Mysticism can be a marmite sort of word – deeply attractive to some people and in some ways, deeply alienating to others. It can make you think of the depths of meaning and of life, of profundity and wisdom and holiness. It can also feel airy-fairy and insubstantial, and something that is only relevant to hyper-pious weird, and likely medieval, saints.   

Evelyn Underhill, the 20th century English writer, was one who was deeply attracted to mysticism and who also wanted to make it accessible and comprehensible to all of us ordinary people. Her definition of it was rooted in our relationship with God. Mysticism for her was: ‘the direct intuition or experience of God’, making a mystic ‘a person who has, to a greater or less degree, such a direct experience’. Nothing to do with ecstatic visions or altered consciousness but simply and profoundly to do with our awareness of God’s presence with us.   

This is mysticism in a more down-to-earth form, mysticism unmystified perhaps. It reminds us that experiences of God are not limited to saints, let alone to medieval saints. All of us are invited to know the love and presence of God in our own lives, however imperfect our faith and erratic our prayer.   

That connection with the divine mystic depth of reality can come fleetingly in a moment of silence shared with others, it can come with the fresh scent of spring in a favourite wood, it can come in the depth of loss as we accept our human finitude, or it can come in the thrill of joy when we know ourselves truly loved.   

Be open to the possibility that you may have already felt, or may yet discover, that sense of union with the divine that marks a mystic experience. The profundity of our deepest reality, God’s divine loving presence, is there for each one of us to discover and to love.

It’s unusual to find a book about pain with the title Celebration but this is what the 20th century English historian and mystic Margaret Spufford chose to call her book on spirituality. The full title is Celebration: A Story of Suffering and Joy. The book tells of Spufford’s suffering from her own ongoing physical pain as well as from her daughter Bridget’s illness and eventual early death from a rare metabolic disease.   

Just to be clear, Spufford is not celebrating suffering. She is brutally honest about the deep misery, in bone and soul, of physical and emotional pain, and crystal clear that this is never the will of God. The joy that she finds in the midst of suffering rests on her experience that God’s presence, especially the incarnate Christ’s presence, companions her through her pain.   

Spufford had three key mystical experiences, three times that she most vividly encountered the divine, that showed her three deep spiritual truths.     

The first was seeing the Spirit of God flowing out to her and to all Christians with loveliness and warmth, swirling gently ‘all round the broken bits’ with loving touch. The second was an assurance of God’s companionable presence in pain. In a moment of intense physical agony she knew with certainty that Christ was with her, not taking the pain away but experiencing it in loving companionship. The third was of the truth of the resurrection. After Bridget’s death she experienced receiving her daughter back in her arms as Christ looked on with deep love. Spufford said of this vision that after it she lived ‘from Easter backwards’ within the conviction that ‘The Lord is risen indeed, and is full of joy, as well as knowing all pain.’   

Whatever the pain in your own life may you also know the Spirit’s warming touch, Christ’s companionship, and the hope of resurrection.