Mechthild of Magdeburg: Session 2

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

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

SPEAKER_3 (0:13)

Thanks.

James Finley (0:22)

Greetings, everyone. And welcome to our time together, Turning for Guidance to the Christian Mystic, Mechthild of Magdeburg.

In this session, I'll be reflecting on or book, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, book three, the second section. And as in the previous session, as I stop at each little aspect of this, as she goes through it, I'll share with you what I see in it, like what it evokes in me and my familiarity with these traditions and what it speaks to me, says to me. So you can then in a prayerful way, if you're so inclined, just sit with it and see what it evokes in you. And this way we'll be joining her and Jesus in their love language with each other.

And this is turning to Mechthild. This is having her guide us in this love language. So she begins.

Oh, sweet Jesus, most handsome image, unconcealed to my exiled soul in distress and in love. In love I praise you through yourself, in distress and in love, in union with all creatures. I yearn to do this above all things.

And so she is saying to Jesus, having us listen in as she says to Jesus, see that Jesus is the most handsome and the most beautiful and noble of image, the image of the invisible God. See, unconcealed to my exiled soul, that we're in an exiled state. That is, God is all about us and within us, closer to us than we are to ourselves.

This infinite reality pouring itself out and giving itself to us as our very reality in our nothingness without God, the reality of everyone and everything. But we don't see God with our eyes. We can't touch God with our hands. We can't grasp God with our mind. So we're in an exiled state. In the exiled state, through the gift of faith, we're interiorly illumined in the light of faith to see God being revealed to us in our exiled state. So, oh, unconcealed, that is, unrevealed and laid bare in my exiled state, I interiorly see you seeing me. I interiorly sense your unexplainable oneness with me and your love for me, my exiled soul. And I sense this in my distress. That is, when I am distressed, I sense that I'm not alone in my distress, that you're with me in my distress, and you're just sustaining me in my distress. And even when my distress becomes intensified to the point of trauma, where I can no longer sense your presence, I know in faith that you are with me, sustaining me in ways that I cannot feel and I do not understand. And you are with me in love, in moments where I enjoy or savor loving and being loved, because I see your infinite love shining through the love of the moment, transcending the love of the moment, and knowing too that this love that I feel for this person or this person's love for me or for the earth or for animals, whatever, I know that this love is your love, being incarnate and poured out in and as, being loved and loving this person, the world and all things. And so in my exiled soul, you're unconcealed in my distress and you're unconcealed in my love.

In love, I praise you through yourself in distress and in love and in union with all creatures. I yearn to do this above all things. You can see how intuitively dense her metaphorical imagery is. So let's walk through the phrasing to what I see in it. See, in love, it's in love, I praise you. So it's when I'm in this stance of interior love, that in this love, I praise you through yourself. For you are the love through whom and by whom I am being loved. And you are the love that is the love in which I'm praising you. So it's an all-encompassing atmospheric love.

And not just that, not just through me, in union, but with all creatures. That I see that your love permeates all creatures, the darkness of the night, the stars moving overhead in the dark, the sound of our own breathing, the smell of flowers, the mountains, the waves crashing on the beach. I see that all, I see, this is your loving presence being poured out in and as the darkness, in and as the light, in and as the animals and the birds and so on. And this God-given, godly nature, this God-given divinity of all things and this shared nothingness without you, Lord, this love, this love nature of all things. And I yearn to do this above all things, that is, I yearn to see this above all things. And I yearn to surrender to this above all things, is to grow in this, my ever more habitual awareness of the flow of your infinite love that alone is ultimately real, is life of my life, breath of my breath. Like this, I yearn for this. And so you see the gift of longing. And I think for us, maybe very clear that that longing isn't given to us, but there is a sincerity of our longing to long more deeply.