Richard, I have to ask—have we really arrived at a place where the path to the Real is effectively closed to anyone who is not a mystic? I understand and appreciate your emphasis on mystical encounter; it can deepen one’s sense of the ontological and bring new clarity to faith. But I wonder if this framing risks sidelining the countless ways the Real has been experienced, recognized, and acted upon through ordinary human life, prophetic witness, and moral engagement.
Consider the biblical prophets, or historical figures like Douglass, King, and Bonhoeffer. Their encounters with the Real were often forged in the heat of injustice, suffering, and moral imagination. They named evil, bore witness to suffering, and compelled change—not necessarily through mystical visions, but through courage, solidarity, and moral insight. Ontology was present in their acts, even if it was not framed as mystical encounter.
To suggest that the Real can only be approached mystically seems to risk creating an unnecessary barrier: if one is not a mystic, the pathway is closed, and the ordinary, lived moral and prophetic experience becomes insufficient. Might it be more fruitful to see mystical encounter as one pathway to the Real, complementary to the prophetic and the lived, rather than the sole avenue?
If our goal is to restore the church to a sense of ontological depth, perhaps we should cultivate both: the mystical and the human, the transcendent and the immanent, recognizing that the Real can be encountered in many dimensions of faithful life.
Goodness, Dennis, I really don't know how to help you. I feel we're just going to talk past each other. Plus, the examples you cite just strike me as so odd.
Take King, for example. Aren't you aware of his mystical experience at the kitchen table, the time God spoke to him and, in that moment, became the social justice prophet we know him as today?
That said, of course there are many paths to the Real. I'm not saying that people have to have visions or hear the audible voice of God. I never have. For a lot of us, I expect, it's just an intimation of depth (Charles Taylor calls it fullness, Hartmut Rosa calls it resonance) in our experience of reality. And there is a sacred, ontological encounter in the depths of human experience, between each other and within oneself. Why do you keep insisting that I'm divorcing the ontological from the human? Please stop pitting the ontological against lived human experience. To borrow from Rosa, among the axes of resonance are the self and the relational. These experiences can be either dead/inert (existentially and morally) or "full" of sacred, ontological significance. For example, the experience of "mattering" which I discuss in The Shape of Joy is, I'd argue, fundamentally a mystical encounter, resonance within oneself, as an ontological value/truth about the reality of the self.
So, in the end, I just don't know what you're so worked up about. But you're clearly bothered about something. Can I ask, do you believe in God?
Thanks for your reply. I believe in God and appreciate the role of mystical resonance in encountering the Real. My concern is the idea that all prophetic witness must be mystical—history and Scripture show the Real can also appear through human experience, solidarity, and moral imagination. Are you saying every encounter with the Real must be mystical, or is mystical resonance just one powerful path among others?
By "the Real" I mean God, who is both immanent and transcendent, the very ground of our being. Closer to us than we are to ourselves. The ontological flutter of longing at the core of our being. Our pulse, heartbeat, and breath. The grain of the universe. The cry of the prophet. The moral law within. The unity and pathos of shared human experience. The sacramental encounter in nature. So, yes, I'd say that every encounter of God is an encounter of mystical resonance. A resonance I feel within myself, in you, in human encounter, in art, in the sacraments, in nature, in my work, in my moral conscience, in exactly everything. For without this mystical resonance material, psychological, and social reality becomes existentially and morally inert, cold, and dead. And it is this cold inert deadness that I am always taking aim at.
Richard, I had assumed mysticism referred to a distinct, singular kind of experience—something unique and extraordinary. But your framing now seems to make everything mystical: human encounter, moral conscience, art, nature, the pulse of life itself. If everything is mystical, then the term loses its clarity. I’m trying to understand—is there still a way to distinguish ordinary human encounter with the Real from what you call mystical resonance?
Everything can be mystical, but it often isn't. This is my point! And the mystical isn't unique and extraordinary. It is, rather, a qualitative experience of the world rather than reducing life to the quantitative, a dead empirical factualness.
As far as the experiential distinction goes, Buber's I-It versus I-Thou gets to it quite well.
Thanks, Richard. I see now that by framing mystical experience as a qualitative, relational encounter, you’re effectively situating it within ordinary human experience. That aligns with my point: the Real can be encountered in human action, prophetic witness, and moral solidarity, even when not explicitly labeled mystical.
