"The mystics are the pioneers of the
spiritual world, and we have no right to deny validity to their discoveries,
merely because we lack the opportunity or courage necessary to those who would
prosecute such explorations for themselves".
"Pioneers of the spiritual world".
Such a title could well be ascribed to Underhill herself, who used it in the
opening lines of her book Mysticism,
published in 1911. Born in 1875, the daughter of a barrister, Underhill was
educated variously at home, at a private school in Folkestone, and at King's
College for Women in London, where in later life she was elected a Fellow. Her
embrace of the Christian faith came in
1907, the same year as her marriage, to another barrister. It was not to the
Church of England but to the mystery of Roman Catholicism that she was drawn in
her early thirties, although Rome's anti-intellectual condemnation of
Modernism, with which her conversion was contemporaneous, meant that in
conscience she could never quite bring herself to join that Church.
It was the
pull of mystery and the desire for intellectual rigour that led her to her
study of mysticism, and her book remains a classic. She defines the mystics she
studies in it as people whose "one
passion appears to be the prosecution of a certain spiritual quest: the finding
of a 'way out' or a 'way back' to some desirable state in which alone they can
satisfy their craving for absolute truth". They exist in the east and
in the west; in the ancient, medieval and modern worlds and, she notes, whether
they are Richard Rolle in fourteenth century England or Teresa of Avila in
sixteenth century Spain, their aims, doctrines and methods have been
substantially the same. In her book she sets out to record and synthesize these
aims, doctrines and methods, and the result is nothing less than a map of the
human soul. Underhill charts the interior terrain explored by practitioners and
writers from the very earliest Christian centuries, through the vast sweep of
the Middle Ages, to her own day.
The terrain
she charts is that of an arduous journey, but a journey with clearly defined
stages. These, writes Underhill, are stages through which any soul intent on
seeking truth - on seeking God - will pass. The journey begins with an
awakening to the possibility of truth. There follows purgation, in which the
awakened soul's conscious and sub-conscious wrestles with the passions and
impulses which threaten to distract it. Purgation is complete when the passions
are stilled and the soul is filled with inner light. Now the soul may rest
awhile, free from the tyranny of the senses and the passions, before being
plunged into a dark night. In this stage all that sustains is a patient waiting
in faith and trust for the final goal of unity with the truth, of unity with
God.
This may
sound unfeasibly neat, a Delia-Smith-style recipe for a mystery which by
definition ought to be beyond such categorization. But Underhill thought not:
her comprehensive study of mystical writing led her to the conclusion that this
was the path trodden by those who sought the truth. It may sound like a
high-brow endeavour for the spiritual elite, the fantasy of the deranged, or,
as Underhill herself puts it "the
eccentric performance of a rare psychic type". Again, she thought not:
"we each have a little buried talent"
she writes, and "everyone who
awakens to consciousness of a Reality which transcends the normal world of
sense...is put upon a road which follows at low levels the path which the
mystic treads at high levels".
Her own
journey was far from over. A charge that can be levelled at Mysticism is that it is not
Christocentric: comprehensive, yes; profound, certainly; but dependent on and
witnessing to the risen Christ? Not exclusively. Yet through the success of her
book she met Friedrich von Hugel, who
became her hugely influential spiritual director, and she was received into the
Church for England in 1921. Thus began a substantial lay ministry in the
Anglo-Catholic tradition, a ministry of retreat-conducting and spiritual
direction , which lasted the rest of her life.
In 1936 she
published her book Worship, in its
way as comprehensive as Mysticism had
been twenty-five years earlier. It too is split into two parts, the first
treating of the principles of worship, the second of the worshipping customs of
the world's great traditions. The contours of the journey she has taken are
evident when it is read alongside the earlier work. Christ now takes centre
stage. Christian worship, she writes, is a distinct response to a distinct
revelation, to God's self-disclosure in Christ. This response is a continuous
stream Godwards of adoration, supplication and sacrificial love, a continuous
stream Godwards which must swell and spread until it includes all loving acts
and all sacrificial inclinations. For worship shows forth "under tokens" the ultimate reality
of humankind's Godward call - it sets before us the pattern around which God
would have us shape the whole of life. This is supremely true of the Eucharist,
in which natural life, represented by bread and wind, is freely offered to God
and consecrated by God, so that it may become the vehicle of God's life in the
world.
Evelyn
Underhill's life and work offers an opportunity to her readers and inspires
courage in her followers, as I said when I began. In prayer and in worship she
asks us to review our habits and our expectations. Perhaps we are stuck with a
routine of prayer that has grown stale without our noticing. Perhaps we hang
onto an idea of God that we ought long have outgrown. There is a little talent
buried within each of us. How are we using it to grow closer to truth and to
God? And when we leave this place today, how will our growth add to the
continuous Godward stream of love and self-giving that our Baptism has made us
a part of? Amen.
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