Lessons in God from the mystics
Do you know what goes on in the core
of the Trinity? I will tell you.
In the core of the Trinity the Father laughs
and gives birth to the Son;
The Son laughs back at the Father
and gives birth to the Spirit;
The whole Trinity laughs and gives birth to us.
This unusual yet charming description of the Blessed Trinity is taken from the writings of Meister Eckhart, a Dominican priest, professor of theology, and mystic (circa 1260-1327).
This is theology expressed in the poetical language of mystics; theology: not as a theoretical study, but as a personal, lived experience. A theologian “knows about” God, whereas a mystic “knows” God, from his or her own personal experience.
The psychiatrist Carl Jung said: “It is only the mystic who brings creativity to religion, and it is to the mystic that we owe what is best in humanity.”
The modern world, in Jung’s view, is in a critical state because it has been desacrilised. Man must rediscover his spiritual roots.
The mystics have succeeded in this quest. As Meister Eckhart affirms: “God is love, and love is joy, and joy is laughter. When the Father laughs at the Son, and the Son laughs back at the Father, that laughter gives pleasure, that pleasure gives joy, that joy gives love.”
In his gospel, Luke tells us that Jesus was “filled with joy by the Holy Spirit” (10: 21), while John tells us: “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him” (1 Jn 4: 16).
This is the very essence of Jesus’ revelation of what God, our Father, is like: “God is love!” and what is more, he yearns for our love. This is why God created us. Meister Eckhart and the mystics know this intuitively.
God said to the soul: “I desired you before the world began. I desire you now as you desire me; and where the desires of two come together, then love is perfect.”
The soul responds: “Lord, you are my lover, my longing, my flowing stream, my sun; and I am your reflection.”
God answers: “It is my nature that makes me love you often, for I am love itself. It is my longing that makes me love you intensely, for I yearn to be loved from the heart. It is my eternity that makes me love you long, for I have no end.”
Etty Hillesun, a young Jewish woman from Holland, was put to death in Auschwitz in 1943. Etty was a mystic. She managed, somehow, to keep a “journal” of her experiences. Against all odds her writings were preserved, and were discovered in 1987.
In her journal she wrote: “There is a deep well inside me. In it dwells God. Sometimes I am there too — but, more often, stones and grit block the well, and God is buried underneath — then he must be dug out again.”
In Meister Eckhart’s words: “God is at home. It is we who have gone out for a walk. Prayer is about returning home and finding the ‘Greatness’ that was there all the time.”
John Main, the late Benedictine spiritual master, says: “Prayer is silence: a silence filled with God’s presence; a journey, a pilgrimage away from Self into the infinity of God, into the silence, peace and stillness of God, into the endless depths of God’s love buried within us.
“To remain unaware of the Eternal that unfolds itself within our lives, out of our inmost being, is the saddest fate that can befall anyone.”
