I can't comment directly to sr. laurel's blog (it isn't set up this way), but I wanted to comment on her post regarding the mystical state. First of all, I should ask for clarification, because I wonder if we are dealing in semantics. But I'll plunge ahead:
She seems to relegate 'mystical' experiences to 'mountain-top' experiences only, or only as the apophatic ecstatic state, and/or (sometimes) as sort of ER help from the divine for the spiritually weak or immature. At least, that's what it sounded like she said.
Um. Not my idea of what mysticism is about.
To me, mysticism is a vocation; a way of life, an every minute, every day experience. Certainly it is not the normal province for the spiritually immature--isn't it usually the mark of the spiritually grounded? At least, some of the most spiritually 'powerful' saints in our canon were marked by a marked mystical life.
So, as I am certainly inferior to Sr. Laurel in terms of knowledge of theology and church history, all I can speak to is my own experience.
My own experience is that the mystic is one who experiences god in all things, and especially in prayer, in an imagery, a fully-sensual experience, simply by grace. There is no 'advanced' or 'beginner'. At least in the most fundamental sense. Mysticism is life with god where god is in all and in ways we could not, would not, have guessed or imagined.
Frankly, in my 26 years of an intentional spiritual life, we experience, usually, what we EXPECT to experience. And there is no contradiction here. If we expect for 'mountaintop' experiences to happen only once per (fill in the blank) then that is what we shall have. If we anticipate that god will intersect with us daily, strangely, physically (so it seems), then he does. This is no mere 'wish fulfillment'; in my view it is a very fundamental and profound and sublime truth. If we wish the spiritual life to be difficult, to be dry, to be 'i-thou', to be usually 'reaching out', then it shall be.
To each his own. But as for me, a different path has chosen me. As sister said so eloquently when she expressed her feeling of the inexpressible joy of the Jesu during one of her own mystical experiences, 'where have you been, I'm so glad you are here'---does this not intimate that the Jesu expects us to be with him always, in every moment, and in that same sublime and inexpressible and mystical way? Why could it not mean that? I don't doubt that sister experiences god in a intimate and even in an ever-present way---but why must a 'mystical' union with god play so infrequent a role?
At any rate, this may not have been sister's intent, but her comments seem reminiscent of the old, old suspicion of the church hierarchy to mystical experiences----and mystical experiences and mystics are as varied, and unorthodox in their imagery and expression, as snowflakes. Certainly, the more the saint is described as 'mystical', the more shocking, surprising, and frankly heterodox their writings appear (I mean, St. Clare sounds simply Crowleyian at times!).
At any rate, I certainly experienced 'mountaintop' experiences before my mystical life burst into my consciousness, but now that the mystical state, both the apophatic ecstasy (in jest i call it the 'black out' prayer) and the definitely 3-d, full-color visionary state (also mystical) are, can and perhaps should be a gift of the divine to all and at all times (imagine!)--it's just that the door must be opened by someone--usually by someone else. I don't think the god-person link can be opened any other way. But I digress.
Well. I'm rambling now. But I was confused and somehow hurt by sister's post and felt like sharing. I apologize for the disorganization and apparent contradictions above; it's all very hard to express. It would be great to get a comment-string going on this one . . . .
