So what happens if the old labels aren’t working anymore? What if I want to redefine things on my own terms and hope that, in doing so, I help others shed their labels and come fully into who they are and who they hope to be? What if, in the way of being a mystic, I want us to simply learn to listen to our own lives on a new wavelength? — Kaitlin B. Curtice
Potawatomi author Kaitlin B. Curtice understands that mysticism is all about story.
Maybe that’s not too radical a statement in itself — after all, mysticism is about life, and life is, in many ways, simply a story. The title of Curtice’s new book, from which the above quotation comes, is Everything is a Story. To be a mystic is to be alive (remember those wise words of Howard Thurman: what the world needs is people who have come alive) In both our lives in general, and our encounter with God/Spirit/the Mystery in particular, we see and hear and understand the raw material of our experience through the poetic lyricism of story. For it is in the stories we receive, the stories we tell, and the stories we enact and embody, that our mystical journeys, our mystical experiences, our mystical lives become available for us to reflect on, learn from, and share with each other and with the human family at large.
But sometimes stories fail us. They no longer inspire or offer us wisdom and liberation. Sometimes our stories can stifle us, or confine us, or even hold us in their thrall. As Curtice succinctly describes it, “the old labels” simply stop working. Okay, a label is not the same thing as a story, but our stories begin with the words we use to name (label) our experience.
This is why silence is essential to spirituality in general, and mysticism in particular. All language must be spoken against the backdrop of silence, and sometimes the words need to shade off into the silence —especially when those words no longer work. It is only in silence that we become open and available to new words, new labels, a new telling of the story (or even, a new story altogether). As Kaitlin Curtice reminds us, to be a mystic means to learn to listen: and as part of listening for the whisper of the Spirit in our hearts, we must also learn to listen to the whispers of our hearts themselves. For it is in the our bodies — and the stories of our lives — that the dance of our intimacy with the source of all Love takes place.
Quotation source: Curtice, Kaitlin B. Everything Is a Story: Reclaiming the Power of Stories to Heal and Shape Our Lives (p. 111). Kindle Edition.