Mechthild of Magdeburg: Session 1

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:07)

Greetings. I'm Jim Finley. Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Greetings, everyone. Welcome to our time together, Turning for Guidance to the Christian Mystic, Mechthild of Magdeburg. In the introductory session with Kirsten, we shared some background information about her life as a Beguine, and also introducing her book of The Flowing Light of the Godhead that she wrote throughout her life, and died really in the process of dictating the final two books, the lifelong work. And in this session, I want to be turning to Section 1, Book 1 of The Flowing Light of the Godhead. And so I'll begin by reading this first section with you, and inviting you to join me as we kind of slowly walk through it to make it as helpful and as accessible as possible to help us in our own desire to deepen our experience and understanding in response to God's presence in our lives. So Mechthild writes, How love and the queen spoke to each other. The soul came to love with the love of the capital L, the infinite love of God. The soul came to love, greeted her with great deference and said, God greet you, lady love. May God reward you, mistress and queen. God's loving response back to her. And so this dialogue now goes back and forth between Mechthild and God's love. Lady love, you are indeed perfect, God responds. Mistress and queen, that is why I am above all things. Lady love, you struggled many a year before you forced the exalted Trinity to pour itself utterly into the humble virginal womb of Mary. Mistress and queen, that was to your honor and benefit. Lady love, you have now come here to me and have taken from me everything I ever gained on earth.

Mistress and queen, you have made a happy choice. Lady love, you have taken from me my childhood. Mistress and queen, in its place I have given you heavenly freedom. Lady love, you have taken from me all of my youth. Mistress and queen, in its place I have given you many a holy virtue. Lady love, you have taken from me possessions, friends and relatives. Come now, mistress and queen. That is a petty complaint. Lady love, you have taken from me the world, worldly honor and all earthly riches. Mistress and queen, I shall make that up to you in one hour with the Holy Spirit on earth, just as you wish it. Lady love, you have brought me to such a past that my body is wracked by a strange weakness. Mistress and queen, in exchange I have given you much sublime knowledge. Lady love, you have devoured my flesh and my blood. Mistress and queen, you have thereby been purified and drawn into God. Lady love, you are a robber. For this, as well, you shall make reparation. Mistress and queen, then take me. Lady love, now you have recompensed me a hundredfold on earth. Mistress and queen, in addition, you may demand God and all of his kingdom. That's the section.

And so if our goal is to make her teachings as helpful as possible by making them as accessible as possible, without watering down the radicality of what she's saying, how do we make this accessible? How do we experientially benefit from what she's saying? How do we apply this to our life? So what I want to do here is I want to go through each couplet, as I want to go through each interaction between Mechthild and God, and I want to share with you what I see in it, and having sat with it. And as I share with you what I see in it, I encourage you, if you're so inclined, to sit very quietly and see what comes to you in it, like what strikes you about it, or what leads you to wonder about, or what you sense in it. There's a deeper understanding of God's love for you. And this way, like, personalize it, like step into this love language between Mechthild and Magdeburg, realizing that it's an invitation for you to find the love language that deepens your loving intimacy with God. I'm also singling out this section to walk through it in this way. Because if you were to color code each of these couplets as a theme, or as an aspect of the infinite love of God accessing us, and drawing us out beyond ourself into God, it might transform us into God, this eternal love as our destiny. If you were to color code each couplet as a theme, or an aspect of that transformative process. So the very first aspect, you might, with colored markers, magenta, the next one may be dark green, the next one yellow, the next whatever, so they're all color coded. Knowing that if you were then read The Flowing Light of the Godhead, as you read each paragraph, as you notice that in the paragraph that you're reading, as she's exploring, we're refining one of those themes, you would highlight or color that paragraph in that color. And as you went through the whole of The Flowing Light of the Godhead that way and then fanned through it, you'd see these colors flowing through the whole thing. So what she's doing here in a very succinct way right at the beginning is laying out the foundations for the transformative path of divine union in our life.