Bonus: The Mystics and Social Justice

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Jim Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

Jim Finley (0:13)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

You. Greetings, everyone. And welcome to this bonus session, in which Kirsten and I were talking about how helpful it would be to see what the implications are to our efforts to turn to the mystics for spiritual guidance in guiding us in how we understand and respond to this widespread social unrest throughout the United States and other countries in the world, too, in response to the killing of George Floyd, which is seen also to be but the latest example of an ongoing systemic racism within the culture. And then the rising up like a collective consciousness with a collection of the movement of the spirit in the world, moving people to make a response to this. And so our commitment to the mystics is a commitment then to this presence of God that utterly transcends the darkness of this world, but not to distance us from it, but rather to radicalize our commitment to God's presence in the world. And so the mystics, the tonal quality of the mystics then, in the Christian mystic, let the mind that was in Christ Jesus also be in you. How would Jesus, how could we join Jesus in how Jesus would understand what's happening? How could we join Jesus in what Jesus' attitude would be, that it might be our attitude? And how might that Christ consciousness move us to act in response to this societal crisis slash opportunity?

And to get at this, this brief reflection here, I thought I'd share with you a paraphrase in the writings of St. Augustine, who was a great early Christian philosopher, theologian and mystic.

And I want to paraphrase it this way. I think this is in the Confessions of Augustine.

Augustine's insight is that whenever we're prejudice against anybody based on race or a sexual orientation or ethnic cultural background or religious belief or what any reason might be, we have some very deep level of prejudice against ourselves. Because underlying these cultural, societal, historical differences is the underlying bond of our shared humanity, with each other. We're woven in to each other. Which, by the way, is really what activates empathy, why we relate and respond to each other because we sense that interconnectedness with each other. And for us here too, in the sense of faith, in the sense of the mystics, it goes even deeper. Because here, we say whenever we're prejudiced against anyone, we're prejudiced against ourselves as a person created by God in the image and likeness of God. That all of us are the children of God. That all of us are siblings of infinite love. And we're woven together in that love. And so the spiritual depth dimension of the destructive power of prejudice rises up then in this kind of fundamental understanding of how we understand this and respond to this.

And so I think what this invites us to do is to reflect on this as a kind of a contemplative Lectio Divina. Because it bears upon this ancient long standing tradition of the relationship between spiritual awakening and social justice. Between spiritual awakening and the corporal works of mercy.

And it's now sitting in our lap. This is our turn now to be present to this. And so my suggestion then would be toward the end of this little reflection here, we're going to sit in meditation together. But my thought for you is that you would consider as spiritual practices, as you're so inclined. For example, you might stand for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in a kind of a sacramental embodiment or oneness with the community of concerned, compassionate people in the presence of God. And in this way also to know that in doing so you take your stand. Because another key thing about these mystics is that when we sit in silent meditation, giving ourselves over to God, the healing energies of that sitting flow out and touch the whole world in ways we don't understand. There's a kind of unseen contemplative ministry to the world. And our sitting practice grounds us in that to take our stand. Another suggestion would be to consider a reading, the signs that people are putting up on the fences and the walls and holding up. Like that Simon and Garfunkel song, the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls. Also, there's some excellent Google articles of talks of sociologists and theologians and ministers and pastors who we can also kind of listen to that kind of help us and encourage us and guide us in this. And then, as you're so inclined then to ground all this to keep them returning back to the mystical taproot, to keep re-energizing, returning to these things. That's a very good way to understand what it means to live a contemplative way of life in the midst of the world, to be a healing presence in an all too often traumatizing world. And so those are my thoughts, those are the thoughts that I would offer here for all of us.