Mixing the Tasks
Contemplation and Action Have Always Gone Together
Mix the tasks of active life with the spiritual labours of the contemplative life, and then you will do well. — Walter Hilton
Walter Hilton was born in the 1340s and died in 1396, making him a contemporary of Julian of Norwich and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing. I like to think of him as the “George Harrison” of the contemplative life. If you’re a Beatles fan, you know George was “the Quiet Beatle”—the youngest member, overshadowed by the towering talents of John Lennon and Paul McCartney—yet he wrote classics like “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something.” One critic famously remarked that Harrison had the misfortune of being a gifted songwriter in a band with two geniuses.
In the same way, Walter Hilton was a gifted mystical writer who is often grouped with two of the greatest medieval English mystics simply because they lived at the same time. But it would be a mistake to overlook him. Though his language can sound harsh and dualistic to modern ears, with its heavy emphasis on sin and repentance, his deepest insights—like those of many great mystics—emerge when we accept him as a product of his time, and read between the lines.
Hilton’s best-known work is The Scale of Perfection, but like the Cloud author he also produced shorter gems. His treatise Mixed Life—written in the 1370s or 1380s, around the same time as The Cloud of Unknowing—was remarkably innovative. Most mystical writers of the era were monks or nuns addressing cloistered readers. Hilton, an Augustinian canon who lived in community but not under full monastic rule, wrote Mixed Life for a layperson seeking to integrate spiritual practice into daily life.
His message is simple yet profound: whether cloistered or secular, a healthy spirituality requires mixing intentional contemplative practice with the ordinary demands of life. Even monks and nuns must do the dishes and balance budgets; likewise, those of us “in the world” must weave silence, prayer, meditation, and contemplation into our busy schedules.
Writing over 600 years ago, Hilton reminds us that this challenge is nothing new—and that the spirituality of laypeople is not second-class. Learning to balance mundane commitments with spiritual pursuit: this is the heart of the mystical journey.
Quotation Source: Walter Hilton, Mixed Life (Fairacres Publications Book 138), Kindle Edition, chapter 2.