Our imagination has become so constricted in the wake of our enslavement to the left brain way of functioning. We need reminders and examples of how to get to and experience and express the ontologic, the Real especially when we're gathered for worship. We need continual pointers to Meaning. The church should be the deepest source of all of this.
Thanks again for your contribution to helping us think about this and hopefully also act as we are acted on, as we abide in Christ.
Individual parishioners and those whom have just nascently come to the Faith, are often still in a deep ‘process’ and at various stages in their faith journey. I can only speak from my own experience, but for me, my journey with Jesus took on a greater sentience in my life back in the early 1980’s but I wouldn’t say it was really truly ‘Mystical’ until much later in my life when I stood at the alter of ‘Chiesa di Pesein’ (the Church of Saint Peter) in Aosta Italy. It truly felt as if the Icons there behind the alter, were very aware of my presence and were actually watching me. They spoke to my heart and mind and said clearly- “Well, it’s about time you’ve joined us!” At the time, having recently gone through the death of my first wife, after her long protected battle with cancer, my spirit was ready, having seen with my own eyes the courage, strength and fortitude that she displayed when facing that Satanic monster. The ‘Principle of Christ’s Concurrent Suffering’ was never made more clearly to me, than in that moment. Paradoxically, although my belief had been severely battered, her bravery in the face of death, actually increased my faith in Christ and in the Power of His Resurrection. At that moment, my faith felt more ‘Real’ than it has ever been! Saint Anselm was from that valley and had been born in Aosta nearly a thousand years before. At the time, I had rented an apartment with my Son not far from his place of birth. I believe that the presence of his initial faith permeates the valley in a mysterious indescribable way and points hungry hearts and weary souls towards God.
This is from a book my son got from a retired army officer who taught at the Army Command and General Staff College at Ft Leavenworth, Kansas. "The leader must continue to hone and develop the full personal and professional repertoire. Moral leaders create moral followers. A legal approach in and of itself cannot create moral leaders and the trust that follows moral leadership. If a person desires to imitate someone in doing evil as a means to belong, then another person with the right role model will conversely imitate them for the good. Thus, the law shapes behaviors toward the good but never activates intrinsic motivation for pursuing the good. Organizations looking to be ethical and moral need something else.
Richard, I have to ask—have we really arrived at a place where the path to the Real is effectively closed to anyone who is not a mystic? I understand and appreciate your emphasis on mystical encounter; it can deepen one’s sense of the ontological and bring new clarity to faith. But I wonder if this framing risks sidelining the countless ways the Real has been experienced, recognized, and acted upon through ordinary human life, prophetic witness, and moral engagement.
Consider the biblical prophets, or historical figures like Douglass, King, and Bonhoeffer. Their encounters with the Real were often forged in the heat of injustice, suffering, and moral imagination. They named evil, bore witness to suffering, and compelled change—not necessarily through mystical visions, but through courage, solidarity, and moral insight. Ontology was present in their acts, even if it was not framed as mystical encounter.
To suggest that the Real can only be approached mystically seems to risk creating an unnecessary barrier: if one is not a mystic, the pathway is closed, and the ordinary, lived moral and prophetic experience becomes insufficient. Might it be more fruitful to see mystical encounter as one pathway to the Real, complementary to the prophetic and the lived, rather than the sole avenue?
If our goal is to restore the church to a sense of ontological depth, perhaps we should cultivate both: the mystical and the human, the transcendent and the immanent, recognizing that the Real can be encountered in many dimensions of faithful life.
Goodness, Dennis, I really don't know how to help you. I feel we're just going to talk past each other. Plus, the examples you cite just strike me as so odd.
Take King, for example. Aren't you aware of his mystical experience at the kitchen table, the time God spoke to him and, in that moment, became the social justice prophet we know him as today?
That said, of course there are many paths to the Real. I'm not saying that people have to have visions or hear the audible voice of God. I never have. For a lot of us, I expect, it's just an intimation of depth (Charles Taylor calls it fullness, Hartmut Rosa calls it resonance) in our experience of reality. And there is a sacred, ontological encounter in the depths of human experience, between each other and within oneself. Why do you keep insisting that I'm divorcing the ontological from the human? Please stop pitting the ontological against lived human experience. To borrow from Rosa, among the axes of resonance are the self and the relational. These experiences can be either dead/inert (existentially and morally) or "full" of sacred, ontological significance. For example, the experience of "mattering" which I discuss in The Shape of Joy is, I'd argue, fundamentally a mystical encounter, resonance within oneself, as an ontological value/truth about the reality of the self.
