Defining the Indefinable
You can't pin mysticism down. Thank heaven.
It’s kind of an occupational hazard for anyone, I imagine, who is so bold (or so foolish) as to write a book about mysticism. I get asked all the time: whether in a public interview, or a private one-on-one conversation:
“What’s your definition of mysticism?”
Every time that question comes to me, I briefly think about Fr. Anthony Delisi, OCSO (of blessed memory). Fr. Anthony was a Trappist monk whom I worked with, back when I worked at the Cistercian abbey here in Georgia. He was a burly fellow with a gruff exterior and a profoundly sweet and kind heart. And he wasn’t above a bit of good natured teasing and even a bit of snark.
When I was writing The Big Book of Christian Mysticism, Fr. Anthony was one of several monks who agreed to read chapters of the book and offer me feedback. One time, fairly early on in the writing process, I gave Fr. Anthony the first chapter of the book.
The next day he showed up at my office, and pulled me aside. “I read your chapter,” he said, in his characteristically blunt way.
“What did you think of it?” I asked him, anxious like a teenager for approval.
“I kept wondering when you would get around to actually giving a definition of mysticism.”
“But Father, you know it’s impossible to define.”
“Yes, you finally admitted as much on page 35, when you basically said you had no idea what it was.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Do you think I need to be more precise with my definition?”
“Oh no, your definition is fine,” he mused. “I just wish you had said as much right up front, that way I wouldn’t have had to wade through 35 pages just to learn that you have no more of an idea about what it is than I do!”
That chapter got revised several times, and I tried to be a bit more clear about my understanding of mysticism. But to this very day, any attempt I make to explain what mysticism is, or even just to admit what it means to me, always makes me think of how a humble monk who had lived in the cloister for more than half a century was just as much at a loss for explaining mysticism as I was.
Because there really is no explaining it. Mysticism is related to mystery. And so, no matter how clever or perceptive or theologically sophisticated you, or I, (or anyone) might be, it simply cannot be defined. It cannot be nailed down, it cannot be concisely explained in a few well-chosen words.
I think this is part of what makes mysticism such a rich and awe-inspiring dimension of spirituality. It can’t be summarized, it can’t be defined, it can’t be put into words. Even though we human beings keep wanting and trying to put it into words anyway.
“You are a God who hides himself” muttered the prophet Isaiah during prayer. Mysticism is a way for relating with the hidden God.
Sometimes when I’m asked to explain mysticism, I’ll try to evade the question by offering an evocative image rather than a cut-and-dried definition.
Mysticism is the silence between each heartbeat. It is the moment of spacious presence that hides between and below all our thoughts. Mysticism is the experience of being wooed by God. It is listening to what contemplative silence has to say to us or teach us. It is the humble recognition that our words inevitably distort our image of God as much as they might help us to create an image of God in the first place. Mysticism is what happens when we read the Bible not as a legal document, but as a passionate love letter.
Because in addition to being about silence and about mystery, mysticism is all about love.
Silence: we pray, we meditate, we listen, we walk a labyrinth with our heart and mind both slowing down. “Silence is God's first language; everything else is a poor translation.” So said Thomas Keating, very likely having himself been inspired by Rumi or Meister Eckhart or John of the Cross. “Let all the earth keep silent before God,” declared the prophet Habbakuk, and mystics have been seeking to follow his instruction ever since.
Mystery: no words can ever contain God. Whatever reveals God ultimately betrays itself and conceals God as well. God is hidden, More wisdom from Isaiah: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.” To be in a relationship with God (or Spirit, or the Divine —use the language you find the least objectionable) is to surrender our need to have things all figured out, to understand what we’re doing and who we’re doing it with, and to accept that we are in the cloud of unknowing, the dark night of the soul.
And finally, Love: mysticism is a love song. It is cosplaying The Song of Songs in real time. It’s forgetting all the crazy talk about God as wrathful or furious or at risk of sending us all to hell; and daring to believe that the One who created the stars and the galaxies is deeply interested in you and me and all of us, in our humility and our littleness and our bother. God is not bothered by us, for God loves us, and if we can truly accept and embody that love, we will be invited into some expression of ecstasy.
Words like these are so clunky and imperfect. Everything anyone can possibly say about mysticism is wrong. But we need to keep trying to say something anyway.
The Tao te Ching by Lao Tzu begins, “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao, the name that can be named is not the eternal name.” In the Chinese translation of the New Testament, the Gospel of John beings, “In the beginning was the Tao, and the Tao was with God, and the Tao was God.” So it’s too far of a stretch to consider that the God who can be spoken of is not the eternal God.
Everything we say about God takes us away from God, even if it paradoxically also brings us closer to God. It can do both at the same time — but it will always guide us further and further into the house of mirrors. Anything that reveals God also conceals God. We encounter God in mystery, and mystery always enshrouds the divine in darkness and unknowing.
In his 1926 poem Ars Poetica, Archibald Macleish famously wrote, “A poem should not mean but be.” God (the ultimate Mystery) is like a poem, and therefore, mysticism is as well. To seek to understand the meaning of poetry, or mysticism, or the Mystery, is to miss the pure grace of encountering the beauty of being.
Perhaps the only way to truly experience the love of God begins with renouncing or surrendering all our efforts to manage or control God, to render God safe or tame by our efforts to comprehend God.
A friend of mine who taught many years in seminary once explained why he was no longer comfortable with the idea of evangelizing non-Christians: “You cannot love someone if you are mainly interested in changing them.” Perhaps we cannot truly love God — the Mystery at the heart of mysticism — if we are busy trying to figure God out.
The best way to define mysticism is to insist that mysticism cannot be defined. Therefore, the ineffability of mystical spirituality is an essential part of its beauty. Mysticism shines precisely because we cannot put it into words.
Poets accept this. So do Zen Buddhists, artists, intuitives and daydreamers.
Mysticism, after all, is not a problem to be solved. It is not a puzzle to be unpacked by scientists or philosophers or other linear thinkers. Not that there’s anything wrong with being an architect or an engineer —we need conscientious people who make amazing new things and who tell stories all about it. But sometimes, it seems that the very qualities that can make someone so skilled with the practical matters of living can ironically get in the way of the artistry of mystical intimacy, intimacy with the very heart of creation.
Mysticism sings silently between our heartbeats and illuminates the dark matter floating between the stars. It is a story that can never be told even though it has been chanted repeatedly since the dawn of time. It is the inner abyss and the playful lights that illuminate our deepest hopes and dreams.
Some might say that if mysticism cannot even be defined, then no wonder it exists only at the margins, the margins of faith, the margins that separate what is known from what is possible. This might be interpreted as dismissing the mystical, except for the fact that the mystics have always been on the margins. That was true two thousand years ago and it remains true today. Mystics are happy to hide in shadowy places and hold fast to liberating wisdom that only can be seen when we wander far away from the center of things.
Mysticism is ineffable, and in its ineffability, it is free. Not free in an American/consumer sense, the freedom of choosing if you want fries with that burger of if you’d rather drink a Coke or a Pepsi. Rather, mysticism embodies the deep and abiding freedom that always empowers us to do the one next right thing. To walk (or seek to walk) in the footsteps of Christ (and the Buddha) is to find the freedom that calls us into lives of compassion, care, and service. That may not seem like much to some, but to others it may seem like a life aflame with love. Increasingly, such freedom is rare — and radical. So mysticism is a doorway into a rare wisdom indeed. Just don’t try to put it into words.
