Awe is a sense for the transcendence,
for the reference everywhere to mystery behind all things.
It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine . . .
to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple;
to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.
What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.
~ Abraham Heschel

Being Willingly Susceptible to All Reality

The late Protestant theologian Robert McAfee Brown described mysticism as “being open in a new way to every aspect of experience.” While seeing, feeling, and appreciating the isness of all reality, Christian monk William McNamara, indebted to Rabbi Heschel, points out mystics experience everything—whether in its unique particularity or cosmic mystery—as an allusion to transcendental meaning and as a suggestiveness of a divine gratuitous personal presence. All things are vibrant with spiritual meaning and significance. The contemplative’s attitude toward all reality is one of wonder and reverence, aware of the spiritual value which even the other-than-human world possess and is alert to the sacred dignity of every human being.

Mystics share in a passionate care for the marvel that is everywhere, have a sense of living in cosmic kinship with all beings, and enjoy a sense of the sacredness of life. The mystic, Rabbi Heschel explains

is alive to what is solemn in the simple, to what is sublime in the sensuous; but he (sic) is not aiming to penetrate into the sacred. Rather he is striving to be himself penetrated and actuated by the sacred, eager to yield to its force, to identify himself with every trend in the world which is toward the divine.

Contemplatives, in other words, are willingly susceptible to be acted upon by reality, however simple or magnificent, whether more-than-human or human. Poor in spirit, and passionate of heart, they have a unique capacity to be moved and to respond to that which moves them. William Stafford, the Oregon poet who was a mystic in his own right, used to sit each early morning at his kitchen table before his family or the world arose, to write a poem. One poem every day. And he described sitting in front of that blank piece of paper as being “susceptible to now.” This is the posture (no that’s too passive), this is the way the mystic engages in life. This is how the mystic greets the day or Doris or delight or disappointment or death — willingly susceptible to be acted upon by life and the author of life.

REFLECTION & PRACTICE:

What will make oohing and aahing this weekend more likely is first consciously allowing ourselves to be susceptible to and acted upon by all reality. Being susceptible is an essential contemplative practice that cultivates a contemplative way of being in the world.

NB! I use the terms mystic/contemplative and mystical/contemplative interchangeably.