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Women Mystics by Suzanne Whitney We pushed the tables back and moved the chairs into a semicircle. Dinner cleared, we became quiet. Time for wonder and wariness. Time for liftoff. As poet Robert Pinsky puts it: "… Now the nervous tangle of tones and scales is suspended, the players all schooling their single root to the raised baton." The semicircle is a pattern unknown to winged migration, nor ideal for a commuter trip from one recognizable destination to another. But this was to be a soul trek, following three women who had gone where few souls had gone before. The wings bearing us beat in reverse and the pilot's back was to the instrument panel. In fact, it was not long before the pilot left the cockpit and joined the passengers. I relaxed. Judy Peace knew the way. We were in for a parallax shift - the same world seen from different angles: inner space, deep space, hyperspace … and back? Would we ever make it back? Should we make it back? Hildegard von Bingen, St. Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich. The smaller their cells, the larger their space. They loved smallness, clung to it, these unorthodox women saved by orthodoxy. Hildegard sang her name away. St. Teresa crumbled into the Trinity. Julian became a hazelnut. There was nowhere they couldn't go. Unchurched people get into trouble leading mystic lives, dancing on sword blades over heresy and madness. As poet Steve Orlen wrote on the holocaust, "… imagination is a terrible gift. Cultivate it accurately." We are blessed that these women were deeply churced, deeply committed to Christ, and relentlessly focused on His Passion. We are also blessed that God granted them mental space for common sense and the will to use it. At one time or another, they all lived within the sound of people being burned at the stake for crimes against the Faith. They persisted in courage. When you, Julian asked God to make her deathly ill in 30 years … and then to heal her. He did. Willful, romantic Teresa desired martyrdom. Her insatiable conscience granted her illness and pain. Hildegard was denied the Eucharist for burying a repentant sinner on hallowed ground. I believe she would have preferred the stake. The normal soul would shrink from lives of such adversity. Yet to deny their example would be to deny their rapture. Follow we must, however small our steps, praying for their help as we go. Persevere, and we will feel their hands slip into ours.
Copyright © 2004 St. Augustine by-the-Sea
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