Francis of Assisi is easily the best-loved Christian saint outside of Biblical figures. Known for his simplicity, humility, joy, and love for animals, nature, and those who are poor, it’s pretty hard to find anything unlikeable about him. This makes it all the more gratifying that he is also generally regarded as one of the greatest Christian mystics, in addition to being a great saint.

What is the difference between a saint and a mystic? I’ve described it this way:

A saint is someone who is good and holy, while a mystic is someone who knows God, who embodies the presence of God, and whose life has been transfigured by this divine presence. Put even more briefly, saints embody goodness while mystics embody love.

Clearly, there’s some overlap here. Maybe it’s not even possible to be a mystic without also being at least something of a saint — and vice versa. After all, great mystical teachers from the second century through the twentieth have suggested that purification is an essential first step in the mystical life. In other words, let go of whatever separates you from divine love, in order to be one with that love. This purifying process — driven by grace, of course — not only makes us more available to be mystics, but also makes saints of us.

There’s too much to say about Saint Francis to easily encapsulate in a short devotional meditation like this one. So let’s just attend to his own words:

Where there is charity and wisdom there is neither fear nor ignorance.
Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor disturbance.
Where there is poverty with joy, there is neither covetousness nor avarice.
Where there is inner peace and meditation, there is neither anxiousness nor dissipation…
Where there is mercy and discernment, there is neither excess nor hardness of heart.
— Francis of Assisi, Admonition 27

Whether we are talking about sanctification (the process of becoming a saint) or deification (the process of becoming a mystic), it seems that at the heart of such an interior transformation is a simple commitment to releasing qualities and values that corrode our hearts and our lives, and replacing them with values that foster compassion, felicity, kindness, and serenity. Don’t fight what is “less than” — simply follow the advice of Johnny Mercer, and “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive.” When we cultivate love, wisdom, patience, joy, and so forth, we embody the antidotes to those qualities that undermine our happiness. Not only that, but we make ourselves more available for the abundant life that both the saints and the mystics exemplify — and offer us.

Paid subscribers: Scroll below for the link, dates, and topics for our upcoming “Let’s Talk About Mysticism” Zoom calls!

Quotation sources:

• McColman, Carl. Christian Mystics: 108 Seers, Saints, and Sages, Kindle Edition, p. xvii.

• Francis and Clare. Francis and Clare: The Complete Works (edited by R. J. Payne; translated by R. J. Armstrong & I. C. Brady), Verbum Edition, p. 35.

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Elton John and Bernie Taupin once wrote a song called “This Song Has No Title.” It’s the fifth track on his 1973 album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. It’s not the most memorable of tunes — although it’s famous as a song where Elton played every instrument on it himself, it hasn’t been performed live since the year it was released; furthermore, on the CD, it appears right after three of the album’s four biggest hits, and right before “Grey Seal,” which is arguably one of the best of Elton’s deep cuts. So even if you’re an Elton John fan, you could easily miss this one.

I’ve always rather liked this humble track, if only for its clever title. To call it “This Song Has No Title” is to christen it with an inherent paradox. The song does have a title, only one that tells a lie about itself. It’s rather like saying, “I’m telling a lie right now.” You can’t sincerely admit to telling a lie without paradoxically also speaking the truth — and if you really were lying about lying, doesn’t that mean that there’s an ironic truthfulness in your deceiving words? Yes, I know; it gives me a headache too.

This kind of silly wordplay is relevant, I think, to the language of mysticism. Mystics and contemplatives dive deep into a place where they make their hearts available to the life-transforming presence of the Spirit. Such a place is shaped by deep silence: to try to describe it is necessarily to diminish it and to create a pale imitation of it. But if we don’t try to talk about the experience of mystical silence, we fail to share it with one another. We need words to talk about the encounter with God, but every word that reveals God also conceals God.

If you desire God, or long for an experience of God, or believe you have actually had an experience of God, then you are faced with the dilemma that the only tool you have for sharing this with others is one that will ultimately fail both you and God. It has been said that, “translators are traitors” — to translate a book from one language to another means always betraying the richness of the author’s original words. To put mysticism into words is just another type of translation. Yes, it is a betrayal. But one worth having anyway: for silence, as rich as it is, needs the words of our stories, just like a precious jewel needs a setting.

Join Carl McColman May 14-20 for a special online retreat experience: Meditating with the Mystics. For more information, click here.

We use our imagination not to escape the world but to join it, and this exhilarates us because of the distance between our ordinary dulled consciousness and an apprehension of the real. — Iris Murdoch1

What is the purpose of the imagination? In our technologically complex, post-industrial culture, many of us might hold that the imagination is all about entertainment. We imagine worlds radically unlike our own: the “worlds” of Star Wars, Star Trek, Middle-Earth, or Narnia. Our children learn about imagination from Barney the Dinosaur, but Barney’s message has a sting to it: he encourages children to “use their imagination” but with the unspoken assumption that what we imagine is strictly make-believe.

This subtly reinforces the idea that only the measurable, empirical world “out there” is real, and whatever we might conjure up in the theater of our imagination is little more than a form of personal entertainment—not “real at all.” This, I suppose, is training our children to grow up to become happy consumers of the entertainment industry, but I fear that it leaves us less equipped, collectively, to rely on our inner landscape as a meaningful way to navigate the creative and spiritual challenges life might throw our way.

In contrast to our cultural assumption that the imagination is something used to avoid reality, novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch understood that the imagination’s purpose is not to alienate us from “real life” but to help us be even more present to what is truly real. “This exhilarates us,” she observes, “because of the distance” between what is authentically real and the “dulled consciousness” that can shape a life of tedium and boredom.

If there is a distance between the imagination and what is real, it is only an imagined distance. In other words, just as we have imagined a great gap between the limitations of reality and the possibilities of the imagination, we can just as easily “imagine” our way back to an integral whole: a world where not only “imagination is more important than knowledge” (a saying often attributed to Albert Einstein), but the freedom of the imaginarium can help our spirituality to blossom, to access our meaning and purpose, and to create a future shimmering with hope and joy.

Robert Llewelyn (1909-2008) was a priest of the Church of England who served as the chaplain at the Julian Shrine in Norwich, England from 1976 to 1990. He was the author of several contemplative books, including With Pity, Not with Blame, from which this quote is taken:

Once we have shown ourselves ready to enter the shallows, it will not be long before God summons us into deeper waters. — Robert Llewelyn

Such an evocative idea, and it reveals a tension at the heart of contemplative spirituality. On the one hand, there is a developmental dynamic at play in much contemplative teaching: it all suggests that contemplation is a journey, a pilgrimage, a directed path that leads us somewhere: we make the ascent up Mount Carmel; we tour the Interior Castle; we ascend the Scale of Perfection; we climb with Dante (and Merton) to the summit of the Seven Storey Mountain.

These are all metaphors, of course, for what is in essence an interior journey: we travel from purification to illumination to union, we journey through the four weeks of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, and we plumb deeper and deeper into the misty darkness of the Cloud of Unknowing.

But is this really what the spiritual life is all about? Is it really a gradual curriculum, like making our way through elementary school, high school, college, graduate school, and eventually on to post-doc fellowships?

This question brings us to the other side of the tension. That’s the recognition that this is all a function of grace, and we don’t have to travel anywhere or even do anything at all to bask in the freely given light of divine love. There’s no mountain to climb, no cloud to pierce, no program to complete. As Van Morrison (inspired by Krishnamurti) said, “No Guru, No Method, No Teacher.” Indeed, it was Krishnamurti who famously said “truth is a pathless land” in 1929, nearly a century ago.

So which is it? Does God call us into ever-deepening waters, or is the mystical life about walking the wayless way? From a non-dual perspective, there’s only one answer: yes.

Go deeper. Go higher. Walk farther. Learn more. Grow in grace. And do it all knowing that none of it is required of you. Be here now. Rest. Receive. Enjoy. In the mystery, it is all one.

Truth is a pathless land. — J. Krishnamurti

“Every minute you are thinking of evil you might have been thinking of good instead.” — The Letters of Evelyn Underhill1

I had a friend once who used to say, “Thoughts are things!” By this she meant that we should be mindful about what we choose to think about, for our thoughts are creative and therefore impact how our future will unfold. Think about peace or love, and you are helping to create a more peaceful or loving future. But on the other hand, if you think such things as fear or conflict or illness, then you run the risk of manifesting such undesirable qualities at some point in your tomorrows.

If you are familiar with New Thought spirituality, or with ideas like the “law of attraction” (popularized in the self-help movie and book The Secret), then you will recognize how this way of thinking has been around for some time. Indeed, New Thought religious groups like the Unity School of Christianity or the Church of Religious Science have existed since 1889 and 1926, respectively. The law of attraction is widely dismissed as lacking any basis in scientific evidence, but even so, books like The Secret have sold in the tens of millions of copies, suggesting that many people find its content compelling. The basic idea is that human beings create (or, at least, co-create) the circumstances of their future lives through not only the choices we make, but even the mere thoughts that shape their present awareness. For a positive future, think positive thoughts in the present.

Evelyn Underhill was not an adherent of New Thought ideas like the law of attraction, so when she counseled one of her directees to focus on thinking about “good” instead of “evil,” she wasn’t implying that such thoughts would materially impact the person’s future. Rather, she saw this as a question of general spiritual health. Thinking about evil can lead to fear, anxiety, discouragement, or even despair, whereas thoughts of good can help us to trust more in God, so as to feel inspired, encouraged, hopeful, and resilient.

I’m not sure that it is wise, or even possible, to insist that we should only think good thoughts, and never allow ourselves to reflect on evil. Sometimes we need to have a clear sense of how things really are, even if that means honestly acknowledging the challenges and problems that face us and our world today. But I think as a general principle, Underhill’s advice makes sense. Only meditate upon evil enough to have an accurate and honest assessment of the problems facing us and our world — but pair that would a committed way of thinking about goodness or “the good.” Committing to structure our consciousness around positive thinking is a way to ensure that our thoughts will lead us toward a better tomorrow — a tomorrow we do not control, but can trust, through the grace of the loving Divine.

Mystical knowing, which we are used to seeing as unclear and uncertain, is actually more reliable than deductive knowing. —Hugo Enomiya-Lassalle, SJ1

The Jesuit father Hugo Enomiya-Lassalle (1898-1990) traveled from his native Germany to Japan to bring Christianity to the Japanese. But instead of just being a missionary, he found Zen there, and discerning…

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“We are always only beginners on the path to a deeper interior life.” —Judith Valente1

In her book How to Live, Judith Valente invites seekers of our time to consider how the 1,500-year-old wisdom from Saint Benedict of Nursia remains as relevant and useful to our day as it ever was. She points out that St.Benedict operates under the assumption that “we a…

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Spirit of Life, of Love, of Joy,

Guide us so that we may nurture in our lives the elements of hope.

Ground us in the stability and security of your healing love and compassionate presence. Help us to remain mindful that you are the source not only of life, but also of healing, purpose, meaning, and abundance.

Out of your stable, grounding presence, call fo…

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I’m the kind of person who gets overwhelmed easily.

I think that’s one of the reasons why I love monasteries so much. I’ll take the deep silence of the abbey over the frenzied activity of a shopping mall any day of the week. When I used to work at the monastery, I used to tease my wife whenever we went to the Mall of Georgia (the biggest and overwhelmin…

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We are fools for the sake of Christ, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. — I Corinthians 4:10

I have a confession to make: I’m an easy mark for April Fools’ Jokes. This morning I got a Substack newsletter about a tech billionaire who did psychedelics and consequently made a commitment t…

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• April 18, 12 Noon Eastern USA Time

• April 22, 7 PM Eastern USA Time

Dates we’re meeting in May::

• May 2, 12 Noon Eastern USA Time

• May 6, 7 PM Eastern USA Time

Here are the suggested readings for April and May. Remember, you are welcome to participate in the Zoom calls even if you do not do the suggested reading beforehand.

April sug…

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The silence of contemplation is of a particular, sui generis, form: it is not the silence of being silenced. Rather, it is the voluntary silence of attention, transformation, mysterious interconnection, and (in violent, abusive, or oppressive contexts) rightful and divinely empowered resistance: it is a special ‘power-in-vulnerability.’ — Sarah Coakley

W…

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I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the star lit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks. — attributed to Saint Patrick

Here’s another legendary prayer that is misattributed to a …

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Spirit of Life,
Teach me to be honest and vulnerable when I pray.

When I am afraid, give me the courage to reveal my fear to you, for healing and renewal.
When I experience rage, give me the serenity to acknowledge my anger before you.
When I feel jealous, show me how to admit my envy in the face of your compassion.
When I am depressed, inspire me to bring e…

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Eighteen months before he died, spiritual teacher and psychedelics pioneer Ram Dass (1931–2019) welcomed ambient musician East Forest (Trevor Oswalt) into his home in Maui, where they collaborated on an album that was released a year later. It would be the final recording of Ram Dass’s teachings. The album, simply titled Ram Dass, features over an hour …

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