So, in the end, I just don't know what you're so worked up about. But you're clearly bothered about something. Can I ask, do you believe in God?
⸻
Thanks for your reply. I believe in God and appreciate the role of mystical resonance in encountering the Real. My concern is the idea that all prophetic witness must be mystical—history and Scripture show the Real can also appear through human experience, solidarity, and moral imagination. Are you saying every encounter with the Real must be mystical, or is mystical resonance just one powerful path among others?
By "the Real" I mean God, who is both immanent and transcendent, the very ground of our being. Closer to us than we are to ourselves. The ontological flutter of longing at the core of our being. Our pulse, heartbeat, and breath. The grain of the universe. The cry of the prophet. The moral law within. The unity and pathos of shared human experience. The sacramental encounter in nature. So, yes, I'd say that every encounter of God is an encounter of mystical resonance. A resonance I feel within myself, in you, in human encounter, in art, in the sacraments, in nature, in my work, in my moral conscience, in exactly everything. For without this mystical resonance material, psychological, and social reality becomes existentially and morally inert, cold, and dead. And it is this cold inert deadness that I am always taking aim at.
Richard, I had assumed mysticism referred to a distinct, singular kind of experience—something unique and extraordinary. But your framing now seems to make everything mystical: human encounter, moral conscience, art, nature, the pulse of life itself. If everything is mystical, then the term loses its clarity. I’m trying to understand—is there still a way to distinguish ordinary human encounter with the Real from what you call mystical resonance?
Everything can be mystical, but it often isn't. This is my point! And the mystical isn't unique and extraordinary. It is, rather, a qualitative experience of the world rather than reducing life to the quantitative, a dead empirical factualness.
As far as the experiential distinction goes, Buber's I-It versus I-Thou gets to it quite well.
Thanks, Richard. I see now that by framing mystical experience as a qualitative, relational encounter, you’re effectively situating it within ordinary human experience. That aligns with my point: the Real can be encountered in human action, prophetic witness, and moral solidarity, even when not explicitly labeled mystical.
Our imagination has become so constricted in the wake of our enslavement to the left brain way of functioning. We need reminders and examples of how to get to and experience and express the ontologic, the Real especially when we're gathered for worship. We need continual pointers to Meaning. The church should be the deepest source of all of this.
Thanks again for your contribution to helping us think about this and hopefully also act as we are acted on, as we abide in Christ.
Dana
Individual parishioners and those whom have just nascently come to the Faith, are often still in a deep ‘process’ and at various stages in their faith journey. I can only speak from my own experience, but for me, my journey with Jesus took on a greater sentience in my life back in the early 1980’s but I wouldn’t say it was really truly ‘Mystical’ until much later in my life when I stood at the alter of ‘Chiesa di Pesein’ (the Church of Saint Peter) in Aosta Italy. It truly felt as if the Icons there behind the alter, were very aware of my presence and were actually watching me. They spoke to my heart and mind and said clearly- “Well, it’s about time you’ve joined us!” At the time, having recently gone through the death of my first wife, after her long protected battle with cancer, my spirit was ready, having seen with my own eyes the courage, strength and fortitude that she displayed when facing that Satanic monster. The ‘Principle of Christ’s Concurrent Suffering’ was never made more clearly to me, than in that moment. Paradoxically, although my belief had been severely battered, her bravery in the face of death, actually increased my faith in Christ and in the Power of His Resurrection. At that moment, my faith felt more ‘Real’ than it has ever been! Saint Anselm was from that valley and had been born in Aosta nearly a thousand years before. At the time, I had rented an apartment with my Son not far from his place of birth. I believe that the presence of his initial faith permeates the valley in a mysterious indescribable way and points hungry hearts and weary souls towards God.
This is from a book my son got from a retired army officer who taught at the Army Command and General Staff College at Ft Leavenworth, Kansas. "The leader must continue to hone and develop the full personal and professional repertoire. Moral leaders create moral followers. A legal approach in and of itself cannot create moral leaders and the trust that follows moral leadership. If a person desires to imitate someone in doing evil as a means to belong, then another person with the right role model will conversely imitate them for the good. Thus, the law shapes behaviors toward the good but never activates intrinsic motivation for pursuing the good. Organizations looking to be ethical and moral need something else.