Do I Have to be a Member of a Church to be a Christian Mystic?

Here’s a question I sometimes get asked:

Do I have to be a member of a church to be a Christian mystic?

Like so many aspects of the spiritual life, the answer — to borrow a phrase from Facebook — is “it’s complicated”!

To begin to get a sense of this, let’s think about not only church but also community.

Whose Feet?

In chapter 9 of The Big Book of Christian …