Turning to Guigo II

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

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

Kirsten Oates (0:22)

Welcome, everyone, to Season 4 of Turning to the Mystics. I'm so excited to be back with the team, Corey in the background, and Jim, welcome, welcome back, Season 4

James Finley (0:37)

Yeah, very nice, lovely. Yeah, so grateful.

Kirsten Oates (0:40)

This episode is an introduction to the season, and we're going to have a little dialogue about the season ahead. And so, my first question to you, Jim, is who is our next mystic, and why did you choose them?

James Finley (0:57)

Yes, the next mystic in our series is Guigo II.

And Guigo II was a monk who lived in France in the 12th century.

And the work of his that we'll be looking at is called A Ladder of Monks, Ladder for Monks. And it's a letter that he wrote as a monk prior of a monastic monastery to a friend of his who was prior of a monastic monastery. So these are two monks kind of corresponding with each other.

And Guigo II is not nearly as well known as the mystics we've looked at so far. So Thomas Merton, St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila. And he's also not as well known as the mystics we'll be looking at next. The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Julianne of Norwich and Meister Eckhart. But I'm choosing him because one, he's among the mystics that have been personally helpful to me. And also because in this very short work, it's really a letter, 17 pages. He gives very clear, insightful guidelines for the practice of Lectio Divina, and for the practice of discursive meditation, and for the practice of prayer, and for contemplation.

And so what we'll be doing in the first session, when I'll be speaking next time alone when I start this work, is I'll be kind of experientially, and he sees each of these ways to pray, Lectio Divina, he sees them as rungs of a ladder to heaven. So it's a ladder that reaches from earth to heaven, it has four rungs. And each rung is a grace state of consciousness. So Lectio Divina is a grace state of consciousness that we can actively choose to cultivate, that puts us into intimate awareness of God's presence in our life. And then how that evolves in discursive meditation, in our dialogue with God, which evolves into prayer, which is desire, to God, help me with this. And then those three rungs are in effect similar to Tres of Avila, or the first three mansions of the interior castle. That it's really building the foundations of psychological, spiritual maturity and discipleship.

And how we can, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna walk through his insights, and I'm gonna practice it out loud, each one the way I practice it. So hopefully it'll help those listening, it might help them in their own practice, you know, in the actual practice.

And then the next session, we'll dialogue about it. You and I will dialogue to their questions. And then the second talk is all gonna be on contemplation, which is mystical contemplation. So this is similar, it corresponds to where Teresa is. In the beginning of the Fourth Mansion, you realize your heart's being enlarged to divine proportions. Or for John of the Cross, a passage through a dark night.

Or for Merton, this infused contemplation into the summit of the soul. And this is very critical for these mystics on how to discern that this is happening to you. And we'll see his insights on how to discern it's happening and how to respond so we can cooperate with it.

And we'll have a dialogue about that with the students. And then lastly, look at his insights for the path. Like day by day life until death. What does it look like to walk this walk? You know, illumined this interior way and ways to apply it in practical ways to our daily life. So that's kind of the outline of who he is and what he is. And what I want to do here with you is share something that personally is important to me. And I think it's relevant. And also I think it's not obvious.

So I'd like to share it. We can dialogue a little bit. I'll move through some examples. You know what's interesting is some of these mystic, that in the Catholic tradition of Christianity, there are religious communities, prayer. And these active orders, these communities, express their commitment to God in a ministry. So Richard Rohr, for example, is a Franciscan. And so there's a Franciscan ministry, the Spirit of St. Francis, in serving parishes and education and service to the poor and so on. The Jesuits, they call it as a vocation. They commit their commitment to God, parishes and so on, but mainly through education. The Dominicans, their commitment to God, the care of souls through preaching, the order of preachers in ministry and higher education and so on. So they have these orders. But what you also have in the Catholic Church are cloistered orders. So cloistered orders are communities of men and women seeking God, and they have no act of ministry. They never leave the monastery. They don't teach, they don't serve the poor, they don't serve parishes, they don't actively help with anything. And not only that, they make a commitment to stay there and not leave. And not only that, no one's allowed in.