A Secular Mystic?

Reflections on being a Secular Mystic

I am identified in my posts as a “secular mystic.” You might well ask, what does that mean? When I use those words, mystic simply means that I feel connected to God who is transcendent mystery. When I use the word, secular, it means that God is also immanent, present, in the whole physical world, connected with our very material existence.

I am a person of faith with deep roots in the church who is in love with the world imperfect as it is.

A friend once asked how I could be a “secular mystic” when I am a Minister. It is precisely because I am a Presbyterian Minister that I see myself as both a mystic and secular. The Reformed faith has always seen God as the God of all creation and religion as part of all life. Clergy are ordained by a church which exists in society and is called to be a witness in the world. Being religious and secular is not only possible, it is inevitable. One can, of course, be secular without being religious but all people have ultimate loyalties of one kind or another.

And, in the Roman Catholic Church, diocesan priests who work in parishes or serve in other positions in society are call secular priests.

While I have given a simple definition of what I mean by “secular mystic,” the concept is somewhat complicated. So, a few more reflections.

One definition says this about what it means to be a mystic:

A person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect.

How does that apply to me? I do not spend my days siting around contemplating God, but theology is my major discipline. I do not spend hours in meditative prayer, but I see prayer as a part of my life. I am not seeking to be absorbed into the Deity, and I am not good at self-surrender, but I want to be faithful to God.

I do believe in the possibility of spiritual connection that lies beyond our normal ways of apprehension, in transcendent truths that engage the intellect, in ways of seeing outside of our senses. To be clear though, I am not talking about extrasensory perception. That is another whole matter.

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As for secular, its actual definition has changed over time. One AI definition that reflects popular understanding is, “Secular means anything that is worldly, earthly, or not connected to religious or spiritual matters.” I use the word to simply refer to society and the material world (worldly or earthly.) I stop before the “or not connected to religious or spiritual matters.” When I speak of secular and am referring to worldly and earthly matters, I include the material world and the social systems in it. For those who are religious, faith touches all of life,

In my childhood, appreciation of life: life in my neighborhood, life in nature, in relationships, in play, and life in prayer all just were. I did not distinguish between the “spiritual” and the “temporal.” It all belonged together. A child’s insight that I return to in my adulthood.

As I live my life in the context of everyday, in both the private and public realm, my faith is simply part of who I am. I do not need to talk about it all the time. Religion cannot be assigned to a box. Religion, from my perspective, is part of the secular world, part of history, part of life. Of course, God is not synonymous with religion. God is, as we have noted, transcendent and immanent, alive in all creation and beyond space and time.

Of course, all religions are not the same or monotheistic. In the States we are constitutionally committed to religious freedom and the separation of religion and state.

This being said about secular, there is a word that can signify the absence of a spiritual and or ethical mooring, it is “profane.” Profane and secular are not the same thing. Profane is an active showing of no respect for a god or religion or universal ethical principles.

So, secular mystic is a person living in the world who has faith in the Holy, or a person who sees life as sacred and embraces ethics that protect life. By combining secular and mystic I bring mystery and reality together.

A final personal note. I view God as close as my own heart and as real as the air I breathe, a Holy Presence moving in this time and all times. God is personal and universal, known but not fully knowable. A Spirit who is embodied in human beings and creation, whom no one religion can ever possess or any nation own or any group of people or any one person fully understand.

My chosen (and inherited faith} is as a Christian who believes that God was revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, in his death and resurrection. Jesus, a human being, a Jewish leader in ancient Palestine more than two thousand years ago. In him is a meeting of the divine and human in time for all time. Jesus Christ lives in The Holy Spirit.

Many people of faith believe the light of the Divine Mystery lives in us human beings, imperfect as we are, we are heirs of God. Because we are human and live in social contexts, God can be present in relationships, communities, and institutions, in the secular. God can also be absent there.

God is alive and well in all of creation, the Spirit of Life, the font of all Being, the source of ethical Wisdom, the creating foundation of ethics that preserve life, the author of Divine Law and Love. When God’s Spirit and ours meet, we are in the realm of mystics.

A mystic is rooted and grounded in the holy and lives in, interacts with, and intersects with the world in all its material reality, the secular.

“I feel entrusted to look upon earthly transformation with the eyes of faith, with lucidity of reason, with openness to mystery and with the cries of the poor and the earth resounding in my heart.” Pope Leo XIV

Magnifica Humanitas