This is how pain is transformed, by being witnessed and held. Pain can steal our energy, our time, our relationships, our sense of ourselves and our futures.
In the figure of Christ, Weil found a pain companion, who “came down and took possession of me.” Through Christ, Weil’s experience of pain becomes part of a mystical union, which connects her to the suffering, crucified Christ. By sharing her pain with Christ, and sharing in Christ’s passion, Weil found she could transform the meaning of her pain. According to Weil, God is able to fill the lonely emptiness of pain with grace.
The medieval women mystics also follow this pathway of uniting themselves to the One who suffered in such excruciating ways. In sharing their pain with Christ, they transform its meaning.
Medieval women like Hildegard of Bingen and Teresa of Avila who experienced chronic and debilitating pain, lived in a liminal space between this world and the divine realm, and were able to open to the mysteries of God and return to the beauty of this world with renewed vision.
For the medieval women visionaries, illness was transformed into a portal to deepened connection with the divine. As the Crucified One becomes more central to medieval faith, the mystics see their own suffering as a mirror of Christ’s and a doorway to intimacy with the Beloved. In the midst of their own illness and disability, they discover powerful abilities to see things in new ways.
When we approach illness with humility and without triteness of explanation, when we open our hearts to what we might be invited to learn, what wisdom is awaiting us, we can be initiated through illness. To be initiated means to move from one life stage to another. We can move from victim of our circumstance, into compassionate and wise guide for others.
This is some of the wisdom for living in challenging times the medieval women mystics offer to us. Whether you deal with chronic pain and illness or another kind of suffering, join us as we listen across time for what Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Clare of Assisi, Angela of Foligno, and Hildegard of Bingen have to offer us.
Our retreat Seven Gates of Mystical Wisdom begins Ash Wednesday with a live two-hour retreat where I will be joined by Polly Paton-Brown and Richard Bruxvoort Colligan. Together we will cross the threshold into Lent and open our hearts to how the Beloved wants to speak to us this season.
The seven weeks that follow have weekly text and pre-recorded audio reflections and meditations from me, along with video invitations to creative practice and dance prayers, and a weekly video conversation with a scholar about each of the mystics. There will be a lovingly facilitated forum for those who want to enter into conversation.
With great and growing love,
Christine
Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE
