Encountering the Mystery through Delight

The Mystical Journey invites us into divine intimacy. It's even better than it sounds.

N.B. For the past couple of months, my friends on Patreon and I have been exploring the question “What is mysticism?” by drawing on the wisdom of Evelyn Underhill and Bernard McGinn. While I believe it is impossible to ever nail down a topic as nuanced as mysticism in a single definition, I think we can explore a variety of ways to at least approach the topic, if not definitively define it. This is the second of five posts where I offer brief invitations for some of the different ways people like you and I might be able to encounter the mystery at the heart of mysticism: a mystery that can never be fully captured in words or earthly ideas (Note: if you’d like to join this conversation with me in monthly Zoom meetings, join Patreon by clicking here).

Another Way to Encounter the Mystery: Delight

“Take delight in Yahweh, who will grant you the desire of your heart.” This is a bold declaration, found in Psalm 37. Not only does it challenge the common stereotype that desire is somehow unspiritual, but it also links the deepest and most intimate kind of desire (“of your heart”) with another quality that is often overlooked in spiritual circles: delight.

The Hebrew word in this verse that gets rendered in English as “delight” is עָנַג or anag, literally meaning “to be soft” or “to take exquisite pleasure in.” It’s a rich, sensual word that loses a lot in translation. It has a lot of overtones that are “feminine”—or if you prefer to avoid traditional gender coding, we can say it is deeply receptive, luxuriating, embodied, and almost indulgent. This is not a command to obey an authoritarian, patriarchal God; it is more of an alluring proposal to savor the joy and deliciousness of a divine lover.

Forget the rules and regulations of Leviticus; this is an invitation into a relationship with God that is closest in quality and feel to the delectable love found in that most beautiful of Biblical poems: the Song of Songs.

Can you imagine a relationship with the divine where you are loved so fully that God simply wants to pamper you? Where you are invited into a soft, dainty, exquisite interaction, like an attentive lover enticing you to take a long, slow bath before… well, you get even closer?

If this scandalizes you, all I can say is I hope you’ll take some time to get to know the great mystics of the past, many of whom drew inspiration from the Song of Songs (the Song of Solomon or the Canticle of Canticles) more than any other book in the Bible. Their understanding of divine intimacy was never crude or vulgar, but sacred even as it is voluptuous, sensitive, amorous, and tender. This is an invitation that dares to suggest that a relationship with God invites us into a spiritual pleasure beyond our wildest dreams.

So how do we take delight in God, in such a nuanced and rich way? My purpose is to offer you an invitation, not a step-by-step program. Just as a teenager can never learn how to kiss from a book, so you and I cannot learn how to take delight in the divine from anything so coarse as the written word. But I can say this: mysticism is an invitation to let go of all the duty-bound, legalistic, overly formal ways of thinking about a relationship with God. This invitation into a deeper, contemplative, even mystical spirituality is no legal contract; it is a love letter. May we read it fully, and respond wholeheartedly.

Quotation sources: Psalm 37:4.