Reclaiming the Transcendent

Millions of people have mystical experiences, near-death experiences, visions, knowings, communications with the dead, with plants, with animals, with angels, with God. The insights they offer are life-changing, yet our society rarely acknowledges these experiences, except as sources of humor or mental illness.

What I have found startling is that when we take this lens of mystical experiences seriously, and superimpose it on scripture and the work of Jesus, all sorts of new understandings pop out. Things that formerly seemed to be saying one thing, now seem to have a somewhat different meaning. Things that didn’t used to make sense, suddenly do. This causes us to reimagine the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It causes us to reimagine God. It causes us to reimagine who we are, and the answer is astonishing! What would it be like for Christianity if we actually took mystical experiences seriously? What if we focused on the nurture of our souls, including the visions of God from those who have actually encountered the Divine?

This past Sunday those of us from liturgical Christian traditions celebrated Last Epiphany with the story of Jesus’ transfiguration. This is when Jesus climbs a mountaintop with three of his disciples: Peter, James, and John. While there, Jesus is transfigured before them, becoming like a shining light, and within the light Moses and Elijah also appear. The three holy men speak and then God’s voice speaks from above, while Peter, James, and John look on in astonishment. In fact, Peter is so moved by the miracle of Jesus’ transfiguration and God’s voice, that years later he writes about it saying:

“For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty… We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.” – 2 Peter 1:16, 18b

In other words, as Peter is writing about the glories of Jesus, he reminds the readers that he is not speaking about random things he heard through the grapevine, but he is speaking from firsthand experience. This isn’t conjecture, this is knowledge. Peter had a Spiritually Transformative Experience (STE) which allowed him direct knowledge of the Divine, and which affected him the rest of his life. Life-altering experiences of the transcendent, of the divine, happen throughout scripture. Why do we, especially Christians, suppose that these sorts of experiences have stopped? Or that if they do exist, they must only be in an acceptable form? Or they must confirm existing theology? On the eve of his death, did not Jesus himself say,

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, she will guide you into all the truth.” – John 16:12-13a

He is letting us know there is more insight to come. The wisdom and actions of Jesus’ life are not all there is to learn.

There are those throughout the ages: mystics, saints, ordinary people who, though their mystical experiences, understand the deeper truth of the enchantedness of the cosmos. This knowing has allowed their personal fullness to flower. However, most of us, especially post-enlightenment, have been taught a smaller and inadequate vision of reality, including of the Earth and ourselves, which has therefore impacted our understanding of Jesus and his mission. Consequently, most churches and Christians have a smaller and inadequate vision of their mission as well. Reclaiming this enchantedness would allow us to fully be ourselves, to be fully who Christ calls us to be, to be who it is we are created to be.

Religions develop because people have transcendent encounters with the Divine and wish to share that insight with others. Structure is given, teachings are offered, and what was originally a transcendent encounter, can devolve into something dry and rote to those who do not have an experience themselves. Even with the best of intentions, words are insufficient to explain enchantedness. So without the sparkle of the transcendent to inspire them along, religion can often be, not surprisingly, dry and rote. The pulsing, enchanted Spirit of love can have difficulty entering into a community or a heart which only encounters it through the paucity of human language, and/or does not actually believe it exists. We can only see what we know to look for.

Wonderful as the scientific Enlightenment Era was, and while acknowledging all the great things it gave us, because of it we also lost a sense of mystery. Of mysticism. Of the transcendent. These things must be reclaimed in order to become whole as individuals and as a species.

*Note: Biblical translations are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, except where I referred to the Holy Spirit as “she.”

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