You Can't Be A Mystic Apart From the Mess

So will I ever sing praises to your name, as I perform my vows day after day (Psalm 61:8 ESV).

While “routine” isn’t a word I would choose to describe my life, my life is made up of a collection of routines. Patterns emerge that are repeated, sometimes weekly, sometimes daily. I’m always the first one up in the morning. I go downstairs and make the coffee. After some time in my study, it’s time to wake the kids, get dressed, help my wife get the kids dressed, then down for breakfast. Most mornings I do car-pool duty on my way to the church. The rhythm of the week is marked by Wednesday nights at church, and Sunday mornings at church. At church on Wednesdays there is choir for the kids followed by dinner in the fellowship hall, followed by one of my weekly teaching commitments. My days are shaped by meetings that happen with familiar repetition: A set of meetings for Monday, a set for Tuesday, a set for Wednesday.

Routines. I don’t know who said it – but I’ve heard that the hardest thing about life is that it’s just so daily. This is true. Routines can be deadening. Boredom sets in. All the real living gets bleached out of life.

And when it comes to our walk with God and our understanding of what it means to live a spiritual life, routines are like Novocain to the soul. We know our souls are there, we just can’t feel them. This leads us to the following conclusion: if we could ditch the routines, we could really know God. We could truly live with a sense of God’s presence. We could get close to God. But for these dishes in the sink, and practices to run to, and clothes to be folded, and grass to be mowed, and baths to be overseen, and family members to be called – were it not for all this daily-ness, we could live a spiritual life.

But this conclusion is wrong. We don’t find God by losing routines and patterns and obligations. We don’t become more spiritual by becoming less predictable. We don’t get deep by getting free. If anything, the opposite is true. God is found and grace is received in the midst of ordinariness. We demonstrate a likeness to God in our own faithfulness and steadfast commitments.

The Psalmist seems to have experienced the right mingling of exuberant praise and daily faithfulness. The words of Psalm 61:8 clearly come from one who has discovered what it means to worship in the midst of the daily performance of vows. Praise and daily-ness belong together. We learn to worship as we embrace the familiar every day stuff that constitutes our lives.

Mysticism and escapism are not the same thing. Not even close.

In fact, mysticism seems to thrive on the mundane. You can’t be a mystic apart from the mess.

One of my own ways of kindling a sense of fervor for the life of faith is to find people who know God intimately and embrace life, ordinary life, fully. Many of these exemplary followers of Jesus are long dead, but not all of them. In a coming post I’ll tell about some of my favorites.