No, my friends, the vision of me at a cauldron is highly inaccurate! :) Yet, romantic that I am, and now fired with enthusiasm about Holy Week and Easter, I'm longing to have powerful emotions, perhaps be swept away with an intensity such as Teresa of Avila would have placed at the seventh mansion. I must comfort myself remembering that Teresa, whose life was filled with 'consolations' where mine is pure orthopraxy, actually thought the special experiences were a bother. Not to mention that, given my temperament, were I to be swept away I'd probably end up on Alpha Centauri and unable to return.
I just checked my inbox - as always for one who has her own domain, it's cluttered with junk that gets past the spam filters. It seems that many 'singles in my area want to meet me' (why? for an exhortation to repentance?). As for the notices that I've won lotteries and the like, were they all true I'd be able to buy Harrod's and establish branches in ten major cities, where the most extravagant purchase I ever made in Harrod's was to go to the loo. (Quite an elegant one, I must mention, though it is less expensive to visit the one of even finer design that is in the Knights Templar pub.)
I'm restless this evening, hoping the Hosannas ahead tomorrow get me out of my rut. Right now, Tudor music is playing, my best incense burning, and I am savouring a glass of red wine. I still feel banal... (I doubt that one can 'feel' banal, but I can manage it if anyone can.)
Now and then, I receive e-mail from sincere but confused souls who, having seen my site, are surprised that mysticism can be Christian. (Get me another gin... but I've seen the works of Julian of Norwich classed as "New Age" on a book site, so I should not be surprised.) Many of them are looking for magic in other ways. Yet the 'real magic' is not power, or secret knowledge, or (yes, even I shall admit this...) falling in love with God (or whatever one considers his equivalent, and it is hoped that is not oneself.)
Magic is transformation - through worship, self knowledge and concurrent self forgetfulness, love of God and neighbour. It is not obtaining power, but seeing both the powerlessness of a crucified man and how limited we are in our perception, how incapable of grasping the divine image. This is quite wonderful, though it frightens us. Once we see that the divine is beyond any image we can grasp, we can further see a 'journey' (bear with me - religious of my generation were always on journeys, which is why, after three decades, they still cannot find themselves) that is love, burning white hot, but always just a glimmer. In this life and the next, there will always be growth, never reaching the total knowledge of God. It's a quest to match anything the Holy Grail crowd can imagine.
No - it is not the wine! :) I'm just reminding myself that romantic feelings, minor ecstasies (which, taken any further, would leave me acting like a half wit), and all that for which the romantics such as myself pine are not the 'truth' at all.
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