Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,
For Lent this year we will be offering a retreat that focuses on 7 of the medieval women mystics, to see what wisdom they have for us. These were women who lived in their own dangerous times and many of whom struggled with experiences of illness as well.
The medieval women mystics have fascinated me since my time in graduate school when I was invited to deepen my study of them. Hildegard of Bingen seized my imagination first, a mystic and visionary, writer and composer, preacher and healer, she was one example of many of a powerful woman who was able to subvert the patriarchal hold on religion and whose voice had spiritual authority.
One thing mysticism, spiritual visions, and illness have in common is a profound experience of life’s liminality and dwelling on the thresholds between worlds. The mystic lives at the juncture between heaven and earth and lifts up all the ways they see the world behind the world breaking through. The visionary is inspired by images that appear like dreams to instruct and inspire about how we are to live fully in loving relationship with the divine presence.
From my ongoing experience with chronic illness, I like to describe the horizontal perspective we receive when forced to rest and lie in bed more hours than we would otherwise prefer. The world looks very different from a prone position, more vulnerable, more attuned to the needs of the body than the vertical perspective so prized by our modern culture.
In Dr. Terrill Gibson’s beautiful book The Liminal and the Luminescent, he describes the power and necessity of making ourselves available to this liminal realm:
The liminal is “where our Destiny—both collective and individual—is revealed. Many believe that this in-between liminal realm, this vast, ripe, emptiness within our understandings of conventional time and space, is where our primal wound is healed by the only ultimate balm there is—relationship and love. . . So, it is necessary to find the doorway, the portal, into such depth chambers of the psyche in order for such repeated, transformative exposure to occur. It is through this portal that the depth psycho-spiritual journey begins.”
He goes on to describe the liminal as “an evanescent, translucent place between worlds.” This is the realm that the mystics regularly encounter and spend time. It is the place where we draw our inspiration, renewal, and healing. Rather than imagine the liminal as a space up in heaven, we might see it as a deep well within that we can draw upon through dreams and intuition, through opening our hearts to the gifts the Beloved offers to us. The portal to these healing waters is everywhere. All that is required is an opening of our eyes and our hearts, a quiet presence and attunement. We enter this liminal space in many ways – dreams, pilgrimage, through landscape and nature, ritual, and the creative arts are all doorways.
Another way we can access the veil between worlds is any experience which humbles us, brings us to our knees, undoes us, disorients us. Often this comes through illness or some other kind of loss. When we are overcome by grief and suffering, if we can stay present to what is happening with us and not run away, Dr. Gibson tells us “we have an encounter with the Divine which brings freshness, renewal, and integration. Then we can ascend again but are now humbler, more grateful for life, with a keener eye on what is essential in our lives, and greater compassion for others.”
These virtues of humility, gratitude, and compassion are essential for our own personal and collective transformation. The women mystics knew what it meant to suffer and rather than be victimized by it, they allowed themselves to be transformed. These visionaries tell us again and again that the Beloved is always pouring out divine compassion and grace and we have knit into our being a deep hunger to receive. These mystics sat in the tension between the horrors of the world and its beauty with depth and consciousness and then offered it back to their communities, and to us across time.
Please consider joining us for our Lenten retreat Seven Gates of Mystical Wisdom where you will be invited each week to explore the wisdom offered by Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Clare of Assisi, Angela of Foligno, and Hildegard of Bingen.
With great and growing love,
Christine
Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE
Dancing Monk Icon by Marcy Hall
